RedCircle VERIFY_TOKEN_4b629045-c07b-4784-a1c9-cda745768432 -- Rendered At Sun, 17 May 2026 18:51:45 +0000 The Retail Razor Show https://redcircle.com/shows/the-retail-razor-show en-US © Copyright 2021-2026 All rights reserved. Retail Razor, LLC. The Retail Razor Show Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Cutting through the clutter in retail strategy, retail technology, and executive leadership. Welcome to The Retail Razor Show—your go-to podcast for bold insights and real-world innovation in the retail industry. We spotlight the trends transforming retail, from AI-powered solutions and retail media networks to the human connection that drives exceptional customer experience and maximizes employee satisfaction. Hosted by RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert, Thinkers360 Top Thought Leader and one of NRF’s 2025 Retail Voices, Ricardo Belmar, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert, retail tech startup founder, and CI&T North American Leader, Casey Golden. Episodes feature: + Executive leaders from top retail brands + Influential industry analysts and retail strategists + Startup founders driving innovation in retail technology + Case studies of successful retail tech deployments + Straight talk on strategy and innovation Whether you’re a retail executive, frontline store team leader, tech innovator, product junkie, or customer experience champion, this show delivers actionable strategies to help you lead your business and your teams with clarity, adopt emerging technologies, and stay ahead in a constantly evolving retail industry. Subscribe: Now in its sixth season, The Retail Razor Show is part of the Retail Razor Podcast Network. Stay sharp. Stay human. Stay ahead. Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube Follow The Retail Razor Podcast Network on: LinkedIn: https://go.retailrazor.com/IN BlueSky: https://go.retailrazor.com/Bluesky Instagram: https://go.retailrazor.com/insta Threads: https://go.retailrazor.com/threads Facebook: https://go.retailrazor.com/Facebook About your hosts: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, a Top 25 AGI & Careers, a Top 50 Agentic AI & Management, & a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 & 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and a Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! 4b629045-c07b-4784-a1c9-cda745768432 Cutting through the clutter in retail strategy, retail technology, and executive leadership.


Welcome to The Retail Razor Show — your go-to podcast for bold strategic insights and real-world innovation in the retail industry. We spotlight the trends transforming retail, from AI-powered solutions and retail media networks to the human connection that drives exceptional customer experience and maximizes employee satisfaction. Hosted by RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert, Thinkers360 Top Thought Leader and one of NRF’s 2025 Retail Voices, Ricardo Belmar, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert, retail tech startup founder, and CI&T North American Leader, Casey Golden.


Episodes feature:


  • Executive leaders from top retail brands
  • Influential industry analysts and retail strategists
  • Startup founders driving innovation in retail technology
  • Case studies of successful retail tech deployments
  • Straight talk on strategy and innovation


Whether you’re a retail executive, frontline store team leader, tech innovator, product junkie, or customer experience champion, this show delivers actionable strategies to help you lead your business and your teams with clarity, adopt emerging technologies, and stay ahead in a constantly evolving retail industry.


Subscribe


Now in its sixth season, The Retail Razor Show is part of the Retail Razor Podcast Network.

Stay sharp. Stay human. Stay ahead.


Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com/

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube


Follow The Retail Razor Podcast Network on


LinkedIn: https://go.retailrazor.com/IN

BlueSky: https://go.retailrazor.com/Bluesky

Instagram: https://go.retailrazor.com/insta

Threads: https://go.retailrazor.com/threads

Facebook: https://go.retailrazor.com/Facebook


About your hosts


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, a Top 25 AGI & Careers, a Top 50 Agentic AI & Management, & a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 & 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.

Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and a Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! 

]]> episodic no Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert podcast@retailrazor.com no full AI Agents Gone Rogue: The Cybersecurity Risks Retailers Are Ignoring in Agentic Commerce AI Agents Gone Rogue: The Cybersecurity Risks Retailers Are Ignoring in Agentic Commerce 5 6 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert AI Agents Gone Rogue: The Cybersecurity Risks Retailers Are Ignoring in Agentic Commerce S6E5 What Retailers Must Know About Prompt Injection, Rogue Bots & AI Agent Security Before It's Too Late Your AI shopping agent just drained your bank account. It's not a glitch — that's the objective it was given. Welcome to the new reality of agentic commerce, where autonomous AI agents shop, transact, and negotiate on behalf of consumers and brands — and where cybercriminals are already waiting to exploit every crack in the system. In this must-listen episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Dr. Aaron Estes, VP of Product & Engineering at Binary Defense, to unpack the retail cybersecurity crisis that most retailers haven't even started preparing for. With half of all internet traffic already coming from bots and 1 in 8 AI-related breaches now involving a rogue agent, the agentic commerce era is creating attack surfaces we've never seen before. Dr. Estes brings 20+ years of hands-on cybersecurity expertise, including penetration testing at Lockheed Martin and advisory work with leading retailers. He breaks down exactly how AI agents differ from traditional e-commerce threats, why prompt injection attacks are the new frontier of retail cybersecurity, and what practical guardrails every retailer needs to put in place right now. What You’ll Learn in This Episode: • Why AI agents are fundamentally different from human users — and why they'll "very confidently spend all your money" to hit their objective • How prompt injection attacks trick AI agents into leaking sensitive data • Why every AI agent needs its own identity, login, and role-based access controls — just like an employee • The "bots watching bots" architecture that's becoming the new standard in agentic commerce security • How AI shopping bots are already exploiting loyalty programs, gift cards, and rewards systems • Why retailers must rethink retail cybersecurity assumptions as autonomous shoppers replace human ones • How to identify rogue chatbots and fraudulent AI agents impersonating legitimate brands • What "human-in-the-loop" oversight really means — and where it's non-negotiable in agentic commerce This Episode is Brought to You By RetailClub. Join 2,000 retail leaders at RetailClub AI Festival, September 22–24 in Huntington Beach. Dive deep into how AI is reshaping retail while soaking up the sun at a fully outdoor, beachside venue. Decision-makers from retailers and brands can attend with free tickets and up to $1,250 in travel reimbursement. Head to retailclub.com to learn more. https://retailclub.com/retail-razor-podcast Subscribe & Follow If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5 star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Goodpods. Subscribe on YouTube so you never miss an episode and check out the other shows in the Retail Razor Podcast Network: Retail Transformers, Blade to Greatness, and Data Blades. Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube About our Guest Dr. Aaron Estes. https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronestes777/ email: aaron.estes@binarydefense.com Dr. Aaron Estes is the VP of Product & Engineering at Binary Defense, a 24/7 cybersecurity watchtower specializing in cyber threat intelligence, dark web monitoring, digital channel fraud, and breach response. He holds a doctorate in software engineering with a concentration in cybersecurity, teaches at UC Berkeley and Southern Methodist University, and previously spent ~15 years in penetration testing at Lockheed Martin across defense, energy, retail, and entertainment sectors. Chapters 00:00 Teaser 00:49 Show Intro 07:26 Welcome Dr Aaron Estes! 09:31 Why Security Matters 14:00 New Attack Surface 17:57 AI Identity and Access 22:09 Adoption Speed and Oversight 26:51 Bots Watching Bots 31:34 Orchestrators and Rival Bots 34:06 Bots Gaming Rewards 37:13 AI Shoppers Rise 38:29 Ads Inside Agents 44:08 Rogue Bots And Trust 48:09 Risk Versus Reward 50:48 Kill Switch Reality 52:55 Ecommerce Lessons Repeat 54:26 Closing Thanks And Contact 56:21 Show Close Meet your hosts Helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail, a Top 25 Thought Leader in AGI and Careers, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Agentic AI and Management, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Digital Transformation and Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S6E5 What Retailers Must Know About Prompt Injection, Rogue Bots & AI Agent Security Before It's Too Late


Your AI shopping agent just drained your bank account. It's not a glitch — that's the objective it was given. Welcome to the new reality of agentic commerce, where autonomous AI agents shop, transact, and negotiate on behalf of consumers and brands — and where cybercriminals are already waiting to exploit every crack in the system.


In this must-listen episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Dr. Aaron Estes, VP of Product & Engineering at Binary Defense, to unpack the retail cybersecurity crisis that most retailers haven't even started preparing for. With half of all internet traffic already coming from bots and 1 in 8 AI-related breaches now involving a rogue agent, the agentic commerce era is creating attack surfaces we've never seen before.


Dr. Estes brings 20+ years of hands-on cybersecurity expertise, including penetration testing at Lockheed Martin and advisory work with leading retailers. He breaks down exactly how AI agents differ from traditional e-commerce threats, why prompt injection attacks are the new frontier of retail cybersecurity, and what practical guardrails every retailer needs to put in place right now.


What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • Why AI agents are fundamentally different from human users — and why they'll "very confidently spend all your money" to hit their objective
  • How prompt injection attacks trick AI agents into leaking sensitive data
  • Why every AI agent needs its own identity, login, and role-based access controls — just like an employee
  • The "bots watching bots" architecture that's becoming the new standard in agentic commerce security
  • How AI shopping bots are already exploiting loyalty programs, gift cards, and rewards systems
  • Why retailers must rethink retail cybersecurity assumptions as autonomous shoppers replace human ones
  • How to identify rogue chatbots and fraudulent AI agents impersonating legitimate brands
  • What "human-in-the-loop" oversight really means — and where it's non-negotiable in agentic commerce


This Episode is Brought to You By RetailClub.

Join 2,000 retail leaders at RetailClub AI Festival, September 22–24 in Huntington Beach. Dive deep into how AI is reshaping retail while soaking up the sun at a fully outdoor, beachside venue. Decision-makers from retailers and brands can attend with free tickets and up to $1,250 in travel reimbursement. Head to retailclub.com to learn more. https://retailclub.com/retail-razor-podcast


Subscribe & Follow

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5‑star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Goodpods. Subscribe on YouTube so you never miss an episode and check out the other shows in the Retail Razor Podcast Network: Retail Transformers, Blade to Greatness, and Data Blades.


Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube


About our Guest

Dr. Aaron Estes. https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronestes777/

email: aaron.estes@binarydefense.com

Binary Defense. https://binarydefense.com/

Dr. Aaron Estes is the VP of Product & Engineering at Binary Defense, a 24/7 cybersecurity watchtower specializing in cyber threat intelligence, dark web monitoring, digital channel fraud, and breach response. He holds a doctorate in software engineering with a concentration in cybersecurity, teaches at UC Berkeley and Southern Methodist University, and previously spent ~15 years in penetration testing at Lockheed Martin across defense, energy, retail, and entertainment sectors.


Chapters

00:00 Teaser 

00:49 Show Intro 

07:26 Welcome Dr Aaron Estes! 

09:31 Why Security Matters 

14:00 New Attack Surface 

17:57 AI Identity and Access 

22:09 Adoption Speed and Oversight 

26:51 Bots Watching Bots 

31:34 Orchestrators and Rival Bots 

34:06 Bots Gaming Rewards 

37:13 AI Shoppers Rise 

38:29 Ads Inside Agents 

44:08 Rogue Bots And Trust 

48:09 Risk Versus Reward 

50:48 Kill Switch Reality 

52:55 Ecommerce Lessons Repeat 

54:26 Closing Thanks And Contact 

56:21 Show Close


Meet your hosts

Helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail, a Top 25 Thought Leader in AGI and Careers, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Agentic AIand Management, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Digital Transformation and Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformationand the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! 


Music

Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <h1><strong>S6E5 What Retailers Must Know About Prompt Injection, Rogue Bots &amp; AI Agent Security Before It&#39;s Too Late</strong></h1><p><br></p><p>Your AI shopping agent just drained your bank account. It&#39;s not a glitch — that&#39;s the objective it was given. Welcome to the new reality of <strong>agentic commerce</strong>, where autonomous <strong>AI agents</strong> shop, transact, and negotiate on behalf of consumers and brands — and where cybercriminals are already waiting to exploit every crack in the system.</p><p><br></p><p>In this must-listen episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Dr. Aaron Estes, VP of Product &amp; Engineering at Binary Defense, to unpack the <strong>retail cybersecurity</strong> crisis that most retailers haven&#39;t even started preparing for. With half of all internet traffic already coming from bots and 1 in 8 AI-related breaches now involving a <em>rogue agent</em>, the agentic commerce era is creating attack surfaces we&#39;ve never seen before.</p><p><br></p><p>Dr. Estes brings 20+ years of hands-on cybersecurity expertise, including penetration testing at Lockheed Martin and advisory work with leading retailers. He breaks down exactly how AI agents differ from traditional e-commerce threats, why prompt injection attacks are the new frontier of retail cybersecurity, and what practical guardrails every retailer needs to put in place right now.</p><p><br></p><h2>What You’ll Learn in This Episode:</h2><ul><li>Why AI agents are fundamentally different from human users — and why they&#39;ll &#34;very confidently spend all your money&#34; to hit their objective</li><li>How prompt injection attacks trick AI agents into leaking sensitive data</li><li>Why every AI agent needs its own identity, login, and role-based access controls — just like an employee</li><li>The &#34;bots watching bots&#34; architecture that&#39;s becoming the new standard in agentic commerce security</li><li>How AI shopping bots are already exploiting loyalty programs, gift cards, and rewards systems</li><li>Why retailers must rethink retail cybersecurity assumptions as autonomous shoppers replace human ones</li><li>How to identify rogue chatbots and fraudulent AI agents impersonating legitimate brands</li><li>What &#34;human-in-the-loop&#34; oversight really means — and where it&#39;s non-negotiable in agentic commerce</li></ul><p><br></p><h2>This Episode is Brought to You By <a href="https://www.retailclub.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>RetailClub</strong></a>.</h2><p>Join 2,000 retail leaders at <strong>RetailClub AI Festival</strong>, <strong>September 22–24 in Huntington Beach</strong>. Dive deep into how AI is reshaping retail while soaking up the sun at a fully outdoor, beachside venue. Decision-makers from retailers and brands can attend with free tickets and up to $1,250 in travel reimbursement. Head to <a href="https://retailclub.com/retail-razor-podcast" rel="nofollow">retailclub.com</a> to learn more. <a href="https://retailclub.com/retail-razor-podcast" rel="nofollow">https://retailclub.com/retail-razor-podcast</a></p><p><br></p><h2>Subscribe &amp; Follow</h2><p>If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a <em>5‑star rating and review</em> on <strong>Apple Podcasts</strong>, <strong>Spotify</strong>, or <strong>Goodpods</strong>. <em>Subscribe</em> on <strong>YouTube</strong> so you never miss an episode and check out the other shows in the <strong>Retail Razor Podcast Network</strong>: <em>Retail Transformers, Blade to Greatness,</em> and <em>Data Blades</em>.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: </strong><a href="https://retailrazor.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.com/</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://go.retailrazor.com/utube" rel="nofollow">https://go.retailrazor.com/utube</a></p><p><br></p><h2>About our Guest</h2><p><strong>Dr. Aaron Estes. </strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronestes777/" rel="nofollow"><strong>https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronestes777/</strong></a></p><p><strong>email: </strong><a href="mailto:aaron.estes@binarydefense.com" rel="nofollow"><strong>aaron.estes@binarydefense.com</strong></a></p><p><strong>Binary Defense</strong>. <a href="https://binarydefense.com/" rel="nofollow">https://binarydefense.com/</a></p><p>Dr. Aaron Estes is the VP of Product &amp; Engineering at Binary Defense, a 24/7 cybersecurity watchtower specializing in cyber threat intelligence, dark web monitoring, digital channel fraud, and breach response. He holds a doctorate in software engineering with a concentration in cybersecurity, teaches at UC Berkeley and Southern Methodist University, and previously spent ~15 years in penetration testing at Lockheed Martin across defense, energy, retail, and entertainment sectors.</p><p><br></p><h2>Chapters</h2><p>00:00 Teaser </p><p>00:49 Show Intro </p><p>07:26 Welcome Dr Aaron Estes! </p><p>09:31 Why Security Matters </p><p>14:00 New Attack Surface </p><p>17:57 AI Identity and Access </p><p>22:09 Adoption Speed and Oversight </p><p>26:51 Bots Watching Bots </p><p>31:34 Orchestrators and Rival Bots </p><p>34:06 Bots Gaming Rewards </p><p>37:13 AI Shoppers Rise </p><p>38:29 Ads Inside Agents </p><p>44:08 Rogue Bots And Trust </p><p>48:09 Risk Versus Reward </p><p>50:48 Kill Switch Reality </p><p>52:55 Ecommerce Lessons Repeat </p><p>54:26 Closing Thanks And Contact </p><p>56:21 Show Close</p><p><br></p><h2>Meet your hosts</h2><p>Helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2026/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2026. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a <em>Top 10 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Retail</em>, a <em>Top 25 Thought Leader </em>in<em> AGI </em>and<em> Careers</em>, a <em>Top 50 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Agentic AI</em>and <em>Management</em>, and a <em>Top 100 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Digital Transformation </em>and<em> Transformation. </em>Thinkers 360 also named him a <em>Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. </em>He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>and the <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail &amp; consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is the North America Leader for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at CI&amp;T, and CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. She is a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2026/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2026, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! </p><p><br></p><h2>Music</h2><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album <em>Beat Hype</em>, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> c57eca9e-61c4-45ee-9412-b4a798504731 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/agentic-cybersecurity Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:27:49 +0000 3430 no full Off-site Retail Media & CTV - Andrew Lipsman on Retail Media’s Next Frontier Off-site Retail Media & CTV - Andrew Lipsman on Retail Media’s Next Frontier 4 6 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Off-site Retail Media & CTV - Andrew Lipsman on Retail Media’s Next Frontier S6E4 Exploring the rise of performance TV, off-site retail media, and what it means for retailers and brands. Retail media is evolving fast, and if you're still stuck in 2022, you're already behind. In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with retail media expert Andrew Lipsman to explore how Retail Media Networks(RMNs) are expanding into Connected TV (CTV) and off-site retail media to drive growth in 2026 and beyond. From Amazon and Walmart’s bold moves into performance TV to the rise of off-site retail media as a full-funnel strategy, this episode is packed with insights for retailers and brands navigating the next wave of retail media strategy. Andrew breaks down the challenges of measurement, the myth of ROAS, and why CMOs and agencies need to rethink their approach to retail media. What You’ll Learn in This Episode: Why connected TV is the next frontier for retail media networks How off-site retail media is growing 3x faster than on-site The real story behind ROAS and why it’s often misleading How Amazon and Walmart are dominating performance TV What smaller RMNs can do to compete through partnerships Why CMOs and agencies must evolve their retail media strategy How to build a full-funnel retail media approach that works Whether you're building a retail media network or buying ad space for your next brand campaign, this episode is packed with the sharp insights you need to stay ahead. Subscribe & Follow If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5‑star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Goodpods. Subscribe on YouTube so you never miss an episode and check out the other shows in the Retail Razor Podcast Network: Retail Transformers, Blade to Greatness, and Data Blades. Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube About our Guest Andrew Lipsman. https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-lipsman-10b2162/ Analyst, Consultant, and Founder - Media, Ads + Commerce. Andrew Lipsman is an independent analyst and principal consultant at Media, Ads + Commerce. His industry coverage specializes in retail media—which he is known for anointing as “digital advertising’s third big wave”—and other areas of the digital media, advertising, and commerce ecosystem. He has published more than a half dozen articles in the Journal of Advertising Research and is frequently quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Financial Times, and Advertising Age. Media, Ads + Commerce. https://mediaadsandcommerce.substack.com Media, Ads + Commerce is a consultancy providing strategy and insights for companies in retail media and the broader media, advertising, and commerce ecosystem. Chapters 00:00 Teaser Open 00:51 Show Intro 04:19 Welcome Back Andrew Lipsman! 06:12 How Retail Media Evolved 07:56 Closed Loop And ROAS Limits 10:57 Retail Media Connective Tissue 15:24 CTV Goes Performance 21:19 Partnership Paths To CTV 24:53 Trade Desk And Agency Gap 27:32 Offsite Media Growth Drivers 29:27 Onsite Relevance First 30:40 Connected TV Landscape 31:46 Inventory Quality and Fraud 33:02 Target and Nordstrom Playbook 35:34 Full Funnel Measurement 36:33 CMO Perception Gap 38:09 Brands and Merchant Alignment 41:49 CTV Attribution Reality 44:06 Rethinking ROAS Metrics 46:17 Last Touch Misleads 47:59 Inefficiency as Opportunity 50:15 Talent and Org Alignment 53:21 2026 Priorities and Mindset 57:13 Where to Follow Andrew 58:00 Show Close Meet your hosts Helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail, a Top 25 Thought Leader in AGI and Careers, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Agentic AIand Management, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Digital Transformation and Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformationand the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Music Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S6E4 Exploring the rise of performance TV, off-site retail media, and what it means for retailers and brands.


Retail media is evolving fast, and if you're still stuck in 2022, you're already behind. In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with retail media expert Andrew Lipsman to explore how Retail Media Networks(RMNs) are expanding into Connected TV (CTV) and off-site retail media to drive growth in 2026 and beyond.


From Amazon and Walmart’s bold moves into performance TV to the rise of off-site retail media as a full-funnel strategy, this episode is packed with insights for retailers and brands navigating the next wave of retail media strategy. Andrew breaks down the challenges of measurement, the myth of ROAS, and why CMOs and agencies need to rethink their approach to retail media.


What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • Why connected TV is the next frontier for retail media networks
  • How off-site retail media is growing 3x faster than on-site
  • The real story behind ROAS and why it’s often misleading
  • How Amazon and Walmart are dominating performance TV
  • What smaller RMNs can do to compete through partnerships
  • Why CMOs and agencies must evolve their retail media strategy
  • How to build a full-funnel retail media approach that works


Whether you're building a retail media network or buying ad space for your next brand campaign, this episode is packed with the sharp insights you need to stay ahead.


Subscribe & Follow

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5‑star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Goodpods. Subscribe on YouTube so you never miss an episode and check out the other shows in the Retail Razor Podcast Network: Retail Transformers, Blade to Greatness, and Data Blades.


Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube


About our Guest

Andrew Lipsman. https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-lipsman-10b2162/

Analyst, Consultant, and Founder - Media, Ads + Commerce.

Andrew Lipsman is an independent analyst and principal consultant at Media, Ads + Commerce. His industry coverage specializes in retail media—which he is known for anointing as “digital advertising’s third big wave”—and other areas of the digital media, advertising, and commerce ecosystem. He has published more than a half dozen articles in the Journal of Advertising Research and is frequently quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Financial Times, and Advertising Age.

Media, Ads + Commerce. https://mediaadsandcommerce.substack.com

Media, Ads + Commerce is a consultancy providing strategy and insights for companies in retail media and the broader media, advertising, and commerce ecosystem.


Chapters

00:00 Teaser Open

00:51 Show Intro 

04:19 Welcome Back Andrew Lipsman! 

06:12 How Retail Media Evolved 

07:56 Closed Loop And ROAS Limits 

10:57 Retail Media Connective Tissue 

15:24 CTV Goes Performance 

21:19 Partnership Paths To CTV 

24:53 Trade Desk And Agency Gap 

27:32 Offsite Media Growth Drivers 

29:27 Onsite Relevance First 

30:40 Connected TV Landscape 

31:46 Inventory Quality and Fraud 

33:02 Target and Nordstrom Playbook 

35:34 Full Funnel Measurement 

36:33 CMO Perception Gap 

38:09 Brands and Merchant Alignment 

41:49 CTV Attribution Reality 

44:06 Rethinking ROAS Metrics 

46:17 Last Touch Misleads 

47:59 Inefficiency as Opportunity 

50:15 Talent and Org Alignment 

53:21 2026 Priorities and Mindset 

57:13 Where to Follow Andrew 

58:00 Show Close


Meet your hosts

Helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail, a Top 25 Thought Leader in AGI and Careers, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Agentic AIand Management, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Digital Transformation and Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformationand the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! 


Music

Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.


]]> <h1><strong>S6E4 Exploring the rise of performance TV, off-site retail media, and what it means for retailers and brands.</strong></h1><p><br></p><p>Retail media is evolving fast, and if you&#39;re still stuck in 2022, you&#39;re already behind. In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts <strong>Ricardo Belmar</strong> and <strong>Casey Golden</strong> sit down with retail media expert <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-lipsman-10b2162/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Andrew Lipsman</strong></a> to explore how <em>Retail Media Networks</em>(RMNs) are expanding into <em>Connected TV</em> (CTV) and <em>off-site retail media</em> to drive growth in 2026 and beyond.</p><p><br></p><p>From <strong>Amazon</strong> and <strong>Walmart’s</strong> bold moves into <em>performance TV</em> to the rise of off-site retail media as a <strong>full-funnel strategy</strong>, this episode is packed with insights for retailers and brands navigating the next wave of retail media strategy. Andrew breaks down the challenges of measurement, the myth of ROAS, and why CMOs and agencies need to rethink their approach to retail media.</p><p><br></p><h2><strong>What You’ll Learn in This Episode:</strong></h2><ul><li>Why connected TV is the next frontier for retail media networks</li><li>How off-site retail media is growing 3x faster than on-site</li><li>The real story behind ROAS and why it’s often misleading</li><li>How Amazon and Walmart are dominating performance TV</li><li>What smaller RMNs can do to compete through partnerships</li><li>Why CMOs and agencies must evolve their retail media strategy</li><li>How to build a full-funnel retail media approach that works</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Whether you&#39;re building a retail media network or buying ad space for your next brand campaign, this episode is packed with the sharp insights you need to stay ahead.</p><p><br></p><h2><strong>Subscribe &amp; Follow</strong></h2><p>If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a <em>5‑star rating and review</em> on <strong>Apple Podcasts</strong>, <strong>Spotify</strong>, or <strong>Goodpods</strong>. <em>Subscribe</em> on <strong>YouTube</strong> so you never miss an episode and check out the other shows in the <strong>Retail Razor Podcast Network</strong>: <em>Retail Transformers, Blade to Greatness,</em> and <em>Data Blades</em>.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: </strong><a href="https://retailrazor.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.com/</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://go.retailrazor.com/utube" rel="nofollow">https://go.retailrazor.com/utube</a></p><p><br></p><h2><strong>About our Guest</strong></h2><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-lipsman-10b2162/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Andrew Lipsman</strong></a><strong>. </strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-lipsman-10b2162/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-lipsman-10b2162/</a></p><p><strong>Analyst, Consultant, and Founder - Media, Ads + Commerce</strong>.</p><p>Andrew Lipsman is an independent analyst and principal consultant at Media, Ads + Commerce. His industry coverage specializes in retail media—which he is known for anointing as “digital advertising’s third big wave”—and other areas of the digital media, advertising, and commerce ecosystem. He has published more than a half dozen articles in the Journal of Advertising Research and is frequently quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Financial Times, and Advertising Age.</p><p><a href="https://mediaadsandcommerce.substack.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Media, Ads + Commerce</strong></a><strong>. </strong><a href="https://mediaadsandcommerce.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://mediaadsandcommerce.substack.com</a></p><p>Media, Ads + Commerce is a consultancy providing strategy and insights for companies in retail media and the broader media, advertising, and commerce ecosystem.</p><p><br></p><h2><strong>Chapters</strong></h2><p>00:00 Teaser Open</p><p>00:51 Show Intro </p><p>04:19 Welcome Back Andrew Lipsman! </p><p>06:12 How Retail Media Evolved </p><p>07:56 Closed Loop And ROAS Limits </p><p>10:57 Retail Media Connective Tissue </p><p>15:24 CTV Goes Performance </p><p>21:19 Partnership Paths To CTV </p><p>24:53 Trade Desk And Agency Gap </p><p>27:32 Offsite Media Growth Drivers </p><p>29:27 Onsite Relevance First </p><p>30:40 Connected TV Landscape </p><p>31:46 Inventory Quality and Fraud </p><p>33:02 Target and Nordstrom Playbook </p><p>35:34 Full Funnel Measurement </p><p>36:33 CMO Perception Gap </p><p>38:09 Brands and Merchant Alignment </p><p>41:49 CTV Attribution Reality </p><p>44:06 Rethinking ROAS Metrics </p><p>46:17 Last Touch Misleads </p><p>47:59 Inefficiency as Opportunity </p><p>50:15 Talent and Org Alignment </p><p>53:21 2026 Priorities and Mindset </p><p>57:13 Where to Follow Andrew </p><p>58:00 Show Close</p><p><br></p><h2><strong>Meet your hosts</strong></h2><p>Helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">Ricardo Belmar</a> is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2026/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2026. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a <em>Top 10 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Retail</em>, a <em>Top 25 Thought Leader </em>in<em> AGI </em>and<em> Careers</em>, a <em>Top 50 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Agentic AI</em>and <em>Management</em>, and a <em>Top 100 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Digital Transformation </em>and<em> Transformation. </em>Thinkers 360 also named him a <em>Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. </em>He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>and the <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail &amp; consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is the North America Leader for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at CI&amp;T, and CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. She is a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2026/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2026, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! </p><p><br></p><h2>Music</h2><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album <em>Beat Hype</em>, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p> e2bcc2fd-0790-415e-845e-e4ae5481918d https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/offsite-retail-media-ctv Fri, 27 Mar 2026 09:00:50 +0000 3534 no full What Agentic Commerce & Agentic AI Mean for Retailers Right Now What Agentic Commerce & Agentic AI Mean for Retailers Right Now 3 6 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert What Agentic Commerce & Agentic AI Mean for Retailers Right Now S6E3 PayPal’s Mike Edmonds breaks down agentic commerce and how it redefines trust, loyalty, and the merchant of record future Agentic commerce is no longer theoretical. It’s already reshaping how shoppers discover, evaluate, and buy products. In this episode, we sit down with Mike Edmonds, VP of Agentic Commerce & Commercial Growth at PayPal, to break down what agentic commerce really means for retailers right now and how agentic AI is transforming the entire shopping lifecycle. We explore the three major use cases of agentic commerce, how AI shopping agents are changing product discovery, why payments and trust are now central to the agentic commerce experience, and how retailers can maintain control of customer relationships through merchant of record models. If you’ve been trying to understand how agentic commerce works, how agentic AI fits into the retail ecosystem, or what retailers must do in the next six months to stay competitive, this episode delivers the clarity and direction you need. What You’ll Learn • What agentic commerce actually is; and why it matters now • How agentic AI is reshaping product discovery, checkout, and loyalty • The three core use cases: CUA, agentic checkout, and autonomous agent to agent shopping • Why payments, identity, and trust are the foundation of agentic commerce • How merchant of record models protect data and customer relationships • The role of loyalty programs in an agent driven world • Catalog readiness and the challenge of integrating with multiple LLMs • How close we are to the universal cart • What retailers must do today to prepare for the agentic shift Why This Episode Matters Agentic commerce is moving faster than most retailers realize. As agentic AI becomes embedded in browsers, apps, and everyday workflows, retailers must rethink how they manage trust, identity, payments, and customer experience. This episode gives you the frameworks and real world examples to understand how agentic commerce will reshape retail in the months ahead. Subscribe & Follow If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5 star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Goodpods. Subscribe on YouTube so you never miss an episode and check out the other shows in the Retail Razor Podcast Network: Retail Transformers, Blade to Greatness, and Data Blades. Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube About our Guest Mike Edmonds. https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeledmonds/ VP Agentic Commerce, Commercial Growth at PayPal. https://www.paypal.com/us/business/ai Mike Edmonds is VP of Agentic Commerce, Commercial Growth for PayPal, responsible for global commercialization, go-to-market, and operational execution across PayPal’s portfolio of AI-powered and agentic commerce products. Mike brings deep expertise having joined PayPal from Microsoft where he led AI and ecommerce strategy for Microsoft’s worldwide retail and consumer goods industry team. Prior to Microsoft, Mike was an agency operator, entrepreneur, and product leader driving digital transformation across B2B, DTC, and marketplace business models spanning a range of verticals including retail, CPG, high tech, industrial manufacturing, automotive, and foodservice across the US, Europe, and China. Mike is also an adjunct professor at Northwestern University teaching Kellogg MBA, MS in Design Innovation, and MS in Product Design and Development students through the Segal Design Institute at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. Chapters 00:00 Teaser 01:00 Show Intro 04:04 Welcome Mike Edmonds 05:22 Mike’s PayPal Role 07:14 Defining Agentic Commerce 14:40 Real World Agentic Checkout 19:33 Trust Merchant Data Loyalty 26:16 Loyalty As Differentiator 27:21 Travel Points And Agentic Commerce 28:32 Trust KYA And Liability 34:46 Skills For Future Commerce Careers 41:54 2030 Multimodal Future And Wrap 48:40 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail, a Top 25 Thought Leader in AGI and Careers, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Agentic AI and Management, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Digital Transformation and Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S6E3 PayPal’s Mike Edmonds breaks down agentic commerce and how it redefines trust, loyalty, and the merchant‑of‑record future


Agentic commerce is no longer theoretical. It’s already reshaping how shoppers discover, evaluate, and buy products. In this episode, we sit down with Mike Edmonds, VP of Agentic Commerce & Commercial Growth at PayPal, to break down what agentic commerce really means for retailers right now and how agentic AI is transforming the entire shopping lifecycle.


We explore the three major use cases of agentic commerce, how AI shopping agents are changing product discovery, why payments and trust are now central to the agentic commerce experience, and how retailers can maintain control of customer relationships through merchant‑of‑record models.


If you’ve been trying to understand how agentic commerce works, how agentic AI fits into the retail ecosystem, or what retailers must do in the next six months to stay competitive, this episode delivers the clarity and direction you need.


What You’ll Learn

  • What agentic commerce actually is; and why it matters now
  • How agentic AI is reshaping product discovery, checkout, and loyalty
  • The three core use cases: CUA, agentic checkout, and autonomous agent‑to‑agent shopping
  • Why payments, identity, and trust are the foundation of agentic commerce
  • How merchant‑of‑record models protect data and customer relationships
  • The role of loyalty programs in an agent‑driven world
  • Catalog readiness and the challenge of integrating with multiple LLMs
  • How close we are to the universal cart
  • What retailers must do today to prepare for the agentic shift


Why This Episode Matters

Agentic commerce is moving faster than most retailers realize. As agentic AI becomes embedded in browsers, apps, and everyday workflows, retailers must rethink how they manage trust, identity, payments, and customer experience. This episode gives you the frameworks and real‑world examples to understand how agentic commerce will reshape retail in the months ahead.


Subscribe & Follow

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5‑star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Goodpods. Subscribe on YouTube so you never miss an episode and check out the other shows in the Retail Razor Podcast Network: Retail Transformers, Blade to Greatness, and Data Blades.


Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube


About our Guest

Mike Edmonds. https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeledmonds/

VP Agentic Commerce, Commercial Growth at PayPal. https://www.paypal.com/us/business/ai

Mike Edmonds is VP of Agentic Commerce, Commercial Growth for PayPal, responsible for global commercialization, go-to-market, and operational execution across PayPal’s portfolio of AI-powered and agentic commerce products. Mike brings deep expertise having joined PayPal from Microsoft where he led AI and ecommerce strategy for Microsoft’s worldwide retail and consumer goods industry team. Prior to Microsoft, Mike was an agency operator, entrepreneur, and product leader driving digital transformation across B2B, DTC, and marketplace business models spanning a range of verticals including retail, CPG, high tech, industrial manufacturing, automotive, and foodservice across the US, Europe, and China.


Mike is also an adjunct professor at Northwestern University teaching Kellogg MBA, MS in Design Innovation, and MS in Product Design and Development students through the Segal Design Institute at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.


Chapters

00:00 Teaser 

01:00 Show Intro 

04:04 Welcome Mike Edmonds 

05:22 Mike’s PayPal Role 

07:14 Defining Agentic Commerce 

14:40 Real World Agentic Checkout 

19:33 Trust Merchant Data Loyalty 

26:16 Loyalty As Differentiator 

27:21 Travel Points And Agentic Commerce 

28:32 Trust KYA And Liability 

34:46 Skills For Future Commerce Careers 

41:54 2030 Multimodal Future And Wrap 

48:40 Show Close


Meet your hosts

Helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail, a Top 25 Thought Leader in AGI and Careers, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Agentic AIand Management, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Digital Transformation and Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformationand the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! 


Music

Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <h1><strong>S6E3 PayPal’s Mike Edmonds breaks down agentic commerce and how it redefines trust, loyalty, and the merchant‑of‑record future</strong></h1><p><br></p><p>Agentic commerce is no longer theoretical. It’s already reshaping how shoppers discover, evaluate, and buy products. In this episode, we sit down with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeledmonds/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Mike Edmonds</strong></a>, <em>VP of Agentic Commerce &amp; Commercial Growth</em> at <a href="https://www.paypal.com/us/business/ai" rel="nofollow"><strong>PayPal</strong></a>, to break down what agentic commerce really means for retailers right now and how agentic AI is transforming the entire shopping lifecycle.</p><p><br></p><p>We explore the three major use cases of agentic commerce, how AI shopping agents are changing product discovery, why payments and trust are now central to the agentic commerce experience, and how retailers can maintain control of customer relationships through merchant‑of‑record models.</p><p><br></p><p>If you’ve been trying to understand how agentic commerce works, how agentic AI fits into the retail ecosystem, or what retailers must do in the next six months to stay competitive, this episode delivers the clarity and direction you need.</p><p><br></p><h2><strong>What You’ll Learn</strong></h2><ul><li>What agentic commerce actually is; and why it matters now</li><li>How agentic AI is reshaping product discovery, checkout, and loyalty</li><li>The three core use cases: CUA, agentic checkout, and autonomous agent‑to‑agent shopping</li><li>Why payments, identity, and trust are the foundation of agentic commerce</li><li>How merchant‑of‑record models protect data and customer relationships</li><li>The role of loyalty programs in an agent‑driven world</li><li>Catalog readiness and the challenge of integrating with multiple LLMs</li><li>How close we are to the universal cart</li><li>What retailers must do today to prepare for the agentic shift</li></ul><p><br></p><h2><strong>Why This Episode Matters</strong></h2><p>Agentic commerce is moving faster than most retailers realize. As agentic AI becomes embedded in browsers, apps, and everyday workflows, retailers must rethink how they manage trust, identity, payments, and customer experience. This episode gives you the frameworks and real‑world examples to understand how agentic commerce will reshape retail in the months ahead.</p><p><br></p><h2><strong>Subscribe &amp; Follow</strong></h2><p>If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a <em>5‑star rating and review</em> on <strong>Apple Podcasts</strong>, <strong>Spotify</strong>, or <strong>Goodpods</strong>. <em>Subscribe</em> on <strong>YouTube</strong> so you never miss an episode and check out the other shows in the <strong>Retail Razor Podcast Network</strong>: <em>Retail Transformers, Blade to Greatness,</em> and <em>Data Blades</em>.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: </strong><a href="https://retailrazor.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.com/</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://go.retailrazor.com/utube" rel="nofollow">https://go.retailrazor.com/utube</a></p><p><br></p><h2><strong>About our Guest</strong></h2><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeledmonds/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Mike Edmonds</strong></a><strong>. </strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeledmonds/" rel="nofollow"><strong>https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeledmonds/</strong></a></p><p><strong>VP Agentic Commerce, Commercial Growth at </strong><a href="https://www.paypal.com/us/business" rel="nofollow"><strong>PayPal</strong></a><strong>. </strong><a href="https://www.paypal.com/us/business/ai" rel="nofollow"><strong>https://www.paypal.com/us/business/ai</strong></a></p><p><strong>Mike Edmonds</strong> is <em>VP of Agentic Commerce, Commercial Growth</em> for <strong>PayPal,</strong> responsible for global commercialization, go-to-market, and operational execution across PayPal’s portfolio of AI-powered and agentic commerce products. Mike brings deep expertise having joined PayPal from Microsoft where he led AI and ecommerce strategy for Microsoft’s worldwide retail and consumer goods industry team. Prior to Microsoft, Mike was an agency operator, entrepreneur, and product leader<strong> </strong>driving digital transformation across B2B, DTC, and marketplace business models spanning a range of verticals including retail, CPG, high tech, industrial manufacturing, automotive, and foodservice across the US, Europe, and China.</p><p><br></p><p>Mike is also an adjunct professor at Northwestern University teaching Kellogg MBA, MS in Design Innovation, and MS in Product Design and Development students through the Segal Design Institute at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.</p><p><br></p><h2><strong>Chapters</strong></h2><p>00:00 Teaser </p><p>01:00 Show Intro </p><p>04:04 Welcome Mike Edmonds </p><p>05:22 Mike’s PayPal Role </p><p>07:14 Defining Agentic Commerce </p><p>14:40 Real World Agentic Checkout </p><p>19:33 Trust Merchant Data Loyalty </p><p>26:16 Loyalty As Differentiator </p><p>27:21 Travel Points And Agentic Commerce </p><p>28:32 Trust KYA And Liability </p><p>34:46 Skills For Future Commerce Careers </p><p>41:54 2030 Multimodal Future And Wrap </p><p>48:40 Show Close</p><p><br></p><h2><strong>Meet your hosts</strong></h2><p>Helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">Ricardo Belmar</a> is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2026/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2026. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a <em>Top 10 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Retail</em>, a <em>Top 25 Thought Leader </em>in<em> AGI </em>and<em> Careers</em>, a <em>Top 50 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Agentic AI</em>and <em>Management</em>, and a <em>Top 100 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Digital Transformation </em>and<em> Transformation. </em>Thinkers 360 also named him a <em>Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. </em>He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>and the <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail &amp; consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is the North America Leader for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at CI&amp;T, and CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. She is a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2026/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2026, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! </p><p><br></p><h2>Music</h2><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album <em>Beat Hype</em>, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> d4afc5ae-b300-49be-844c-15a9be5eac62 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/agentic-commerce-paypal Tue, 10 Mar 2026 21:58:46 +0000 2975 no full Retail Growth Strategy in a K-Shaped Economy — Dr. Rebecca Homkes Breaks It Down Retail Growth Strategy in a K-Shaped Economy — Dr. Rebecca Homkes Breaks It Down 2 6 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Retail Growth Strategy in a K Shaped Economy — Dr. Rebecca Homkes Breaks It Down S6E2 The Retail Growth Strategy Retailers Need for 2026 with Today’s Economic Realities, Tariffs, Fed Moves, and Consumer Shifts In this powerful episode of The Retail Razor Show, Dr. Rebecca Homkes, London Business School lecturer, Duke faculty member, high‑growth strategy advisor, and author of Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times, joins Ricardo and Casey to break down what retailers must understand about the economic outlook in 2026, shifting consumer behavior, and the strategic moves that separate winners from laggards. Rebecca explains why uncertainty is not a threat but a catalyst for growth, and how her Survive, Reset, Thrive (SRT) framework helps leaders stabilize quickly, reset strategy intelligently, and execute a retail growth strategy that works even in volatile conditions. She also unpacks the realities behind sticky inflation, tariffs, the no‑hire/no‑fire labor market, and the rise of the K‑shaped consumer economy. If you want to build a retail growth strategy that thrives in the face of market shocks, this episode gives you the playbook. What We Cover Why the economic outlook in 2026 is full of contradictions, and what that means for retail How the SRT loop helps leaders stabilize, reset, and thrive Real‑world examples of companies using SRT to turn crises into growth Why averages hide the truth about consumer sentiment The rise of the K‑shaped economy and the death of the “everyman” consumer Value vs. price: why consumers will still pay more for what they truly value How retailers should think about store formats, assortment, and experimentation The must‑win battles for 2026 Where AI actually moves the needle in a retail growth strategy Key Takeaways Uncertainty is the best time to grow: because customers, partners, and employees are more honest about what they value. Value ≠ price. Consumers want their dollar to go further, not necessarily cheaper products. The middle of the market is the danger zone. Retailers must choose: differentiated premium or true value leadership. Retail growth strategy in 2026 requires testing, iteration, and abandoning legacy assumptions. Economic outlook in 2026 signals a decoupling between GDP strength and consumer reality: leaders must plan accordingly. Subscribe & Follow Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube About our Guest Rebecca Homkes, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-homkes/ https://www.rebeccahomkes.com Author, Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times. https://a.co/d/0aXECIB2 Rebecca Homkes, is a high-growth strategy specialist, CEO and executive advisor. After more than a decade of advising her clients on developing, executing and innovating on strategy, Rebecca is sharing her proven and practical playbook in Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times. She is a Lecturer at the London Business School, Faculty at Duke Corporate Executive Education, Advisor and Faculty at the Boston Consulting Group focused on AI and Climate and Sustainability, and a former fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance. A global keynote speaker and recognized thought leader, she is also the global Faculty Director of the Active Learning Program with the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), leads several fintech accelerators, and serves on the boards of many high-growth companies. She earned her doctorate at the London School of Economics as a Marshall Scholar and is now based in Miami, San Francisco, and London. Chapters 00:00 Teaser 01:10 Show Intro 04:40 Welcome Dr Rebecca Homkes 05:46 The Survive Reset Thrive Framework 08:04 Real World SRT Success Stories 12:55 Macro Economic Outlook for 2026 17:38 Understanding the K Shaped Economy 19:39 Value vs Price Strategy 24:06 Differentiation and Competitive Advantage 26:41 Store Strategy and Expansion 30:37 Consumer Experience and AI 32:34 B2B Software Experience Gap 34:04 Financing and Inventory Strategy 36:28 Supply Chain Robustness 38:10 No Regret Moves 40:40 Defining Right to Win 43:45 Hard Reset Strategy 45:51 Strategic Center of Gravity 48:24 Must Win Battles 49:34 Closing and Contact Info 51:36 Show Close Meet your hosts Helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail, a Top 25 Thought Leader in AGI and Careers, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Agentic AIand Management, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Digital Transformation and Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformationand the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Music Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S6E2 The Retail Growth Strategy Retailers Need for 2026 with Today’s Economic Realities, Tariffs, Fed Moves, and Consumer Shifts


In this powerful episode of The Retail Razor Show, Dr. Rebecca Homkes, London Business School lecturer, Duke faculty member, high‑growth strategy advisor, and author of Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times, joins Ricardo and Casey to break down what retailers must understand about the economic outlook in 2026, shifting consumer behavior, and the strategic moves that separate winners from laggards.


Rebecca explains why uncertainty is not a threat but a catalyst for growth, and how her Survive, Reset, Thrive (SRT) framework helps leaders stabilize quickly, reset strategy intelligently, and execute a retail growth strategy that works even in volatile conditions. She also unpacks the realities behind sticky inflation, tariffs, the no‑hire/no‑fire labor market, and the rise of the K‑shaped consumer economy.


If you want to build a retail growth strategy that thrives in the face of market shocks, this episode gives you the playbook.



What We Cover

  • Why the economic outlook in 2026 is full of contradictions, and what that means for retail
  • How the SRT loop helps leaders stabilize, reset, and thrive
  • Real‑world examples of companies using SRT to turn crises into growth
  • Why averages hide the truth about consumer sentiment
  • The rise of the K‑shaped economy and the death of the “everyman” consumer
  • Value vs. price: why consumers will still pay more for what they truly value
  • How retailers should think about store formats, assortment, and experimentation
  • The must‑win battles for 2026
  • Where AI actually moves the needle in a retail growth strategy



Key Takeaways

  • Uncertainty is the best time to grow: because customers, partners, and employees are more honest about what they value.
  • Value ≠ price. Consumers want their dollar to go further, not necessarily cheaper products.
  • The middle of the market is the danger zone. Retailers must choose: differentiated premium or true value leadership.
  • Retail growth strategy in 2026 requires testing, iteration, and abandoning legacy assumptions.
  • Economic outlook in 2026 signals a decoupling between GDP strength and consumer reality: leaders must plan accordingly.



Subscribe & Follow

Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube



About our Guest

Rebecca Homkes, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-homkes/

https://www.rebeccahomkes.com

Author, Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times. https://a.co/d/0aXECIB2

Rebecca Homkes, is a high-growth strategy specialist, CEO and executive advisor. After more than a decade of advising her clients on developing, executing and innovating on strategy, Rebecca is sharing her proven and practical playbook in Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times. She is a Lecturer at the London Business School, Faculty at Duke Corporate Executive Education, Advisor and Faculty at the Boston Consulting Group focused on AI and Climate and Sustainability, and a former fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance. A global keynote speaker and recognized thought leader, she is also the global Faculty Director of the Active Learning Program with the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), leads several fintech accelerators, and serves on the boards of many high-growth companies. She earned her doctorate at the London School of Economics as a Marshall Scholar and is now based in Miami, San Francisco, and London.



Chapters

00:00 Teaser

01:10 Show Intro

04:40 Welcome Dr Rebecca Homkes

05:46 The Survive Reset Thrive Framework

08:04 Real World SRT Success Stories

12:55 Macro Economic Outlook for 2026

17:38 Understanding the K Shaped Economy

19:39 Value vs Price Strategy

24:06 Differentiation and Competitive Advantage

26:41 Store Strategy and Expansion

30:37 Consumer Experience and AI

32:34 B2B Software Experience Gap

34:04 Financing and Inventory Strategy

36:28 Supply Chain Robustness

38:10 No Regret Moves

40:40 Defining Right to Win

43:45 Hard Reset Strategy

45:51 Strategic Center of Gravity

48:24 Must Win Battles

49:34 Closing and Contact Info

51:36 Show Close



Meet your hosts

Helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail, a Top 25 Thought Leader in AGI and Careers, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Agentic AI and Management, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Digital Transformation and Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformationand the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.

Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! 



Music

Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <h1>S6E2 The Retail Growth Strategy Retailers Need for 2026 with Today’s Economic Realities, Tariffs, Fed Moves, and Consumer Shifts</h1><p><br></p><p>In this powerful episode of <em>The Retail Razor Show</em>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-homkes/" rel="nofollow">Dr. Rebecca Homkes</a>, <strong>London Business School</strong> lecturer, <strong>Duke</strong> faculty member, high‑growth strategy advisor, and author of <a href="https://a.co/d/0aXECIB2" rel="nofollow"><em>Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times</em></a>, joins Ricardo and Casey to break down what retailers must understand about the economic outlook in 2026, shifting consumer behavior, and the strategic moves that separate winners from laggards.</p><p><br></p><p>Rebecca explains why uncertainty is not a threat but a <em>catalyst</em> for growth, and how her <strong>Survive, Reset, Thrive (SRT)</strong> framework helps leaders stabilize quickly, reset strategy intelligently, and execute a retail growth strategy that works even in volatile conditions. She also unpacks the realities behind sticky inflation, tariffs, the no‑hire/no‑fire labor market, and the rise of the K‑shaped consumer economy.</p><p><br></p><p>If you want to build a retail growth strategy that thrives in the face of market shocks, this episode gives you the playbook.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>What We Cover</h2><ul><li>Why the economic outlook in 2026 is full of contradictions, and what that means for retail</li><li>How the SRT loop helps leaders stabilize, reset, and thrive</li><li>Real‑world examples of companies using SRT to turn crises into growth</li><li>Why averages hide the truth about consumer sentiment</li><li>The rise of the K‑shaped economy and the death of the “everyman” consumer</li><li>Value vs. price: why consumers will still pay more for what they truly value</li><li>How retailers should think about store formats, assortment, and experimentation</li><li>The must‑win battles for 2026</li><li>Where AI actually moves the needle in a retail growth strategy</li></ul><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>Key Takeaways</h2><ul><li>Uncertainty is the best time to grow: because customers, partners, and employees are more honest about what they value.</li><li>Value ≠ price. Consumers want their dollar to go further, not necessarily cheaper products.</li><li>The middle of the market is the danger zone. Retailers must choose: differentiated premium or true value leadership.</li><li>Retail growth strategy in 2026 requires testing, iteration, and abandoning legacy assumptions.</li><li>Economic outlook in 2026 signals a decoupling between GDP strength and consumer reality: leaders must plan accordingly.</li></ul><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>Subscribe &amp; Follow</h2><p><strong>Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: </strong><a href="https://retailrazor.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.com/</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://go.retailrazor.com/utube" rel="nofollow">https://go.retailrazor.com/utube</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>About our Guest</h2><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-homkes/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Rebecca Homkes</strong></a><strong>,</strong> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-homkes/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-homkes/</a></p><p><a href="https://www.rebeccahomkes.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rebeccahomkes.com</a></p><p><strong>Author</strong>, <a href="https://a.co/d/0aXECIB2" rel="nofollow"><em>Survive, Reset, Thrive</em>: <em>Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times</em></a>. <a href="https://a.co/d/0aXECIB2" rel="nofollow">https://a.co/d/0aXECIB2</a></p><p><a href="https://www.rebeccahomkes.com/" rel="nofollow">Rebecca Homkes</a>, is a high-growth strategy specialist, CEO and executive advisor. After more than a decade of advising her clients on developing, executing and innovating on strategy, Rebecca is sharing her proven and practical playbook in <a href="https://a.co/d/0aXECIB2" rel="nofollow"><em>Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times</em></a>. She is a Lecturer at the <strong>London Business School</strong>, Faculty at <strong>Duke Corporate Executive Education</strong>, Advisor and Faculty at the <strong>Boston Consulting Group</strong> focused on AI and Climate and Sustainability, and a former fellow at the <strong>London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance</strong>. A global keynote speaker and recognized thought leader, she is also the global Faculty Director of the <em>Active Learning Program</em> with the <strong>Young Presidents Organization</strong> (YPO), leads several fintech accelerators, and serves on the boards of many high-growth companies. She earned her doctorate at the London School of Economics as a Marshall Scholar and is now based in Miami, San Francisco, and London.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>Chapters</h2><p>00:00 Teaser</p><p>01:10 Show Intro</p><p>04:40 Welcome Dr Rebecca Homkes</p><p>05:46 The Survive Reset Thrive Framework</p><p>08:04 Real World SRT Success Stories</p><p>12:55 Macro Economic Outlook for 2026</p><p>17:38 Understanding the K Shaped Economy</p><p>19:39 Value vs Price Strategy</p><p>24:06 Differentiation and Competitive Advantage</p><p>26:41 Store Strategy and Expansion</p><p>30:37 Consumer Experience and AI</p><p>32:34 B2B Software Experience Gap</p><p>34:04 Financing and Inventory Strategy</p><p>36:28 Supply Chain Robustness</p><p>38:10 No Regret Moves</p><p>40:40 Defining Right to Win</p><p>43:45 Hard Reset Strategy</p><p>45:51 Strategic Center of Gravity</p><p>48:24 Must Win Battles</p><p>49:34 Closing and Contact Info</p><p>51:36 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>Meet your hosts</h2><p>Helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">Ricardo Belmar</a> is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2026/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2026. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a <em>Top 10 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Retail</em>, a <em>Top 25 Thought Leader </em>in<em> AGI </em>and<em> Careers</em>, a <em>Top 50 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Agentic AI </em>and <em>Management</em>, and a <em>Top 100 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Digital Transformation </em>and <em>Transformation. </em>Thinkers 360 also named him a <em>Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. </em>He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>and the <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail &amp; consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.</p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is the North America Leader for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at CI&amp;T, and CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. She is a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2026/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2026, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! </p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>Music</h2><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album <em>Beat Hype</em>, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> e3c774b6-1cf6-4421-aee8-eb913e0b8431 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/retail-growth-strategy-2026 Tue, 24 Feb 2026 10:05:08 +0000 3150 no full Retail Media 2026 - DSP Shifts, Agentic Commerce & Brand Strategy Retail Media 2026 - DSP Shifts, Agentic Commerce & Brand Strategy 1 6 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Retail Media 2026 - DSP Shifts, Agentic Commerce & Brand Strategy S6E1 Retail Media’s New Reality: DSP Shifts, Agentic Commerce & Brand Strategy for 2026 Season 6 of The Retail Razor Show kicks off with a deep dive into one of the most important topics in commerce today: retail media. Ricardo and Casey sit down with Jeff Cohen, Chief Business Development Officer at Skai, to unpack the newly released 2026 State of Retail Media Report, created in partnership with Stratably. This episode explores how brands, versus retailers, are navigating the rapid evolution of retail media. From DSP shifts and CTV growth to AI adoption and agentic commerce, measurement challenges, and the widening gap between leaders and laggards, this conversation delivers the insights every brand marketer needs heading into 2026. What We Cover • Why retail media now commands nearly 30% of US digital ad spend • The rise of retail media maturity and what separates leaders from laggards • Why organizational structure is now a top predictor of retail media success • The growing importance of Amazon DSP and Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) • How brands should evaluate incrementality, attribution, and ROI • Why CTV and sponsored brand video are accelerating • The role of AI and agentic commerce in shaping future shopping journeys • What brands must do in 2026 to stay competitive Download the 2026 State of Retail Media Report (free): https://skai.io/reports-and-whitepapers/2026-state-of-retail-media-report/ Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube About our Guests Jeff Cohen, Chief Business Development Officer, Skai https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreycohen/ Jeff Cohen leads global business development at Skai, overseeing partnerships and innovation across the commerce media ecosystem. A recognized thought leader, he is focused on uniting brands, agencies, retailers, and publishers around the next era of growth. Previously, Jeff was Principal Evangelist at Amazon Ads. Chapters: 00:00 Preview Teaser 00:53 Show Intro 03:45 Welcome Jeff Cohen 06:24 Retail Media Maturity and Brand Strategies 08:30 Leaders vs. Laggards in Retail Media 12:12 Organizational Structure and Retail Media Success 17:35 Amazon Ads and DSP Insights 24:36 Evaluating Performance Across Platforms 27:45 The Shift to Full Funnel Advertising 29:46 Challenges in Measurement and Attribution 30:50 The Role of AMC in Retail Media 33:01 Incrementality and Budget Constraints 35:45 AI's Impact on Retail Media 37:10 Strategies for Brands in an AI World 42:54 Key Takeaways and Final Thoughts 48:21 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail and AGI, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Management, Careers, and Transformation, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Agentic AI and Digital Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S6E1 Retail Media’s New Reality: DSP Shifts, Agentic Commerce & Brand Strategy for 2026


Season 6 of The Retail Razor Show kicks off with a deep dive into one of the most important topics in commerce today: retail media. Ricardo and Casey sit down with Jeff Cohen, Chief Business Development Officer at Skai, to unpack the newly released 2026 State of Retail Media Report, created in partnership with Stratably.


This episode explores how brands, versus retailers, are navigating the rapid evolution of retail media. From DSP shifts and CTV growth to AI adoption and agentic commerce, measurement challenges, and the widening gap between leaders and laggards, this conversation delivers the insights every brand marketer needs heading into 2026.


What We Cover

  • Why retail media now commands nearly 30% of US digital ad spend
  • The rise of retail media maturity and what separates leaders from laggards
  • Why organizational structure is now a top predictor of retail media success
  • The growing importance of Amazon DSP and Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)
  • How brands should evaluate incrementality, attribution, and ROI
  • Why CTV and sponsored brand video are accelerating
  • The role of AI and agentic commerce in shaping future shopping journeys
  • What brands must do in 2026 to stay competitive


Download the 2026 State of Retail Media Report (free):

https://skai.io/reports-and-whitepapers/2026-state-of-retail-media-report/


Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


About our Guests

Jeff Cohen, Chief Business Development Officer, Skai

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreycohen/

Jeff Cohen leads global business development at Skai, overseeing partnerships and innovation across the commerce media ecosystem. A recognized thought leader, he is focused on uniting brands, agencies, retailers, and publishers around the next era of growth. Previously, Jeff was Principal Evangelist at Amazon Ads.


Chapters:

00:00 Preview Teaser 

00:53 Show Intro 

03:45 Welcome Jeff Cohen 

06:24 Retail Media Maturity and Brand Strategies 

08:30 Leaders vs. Laggards in Retail Media 

12:12 Organizational Structure and Retail Media Success 

17:35 Amazon Ads and DSP Insights 

24:36 Evaluating Performance Across Platforms 

27:45 The Shift to Full Funnel Advertising 

29:46 Challenges in Measurement and Attribution 

30:50 The Role of AMC in Retail Media 

33:01 Incrementality and Budget Constraints 

35:45 AI's Impact on Retail Media 

37:10 Strategies for Brands in an AI World 

42:54 Key Takeaways and Final Thoughts 

48:21 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail and AGI, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Management, Careers, and Transformation, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Agentic AI and Digital Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.


Casey Golden is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! 


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S6E1 Retail Media’s New Reality: DSP Shifts, Agentic Commerce &amp; Brand Strategy for 2026</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Season 6 of <em>The Retail Razor Show</em> kicks off with a deep dive into one of the most important topics in commerce today: <strong>retail media</strong>. Ricardo and Casey sit down with <a href="https://skai.io/reports-and-whitepapers/2026-state-of-retail-media-report/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Jeff Cohen</strong></a>, <em>Chief Business Development Officer</em> at <a href="https://skai.io/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Skai</strong></a>, to unpack the newly released <a href="https://skai.io/reports-and-whitepapers/2026-state-of-retail-media-report/" rel="nofollow"><strong>2026 State of Retail Media Report</strong></a>, created in partnership with <strong>Stratably</strong>.</p><p><br></p><p>This episode explores how brands, versus retailers, are navigating the rapid evolution of retail media. From DSP shifts and CTV growth to AI adoption and agentic commerce, measurement challenges, and the widening gap between leaders and laggards, this conversation delivers the insights every brand marketer needs heading into 2026.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>What We Cover</strong></p><ul><li>Why retail media now commands nearly 30% of US digital ad spend</li><li>The rise of retail media maturity and what separates leaders from laggards</li><li>Why organizational structure is now a top predictor of retail media success</li><li>The growing importance of Amazon DSP and Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)</li><li>How brands should evaluate incrementality, attribution, and ROI</li><li>Why CTV and sponsored brand video are accelerating</li><li>The role of AI and agentic commerce in shaping future shopping journeys</li><li>What brands must do in 2026 to stay competitive</li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>Download the 2026 State of Retail Media Report (free):</strong></p><p><a href="https://skai.io/reports-and-whitepapers/2026-state-of-retail-media-report/" rel="nofollow">https://skai.io/reports-and-whitepapers/2026-state-of-retail-media-report/</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: </strong><a href="https://retailrazor.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.com/</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guests</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreycohen/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Jeff Cohen</strong></a><strong>, Chief Business Development Officer, </strong><a href="https://skai.io/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Skai</strong></a></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreycohen/" rel="nofollow"><strong>https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreycohen/</strong></a></p><p>Jeff Cohen leads global business development at Skai, overseeing partnerships and innovation across the commerce media ecosystem. A recognized thought leader, he is focused on uniting brands, agencies, retailers, and publishers around the next era of growth. Previously, Jeff was Principal Evangelist at Amazon Ads.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Chapters:</strong></p><p>00:00 Preview Teaser </p><p>00:53 Show Intro </p><p>03:45 Welcome Jeff Cohen </p><p>06:24 Retail Media Maturity and Brand Strategies </p><p>08:30 Leaders vs. Laggards in Retail Media </p><p>12:12 Organizational Structure and Retail Media Success </p><p>17:35 Amazon Ads and DSP Insights </p><p>24:36 Evaluating Performance Across Platforms </p><p>27:45 The Shift to Full Funnel Advertising </p><p>29:46 Challenges in Measurement and Attribution </p><p>30:50 The Role of AMC in Retail Media </p><p>33:01 Incrementality and Budget Constraints </p><p>35:45 AI&#39;s Impact on Retail Media </p><p>37:10 Strategies for Brands in an AI World </p><p>42:54 Key Takeaways and Final Thoughts </p><p>48:21 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2026/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2026. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a <em>Top 10 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Retail </em>and <em>AGI</em>, a <em>Top 50 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Management</em>, <em>Careers</em>, and <em>Transformation</em>, and a <em>Top 100 Thought Leader </em>in <em>Agentic AI </em>and <em>Digital Transformation. </em>Thinkers 360 also named him a <em>Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. </em>He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a> and the <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail &amp; consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a> is the North America Leader for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at CI&amp;T, and CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. She is a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2026/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2026, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! </p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album <em>Beat Hype</em>, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> 1abc17a0-21cf-4daf-ad82-7593b6a28a0d https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/s6e1-retail-media-2026 Sat, 31 Jan 2026 21:05:40 +0000 2957 no trailer The New Era of Agentic Commerce and Retail Media Begins! The New Era of Agentic Commerce and Retail Media Begins! 6 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert The New Era of Agentic Commerce and Retail Media Begins Agentic Commerce, Retail Media, and the Human Experience: Season 6 Preview Season 6 of The Retail Razor Show is here, and we’re diving into the future of retail through the lens of Agentic Commerce and Retail Media. In this trailer, Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden introduce a season built around the collision of technology, content, and the human experience. As Agentic Commerce reshapes how consumers discover and buy products, Retail Media becomes the environment where every decision is influenced, measured, and optimized. This season builds on the momentum from Season 5, where we explored resilience, digital marketing, sustainability, resale, marketplace strategy, and leadership in an AI saturated world. Now we move into a new era where AI agents may shop on behalf of consumers, and retailers must understand how Agentic Commerce changes engagement, loyalty, and the path to purchase. At the same time, Retail Media continues to expand as a core revenue engine and a critical part of the customer journey. You’ll hear from innovators who are building systems powered by Agentic AI, leaders redefining Retail Media strategy, and operators proving that frontline teams can thrive when technology is designed to support them. This season explores how Agentic Commerce transforms merchandising, planning, and customer experience, and why the human connection still matters more than ever. Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, iHeartMedia, YouTube, and Goodpods. Stay connected with us on LinkedIn, Blue Sky, Threads, and Instagram. If you want to understand where retail is heading in 2026, this is the podcast for you! Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Chapters: 00:00 Cold Open 00:23 Intro to Season 6 00:50 Reflecting on Last Season 01:38 Introducing Agentic AI 01:51 The Role of Media in Retail 02:09 Human Connection in a Digital World 03:02 The Era of Agentic Commerce 04:03 Looking Ahead: Innovators and Leaders 04:44 Stay Connected and Engaged Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail and AGI, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Management, Careers, and Transformation, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Agentic AI and Digital Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T. Agentic Commerce, Retail Media, and the Human Experience: Season 6 Preview


Season 6 of The Retail Razor Show is here, and we’re diving into the future of retail through the lens of Agentic Commerce and Retail Media. In this trailer, Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden introduce a season built around the collision of technology, content, and the human experience. As Agentic Commerce reshapes how consumers discover and buy products, Retail Media becomes the environment where every decision is influenced, measured, and optimized.


This season builds on the momentum from Season 5, where we explored resilience, digital marketing, sustainability, resale, marketplace strategy, and leadership in an AI saturated world. Now we move into a new era where AI agents may shop on behalf of consumers, and retailers must understand how Agentic Commerce changes engagement, loyalty, and the path to purchase. At the same time, Retail Media continues to expand as a core revenue engine and a critical part of the customer journey.


You’ll hear from innovators who are building systems powered by Agentic AI, leaders redefining Retail Media strategy, and operators proving that frontline teams can thrive when technology is designed to support them. This season explores how Agentic Commerce transforms merchandising, planning, and customer experience, and why the human connection still matters more than ever.


Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, iHeartMedia, YouTube, and Goodpods. Stay connected with us on LinkedIn, Blue Sky, Threads, and Instagram.


If you want to understand where retail is heading in 2026, this is the podcast for you!


Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


Chapters:

00:00 Cold Open 

00:23 Intro to Season 6 

00:50 Reflecting on Last Season 

01:38 Introducing Agentic AI 

01:51 The Role of Media in Retail 

02:09 Human Connection in a Digital World 

03:02 The Era of Agentic Commerce 

04:03 Looking Ahead: Innovators and Leaders 

04:44 Stay Connected and Engaged


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail and AGI, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Management, Careers, and Transformation, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Agentic AI and Digital Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T.

]]> <p><strong>Agentic Commerce, Retail Media, and the Human Experience: Season 6 Preview</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Season 6 of The Retail Razor Show is here, and we’re diving into the future of retail through the lens of Agentic Commerce and Retail Media. In this trailer, Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden introduce a season built around the collision of technology, content, and the human experience. As Agentic Commerce reshapes how consumers discover and buy products, Retail Media becomes the environment where every decision is influenced, measured, and optimized.</p><p><br></p><p>This season builds on the momentum from Season 5, where we explored resilience, digital marketing, sustainability, resale, marketplace strategy, and leadership in an AI saturated world. Now we move into a new era where AI agents may shop on behalf of consumers, and retailers must understand how Agentic Commerce changes engagement, loyalty, and the path to purchase. At the same time, Retail Media continues to expand as a core revenue engine and a critical part of the customer journey.</p><p><br></p><p>You’ll hear from innovators who are building systems powered by Agentic AI, leaders redefining Retail Media strategy, and operators proving that frontline teams can thrive when technology is designed to support them. This season explores how Agentic Commerce transforms merchandising, planning, and customer experience, and why the human connection still matters more than ever.</p><p><br></p><p>Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, iHeartMedia, YouTube, and Goodpods. Stay connected with us on LinkedIn, Blue Sky, Threads, and Instagram.</p><p><br></p><p>If you want to understand where retail is heading in 2026, this is the podcast for you!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: </strong><a href="https://retailrazor.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>https://retailrazor.com/</strong></a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Chapters:</strong></p><p>00:00 Cold Open </p><p>00:23 Intro to Season 6 </p><p>00:50 Reflecting on Last Season </p><p>01:38 Introducing Agentic AI </p><p>01:51 The Role of Media in Retail </p><p>02:09 Human Connection in a Digital World </p><p>03:02 The Era of Agentic Commerce </p><p>04:03 Looking Ahead: Innovators and Leaders </p><p>04:44 Stay Connected and Engaged</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2026/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a <em>Top 10 Thought Leader</em> in <em>Retail</em> and <em>AGI</em>, a <em>Top 50 Thought Leader</em> in <em>Management</em>, <em>Careers</em>, and <em>Transformation</em>, and a <em>Top 100 Thought Leader</em><strong> </strong>in <em>Agentic AI</em> and <em>Digital Transformation. </em>Thinkers 360 also named him a <em>Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025.</em> He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a> and the <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail &amp; consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2026/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2026, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at CI&amp;T.</p> 31c34e8a-c506-4f4a-9684-0e9a9ece3428 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/s6e1-new-era Fri, 23 Jan 2026 10:04:28 +0000 344 no full Future of Retail Unveiled - From AI Insights to Consumer Joy! Future of Retail Unveiled - From AI Insights to Consumer Joy! 14 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Future of Retail Unveiled - From AI Insights to Consumer Joy! S5E14 2025 Retail Year in Review - AI, Consumer Shifts, and the Future of Commerce with Guest Host, Alicia Esposito! In this Season 5 finale of The Retail Razor Show, guest host Alicia Esposito (Future Commerce) sits down with Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden for a deep, unfiltered 2025 retail year in review. Together, they unpack the biggest trends shaping the industry, from AI’s accelerating influence, to the emotional needs of today’s consumer, the rise of resale, the evolution of marketplaces, and the shifting definition of value. Across the Retail Razor Podcast Network - The Retail Razor Show, Blade to Greatness, Data Blades, and Retail Transformers - this year’s guests revealed a powerful through line: retail is no longer just about convenience or price. It’s about culture, community, emotion, and the human experience. This episode explores: • How AI is reshaping leadership, decision making, and personalization • Why consumers—especially Gen Z—are craving analog joy and emotional shopping • The rise of marketplaces like Temu and AliExpress • Retail media’s evolution and the coming disruption from agentic commerce • The loyalty shakeout and why brand equity matters more than ever • The explosive growth of resale and secondhand shopping • Holiday shopping behavior and the psychology behind “perpetual shopping lists” • The keywords that will define 2026: velocity and joy If you want to understand where retail is heading in 2026, this is the episode you can’t miss! Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube About our Guest Host Alicia Esposito, Director, Content + Media Strategy - Future Commerce https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciaesposito/  Alicia is the head of content and insights for Future Commerce. At Future Commerce we are big on dissecting the intersection of culture and commerce and not just covering what's happening today, but also what are the ripple effects for tomorrow, and for the future. Future Commerce delivers consumer insights for e-commerce and retail brands. Newsletters, essays, podcasts, and research. For the risk-takers in Commerce! Future Commerce helps brands manifest vision and create goals which lead to future-altering impacts for their customers, and for the world around them. Chapters: 00:00 Preview 01:06 Introduction and Host Introduction 03:02 Balancing Automation and Human Intuition 06:57 Consumer Behavior and AI 10:18 The Evolution of Retail Experiences 18:21 The Importance of Brand Value 24:14 Challenges in Fast Fashion and Marketplaces 28:23 The Future of Commerce 31:36 Retail Media Evolution 36:50 Consumer Behavior and Shopping Trends 41:09 The Impact of Resale and Sustainability 50:12 Personalization and AI in Retail 53:16 The Keyword That Will Represent 2026 55:45 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T. Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5E14 2025 Retail Year in Review - AI, Consumer Shifts, and the Future of Commerce with Guest Host, Alicia Esposito!


In this Season 5 finale of The Retail Razor Show, guest host Alicia Esposito (Future Commerce) sits down with Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden for a deep, unfiltered 2025 retail year in review. Together, they unpack the biggest trends shaping the industry, from AI’s accelerating influence, to the emotional needs of today’s consumer, the rise of resale, the evolution of marketplaces, and the shifting definition of value.


Across the Retail Razor Podcast Network - The Retail Razor Show, Blade to Greatness, Data Blades, and Retail Transformers - this year’s guests revealed a powerful through‑line: retail is no longer just about convenience or price. It’s about culture, community, emotion, and the human experience.


This episode explores:

  • How AI is reshaping leadership, decision‑making, and personalization
  • Why consumers—especially Gen Z—are craving analog joy and emotional shopping
  • The rise of marketplaces like Temu and AliExpress
  • Retail media’s evolution and the coming disruption from agentic commerce
  • The loyalty shakeout and why brand equity matters more than ever
  • The explosive growth of resale and secondhand shopping
  • Holiday shopping behavior and the psychology behind “perpetual shopping lists”
  • The keywords that will define 2026: velocity and joy


If you want to understand where retail is heading in 2026, this is the episode you can’t miss!


Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


About our Guest Host

Alicia Esposito, Director, Content + Media Strategy - Future Commerce

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciaesposito/

Alicia is the head of content and insights for Future Commerce. At Future Commerce we are big on dissecting the intersection of culture and commerce and not just covering what's happening today, but also what are the ripple effects for tomorrow, and for the future. Future Commerce delivers consumer insights for e-commerce and retail brands. Newsletters, essays, podcasts, and research. For the risk-takers in Commerce! Future Commerce helps brands manifest vision and create goals which lead to future-altering impacts for their customers, and for the world around them.


Chapters:

00:00 Preview

01:06 Introduction and Host Introduction

03:02 Balancing Automation and Human Intuition

06:57 Consumer Behavior and AI

10:18 The Evolution of Retail Experiences

18:21 The Importance of Brand Value

24:14 Challenges in Fast Fashion and Marketplaces

28:23 The Future of Commerce

31:36 Retail Media Evolution

36:50 Consumer Behavior and Shopping Trends

41:09 The Impact of Resale and Sustainability

50:12 Personalization and AI in Retail

53:16 The Keyword That Will Represent 2026

55:45 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T.


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S5E14 2025 Retail Year in Review - AI, Consumer Shifts, and the Future of Commerce with Guest Host, Alicia Esposito!</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In this Season 5 finale of The Retail Razor Show, guest host <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciaesposito/" rel="nofollow">Alicia Esposito</a> (<a href="https://www.futurecommerce.com/" rel="nofollow"><em>Future Commerce</em></a>) sits down with Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden for a deep, unfiltered 2025 retail year in review. Together, they unpack the biggest trends shaping the industry, from AI’s accelerating influence, to the emotional needs of today’s consumer, the rise of resale, the evolution of marketplaces, and the shifting definition of value.</p><p><br></p><p>Across the <strong>Retail Razor Podcast Network</strong> - <em>The Retail Razor Show, Blade to Greatness, Data Blades</em>, and <em>Retail Transformers</em> - this year’s guests revealed a powerful through‑line: retail is no longer just about convenience or price. It’s about culture, community, emotion, and the human experience.</p><p><br></p><p>This episode explores:</p><ul><li>How AI is reshaping leadership, decision‑making, and personalization</li><li>Why consumers—especially Gen Z—are craving analog joy and emotional shopping</li><li>The rise of marketplaces like Temu and AliExpress</li><li>Retail media’s evolution and the coming disruption from agentic commerce</li><li>The loyalty shakeout and why brand equity matters more than ever</li><li>The explosive growth of resale and secondhand shopping</li><li>Holiday shopping behavior and the psychology behind “perpetual shopping lists”</li><li>The keywords that will define 2026: velocity and joy</li></ul><p><br></p><p>If you want to understand where retail is heading in 2026, this is the episode you can’t miss!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: </strong><a href="https://retailrazor.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>https://retailrazor.com/</strong></a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guest Host</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciaesposito/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Alicia Esposito</strong></a>, Director, Content + Media Strategy - <a href="https://www.futurecommerce.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Future Commerce</strong></a></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciaesposito/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciaesposito/</a></p><p>Alicia is the head of content and insights for Future Commerce. At Future Commerce we are big on dissecting the intersection of culture and commerce and not just covering what&#39;s happening today, but also what are the ripple effects for tomorrow, and for the future. Future Commerce delivers consumer insights for e-commerce and retail brands. Newsletters, essays, podcasts, and research. For the risk-takers in Commerce! Future Commerce helps brands manifest <strong>vision</strong> and create <strong>goals</strong> which lead to <strong>future-altering impacts</strong> for their customers, and for the <strong>world around them.</strong></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Chapters:</strong></p><p>00:00 Preview</p><p>01:06 Introduction and Host Introduction</p><p>03:02 Balancing Automation and Human Intuition</p><p>06:57 Consumer Behavior and AI</p><p>10:18 The Evolution of Retail Experiences</p><p>18:21 The Importance of Brand Value</p><p>24:14 Challenges in Fast Fashion and Marketplaces</p><p>28:23 The Future of Commerce</p><p>31:36 Retail Media Evolution</p><p>36:50 Consumer Behavior and Shopping Trends</p><p>41:09 The Impact of Resale and Sustainability</p><p>50:12 Personalization and AI in Retail</p><p>53:16 The Keyword That Will Represent 2026</p><p>55:45 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> &amp; a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a Top 10 Retail, &amp; AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, &amp; Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation &amp; Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and the <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and a <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at CI&amp;T.</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> 47462231-6a7b-49a7-bacd-65113531a9a9 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/s5e14yearinreview Wed, 31 Dec 2025 10:05:27 +0000 3411 no full Consumer Insights - Can AI Reveal What Shoppers Really Want? Consumer Insights - Can AI Reveal What Shoppers Really Want? 13 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Consumer Insights - Can AI Reveal What Shoppers Really Want? S5E13 Future of AI-Powered Consumer Insights with Trevor Sumner & Stan Sthanunathan In Season 5, Episode 13 of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden tackle one of retail’s biggest blind spots in consumer insights: the consumer sentiment gap. For decades, brands relied on surveys to understand shoppers. But what people say doesn’t always match what they do. Enter AI-powered shopper insights! Joining the conversation are Trevor Sumner (CEO of i-Genie AI) and Stan Sthanunathan (Executive Chairman of i-Genie AI, former EVP at Unilever and VP at Coca-Cola). Together, they reveal how billions of unfiltered signals — from searches, reviews, and social posts — can be transformed into real-time, actionable consumer insights that reshape retail decision-making. What You’ll Learn in This Episode: • Why traditional consumer surveys are breaking down • How AI and natural language processing uncover real customer behavior • The role of empathy vs sympathy in understanding consumers • How disruptor brands are reshaping competitive landscapes • Why augmented intelligence (AI + human insight) is the future of retail strategy and consumer insights Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube About our Guests Trevor Sumner, CEO, i-Genie.AI - https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevorsumner/ Trevor is a NYC-based entrepreneur, product and marketing executive and recognized startup advisor and angel. Trevor is the CEO at i-Genie.ai, the leading AI platform for consumer insights, revolutionizing an industry that had been dominated with antiquated survey methodologies by synthesizing tens of billions of searches, social and video posts, ratings and reviews and market data for industry leaders like Kenvue, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Bayer, Clorox and more. Previously, Trevor was Head of AI and Data Platform products for Raydiant, a leading VC-backed digital experience platform that is transforming over 250,000 digital touch points across 4,500 clients with AI, computer vision and data. Trevor came to Raydiant when it acquired Perch, a recognized leader in in-store Product Engagement Marketing, interactive retail displays and augmented reality, where Trevor served as CEO. Perch was named a Top Tech Company to Watch by Forbes, a Top 10 Retail Technology company by CIO Review and has won numerous Clio, Fast Company, Edison, Bloomberg and Digi awards. Stan Sthanunathan, Executive Chairman, i-Genie.AI - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stan-sthanunathan-1ab4035/ Stan Sthanunathan joined Unilever in July 2013 as Executive Vice President of Consumer & Market Insights. As chief provocateur, he headed up the insights function globally based in London. He retired from Unilever on June 1, 2021. Post retirement he has started an AI/ML enabled company called i-Genie.AI focused on delivering near real time insights and ideas to help business identify Next Big Thing. Prior to joining Unilever, he was Vice President of Marketing Strategy & Insights for The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, heading up the function on a global basis. Stan co-authored a paper on Building an Insights Engine that was published in Harvard Business Review, Sept 2016. He has also co-authored a book titled AI for Marketing and Product Innovation. He was awarded Lifetime Achievement award at TMRE 2022 event. Chapters: 00:00 Previews 01:23 Show Intro 04:43 The Consumer Sentiment Gap 05:37 Welcome Trevor Sumner & Stan Sthanunathan 06:30 Backgrounds of Trevor and Stan 09:11 Challenges in Understanding Consumers 16:58 The Evolution of Influencers 18:32 Limitations of Surveys and the Need for AI 25:46 Augmented Intelligence: AI + Human Insight 31:46 Challenges in CPG Innovation 33:02 Innovate: A Data-Driven Product 34:42 AI and Predictive Analytics 36:21 Democratizing Data Access 38:07 Mindset Shift for Rapid Actions 40:46 Adopting AI in CPG 48:16 Retailers and Data Utilization 52:59 Future of Brand Understanding 57:23 Conclusion and Contact Information 58:15 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T. Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5E13 Future of AI-Powered Consumer Insights with Trevor Sumner & Stan Sthanunathan


In Season 5, Episode 13 of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden tackle one of retail’s biggest blind spots in consumer insights: the consumer sentiment gap. For decades, brands relied on surveys to understand shoppers. But what people say doesn’t always match what they do.


Enter AI-powered shopper insights!


Joining the conversation are Trevor Sumner (CEO of i-Genie AI) and Stan Sthanunathan (Executive Chairman of i-Genie AI, former EVP at Unilever and VP at Coca-Cola). Together, they reveal how billions of unfiltered signals — from searches, reviews, and social posts — can be transformed into real-time, actionable consumer insights that reshape retail decision-making.


What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • Why traditional consumer surveys are breaking down
  • How AI and natural language processing uncover real customer behavior
  • The role of empathy vs sympathy in understanding consumers
  • How disruptor brands are reshaping competitive landscapes
  • Why augmented intelligence (AI + human insight) is the future of retail strategy and consumer insights


Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


About our Guests

Trevor Sumner, CEO, i-Genie.AI - https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevorsumner/

Trevor is a NYC-based entrepreneur, product and marketing executive and recognized startup advisor and angel. Trevor is the CEO at i-Genie.ai, the leading AI platform for consumer insights, revolutionizing an industry that had been dominated with antiquated survey methodologies by synthesizing tens of billions of searches, social and video posts, ratings and reviews and market data for industry leaders like Kenvue, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Bayer, Clorox and more.


Previously, Trevor was Head of AI and Data Platform products for Raydiant, a leading VC-backed digital experience platform that is transforming over 250,000 digital touch points across 4,500 clients with AI, computer vision and data.


Trevor came to Raydiant when it acquired Perch, a recognized leader in in-store Product Engagement Marketing, interactive retail displays and augmented reality, where Trevor served as CEO. Perch was named a Top Tech Company to Watch by Forbes, a Top 10 Retail Technology company by CIO Review and has won numerous Clio, Fast Company, Edison, Bloomberg and Digi awards.


Stan Sthanunathan, Executive Chairman, i-Genie.AI - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stan-sthanunathan-1ab4035/

Stan Sthanunathan joined Unilever in July 2013 as Executive Vice President of Consumer & Market Insights. As chief provocateur, he headed up the insights function globally based in London. He retired from Unilever on June 1, 2021.


Post retirement he has started an AI/ML enabled company called i-Genie.AI focused on delivering near real time insights and ideas to help business identify Next Big Thing. Prior to joining Unilever, he was Vice President of Marketing Strategy & Insights for The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, heading up the function on a global basis.


Stan co-authored a paper on Building an Insights Engine that was published in Harvard Business Review, Sept 2016. He has also co-authored a book titled AI for Marketing and Product Innovation.

He was awarded Lifetime Achievement award at TMRE 2022 event.


Chapters:

00:00 Previews 

01:23 Show Intro 

04:43 The Consumer Sentiment Gap 

05:37 Welcome Trevor Sumner & Stan Sthanunathan 

06:30 Backgrounds of Trevor and Stan 

09:11 Challenges in Understanding Consumers 

16:58 The Evolution of Influencers 

18:32 Limitations of Surveys and the Need for AI 

25:46 Augmented Intelligence: AI + Human Insight 

31:46 Challenges in CPG Innovation 

33:02 Innovate: A Data-Driven Product 

34:42 AI and Predictive Analytics 

36:21 Democratizing Data Access 

38:07 Mindset Shift for Rapid Actions 

40:46 Adopting AI in CPG 

48:16 Retailers and Data Utilization 

52:59 Future of Brand Understanding 

57:23 Conclusion and Contact Information 

58:15 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T.


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S5E13 Future of AI-Powered Consumer Insights with Trevor Sumner &amp; Stan Sthanunathan</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In Season 5, Episode 13 of <strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong>, hosts <strong>Ricardo Belmar</strong> and <strong>Casey Golden</strong> tackle one of retail’s biggest blind spots in consumer insights: <em>the consumer sentiment gap</em>. For decades, brands relied on surveys to understand shoppers. But what people say doesn’t always match what they do.</p><p><br></p><p>Enter AI-powered shopper insights!</p><p><br></p><p>Joining the conversation are <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevorsumner/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Trevor Sumner</strong></a> (CEO of <a href="http://i-genie.ai/" rel="nofollow">i-Genie AI</a>) and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stan-sthanunathan-1ab4035/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Stan Sthanunathan</strong></a> (Executive Chairman of <a href="http://i-genie.ai/" rel="nofollow">i-Genie AI</a>, former EVP at <strong>Unilever</strong> and VP at <strong>Coca-Cola</strong>). Together, they reveal how billions of unfiltered signals — from searches, reviews, and social posts — can be transformed into real-time, actionable consumer insights that reshape retail decision-making.</p><p><br></p><p>What You’ll Learn in This Episode:</p><ul><li>Why traditional consumer surveys are breaking down</li><li>How AI and natural language processing uncover real customer behavior</li><li>The role of empathy vs sympathy in understanding consumers</li><li>How disruptor brands are reshaping competitive landscapes</li><li>Why augmented intelligence (AI + human insight) is the future of retail strategy and consumer insights</li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: </strong><a href="https://retailrazor.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>https://retailrazor.com/</strong></a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guests</strong></p><p><strong>Trevor Sumner</strong>, CEO, <a href="http://i-genie.ai/" rel="nofollow">i-Genie.AI</a> - <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevorsumner/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevorsumner/</a></p><p>Trevor is a NYC-based entrepreneur, product and marketing executive and recognized startup advisor and angel. Trevor is the CEO at <a href="http://i-genie.ai/" rel="nofollow">i-Genie.ai</a>, the leading AI platform for consumer insights, revolutionizing an industry that had been dominated with antiquated survey methodologies by synthesizing tens of billions of searches, social and video posts, ratings and reviews and market data for industry leaders like Kenvue, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Bayer, Clorox and more.</p><p><br></p><p>Previously, Trevor was Head of AI and Data Platform products for Raydiant, a leading VC-backed digital experience platform that is transforming over 250,000 digital touch points across 4,500 clients with AI, computer vision and data.</p><p><br></p><p>Trevor came to Raydiant when it acquired Perch, a recognized leader in in-store Product Engagement Marketing, interactive retail displays and augmented reality, where Trevor served as CEO. Perch was named a Top Tech Company to Watch by Forbes, a Top 10 Retail Technology company by CIO Review and has won numerous Clio, Fast Company, Edison, Bloomberg and Digi awards.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Stan Sthanunathan,</strong> Executive Chairman, <a href="http://i-genie.ai/" rel="nofollow">i-Genie.AI</a> - <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stan-sthanunathan-1ab4035/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/stan-sthanunathan-1ab4035/</a></p><p>Stan Sthanunathan joined Unilever in July 2013 as Executive Vice President of Consumer &amp; Market Insights. As chief provocateur, he headed up the insights function globally based in London. He retired from Unilever on June 1, 2021.</p><p><br></p><p>Post retirement he has started an AI/ML enabled company called <a href="http://i-genie.ai/" rel="nofollow">i-Genie.AI</a> focused on delivering near real time insights and ideas to help business identify Next Big Thing. Prior to joining Unilever, he was Vice President of Marketing Strategy &amp; Insights for The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, heading up the function on a global basis.</p><p><br></p><p>Stan co-authored a paper on Building an Insights Engine that was published in Harvard Business Review, Sept 2016. He has also co-authored a book titled AI for Marketing and Product Innovation.</p><p>He was awarded Lifetime Achievement award at TMRE 2022 event.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Chapters:</strong></p><p>00:00 Previews </p><p>01:23 Show Intro </p><p>04:43 The Consumer Sentiment Gap </p><p>05:37 Welcome Trevor Sumner &amp; Stan Sthanunathan </p><p>06:30 Backgrounds of Trevor and Stan </p><p>09:11 Challenges in Understanding Consumers </p><p>16:58 The Evolution of Influencers </p><p>18:32 Limitations of Surveys and the Need for AI </p><p>25:46 Augmented Intelligence: AI + Human Insight </p><p>31:46 Challenges in CPG Innovation </p><p>33:02 Innovate: A Data-Driven Product </p><p>34:42 AI and Predictive Analytics </p><p>36:21 Democratizing Data Access </p><p>38:07 Mindset Shift for Rapid Actions </p><p>40:46 Adopting AI in CPG </p><p>48:16 Retailers and Data Utilization </p><p>52:59 Future of Brand Understanding </p><p>57:23 Conclusion and Contact Information </p><p>58:15 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">Ricardo Belmar</a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> &amp; a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a Top 10 Retail, &amp; AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, &amp; Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation &amp; Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and the <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">Casey Golden</a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and a <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at CI&amp;T.</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> 5a75d4b2-47ce-4450-92ef-ccf6de80bd4d https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/s5e13consumerinsights Mon, 15 Dec 2025 16:48:58 +0000 3555 no full Agentic AI for Retail Merchandising: Transforming Buying & Planning Agentic AI for Retail Merchandising: Transforming Buying & Planning 12 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Agentic AI for Retail Merchandising: Transforming Buying & Planning S5E12 The Future of AI in Merchandising & Buying with Noah Herschman and Jeff Fish In Season 5, Episode 12 of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Noah Herschman and Jeff Fish of Intelo.ai to explore how agentic AI is revolutionizing retail merchandising and buying. From the art and science of retail merchandising to the persistent challenges of planning and allocation, this episode dives deep into how collaborative intelligence empowers merchandisers, planners, and buyers to make smarter, faster, and more creative decisions. What You’ll Learn in This Episode: • Why merchandising is the “hub of the wheel” in retail success • The balance between creativity and analytics in buying decisions • How agentic AI enhances human judgment without replacing it • Real-world examples of AI improving in-season planning and merchandising financial plans • Why spreadsheets aren’t going away, but AI agents make them smarter • The future of retail technology and how Agentic AI delivers superpowers to retail merchandisers Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube About our Guests Noah Herschman. Senior Industry Advisor, Intelo.ai Noah is an ecommerce strategist who’s been shaping online retail since the 1990s. He’s held leadership roles at Amazon, eBay, and Groupon. As a Microsoft Senior Retail Industry Architect, he has worked with more than 150 global retail & CPG clients. Noah has lived in China for 15 years and fluent in Mandarin, Noah operates out of Hong Kong. He is currently a Senior Industry Advisor for Intelo.ai Jeffrey Fish, Co-CEO, Intelo.ai Jeffrey Fish Co-Founded the Chatly platform serving global retail & hospitality brands targeting the China market (exited to Salesforce in 2020). He then led Salesforce China in partnership with Alibaba Cloud. Now he's scaling up Intelo's Collaborative Intelligence Agentic Merchandising & Planning Platform. Chapters: 00:00 Previews 01:39 Show Intro 04:13 Welcome Noah Herschman & Jeff Fish 04:37 Guest Backgrounds and Expertise 07:33 The Importance of Retail Merchandising 11:41 Challenges and Solutions in Modern Merchandising 16:25 The Role of Agentic AI in Merchandising 23:09 Future of Agentic AI and Merchandising 40:04 Practical Steps for Retailers 41:36 How to Reach Out And Contact 42:10 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T. Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5E12 The Future of AI in Merchandising & Buying with Noah Herschman and Jeff Fish


In Season 5, Episode 12 of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Noah Herschman and Jeff Fish of Intelo.ai to explore how agentic AI is revolutionizing retail merchandising and buying. From the art and science of retail merchandising to the persistent challenges of planning and allocation, this episode dives deep into how collaborative intelligence empowers merchandisers, planners, and buyers to make smarter, faster, and more creative decisions.


What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • Why merchandising is the “hub of the wheel” in retail success
  • The balance between creativity and analytics in buying decisions
  • How agentic AI enhances human judgment without replacing it
  • Real-world examples of AI improving in-season planning and merchandising financial plans
  • Why spreadsheets aren’t going away, but AI agents make them smarter
  • The future of retail technology and how Agentic AI delivers superpowers to retail merchandisers


Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


About our Guests

Noah Herschman. Senior Industry Advisor, Intelo.ai

Noah is an ecommerce strategist who’s been shaping online retail since the 1990s. He’s held leadership roles at Amazon, eBay, and Groupon. As a Microsoft Senior Retail Industry Architect, he has worked with more than 150 global retail & CPG clients. Noah has lived in China for 15 years and fluent in Mandarin, Noah operates out of Hong Kong. He is currently a Senior Industry Advisor for Intelo.ai

Jeffrey Fish, Co-CEO, Intelo.ai

Jeffrey Fish Co-Founded the Chatly platform serving global retail & hospitality brands targeting the China market (exited to Salesforce in 2020). He then led Salesforce China in partnership with Alibaba Cloud. Now he's scaling up Intelo's Collaborative Intelligence Agentic Merchandising & Planning Platform.


Chapters:

00:00 Previews 

01:39 Show Intro 

04:13 Welcome Noah Herschman & Jeff Fish 

04:37 Guest Backgrounds and Expertise 

07:33 The Importance of Retail Merchandising 

11:41 Challenges and Solutions in Modern Merchandising 

16:25 The Role of Agentic AI in Merchandising 

23:09 Future of Agentic AI and Merchandising 

40:04 Practical Steps for Retailers 

41:36 How to Reach Out And Contact 

42:10 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Allianceadvisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T.


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.


]]> <p><strong>S5E12 The Future of AI in Merchandising &amp; Buying with Noah Herschman and Jeff Fish</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In Season 5, Episode 12 of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-herschman/" rel="nofollow">Noah Herschman</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreyfish/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Fish</a> of <a href="https://www.intelo.ai/" rel="nofollow">Intelo.ai</a> to explore how agentic AI is revolutionizing retail merchandising and buying. From the art and science of retail merchandising to the persistent challenges of planning and allocation, this episode dives deep into how collaborative intelligence empowers merchandisers, planners, and buyers to make smarter, faster, and more creative decisions.</p><p><br></p><p>What You’ll Learn in This Episode:</p><ul><li>Why merchandising is the “hub of the wheel” in retail success</li><li>The balance between creativity and analytics in buying decisions</li><li>How agentic AI enhances human judgment without replacing it</li><li>Real-world examples of AI improving in-season planning and merchandising financial plans</li><li>Why spreadsheets aren’t going away, but AI agents make them smarter</li><li>The future of retail technology and how Agentic AI delivers superpowers to retail merchandisers</li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: </strong><a href="https://retailrazor.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>https://retailrazor.com/</strong></a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guests</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-herschman/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Noah Herschman</strong></a><strong>. Senior Industry Advisor, </strong><a href="https://www.intelo.ai/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Intelo.ai</strong></a></p><p>Noah is an ecommerce strategist who’s been shaping online retail since the 1990s. He’s held leadership roles at Amazon, eBay, and Groupon. As a Microsoft Senior Retail Industry Architect, he has worked with more than 150 global retail &amp; CPG clients. Noah has lived in China for 15 years and fluent in Mandarin, Noah operates out of Hong Kong. He is currently a Senior Industry Advisor for Intelo.ai</p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreyfish/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Jeffrey Fish</strong></a><strong>, Co-CEO, </strong><a href="https://www.intelo.ai/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Intelo.ai</strong></a></p><p>Jeffrey Fish Co-Founded the Chatly platform serving global retail &amp; hospitality brands targeting the China market (exited to Salesforce in 2020). He then led Salesforce China in partnership with Alibaba Cloud. Now he&#39;s scaling up Intelo&#39;s Collaborative Intelligence Agentic Merchandising &amp; Planning Platform.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Chapters:</strong></p><p>00:00 Previews </p><p>01:39 Show Intro </p><p>04:13 Welcome Noah Herschman &amp; Jeff Fish </p><p>04:37 Guest Backgrounds and Expertise </p><p>07:33 The Importance of Retail Merchandising </p><p>11:41 Challenges and Solutions in Modern Merchandising </p><p>16:25 The Role of Agentic AI in Merchandising </p><p>23:09 Future of Agentic AI and Merchandising </p><p>40:04 Practical Steps for Retailers </p><p>41:36 How to Reach Out And Contact </p><p>42:10 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">Ricardo Belmar</a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> &amp; a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a Top 10 Retail, &amp; AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, &amp; Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation &amp; Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and the <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">Casey Golden</a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and a <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at CI&amp;T.</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p> 6626a0c0-823f-411d-8c8d-5b50a4b9297a https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 28 Nov 2025 19:45:57 +0000 2596 no full Resale and Circular Fashion - ThredUp’s 2025 Holiday Shopping Report Resale and Circular Fashion - ThredUp’s 2025 Holiday Shopping Report 11 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Resale and Circular Fashion - ThredUp’s 2025 Holiday Shopping Report S5E11 ThredUp’s Resale Revolution: Holiday Shopping & Gift Giving Trends with Alon Rotem The holidays are here and resale is at the center of this year’s shopping story! In this timely episode of The Retail Razor Show, Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Alon Rotem, Chief Strategy Officer at ThredUp, to unpack the company’s 2025 Holiday Shopping Report. From surprising insights on resale gift giving to how shoppers are embracing sustainable fashion and circular economy models, this conversation reveals why resale is becoming a mainstream holiday shopping strategy. We also explore ThredUp’s evolution from a secondhand marketplace to a Resale as a Service (RaaS) leader, powering branded resale programs for fashion retailers. Alon shares how ThredUp’s AI-powered innovations — including image search, natural language search, and personalized curation — are transforming the secondhand shopping experience and driving conversion. If you want to understand how resale, sustainability, and AI are reshaping holiday shopping in 2025, this episode delivers insights every retailer, brand, and shopper needs. Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube About our Guest Alon Rotem, Chief Strategy Officer & General Counsel, ThredUp Alon Rotem has served as ThredUp’s Chief Strategy Officer and General Counsel since September 2024. Alon has also served as Chief Legal Officer since February 2021 and Secretary since March 2017 and previously served as General Counsel from January 2017 to February 2021. From September 2013 to November 2016, Alon served as the General Counsel of Rocket Lawyer Inc., an online legal technology company. From June 2010 to August 2013, he was an associate at Goodwin Procter LLP, a global law firm. Alon holds a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and a Bachelor of Science in Managerial Economics from the University of California, Davis. ThredUp 2025 Holiday Report - https://newsroom.thredup.com/news/thredup-2025-holiday-report ThredUp Resale-as-a-Service - https://www.raas.thredup.com Chapters: 00:00 Previews 01:13 Show Intro 04:51 Welcome, Alon Rotem - Chief Strategy Officer, ThredUp 08:38 ThredUp's Evolution and Resale as a Service 15:51 Implementing Resale Programs with ThredUp 21:31 Challenges and Successes of Going Public 25:36 AI Innovations in ThredUp's Shopping Experience 33:06 Insights from the Holiday Report 35:25 Consumer Behavior and Secondhand Gifts 36:24 Top Gifting Trends in Resale 39:49 The Role of Data in Resale 41:32 Consumer Funding for Holiday Shopping 47:21 Luxury vs. Mid-Market Resale 51:05 Sustainability and the Future of Fashion 55:11 Future Outlook 59:47 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T. Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5E11 ThredUp’s Resale Revolution: Holiday Shopping & Gift Giving Trends with Alon Rotem


The holidays are here and resale is at the center of this year’s shopping story! In this timely episode of The Retail Razor Show, Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Alon Rotem, Chief Strategy Officer at ThredUp, to unpack the company’s 2025 Holiday Shopping Report. From surprising insights on resale gift giving to how shoppers are embracing sustainable fashion and circular economy models, this conversation reveals why resale is becoming a mainstream holiday shopping strategy.


We also explore ThredUp’s evolution from a secondhand marketplace to a Resale as a Service (RaaS) leader, powering branded resale programs for fashion retailers. Alon shares how ThredUp’s AI-powered innovations — including image search, natural language search, and personalized curation — are transforming the secondhand shopping experience and driving conversion.


If you want to understand how resale, sustainability, and AI are reshaping holiday shopping in 2025, this episode delivers insights every retailer, brand, and shopper needs.


Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


About our Guest

Alon Rotem, Chief Strategy Officer & General Counsel, ThredUp

Alon Rotem has served as ThredUp’s Chief Strategy Officer and General Counsel since September 2024. Alon has also served as Chief Legal Officer since February 2021 and Secretary since March 2017 and previously served as General Counsel from January 2017 to February 2021. From September 2013 to November 2016, Alon served as the General Counsel of Rocket Lawyer Inc., an online legal technology company. From June 2010 to August 2013, he was an associate at Goodwin Procter LLP, a global law firm. Alon holds a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and a Bachelor of Science in Managerial Economics from the University of California, Davis.

ThredUp 2025 Holiday Report - https://newsroom.thredup.com/news/thredup-2025-holiday-report

ThredUp Resale-as-a-Service - https://www.raas.thredup.com


Chapters

00:00 Previews 

01:13 Show Intro 

04:51 Welcome, Alon Rotem - Chief Strategy Officer, ThredUp 

08:38 ThredUp's Evolution and Resale as a Service 

15:51 Implementing Resale Programs with ThredUp 

21:31 Challenges and Successes of Going Public 

25:36 AI Innovations in ThredUp's Shopping Experience 

33:06 Insights from the Holiday Report 

35:25 Consumer Behavior and Secondhand Gifts 

36:24 Top Gifting Trends in Resale 

39:49 The Role of Data in Resale 

41:32 Consumer Funding for Holiday Shopping 

47:21 Luxury vs. Mid-Market Resale 

51:05 Sustainability and the Future of Fashion 

55:11 Future Outlook 59:47 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Allianceadvisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T.


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S5E11 ThredUp’s Resale Revolution: Holiday Shopping &amp; Gift Giving Trends with Alon Rotem</strong></p><p><br></p><p>The holidays are here and resale is at the center of this year’s shopping story! In this timely episode of <em>The Retail Razor Show</em>, Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alonrotem/" rel="nofollow">Alon Rotem</a>, Chief Strategy Officer at <a href="https://www.thredup.com/" rel="nofollow">ThredUp</a>, to unpack the company’s <a href="https://newsroom.thredup.com/news/thredup-2025-holiday-report" rel="nofollow"><strong>2025 Holiday Shopping Report</strong></a>. From surprising insights on <strong>resale gift giving</strong> to how shoppers are embracing <strong>sustainable fashion and circular economy models</strong>, this conversation reveals why resale is becoming a mainstream holiday shopping strategy.</p><p><br></p><p>We also explore ThredUp’s evolution from a secondhand marketplace to a <a href="https://www.raas.thredup.com/" rel="nofollow">Resale as a Service</a> (RaaS) leader, powering branded resale programs for fashion retailers. Alon shares how ThredUp’s <strong>AI-powered innovations</strong> — including image search, natural language search, and personalized curation — are transforming the secondhand shopping experience and driving conversion.</p><p><br></p><p>If you want to understand how <strong>resale, sustainability, and AI are reshaping holiday shopping in 2025</strong>, this episode delivers insights every retailer, brand, and shopper needs.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: </strong><a href="https://retailrazor.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>https://retailrazor.com/</strong></a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guest</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alonrotem/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Alon Rotem</strong></a><strong>, Chief Strategy Officer &amp; General Counsel, </strong><a href="https://www.thredup.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>ThredUp</strong></a></p><p>Alon Rotem has served as ThredUp’s Chief Strategy Officer and General Counsel since September 2024. Alon has also served as Chief Legal Officer since February 2021 and Secretary since March 2017 and previously served as General Counsel from January 2017 to February 2021. From September 2013 to November 2016, Alon served as the General Counsel of Rocket Lawyer Inc., an online legal technology company. From June 2010 to August 2013, he was an associate at Goodwin Procter LLP, a global law firm. Alon holds a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and a Bachelor of Science in Managerial Economics from the University of California, Davis.</p><p><strong>ThredUp 2025 Holiday Report - </strong><a href="https://newsroom.thredup.com/news/thredup-2025-holiday-report" rel="nofollow"><strong>https://newsroom.thredup.com/news/thredup-2025-holiday-report</strong></a></p><p><strong>ThredUp Resale-as-a-Service - </strong><a href="https://www.raas.thredup.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>https://www.raas.thredup.com</strong></a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Chapters</strong></p><p>00:00 Previews </p><p>01:13 Show Intro </p><p>04:51 Welcome, Alon Rotem - Chief Strategy Officer, ThredUp </p><p>08:38 ThredUp&#39;s Evolution and Resale as a Service </p><p>15:51 Implementing Resale Programs with ThredUp </p><p>21:31 Challenges and Successes of Going Public </p><p>25:36 AI Innovations in ThredUp&#39;s Shopping Experience </p><p>33:06 Insights from the Holiday Report </p><p>35:25 Consumer Behavior and Secondhand Gifts </p><p>36:24 Top Gifting Trends in Resale </p><p>39:49 The Role of Data in Resale </p><p>41:32 Consumer Funding for Holiday Shopping </p><p>47:21 Luxury vs. Mid-Market Resale </p><p>51:05 Sustainability and the Future of Fashion </p><p>55:11 Future Outlook 59:47 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">Ricardo Belmar</a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> &amp; a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a Top 10 Retail, &amp; AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, &amp; Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation &amp; Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and the <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">Casey Golden</a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and a <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at CI&amp;T.</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> a53e9018-6a1e-4cf3-8d98-1df7c488f671 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/circular-fashion-thredup Mon, 10 Nov 2025 10:01:36 +0000 3641 no bonus BONUS Sharpening Retail Strategies | AI, Customer Experience, Retail Media, and Employee Impact BONUS Sharpening Retail Strategies | AI, Customer Experience, Retail Media, and Employee Impact 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert BONUS Sharpening Retail Strategies | AI, Customer Experience, Retail Media, and Employee Impact BONUS - The Retail Razor: Data Blades Season 2 Trailer Data Blades Returns: AI, CX, and Retail Media for Executive Leaders Welcome to a special cross-release of the Season 2 trailer for The Retail Razor: Data Blades—the podcast that slices through complex retail research to deliver sharp, actionable insights and retail strategies for executive leaders in the AI era. In Season 1, we cut through the clutter with data-backed insights to identify strategies for: - Inflation’s uneven impact across age groups—where seniors felt the pinch more than younger shoppers. - Shifting shopping habits—like 74% of consumers using lists to control spending. - The power of values in loyalty—with 77% of consumers saying brand values matter more than discounts. - Self-checkout and employee experience—where well-informed store teams drove a 27% increase in average spend. Now in Season 2, we’re going deeper. Hosts Ricardo Belmar, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert & NRF 2025 Retail Voice, and Casey Golden, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert, preview what’s ahead: - Exclusive insights from TruRating and top retail analysts to hone your data-driven retail strategies. - A focus on three pillars: Customer Experience, Retail Media, and Employee Experience. - How AI is reshaping retail strategy—from predictive personalization to AI-powered workforce tools. - Revisiting themes of trust, transparency, and loyalty with fresh data and new perspectives. If you're a VP, CMO, COO, or CEO in retail looking to make smarter, data-driven decisions for AI-first retail strategies, this is your podcast. Subscribe now in your favorite podcast player and stay ahead of the curve with insights that drive conversion, loyalty, and operational excellence. New episodes drop starting tomorrow! 👉 Stay Sharp. Be Data-Driven. Harness AI. Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube About your hosts:: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail & AGI, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers, and a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader. Plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Allianceadvisory council member. Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T. Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Tech Lore from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. BONUS - The Retail Razor: Data Blades Season 2 Trailer

Data Blades Returns: AI, CX, and Retail Media for Executive Leaders

 

Welcome to a special cross-release of the Season 2 trailer for The Retail Razor: Data Blades—the podcast that slices through complex retail research to deliver sharp, actionable insights and retail strategies for executive leaders in the AI era. 

 

In Season 1, we cut through the clutter with data-backed insights to identify strategies for:

  • Inflation’s uneven impact across age groups—where seniors felt the pinch more than younger shoppers.
  • Shifting shopping habits—like 74% of consumers using lists to control spending.
  • The power of values in loyalty—with 77% of consumers saying brand values matter more than discounts.
  • Self-checkout and employee experience—where well-informed store teams drove a 27% increase in average spend.

 

Now in Season 2, we’re going deeper. Hosts Ricardo Belmar, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert & NRF 2025 Retail Voice, and Casey Golden, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert, preview what’s ahead:

  • Exclusive insights from TruRating and top retail analysts to hone your data-driven retail strategies.
  • A focus on three pillars: Customer Experience, Retail Media, and Employee Experience.
  • How AI is reshaping retail strategy—from predictive personalization to AI-powered workforce tools.
  • Revisiting themes of trust, transparency, and loyalty with fresh data and new perspectives.

 

If you're a VP, CMO, COO, or CEO in retail looking to make smarter, data-driven decisions for AI-first retail strategies, this is your podcast. Subscribe now in your favorite podcast player and stay ahead of the curve with insights that drive conversion, loyalty, and operational excellence.

New episodes drop starting tomorrow!

👉 Stay Sharp. Be Data-Driven. Harness AI.


Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube


About your hosts::

Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail & AGI, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers, and a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader. Plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.

Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Allianceadvisory council member. Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T.

Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Tech Lore from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>BONUS - The Retail Razor: Data Blades Season 2 Trailer</strong></p><p><strong>Data Blades Returns: AI, CX, and Retail Media for Executive Leaders</strong></p><p><strong> </strong></p><p>Welcome to a special <strong>cross-release</strong> of the Season 2 trailer for <em>The Retail Razor: Data Blades</em>—the podcast that slices through complex retail research to deliver sharp, actionable insights and retail strategies for executive leaders in the AI era. </p><p> </p><p>In Season 1, we cut through the clutter with data-backed insights to identify strategies for:</p><ul><li><strong>Inflation’s uneven impact across age groups</strong>—where seniors felt the pinch more than younger shoppers.</li><li><strong>Shifting shopping habits</strong>—like 74% of consumers using lists to control spending.</li><li><strong>The power of values in loyalty</strong>—with 77% of consumers saying brand values matter more than discounts.</li><li><strong>Self-checkout and employee experience</strong>—where well-informed store teams drove a 27% increase in average spend.</li></ul><p> </p><p>Now in Season 2, we’re going deeper. Hosts <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbelmar/" rel="nofollow">Ricardo Belmar</a>, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert &amp; NRF 2025 Retail Voice, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/cgoldenone/" rel="nofollow">Casey Golden</a>, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert, preview what’s ahead:</p><ul><li>Exclusive insights from TruRating and top retail analysts to hone your data-driven retail strategies.</li><li>A focus on three pillars: <strong>Customer Experience, Retail Media, and Employee Experience.</strong></li><li>How <strong>AI is reshaping retail strategy</strong>—from predictive personalization to AI-powered workforce tools.</li><li>Revisiting themes of trust, transparency, and loyalty with fresh data and new perspectives.</li></ul><p> </p><p>If you&#39;re a VP, CMO, COO, or CEO in retail looking to make smarter, data-driven decisions for AI-first retail strategies, this is your podcast. Subscribe now in your favorite podcast player and stay ahead of the curve with insights that drive conversion, loyalty, and operational excellence.</p><p>New episodes drop starting tomorrow!</p><p>👉 Stay Sharp. Be Data-Driven. Harness AI.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: </strong><a href="https://retailrazor.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.com/</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://go.retailrazor.com/utube" rel="nofollow">https://go.retailrazor.com/utube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About your hosts</strong>::</p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> &amp; a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a Top 10 <em>Retail</em> &amp; <em>AGI</em>, a Top 50 <em>Management</em>, <em>Transformation</em>, &amp; <em>Careers</em>, and a Top 100 <em>Digital Transformation</em> &amp; <em>Agentic AI Thought Leader</em>. Plus a <em>Top Digital Voice for 2024</em> and <em>2025</em>. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.</p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and a <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>advisory council member. Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at CI&amp;T.</p><p><span>Includes music provided </span>by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a><span>, featuring </span><em>Tech Lore </em><span>from the album </span><em>Beat Hype</em><span>, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</span></p> dce7fb86-b9fb-4964-8ae7-c785c41e2bde https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-data-blades/episode/sharpening-retail-strategies-trailer Wed, 29 Oct 2025 09:01:00 +0000 227 no bonus BONUS Sharpen Your Leadership Blade | Insights for the AI Era BONUS Sharpen Your Leadership Blade | Insights for the AI Era 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert BONUS Sharpen Your Leadership Blade | Insights for the AI Era BONUS - The Retail Razor: Blade to Greatness Season 2 Trailer Retail Executive Leadership & Coaching Insights for the AI Era Welcome to a special cross-release of the Season 2 trailer for Blade to Greatness — the podcast where retail leaders sharpen their edge. Hosted by Ricardo Belmar & Casey Golden, this series explores the essential skills & qualities every retail executive needs to lead boldly, stay sharp, & stay human in the AI era. In Season 1, we uncovered the fundamentals of great leadership: - how intrinsic motivation and autonomy unlock innovation - why positivity is fuel, not fluff - rethinking hiring, career development, & investing in people Season 2 takes it further with new retail executives & coaching experts — to share actionable insights on: - Building resilient & adaptable leadership cultures - Leading through disruption & transformation in the AI era - Practical coaching strategies for executives & C-suite leaders If you’re a retail leader, this season will help you sharpen your leadership blade & lead with clarity. Subscribe to The Retail Razor: Blade to Greatness show in your favorite podcast player! New episodes drop starting tomorrow! 👉 Stay Sharp. Lead Boldly. Stay Human. Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube About your hosts:: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail & AGI, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers, and a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader. Plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Allianceadvisory council member. Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T. Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Swag, Tag and Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. BONUS - The Retail Razor: Blade to Greatness Season 2 Trailer

Retail Executive Leadership & Coaching Insights for the AI Era

Welcome to a special cross-release of the Season 2 trailer for The Retail Razor: Blade to Greatness — the podcast where retail leaders sharpen their edge. Hosted by Ricardo Belmar & Casey Golden, this series explores the essential skills & qualities every retail executive needs to lead boldly, stay sharp, & stay human in the AI era.


In Season 1, we uncovered the fundamentals of great leadership:

  • how intrinsic motivation and autonomy unlock innovation
  • why positivity is fuel, not fluff
  • rethinking hiring, career development, & investing in people


Season 2 takes it further with new retail executives & coaching experts—to share actionable insights on:

  • Building resilient & adaptable leadership cultures
  • Leading through disruption & transformation in the AI era
  • Practical coaching strategies for executives & C-suite leaders


If you’re a retail leader, this season will help you sharpen your leadership blade & lead with clarity. Subscribe to The Retail Razor: Blade to Greatness show in your favorite podcast player!

New episodes drop starting tomorrow!

👉 Stay Sharp. Lead Boldly. Stay Human.


Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube


About your hosts::

Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail & AGI, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers, and a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader. Plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.

Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Allianceadvisory council member. Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T.

Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Swag, Tag and Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>BONUS - The Retail Razor: Blade to Greatness Season 2 Trailer</strong></p><p><strong>Retail Executive Leadership &amp; Coaching Insights for the AI Era</strong></p><p>Welcome to a special <strong>cross-release</strong> of the Season 2 trailer for <em>The Retail Razor: Blade to Greatness </em>— the podcast where retail leaders sharpen their edge. Hosted by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbelmar/" rel="nofollow">Ricardo Belmar</a> &amp; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/cgoldenone/" rel="nofollow">Casey Golden</a>, this series explores the essential skills &amp; qualities every retail executive needs to lead boldly, stay sharp, &amp; stay human in the AI era.</p><p><br></p><p>In Season 1, we uncovered the fundamentals of great leadership:</p><ul><li>how intrinsic motivation and autonomy unlock innovation</li><li>why positivity is fuel, not fluff</li><li>rethinking hiring, career development, &amp; investing in people</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Season 2 takes it further with new retail executives &amp; coaching experts—to share actionable insights on:</p><ul><li>Building resilient &amp; adaptable leadership cultures</li><li>Leading through disruption &amp; transformation in the AI era</li><li>Practical coaching strategies for executives &amp; C-suite leaders</li></ul><p><br></p><p>If you’re a retail leader, this season will help you sharpen your leadership blade &amp; lead with clarity. Subscribe to <em>The Retail Razor: Blade to Greatness</em> show in your favorite podcast player!</p><p>New episodes drop starting tomorrow!</p><p>👉 Stay Sharp. Lead Boldly. Stay Human.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: </strong><a href="https://retailrazor.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.com/</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://go.retailrazor.com/utube" rel="nofollow">https://go.retailrazor.com/utube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About your hosts</strong>::</p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> &amp; a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a Top 10 <em>Retail</em> &amp; <em>AGI</em>, a Top 50 <em>Management</em>, <em>Transformation</em>, &amp; <em>Careers</em>, and a Top 100 <em>Digital Transformation</em> &amp; <em>Agentic AI Thought Leader</em>. Plus a <em>Top Digital Voice for 2024</em> and <em>2025</em>. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.</p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and a <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>advisory council member. Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at CI&amp;T.</p><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Swag, Tag and Brag </em>from the album <em>Beat Hype</em>, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> dca897e2-198c-41b2-8b25-007abce0e4ed https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-blade-to-greatness/episode/blade-season2 Mon, 27 Oct 2025 09:01:02 +0000 209 no full AI-Powered Store Teams: How Microsoft & SYNQ Are Transforming Retail Frontlines AI-Powered Store Teams: How Microsoft & SYNQ Are Transforming Retail Frontlines 10 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert AI-Powered Store Teams: How Microsoft & SYNQ Are Transforming Retail Frontlines S5E10 From Task Overload to Customer Focus: AI Solutions for Retail Associates Retailers are asking store associates to do more with less—shorter staffing, longer task lists, and higher customer expectations. In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden explore how AI is reshaping frontline retail teams from overwhelmed to empowered. Joining the conversation are: • Jeff Strasser, General Manager of AI Business Solutions for Retail & Consumer Goods at Microsoft • Nolan Wheeler, CEO & Founder of SYNQ Technologies Together, they dive into: • The biggest challenges facing frontline store associates today: task overload, reduced staffing, and customer service trade-offs • How AI can automate and simplify corporate task lists, freeing up time for customer engagement • Why voice-first, hands-free AI is a breakthrough for associates, with SYNQ’s solution connecting two-way radios to Azure OpenAI for instant answers in the aisle • The importance of integration and governance when deploying AI at scale in retail operations • Real-world examples of AI reducing friction, improving training, and accelerating onboarding • How to measure success with the right KPIs: time-to-answer, customer satisfaction, and associate productivity • What’s next for AI in retail over the next 24 months—and how retailers can prepare their teams today This isn’t about replacing people—it’s about augmenting store teams with AI-powered tools that make their jobs easier, improve morale, and elevate the customer experience. If you’re a retail leader, innovator, or operator, this episode is packed with insights on how to start small, scale fast, and empower your frontline workforce with AI. Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube About our Guests Nolan Wheeler – CEO & Founder, SYNQ Technologies Nolan Wheeler founded SYNQ in 2015 after a successful multi-decade career in retail. With experience in asset protection, store operations, and store transformation, Nolan founded SYNQ with a vision for transforming how retailers think about operations and merchandizing. Nolan lives in Victoria, BC with his young family, spending as much of his time on the water as possible. Retail Clinic on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RetailClinic SYNQ Technologies - www.synqtech.com Jeff Strasser – GM, AI Business Solutions for Retail & Consumer Goods, Microsoft. Jeff oversees Microsoft’s AI Business Solutions portfolio for the US Retail & Consumer Goods enterprise customer segment. Jeffrey’s organization supports clients’ business priorities to grow revenue, optimize costs and deliver customer and employee satisfaction through AI led solutions. Recently, Jeffrey has been leading discussions on the application of generative AI to improve the efficiency of work and operations, accelerate decision-making, and support client leadership with strategies to build an AI first culture and deliver on business impacting solutions. Microsoft Cloud for Retail - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/retail/microsoft-cloud-for-retail Chapters: 00:00 Previews 00:54 Show Intro 04:27 Welcome Jeff Strasser & Nolan Wheeler 07:29 Challenges Faced by Frontline Store Teams 14:14 AI Solutions for Retail Operations 19:59 Voice AI and Real-World Applications 25:34 Data-Driven Retail Insights 30:55 The Power of Voice Agents in Retail 32:05 Integrating IoT and Voice for Seamless Operations 34:22 Building Effective AI Agents 38:21 Starting with AI: Metrics and ROI 41:18 Overcoming Barriers to AI Adoption 4 7:24 Future Capabilities and Getting Started 54:01 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T. Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5E10 From Task Overload to Customer Focus: AI Solutions for Retail Associates


Retailers are asking store associates to do more with less—shorter staffing, longer task lists, and higher customer expectations. In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden explore how AI is reshaping frontline retail teams from overwhelmed to empowered.


Joining the conversation are:


•  Jeff Strasser, General Manager of AI Business Solutions for Retail & Consumer Goods at Microsoft

•  Nolan Wheeler, CEO & Founder of SYNQ Technologies


Together, they dive into:


•  The biggest challenges facing frontline store associates today: task overload, reduced staffing, and customer service trade-offs

•  How AI can automate and simplify corporate task lists, freeing up time for customer engagement

•  Why voice-first, hands-free AI is a breakthrough for associates, with SYNQ’s solution connecting two-way radios to Azure OpenAI for instant answers in the aisle

•  The importance of integration and governance when deploying AI at scale in retail operations

•  Real-world examples of AI reducing friction, improving training, and accelerating onboarding

•  How to measure success with the right KPIs: time-to-answer, customer satisfaction, and associate productivity

•  What’s next for AI in retail over the next 24 months—and how retailers can prepare their teams today


This isn’t about replacing people—it’s about augmenting store teams with AI-powered tools that make their jobs easier, improve morale, and elevate the customer experience.


If you’re a retail leader, innovator, or operator, this episode is packed with insights on how to start small, scale fast, and empower your frontline workforce with AI.


Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


About our Guests

Nolan Wheeler – CEO & Founder, SYNQ Technologies

Nolan Wheeler founded SYNQ in 2015 after a successful multi-decade career in retail. With experience in asset protection, store operations, and store transformation, Nolan founded SYNQ with a vision for transforming how retailers think about operations and merchandizing. Nolan lives in Victoria, BC with his young family, spending as much of his time on the water as possible.

Retail Clinic on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/@RetailClinic

SYNQ Technologies - www.synqtech.com


Jeff Strasser – GM, AI Business Solutions for Retail & Consumer Goods, Microsoft.

Jeff oversees Microsoft’s AI Business Solutions portfolio for the US Retail & Consumer Goods enterprise customer segment. Jeffrey’s organization supports clients’ business priorities to grow revenue, optimize costs and deliver customer and employee satisfaction through AI led solutions. Recently, Jeffrey has been leading discussions on the application of generative AI to improve the efficiency of work and operations, accelerate decision-making, and support client leadership with strategies to build an AI first culture and deliver on business impacting solutions.

Microsoft Cloud for Retail - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/retail/microsoft-cloud-for-retail


Chapters:

00:00 Previews 

00:54 Show Intro 

04:27 Welcome Jeff Strasser & Nolan Wheeler 

07:29 Challenges Faced by Frontline Store Teams 

14:14 AI Solutions for Retail Operations 

19:59 Voice AI and Real-World Applications 

25:34 Data-Driven Retail Insights 

30:55 The Power of Voice Agents in Retail 

32:05 Integrating IoT and Voice for Seamless Operations 

34:22 Building Effective AI Agents 

38:21 Starting with AI: Metrics and ROI 

41:18 Overcoming Barriers to AI Adoption 4

7:24 Future Capabilities and Getting Started 

54:01 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Allianceadvisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T.


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S5E10 From Task Overload to Customer Focus: AI Solutions for Retail Associates</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Retailers are asking store associates to do more with less—shorter staffing, longer task lists, and higher customer expectations. In this episode of <em>The Retail Razor Show</em>, hosts <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">Ricardo Belmar</a> and <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">Casey Golden</a> explore how AI is reshaping frontline retail teams from overwhelmed to empowered.</p><p><br></p><p>Joining the conversation are:</p><p><br></p><p><strong>•  </strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffstrasser/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Jeff Strasser</strong></a>, General Manager of AI Business Solutions for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at <strong>Microsoft</strong></p><p><strong>•  </strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nolanwheeler/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Nolan Wheeler</strong></a>, CEO &amp; Founder of <strong>SYNQ Technologies</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Together, they dive into:</p><p><br></p><p><strong>•  </strong>The biggest challenges facing frontline store associates today: task overload, reduced staffing, and customer service trade-offs</p><p><strong>•  </strong>How <strong>AI can automate and simplify corporate task lists</strong>, freeing up time for customer engagement</p><p><strong>•  </strong>Why <strong>voice-first, hands-free AI</strong> is a breakthrough for associates, with SYNQ’s solution connecting two-way radios to Azure OpenAI for instant answers in the aisle</p><p><strong>•  </strong>The importance of <strong>integration and governance</strong> when deploying AI at scale in retail operations</p><p><strong>•  </strong>Real-world examples of AI reducing friction, improving training, and accelerating onboarding</p><p><strong>•  </strong>How to measure success with the right KPIs: time-to-answer, customer satisfaction, and associate productivity</p><p><strong>•  </strong>What’s next for AI in retail over the next 24 months—and how retailers can prepare their teams today</p><p><br></p><p>This isn’t about replacing people—it’s about <strong>augmenting store teams with AI-powered tools</strong> that make their jobs <em>easier</em>, <em>improve morale</em>, and <em>elevate the customer experience.</em></p><p><br></p><p>If you’re a retail leader, innovator, or operator, this episode is packed with insights on how to start small, scale fast, and empower your frontline workforce with AI.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: </strong><a href="https://retailrazor.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>https://retailrazor.com/</strong></a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guests</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nolanwheeler/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Nolan Wheeler</strong></a> – CEO &amp; Founder, <a href="http://www.synqtech.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>SYNQ Technologies</strong></a></p><p>Nolan Wheeler founded SYNQ in 2015 after a successful multi-decade career in retail. With experience in asset protection, store operations, and store transformation, Nolan founded SYNQ with a vision for transforming how retailers think about operations and merchandizing. Nolan lives in Victoria, BC with his young family, spending as much of his time on the water as possible.</p><p><strong>Retail Clinic on YouTube</strong>:  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@RetailClinic" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/@RetailClinic</a></p><p><strong>SYNQ Technologies</strong> - <a href="http://www.synqtech.com/" rel="nofollow">www.synqtech.com</a></p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffstrasser/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Jeff Strasser</strong></a> – GM, AI Business Solutions for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods, <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/retail/microsoft-cloud-for-retail" rel="nofollow">Microsoft</a>.</p><p>Jeff oversees Microsoft’s AI Business Solutions portfolio for the US Retail &amp; Consumer Goods enterprise customer segment. Jeffrey’s organization supports clients’ business priorities to grow revenue, optimize costs and deliver customer and employee satisfaction through AI led solutions. Recently, Jeffrey has been leading discussions on the application of generative AI to improve the efficiency of work and operations, accelerate decision-making, and support client leadership with strategies to build an AI first culture and deliver on business impacting solutions.</p><p><strong>Microsoft Cloud for Retail</strong> - <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/retail/microsoft-cloud-for-retail" rel="nofollow">https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/retail/microsoft-cloud-for-retail</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Chapters:</strong></p><p>00:00 Previews </p><p>00:54 Show Intro </p><p>04:27 Welcome Jeff Strasser &amp; Nolan Wheeler </p><p>07:29 Challenges Faced by Frontline Store Teams </p><p>14:14 AI Solutions for Retail Operations </p><p>19:59 Voice AI and Real-World Applications </p><p>25:34 Data-Driven Retail Insights </p><p>30:55 The Power of Voice Agents in Retail </p><p>32:05 Integrating IoT and Voice for Seamless Operations </p><p>34:22 Building Effective AI Agents </p><p>38:21 Starting with AI: Metrics and ROI </p><p>41:18 Overcoming Barriers to AI Adoption 4</p><p>7:24 Future Capabilities and Getting Started </p><p>54:01 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">Ricardo Belmar</a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> &amp; a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a Top 10 Retail, &amp; AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, &amp; Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation &amp; Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and the <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">Casey Golden</a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and a <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a>advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at CI&amp;T.</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> 844fd279-26a8-4e5d-a7f5-383b1fee300d https://retailrazor.com/episode/ai-powered-store-teams Tue, 21 Oct 2025 09:00:21 +0000 3306 no full We Are RetailROI Champions: Celebrating Retail’s Impact on Children in Need We Are RetailROI Champions: Celebrating Retail’s Impact on Children in Need 9 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert We Are RetailROI Champions: Celebrating Retail’s Impact on Children in Need S5E9 Retail's Best Kept Secret: Discover How RetailROI Transforms Children's Futures In this special replay episode of The Retail Razor Show, we shine a spotlight on the incredible work of the Retail Orphan Initiative (RetailROI)—a nonprofit transforming lives of orphans and foster children through the power of the retail industry. With a fresh introduction for 2025, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden revisit a heartfelt conversation with Greg Buzek, President of RetailROI, Vicki Cantrell, board member and retail legend, and Jeff Roster, former Gartner & IHL analyst and top retail expert, as they share the origin story, mission, and global impact of this powerful retail charity. Learn how RetailROI’s Super Saturday event at NRF has become the most meaningful gathering of the year, where retailers, tech vendors, and solution providers come together to help fund clean water, education, and life skills training for thousands of children worldwide. Hear inspiring stories of transformation, including previous keynote speaker Darryl McDaniels of Run DMC, and discover how just showing up at Super Saturday can help change lives. Whether you're a retailer planning for NRF, a technology supplier and potential sponsor, or simply passionate about retail’s role in social responsibility, this episode will move you to action. Join us in celebrating RetailROI’s rich history and accomplishments and learn how you too can become a RetailROI Champion. 👉 Learn more and register for Super Saturday at NRF 2026 at http://retailroi.org/super-saturday 🎧 Subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Goodpods to help us amplify this message of hope and impact! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube About our Guests Greg Buzek, President, IHL Group & President, RetailROI https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbuzek/ Vicki Cantrell, CEO, Vendors in Partnership https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickicantrell/ Jeff Roster, Former Gartner & IHL analyst, top retail expert https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-8828b8257/ Retail Orphan Initiative (RetailROI), https://www.retailroi.org The Purpose of the Retail Orphan Initiative (RetailROI) is to raise awareness and provide real solutions for the more than 400 million vulnerable children worldwide. RetailROI has 3 primary goals: Bring Awareness to the enormous needs of orphans worldwide Encourage companies (Retailers, Vendors, Manufacturers) to create programs internally for their companies to help with the need Raise Funds through to help “feet on the street” charities who are making a real difference 00:00 Previews 01:16 Show Intro 06:43 I am a RetailROI Champion 17:53 RetailROI Discussion 20:03 How RetailROI Began 23:08 How RetailROI Works 26:57 Accomplishments 36:44 The Trips 44:06 Getting involved 51:35 Finding Charities 55:47 A little goes a long way to make a difference 01:02:53 Fundraising 01:06:08 More Great Work 01:13:32 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, & Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5E9 Retail's Best Kept Secret: Discover How RetailROI Transforms Children's Futures


In this special replay episode of The Retail Razor Show, we shine a spotlight on the incredible work of the Retail Orphan Initiative (RetailROI)—a nonprofit transforming lives of orphans and foster children through the power of the retail industry. With a fresh introduction for 2025, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden revisit a heartfelt conversation with Greg Buzek, President of RetailROI, Vicki Cantrell, board member and retail legend, and Jeff Roster, former Gartner & IHL analyst and top retail expert, as they share the origin story, mission, and global impact of this powerful retail charity.


Learn how RetailROI’s Super Saturday event at NRF has become the most meaningful gathering of the year, where retailers, tech vendors, and solution providers come together to help fund clean water, education, and life skills training for thousands of children worldwide. Hear inspiring stories of transformation, including previous keynote speaker Darryl McDaniels of Run DMC, and discover how just showing up at Super Saturday can help change lives.


Whether you're a retailer planning for NRF, a technology supplier and potential sponsor, or simply passionate about retail’s role in social responsibility, this episode will move you to action. Join us in celebrating RetailROI’s rich history and accomplishments and learn how you too can become a RetailROI Champion.


👉 Learn more and register for Super Saturday at NRF 2026 at http://retailroi.org/super-saturday


🎧 Subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Goodpods to help us amplify this message of hope and impact!


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


About our Guests

Greg Buzek, President, IHL Group & President, RetailROI https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbuzek/

Vicki Cantrell, CEO, Vendors in Partnership https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickicantrell/

Jeff Roster, Former Gartner & IHL analyst, top retail expert

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-8828b8257/


Retail Orphan Initiative (RetailROI), https://www.retailroi.org

The Purpose of the Retail Orphan Initiative (RetailROI) is to raise awareness and provide real solutions for the more than 400 million vulnerable children worldwide.

RetailROI has 3 primary goals:

Bring Awareness to the enormous needs of orphans worldwide

Encourage companies (Retailers, Vendors, Manufacturers) to create programs internally for their companies to help with the need

Raise Funds through to help “feet on the street” charities who are making a real difference


00:00 Previews 

01:16 Show Intro 

06:43 I am a RetailROI Champion 

17:53 RetailROI Discussion 

20:03 How RetailROI Began 

23:08 How RetailROI Works 

26:57 Accomplishments 

36:44 The Trips 

44:06 Getting involved 

51:35 Finding Charities 

55:47 A little goes a long way to make a difference 

01:02:53 Fundraising 

01:06:08 More Great Work 

01:13:32 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, & Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S5E9 Retail&#39;s Best Kept Secret: Discover How RetailROI Transforms Children&#39;s Futures</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In this special replay episode of <em>The Retail Razor Show</em>, we shine a spotlight on the incredible work of the <strong>Retail Orphan Initiative</strong> (<a href="https://www.retailroi.org/" rel="nofollow">RetailROI</a>)—a nonprofit transforming lives of orphans and foster children through the power of the retail industry. With a fresh introduction for 2025, hosts <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">Ricardo Belmar</a> and <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">Casey Golden</a> revisit a heartfelt conversation with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbuzek/" rel="nofollow">Greg Buzek</a>, President of RetailROI, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickicantrell/" rel="nofollow">Vicki Cantrell</a>, board member and retail legend, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-8828b8257/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Roster</a>, former Gartner &amp; IHL analyst and top retail expert, as they share the origin story, mission, and global impact of this powerful retail charity.</p><p><br></p><p>Learn how RetailROI’s <a href="https://www.retailroi.org/supersaturday" rel="nofollow">Super Saturday event at NRF</a> has become the most meaningful gathering of the year, where retailers, tech vendors, and solution providers come together to help fund clean water, education, and life skills training for thousands of children worldwide. Hear inspiring stories of transformation, including previous keynote speaker Darryl McDaniels of Run DMC, and discover how just showing up at Super Saturday can help change lives.</p><p><br></p><p>Whether you&#39;re a retailer planning for NRF, a technology supplier and potential sponsor, or simply passionate about retail’s role in social responsibility, this episode will move you to action. Join us in celebrating RetailROI’s rich history and accomplishments and learn how you too can become a <strong>RetailROI Champion</strong>.</p><p><br></p><p>👉 Learn more and register for <strong>Super Saturday at NRF 2026</strong> at http://<a href="https://retailroi.org/super-saturday" rel="nofollow">retailroi.org/super-saturday</a></p><p><br></p><p>🎧 <strong>Subscribe</strong>, <strong>rate</strong>, and <strong>review</strong> on <a href="https://go.retailrazor.com/TRRSapple" rel="nofollow">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://go.retailrazor.com/TRRSspotify" rel="nofollow">Spotify</a>, or <a href="https://go.retailrazor.com/TRRSgpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> to help us amplify this message of <em>hope</em> and <em>impact</em>!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guests</strong></p><p><strong>Greg Buzek</strong>, President, IHL Group &amp; President, RetailROI <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbuzek/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbuzek/</a></p><p><strong>Vicki Cantrell</strong>, CEO, Vendors in Partnership <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickicantrell/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickicantrell/</a></p><p><strong>Jeff Roster</strong>, Former Gartner &amp; IHL analyst, top retail expert</p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-8828b8257/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-8828b8257/</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Retail Orphan Initiative (RetailROI),</strong> <a href="https://www.retailroi.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.retailroi.org</a></p><p>The Purpose of the Retail Orphan Initiative (RetailROI) is to raise awareness and provide real solutions for the more than 400 million vulnerable children worldwide.</p><p><strong>RetailROI</strong> has 3 primary goals:</p><p><strong>Bring Awareness</strong> to the enormous needs of orphans worldwide</p><p><strong>Encourage companies</strong> (Retailers, Vendors, Manufacturers) to create programs internally for their companies to help with the need</p><p><strong>Raise Funds</strong> through to help “feet on the street” charities who are making a real difference</p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Previews </p><p>01:16 Show Intro </p><p>06:43 I am a RetailROI Champion </p><p>17:53 RetailROI Discussion </p><p>20:03 How RetailROI Began </p><p>23:08 How RetailROI Works </p><p>26:57 Accomplishments </p><p>36:44 The Trips </p><p>44:06 Getting involved </p><p>51:35 Finding Charities </p><p>55:47 A little goes a long way to make a difference </p><p>01:02:53 Fundraising </p><p>01:06:08 More Great Work </p><p>01:13:32 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> &amp; a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, &amp; Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and was most recently the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> 8c08ff64-7bf5-4e22-954d-da544321d1fc https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/retailroi-champions Tue, 30 Sep 2025 09:01:29 +0000 4720 no full Amazon Prime Day Hidden Truths with Meghan Barden Amazon Prime Day Hidden Truths with Meghan Barden 8 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Amazon Prime Day Hidden Truths with Meghan Barden S5:E8 Prime Day Unveiled: Trends, Sales, and What Lies Ahead for Retail Amazon Prime Day 2025 may be over, but its ripple effects are just beginning. In this episode, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Meghan Barden, Director of Global Retail Media at Rithum, to unpack the surprising data and shopper behaviors that emerged — and what they mean for retail and ecommerce leaders heading into the holiday shopping season. You’ll discover: • 📊 Prime Day outcomes that matter — from sales spikes to category standouts, and how they compare to past years • 🛍 Why the timing right after July 4th may have shifted discretionary spending patterns • 💡 Meghan’s expert take on how retailers can turn Prime Day insights into Q4 wins • 🔮 The strategic moves brands should make now to capture Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond Whether you’re a retail strategist, ecommerce operator, or simply fascinated by the biggest shopping events of the year, this conversation delivers actionable insights to help you outpace the competition. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube About our Guest Meghan Barden - https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghan-barden/ Rithum - https://www.rithum.com Meghan Barden is an accomplished retail media strategist with over 20 years of experience in marketing and client services in both retailer, brand and agency environments. Currently serving as the Director of Global Retail Media at Rithum, she leads the company's efforts in helping brands and retailers leverage first-party data to create personalized and impactful retail media campaigns. Her expertise spans various facets of retail media, including strategy development, media planning, and campaign optimization. For more Amazon Prime Day analysis by Rithum, access the full report → https://explore.rithum.com/prime-day-guide-cont/prime-day-lessons-for-peak-shopping-season 00:00 Previews 01:01 Show Intro 10:09 Welcome Meghan Barden 10:17 Overview of Prime Day and Rithum's Role 12:20 Prime Day Anomalies and Trends 16:15 Generational Shopping Behaviors 19:20 Impact of Gen Z on Retail Strategies 24:54 AI and Authenticity in Retail 31:51 Preparing for Future Retail Events 37:59 Final Thoughts 39:11 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, & Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5:E8 Prime Day Unveiled: Trends, Sales, and What Lies Ahead for Retail


Amazon Prime Day 2025 may be over, but its ripple effects are just beginning. In this episode, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Meghan Barden, Director of Global Retail Media at Rithum, to unpack the surprising data and shopper behaviors that emerged — and what they mean for retail and ecommerce leaders heading into the holiday shopping season.


You’ll discover:


•  📊 Prime Day outcomes that matter — from sales spikes to category standouts, and how they compare to past years

•  🛍 Why the timing right after July 4th may have shifted discretionary spending patterns

•  💡 Meghan’s expert take on how retailers can turn Prime Day insights into Q4 wins

•  🔮 The strategic moves brands should make now to capture Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond


Whether you’re a retail strategist, ecommerce operator, or simply fascinated by the biggest shopping events of the year, this conversation delivers actionable insights to help you outpace the competition.


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


About our Guest

Meghan Barden - https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghan-barden/

Rithum - https://www.rithum.com

Meghan Barden is an accomplished retail media strategist with over 20 years of experience in marketing and client services in both retailer, brand and agency environments. Currently serving as the Director of Global Retail Media at Rithum, she leads the company's efforts in helping brands and retailers leverage first-party data to create personalized and impactful retail media campaigns. Her expertise spans various facets of retail media, including strategy development, media planning, and campaign optimization.


For more Amazon Prime Day analysis by Rithum, access the full report → https://explore.rithum.com/prime-day-guide-cont/prime-day-lessons-for-peak-shopping-season


00:00 Previews 

01:01 Show Intro 

10:09 Welcome Meghan Barden 

10:17 Overview of Prime Day and Rithum's Role 

12:20 Prime Day Anomalies and Trends 

16:15 Generational Shopping Behaviors 

19:20 Impact of Gen Z on Retail Strategies 

24:54 AI and Authenticity in Retail 

31:51 Preparing for Future Retail Events 

37:59 Final Thoughts 

39:11 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, & Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S5:E8 Prime Day Unveiled: Trends, Sales, and What Lies Ahead for Retail</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Amazon Prime Day 2025 may be over, but its ripple effects are just beginning. In this episode, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghan-barden/" rel="nofollow">Meghan Barden</a>, Director of Global Retail Media at <a href="https://www.rithum.com/" rel="nofollow">Rithum</a>, to unpack the surprising data and shopper behaviors that emerged — and what they mean for retail and ecommerce leaders heading into the holiday shopping season.</p><p><br></p><p>You’ll discover:</p><p><br></p><p>•  📊 Prime Day outcomes that matter — from sales spikes to category standouts, and how they compare to past years</p><p>•  🛍 Why the timing right after July 4th may have shifted discretionary spending patterns</p><p>•  💡 Meghan’s expert take on how retailers can turn Prime Day insights into Q4 wins</p><p>•  🔮 The strategic moves brands should make now to capture Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond</p><p><br></p><p>Whether you’re a retail strategist, ecommerce operator, or simply fascinated by the biggest shopping events of the year, this conversation delivers actionable insights to help you outpace the competition.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guest</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghan-barden/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Meghan Barden</strong></a> - <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghan-barden/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghan-barden/</a></p><p><a href="https://www.rithum.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Rithum</strong></a> - <a href="https://www.rithum.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rithum.com</a></p><p>Meghan Barden is an accomplished retail media strategist with over 20 years of experience in marketing and client services in both retailer, brand and agency environments. Currently serving as the Director of Global Retail Media at Rithum, she leads the company&#39;s efforts in helping brands and retailers leverage first-party data to create personalized and impactful retail media campaigns. Her expertise spans various facets of retail media, including strategy development, media planning, and campaign optimization.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>For more Amazon Prime Day analysis by Rithum</strong>, <a href="https://explore.rithum.com/prime-day-guide-cont/prime-day-lessons-for-peak-shopping-season?personalization=&utm_campaign=brands&utm_content=retail+razor+podcast+description+link&utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=retail+razor&utm_term=offer-gatedasset" rel="nofollow">access the full report</a> → <a href="https://explore.rithum.com/prime-day-guide-cont/prime-day-lessons-for-peak-shopping-season" rel="nofollow">https://explore.rithum.com/prime-day-guide-cont/prime-day-lessons-for-peak-shopping-season</a></p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Previews </p><p>01:01 Show Intro </p><p>10:09 Welcome Meghan Barden </p><p>10:17 Overview of Prime Day and Rithum&#39;s Role </p><p>12:20 Prime Day Anomalies and Trends </p><p>16:15 Generational Shopping Behaviors </p><p>19:20 Impact of Gen Z on Retail Strategies </p><p>24:54 AI and Authenticity in Retail </p><p>31:51 Preparing for Future Retail Events </p><p>37:59 Final Thoughts </p><p>39:11 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> &amp; a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, &amp; Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> ab49c5fa-54eb-49b9-ad67-2a34afa4ad7e https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/decoding-amazon-prime-day Tue, 26 Aug 2025 09:08:01 +0000 2423 no full The AI-First Future of Retail - Inside RetailClub with Krystina Gustafson The AI-First Future of Retail - Inside RetailClub with Krystina Gustafson 7 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert The AI-First Future of Retail - Inside RetailClub with Krystina Gustafson S5:E7 Unplugged and Unscripted: Retail Club's AI-First Event Revolution w/ Krystina Gustafson What happens when you blend cutting-edge innovation, authentic community, and the brightest minds in retail? You get RetailClub—the AI-first retail event redefining how industry leaders connect, collaborate, and shape the future. In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Krystina Gustafson, co-founder and Chief Content Officer at Retail Club and one of the visionary forces behind RetailClub. Krystina shares the inspiration behind this exclusive retail conference, how it fosters meaningful connections among AI changemakers, and why RetailClub is more than just another event—it’s a movement. 💡 What You’ll Learn: + Why RetailClub is unlike any other retail event you’ve attended + How the power of retail community is driving innovation and collaboration + The role of AI in retail and how it’s shaping the conversations at RetailClub + Behind-the-scenes insights from Krystina on curating impactful content and experiences Whether you’re a retail executive, tech innovator, or curious observer of industry trends, this episode delivers a front-row seat to the future of AI in retail! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube About our Guest Krystina Gustafson, co-founder & Chief Content Officer, RetailClub - https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystina-gustafson-908a5a14/ Register for RetailClub’s AI Deep Dive Retreat - https://www.retailclub.com Krystina is a co-founder and the chief content officer at RetailClub, a new retreats business from the founders of Shoptalk. RetailClub is building retail’s first AI-native community, bringing together 500 AI champions and changemakers for their inaugural AI Deepdive Retreat, taking place Sept 14-17, 2025 in Huntington Beach, CA. Prior to RetailClub, she was the senior vice president of content at Shoptalk and Groceryshop, the leading conferences in the retail, grocery and consumer packaged goods industries. She led the team that shaped the retail and ecommerce industry narratives across its four annual events – Shoptalk, Shoptalk Europe, Shoptalk Fall and Groceryshop – including agenda development and speaker selection. Krystina joined Shoptalk in 2017, after spending four years as a retail reporter and content editor at CNBC.com. Prior to CNBC, Krystina was a web editor at Women's Wear Daily, the trade publication for the fashion industry.She has interviewed prominent business figures from retail and beyond, including the CEOs of Target, Sam’s Club, The Honest Company and Warby Parker, Dreamworks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, and “Shark Tank” shark Kevin O’Leary. 00:00 Previews 01:04 Show Intro 08:44 Welcome Krystina and the Importance of AI! 09:56 Introducing Retail Club and AI Deep Dive Retreat 12:03 Event Structure and Unique Approach 14:07 Challenges and Opportunities in AI Adoption 17:56 The Future of AI in Retail & Event Experiences 22:46 Data Readiness and Tech Maturity 27:04 Agentic AI's Impact on Retail Operations 36:36 Event Details and Future Thoughts 41:26 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, & Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5:E7 Unplugged and Unscripted: Retail Club's AI-First Event Revolution w/ Krystina Gustafson


What happens when you blend cutting-edge innovation, authentic community, and the brightest minds in retail? You get RetailClub—the AI-first retail event redefining how industry leaders connect, collaborate, and shape the future.


In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with Krystina Gustafson, co-founder and Chief Content Officer at Retail Club and one of the visionary forces behind RetailClub. Krystina shares the inspiration behind this exclusive retail conference, how it fosters meaningful connections among AI changemakers, and why RetailClub is more than just another event—it’s a movement.


💡 What You’ll Learn:

  • Why RetailClub is unlike any other retail event you’ve attended
  • How the power of retail community is driving innovation and collaboration
  • The role of AI in retail and how it’s shaping the conversations at RetailClub
  • Behind-the-scenes insights from Krystina on curating impactful content and experiences


Whether you’re a retail executive, tech innovator, or curious observer of industry trends, this episode delivers a front-row seat to the future of AI in retail!


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


About our Guest

Krystina Gustafson, co-founder & Chief Content Officer, RetailClub - https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystina-gustafson-908a5a14/

Register for RetailClub’s AI Deep Dive Retreat - https://www.retailclub.com

 

Krystina is a co-founder and the chief content officer at RetailClub, a new retreats business from the founders of Shoptalk. RetailClub is building retail’s first AI-native community, bringing together 500 AI champions and changemakers for their inaugural AI Deepdive Retreat, taking place Sept 14-17, 2025 in Huntington Beach, CA.


Prior to RetailClub, she was the senior vice president of content at Shoptalk and Groceryshop, the leading conferences in the retail, grocery and consumer packaged goods industries. She led the team that shaped the retail and ecommerce industry narratives across its four annual events – Shoptalk, Shoptalk Europe, Shoptalk Fall and Groceryshop – including agenda development and speaker selection.


Krystina joined Shoptalk in 2017, after spending four years as a retail reporter and content editor at CNBC.com. Prior to CNBC, Krystina was a web editor at Women's Wear Daily, the trade publication for the fashion industry.She has interviewed prominent business figures from retail and beyond, including the CEOs of Target, Sam’s Club, The Honest Company and Warby Parker, Dreamworks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, and “Shark Tank” shark Kevin O’Leary.


00:00 Previews

01:04 Show Intro

08:44 Welcome Krystina and the Importance of AI!

09:56 Introducing Retail Club and AI Deep Dive Retreat

12:03 Event Structure and Unique Approach

14:07 Challenges and Opportunities in AI Adoption

17:56 The Future of AI in Retail & Event Experiences

22:46 Data Readiness and Tech Maturity

27:04 Agentic AI's Impact on Retail Operations

36:36 Event Details and Future Thoughts

41:26 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, & Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S5:E7 Unplugged and Unscripted: Retail Club&#39;s AI-First Event Revolution w/ Krystina Gustafson</strong></p><p><br></p><p>What happens when you blend cutting-edge innovation, authentic community, and the brightest minds in retail? You get <strong>RetailClub</strong>—the AI-first retail event redefining how industry leaders connect, collaborate, and shape the future.</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of <em>The Retail Razor Show</em>, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden sit down with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystina-gustafson-908a5a14/" rel="nofollow">Krystina Gustafson</a>, co-founder and Chief Content Officer at <a href="https://www.retailclub.com/" rel="nofollow">Retail Club</a> and one of the visionary forces behind RetailClub. Krystina shares the inspiration behind this exclusive retail conference, how it fosters meaningful connections among AI changemakers, and why RetailClub is more than just another event—it’s a movement.</p><p><br></p><p>💡 What You’ll Learn:</p><ul><li>Why RetailClub is unlike any other retail event you’ve attended</li><li>How the power of retail community is driving innovation and collaboration</li><li>The role of AI in retail and how it’s shaping the conversations at RetailClub</li><li>Behind-the-scenes insights from Krystina on curating impactful content and experiences</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Whether you’re a retail executive, tech innovator, or curious observer of industry trends, this episode delivers a front-row seat to the future of AI in retail!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guest</strong></p><p><strong><em>Krystina Gustafson</em></strong><em>, co-founder &amp; Chief Content Officer, RetailClub - </em><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystina-gustafson-908a5a14/" rel="nofollow"><em>https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystina-gustafson-908a5a14/</em></a></p><p><strong><em>Register for RetailClub’s AI Deep Dive Retreat</em></strong><em> - </em><a href="https://www.retailclub.com/" rel="nofollow"><em>https://www.retailclub.com</em></a></p><p><em> </em></p><p><strong>Krystina</strong> is a co-founder and the <em>chief content officer</em> at <strong>RetailClub</strong>, a new retreats business from the founders of <em>Shoptalk</em>. RetailClub is building retail’s first <em>AI-native community</em>, bringing together 500 AI champions and changemakers for their inaugural <strong>AI Deepdive Retreat</strong>, taking place <strong>Sept 14-17, 2025</strong> in <strong>Huntington Beach, CA</strong>.</p><p><br></p><p>Prior to RetailClub, she was the senior vice president of content at Shoptalk and Groceryshop, the leading conferences in the retail, grocery and consumer packaged goods industries. She led the team that shaped the retail and ecommerce industry narratives across its four annual events – Shoptalk, Shoptalk Europe, Shoptalk Fall and Groceryshop – including agenda development and speaker selection.</p><p><br></p><p>Krystina joined Shoptalk in 2017, after spending four years as a retail reporter and content editor at <a href="http://cnbc.com/" rel="nofollow">CNBC.com</a>. Prior to CNBC, Krystina was a web editor at Women&#39;s Wear Daily, the trade publication for the fashion industry.She has interviewed prominent business figures from retail and beyond, including the CEOs of Target, Sam’s Club, The Honest Company and Warby Parker, Dreamworks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, and “Shark Tank” shark Kevin O’Leary.</p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Previews</p><p>01:04 Show Intro</p><p>08:44 Welcome Krystina and the Importance of AI!</p><p>09:56 Introducing Retail Club and AI Deep Dive Retreat</p><p>12:03 Event Structure and Unique Approach</p><p>14:07 Challenges and Opportunities in AI Adoption</p><p>17:56 The Future of AI in Retail &amp; Event Experiences</p><p>22:46 Data Readiness and Tech Maturity</p><p>27:04 Agentic AI&#39;s Impact on Retail Operations</p><p>36:36 Event Details and Future Thoughts</p><p>41:26 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> &amp; a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, &amp; Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> 2053bbf7-4949-4d9e-8e2a-28f31968e502 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/inside-retailclub Wed, 13 Aug 2025 09:01:42 +0000 2554 no full How SHEIN is Rewriting Retail’s Marketplace Rulebook, with George Chang How SHEIN is Rewriting Retail’s Marketplace Rulebook, with George Chang 6 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert How SHEIN is Rewriting Retail’s Marketplace Rulebook, with George Chang S5:E6 SHEIN’s Marketplace Evolution - A Conversation with George Chang, GM & Head of SHEIN Marketplace In this episode, we explore how SHEIN is reengineering what marketplace success looks like in the U.S., how loyalty is evolving post-2020, and why SHEIN’s unique approach to seller partnerships and social commerce is creating a new kind of ecosystem—one built for discovery, agility, and growth. From leadership roles at Rakuten, Mirakl, and Newegg to his current post as GM of SHEIN Marketplace, George Chang’s career reads like a playbook for scaling commerce in the digital age. Now a key member of the senior leadership team at SHEIN, George joins Ricardo and Casey to talk about building a curated, invitation-only marketplace tailored for Gen Z and Millennial consumers—where fashion, beauty, and lifestyle collide. Tune in for a conversation that spans everything from globalization to the next frontier in customer acquisition. Learn how George’s energetic & visionary leadership style is driving change at SHEIN while reshaping U.S. retail one bold move at a time. Whether you’re a seller, a strategist, or just marketplace-curious, this one’s got something for you! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube About our Guest George Chang, GM & Head of SHEIN Marketplace. https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-chang-usc/ SHEIN Marketplace: https://seller-us.shein.com/homepage Prospective Sellers: https://seller-us.shein.com/get-started-shein-marketplace To learn more about SHEIN: https://www.sheingroup.com/ George is an Ecommerce and Marketplace veteran with Senior leadership roles at Rakuten, Newegg, Sears, Mirakl, VTEX, Spreetail, and Cymax Group. He is currently part of the leadership team at SHEIN U.S. and is leading the 3rd Party Marketplace business at SHEIN. He has a unique 360 degree perspective on Ecommerce Marketplaces having operated, licensed, consulted and sold on multiple marketplaces. 00:00 Preview 01:10 Show Intro 05:40 Welcome George Chang, GM SHEIN Marketplace 06:59 What Sets Shein Apart 08:55 Shein's Marketplace Strategy 11:50 Customer and Seller Experience 16:58 Expanding Beyond Fashion 20:16 Evolving with the Customer 22:06 Diverse Seller Community 24:03 Understanding Gen Z and Millennials in E-commerce 26:49 The Rise of Social Commerce and Live Shopping 30:08 Driving Customer Loyalty through Engagement 33:06 Sustainability Initiatives and Mindful Purchasing 35:15 Future of Marketplaces and Hyper-Personalization 38:08 Final Thoughts 39:36 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, & Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5:E6 SHEIN’s Marketplace Evolution - A Conversation with George Chang, GM & Head of SHEIN Marketplace

🎙️What does modern marketplace success look like in the U.S? SHEIN is rewriting the rules — and George Chang, GM of SHEIN Marketplace and key member of the senior leadership team at SHEIN, is leading the charge with his energetic & visionary leadership style.

In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden dive deep with George to uncover how SHEIN is building a curated, invitation-only marketplace designed for Gen Z and Millennial consumers. From fashion and beauty to lifestyle and social commerce, SHEIN’s ecosystem is built for discovery, agility, and growth.

💡 Key topics in this episode:

  • • How SHEIN uses data insights to drive personalization and loyalty
  • • Why seller partnerships and social commerce are central to SHEIN’s strategy
  • • The evolution of customer acquisition post-2020
  • • George Chang’s journey from Rakuten, Mirakl, and Newegg to SHEIN
  • • What makes SHEIN’s marketplace model different from Amazon, Temu, and others
  • • The future of retail and digital marketplaces


📈 Whether you’re a seller, strategist, or retail innovator, this episode delivers actionable insights into the next frontier of ecommerce!


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


About our Guest

George Chang, GM & Head of SHEIN Marketplace. https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-chang-usc/

SHEIN Marketplace: https://seller-us.shein.com/homepage

Prospective Sellers: https://seller-us.shein.com/get-started-shein-marketplace

To learn more about SHEIN: https://www.sheingroup.com/

George is an Ecommerce and Marketplace veteran with Senior leadership roles at Rakuten, Newegg, Sears, Mirakl, VTEX, Spreetail, and Cymax Group. He is currently part of the leadership team at SHEIN U.S. and is leading the 3rd Party Marketplace business at SHEIN. He has a unique 360 degree perspective on Ecommerce Marketplaces having operated, licensed, consulted and sold on multiple marketplaces.


Chapters

00:00 Preview 

01:10 Show Intro 

05:40 Welcome George Chang, GM SHEIN Marketplace 

06:59 What Sets Shein Apart 

08:55 Shein's Marketplace Strategy 

11:50 Customer and Seller Experience 

16:58 Expanding Beyond Fashion 

20:16 Evolving with the Customer 

22:06 Diverse Seller Community 

24:03 Understanding Gen Z and Millennials in E-commerce 

26:49 The Rise of Social Commerce and Live Shopping 

30:08 Driving Customer Loyalty through Engagement 

33:06 Sustainability Initiatives and Mindful Purchasing 

35:15 Future of Marketplaces and Hyper-Personalization 

38:08 Final Thoughts 

39:36 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, & Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S5:E6 SHEIN’s Marketplace Evolution - A Conversation with George Chang, GM &amp; Head of SHEIN Marketplace</strong></p><p>🎙️What does modern marketplace success look like in the U.S? <strong>SHEIN</strong> is rewriting the rules — and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-chang-usc/" rel="nofollow">George Chang</a>, GM of <a href="https://seller-us.shein.com/homepage" rel="nofollow">SHEIN Marketplace</a> and key member of the senior leadership team at SHEIN, is leading the charge with his energetic &amp; visionary leadership style.</p><p>In this episode of <em>The Retail Razor Show</em>, hosts <em>Ricardo Belmar</em> and <em>Casey Golden</em> dive deep with George to uncover how SHEIN is building a <em>curated</em>, <em>invitation-only</em> marketplace designed for Gen Z and Millennial consumers. From fashion and beauty to lifestyle and social commerce, SHEIN’s ecosystem is built for <em>discovery</em>, <em>agility</em>, and <em>growth</em>.</p><p>💡 Key topics in this episode:</p><ul><li>• How SHEIN uses data insights to drive personalization and loyalty</li><li>• Why seller partnerships and social commerce are central to SHEIN’s strategy</li><li>• The evolution of customer acquisition post-2020</li><li>• George Chang’s journey from Rakuten, Mirakl, and Newegg to SHEIN</li><li>• What makes SHEIN’s marketplace model different from Amazon, Temu, and others</li><li>• The future of retail and digital marketplaces</li></ul><p><br></p><p>📈 Whether you’re a seller, strategist, or retail innovator, this episode delivers actionable insights into the next frontier of ecommerce!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guest</strong></p><p><strong><em>George Chang</em></strong>, GM &amp; Head of SHEIN Marketplace. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-chang-usc/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-chang-usc/</a></p><p><strong>SHEIN Marketplace</strong>: <a href="https://seller-us.shein.com/homepage" rel="nofollow">https://seller-us.shein.com/homepage</a></p><p><strong>Prospective Sellers</strong>: <a href="https://seller-us.shein.com/get-started-shein-marketplace" rel="nofollow">https://seller-us.shein.com/get-started-shein-marketplace</a></p><p>To learn more about <strong>SHEIN</strong>: <a href="https://www.sheingroup.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.sheingroup.com/</a></p><p>George is an Ecommerce and Marketplace veteran with Senior leadership roles at Rakuten, Newegg, Sears, Mirakl, VTEX, Spreetail, and Cymax Group. He is currently part of the leadership team at SHEIN U.S. and is leading the 3rd Party Marketplace business at SHEIN. He has a unique 360 degree perspective on Ecommerce Marketplaces having operated, licensed, consulted and sold on multiple marketplaces.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Chapters</strong></p><p>00:00 Preview </p><p>01:10 Show Intro </p><p>05:40 Welcome George Chang, GM SHEIN Marketplace </p><p>06:59 What Sets Shein Apart </p><p>08:55 Shein&#39;s Marketplace Strategy </p><p>11:50 Customer and Seller Experience </p><p>16:58 Expanding Beyond Fashion </p><p>20:16 Evolving with the Customer </p><p>22:06 Diverse Seller Community </p><p>24:03 Understanding Gen Z and Millennials in E-commerce </p><p>26:49 The Rise of Social Commerce and Live Shopping </p><p>30:08 Driving Customer Loyalty through Engagement </p><p>33:06 Sustainability Initiatives and Mindful Purchasing </p><p>35:15 Future of Marketplaces and Hyper-Personalization </p><p>38:08 Final Thoughts </p><p>39:36 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> &amp; a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, &amp; Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> c36ecb9d-bef8-4d38-b14f-ef32f2b4b21e https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/beyond-the-cart-how-shein-is-rewriting-retails-marketplace-rulebook-with-george-chang Wed, 06 Aug 2025 09:00:48 +0000 2444 no full Innovation & Sustainability Inside Naturepedic: A Conversation with Arin Schultz Innovation & Sustainability Inside Naturepedic: A Conversation with Arin Schultz 5 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Innovation & Sustainability Inside Naturepedic: A Conversation with Arin Schultz S5:E5 Leading with Values: How Naturepedic Builds a Better Brand, with Arin Schultz What does it take to lead growth at the forefront of a movement for safer, healthier sleep? In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, we sit down with Arin Schultz, Chief Growth Officer at Naturepedic, a pioneering brand in certified organic mattresses and bedding. With over eleven years in the organic sleep industry, Arin shares how he’s helped Naturepedic expand its market share, launch innovative products, and build a trusted brand committed to health, sustainability, and safety. We talk about the evolution of the organic mattress category, how purpose-driven growth strategies translate to retail success, and the balancing act of leading multiple departments—sales, marketing, retail, R&D, and more. Whether you're in retail, health-conscious consumer products, or looking to build a values-based, mission-led brand, this episode delivers sharp insights from one of the industry’s most committed and capable leaders! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube About our Guest Arin Schultz is Chief Growth Officer at Naturepedic, the leading organic mattress brand. As the lead on all Naturepedic marketing efforts, Arin develops and implements strategies that support the company’s business growth, customer retention, product innovation, consumer education initiatives and sustainability goals. Working for the certified organic, non-toxic mattress pioneer opened Arin’s eyes to the dangers of harmful chemicals and their pervasive presence in households across the globe. This knowledge has added a deeper purpose to his relentless push to help transform the brand’s vision into reality. A father of four and an empathetic listener, Arin’s success at Naturepedic is centered on his authentic understanding of the Naturepedic customer and his genuine desire to help families make the safest, healthiest sleep choices. 00:00 Preview 01:45 Show Intro 07:21 Arin Schultz, Chief Growth Officer, Naturepedic - The Mission 08:43 The Founding Story of Naturepedic 12:09 Challenges and Growth in the Mattress Industry 17:13 Retail Expansion and Customer Engagement 19:30 Product Innovation and Sustainability 23:10 Industry Environmental Impact and Continuous Product Improvement 35:20 Customer Experience and Meeting Their Needs 38:21 Replacing Your Mattress & Customer Service Excellence 43:20 Sourcing and Tariffs Impact 49:53 Embracing AI in Marketing and Operations 56:28 Advice for Growing a Values-Based Brand 59:23 Final Thoughts 01:00:38 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, & Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5:E5 Leading with Values: How Naturepedic Builds a Better Brand, with Arin Schultz


What does it take to lead growth at the forefront of a movement for safer, healthier sleep? In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, we sit down with Arin Schultz, Chief Growth Officer at Naturepedic, a pioneering brand in certified organic mattresses and bedding. With over eleven years in the organic sleep industry, Arin shares how he’s helped Naturepedic expand its market share, launch innovative products, and build a trusted brand committed to health, sustainability, and safety. We talk about the evolution of the organic mattress category, how purpose-driven growth strategies translate to retail success, and the balancing act of leading multiple departments—sales, marketing, retail, R&D, and more. Whether you're in retail, health-conscious consumer products, or looking to build a values-based, mission-led brand, this episode delivers sharp insights from one of the industry’s most committed and capable leaders!


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


About our Guest

Arin Schultz is Chief Growth Officer at Naturepedic, the leading organic mattress brand. As the lead on all Naturepedic marketing efforts, Arin develops and implements strategies that support the company’s business growth, customer retention, product innovation, consumer education initiatives and sustainability goals. Working for the certified organic, non-toxic mattress pioneer opened Arin’s eyes to the dangers of harmful chemicals and their pervasive presence in households across the globe. This knowledge has added a deeper purpose to his relentless push to help transform the brand’s vision into reality. A father of four and an empathetic listener, Arin’s success at Naturepedic is centered on his authentic understanding of the Naturepedic customer and his genuine desire to help families make the safest, healthiest sleep choices.


00:00 Preview 

01:45 Show Intro 

07:21 Arin Schultz, Chief Growth Officer, Naturepedic - The Mission 

08:43 The Founding Story of Naturepedic 

12:09 Challenges and Growth in the Mattress Industry 

17:13 Retail Expansion and Customer Engagement 

19:30 Product Innovation and Sustainability 

23:10 Industry Environmental Impact and Continuous Product Improvement 

35:20 Customer Experience and Meeting Their Needs 

38:21 Replacing Your Mattress & Customer Service Excellence 

43:20 Sourcing and Tariffs Impact 

49:53 Embracing AI in Marketing and Operations 

56:28 Advice for Growing a Values-Based Brand 

59:23 Final Thoughts 

01:00:38 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, & Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S5:E5 Leading with Values: How Naturepedic Builds a Better Brand, with Arin Schultz</strong></p><p><br></p><p>What does it take to lead growth at the forefront of a movement for safer, healthier sleep? In this episode of <em>The Retail Razor Show</em>, we sit down with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/arin-schultz-581a132b/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Arin Schultz</strong></a>, Chief Growth Officer at <a href="https://www.naturepedic.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Naturepedic</strong></a>, a pioneering brand in certified organic mattresses and bedding. With over eleven years in the organic sleep industry, Arin shares how he’s helped Naturepedic expand its market share, launch innovative products, and build a trusted brand committed to health, sustainability, and safety. We talk about the evolution of the organic mattress category, how purpose-driven growth strategies translate to retail success, and the balancing act of leading multiple departments—sales, marketing, retail, R&amp;D, and more. Whether you&#39;re in retail, health-conscious consumer products, or looking to build a values-based, mission-led brand, this episode delivers sharp insights from one of the industry’s most committed and capable leaders!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guest</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/arin-schultz-581a132b/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Arin Schultz</strong></a> is <strong>Chief Growth Officer</strong> at <a href="https://www.naturepedic.com/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Naturepedic</strong></a>, the leading organic mattress brand. As the lead on all Naturepedic marketing efforts, Arin develops and implements strategies that support the company’s business growth, customer retention, product innovation, consumer education initiatives and sustainability goals. Working for the certified organic, non-toxic mattress pioneer opened Arin’s eyes to the dangers of harmful chemicals and their pervasive presence in households across the globe. This knowledge has added a deeper purpose to his relentless push to help transform the brand’s vision into reality. A father of four and an empathetic listener, Arin’s success at Naturepedic is centered on his authentic understanding of the Naturepedic customer and his genuine desire to help families make the safest, healthiest sleep choices.</p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Preview </p><p>01:45 Show Intro </p><p>07:21 Arin Schultz, Chief Growth Officer, Naturepedic - The Mission </p><p>08:43 The Founding Story of Naturepedic </p><p>12:09 Challenges and Growth in the Mattress Industry </p><p>17:13 Retail Expansion and Customer Engagement </p><p>19:30 Product Innovation and Sustainability </p><p>23:10 Industry Environmental Impact and Continuous Product Improvement </p><p>35:20 Customer Experience and Meeting Their Needs </p><p>38:21 Replacing Your Mattress &amp; Customer Service Excellence </p><p>43:20 Sourcing and Tariffs Impact </p><p>49:53 Embracing AI in Marketing and Operations </p><p>56:28 Advice for Growing a Values-Based Brand </p><p>59:23 Final Thoughts </p><p>01:00:38 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> &amp; a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, &amp; Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> 0a7eb52c-6960-4224-a410-8ecaa01c6c82 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/inside-naturepedic-a-conversation-with-arin-schultz-on-innovation-sustainability Fri, 25 Jul 2025 09:05:49 +0000 3699 no full Retail Women in Tech is Breaking Barriers with Shannon Flanagan Retail Women in Tech is Breaking Barriers with Shannon Flanagan 4 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Retail Women in Tech is Breaking Barriers with Shannon Flanagan S5:E4 Empowering Women in Retail Tech: A New Era of Leadership In Season Five, Episode Four of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden engage in a captivating conversation with Shannon Flanagan, a seasoned retail leader and founder of Retail Women in Tech (RWIT). Shannon shares her journey from folding jeans at 18 to leading billion-dollar business transformations and emphasizes the importance of embracing change and innovation in retail. The episode underscores the critical role of diversity and inclusion in driving the industry forward, touching on the challenges and opportunities for women in tech and retail. Shannon discusses her vision for RWIT, a community aimed at fostering connections, mentorship, and leadership among women and allies in the retail tech space. With insights on change management, the impact of AI in retail, and the power of allyship, this episode offers valuable perspectives for retail professionals and tech enthusiasts alike. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube About our Guest Shannon Flanagan, founder of Retail Women in Tech, https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-e-flanagan/ - Retail Women in Tech, https://retailwomenintech.org Shannon Flanagan caught the retail bug at 18 and never looked back. A retail strategist, AI enthusiast, and career change practitioner, she brings a 360-degree perspective on retail transformation—from product creation to customer experience—shaped by her work with hyper-growth startups to Fortune 500 retailers, consulting firms and tech companies. As a strategic partner and top industry voice, she collaborates with RETHINK Retail, RetailWire and the RetailAICouncil to drive conversations that shape the future of the industry. As the founder of Retail Women in Tech, Shannon has built a global community dedicated to creating life-changing connections for women and allies who share a passion for retail and technology. As social as retail is, there are surprisingly very few communities representing every facet of the industry. Shannon is on a mission to change that—stay tuned for more to come! 00:00 Preview 00:51 Show Intro 05:26 Welcome Shannon Flanagan 06:14 Shannon's Retail Journey Begins 08:47 Insights on Change Management 10:21 The Importance of Diverse Perspectives 15:03 Challenges in Hiring for Innovation 24:00 The Birth of Retail Women in Tech (RWIT) 34:42 Addressing the Leadership Gap 38:39 The Challenge of Asking for Help 40:36 The Harsh Reality for Female Founders 45:08 The Importance of Allies 49:01 Building a Supportive Community 59:32 The Future of Retail Women in Tech 01:06:22 Final Thoughts and Call to Action 01:08:53 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, & Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5:E4 Empowering Women in Retail Tech: A New Era of Leadership


In Season Five, Episode Four of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden engage in a captivating conversation with Shannon Flanagan, a seasoned retail leader and founder of Retail Women in Tech (RWIT). Shannon shares her journey from folding jeans at 18 to leading billion-dollar business transformations and emphasizes the importance of embracing change and innovation in retail. The episode underscores the critical role of diversity and inclusion in driving the industry forward, touching on the challenges and opportunities for women in tech and retail. Shannon discusses her vision for RWIT, a community aimed at fostering connections, mentorship, and leadership among women and allies in the retail tech space. With insights on change management, the impact of AI in retail, and the power of allyship, this episode offers valuable perspectives for retail professionals and tech enthusiasts alike.


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


About our Guest


Shannon Flanagan, founder of Retail Women in Tech, https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-e-flanagan/ - Retail Women in Tech, https://retailwomenintech.org


Shannon Flanagan caught the retail bug at 18 and never looked back. A retail strategist, AI enthusiast, and career change practitioner, she brings a 360-degree perspective on retail transformation—from product creation to customer experience—shaped by her work with hyper-growth startups to Fortune 500 retailers, consulting firms and tech companies. As a strategic partner and top industry voice, she collaborates with RETHINK Retail, RetailWire and the RetailAICouncil to drive conversations that shape the future of the industry.


As the founder of Retail Women in Tech, Shannon has built a global community dedicated to creating life-changing connections for women and allies who share a passion for retail and technology. As social as retail is, there are surprisingly very few communities representing every facet of the industry. Shannon is on a mission to change that—stay tuned for more to come!


00:00 Preview 

00:51 Show Intro 

05:26 Welcome Shannon Flanagan 

06:14 Shannon's Retail Journey Begins 

08:47 Insights on Change Management 

10:21 The Importance of Diverse Perspectives 

15:03 Challenges in Hiring for Innovation 

24:00 The Birth of Retail Women in Tech (RWIT) 

34:42 Addressing the Leadership Gap 

38:39 The Challenge of Asking for Help 

40:36 The Harsh Reality for Female Founders 

45:08 The Importance of Allies 

49:01 Building a Supportive Community 

59:32 The Future of Retail Women in Tech 

01:06:22 Final Thoughts and Call to Action 

01:08:53 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, & Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S5:E4 Empowering Women in Retail Tech: A New Era of Leadership</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In Season Five, Episode Four of The Retail Razor Show, hosts <em>Ricardo Belmar</em> and <em>Casey Golden</em> engage in a captivating conversation with <em>Shannon Flanagan</em>, a seasoned retail leader and founder of <strong>Retail Women in Tech (RWIT).</strong> Shannon shares her journey from folding jeans at 18 to leading billion-dollar business transformations and emphasizes the importance of embracing change and innovation in retail. The episode underscores the critical role of diversity and inclusion in driving the industry forward, touching on the challenges and opportunities for women in tech and retail. Shannon discusses her vision for RWIT, a community aimed at fostering connections, mentorship, and leadership among women and allies in the retail tech space. With insights on change management, the impact of AI in retail, and the power of allyship, this episode offers valuable perspectives for retail professionals and tech enthusiasts alike.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guest</strong></p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-e-flanagan/" rel="nofollow">Shannon Flanagan</a>, founder of <a href="https://retailwomenintech.org/" rel="nofollow">Retail Women in Tech</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-e-flanagan/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-e-flanagan/</a> - <em>Retail Women in Tech</em>, <a href="https://retailwomenintech.org/" rel="nofollow">https://retailwomenintech.org</a></p><p><br></p><p>Shannon Flanagan caught the retail bug at 18 and never looked back. A retail strategist, AI enthusiast, and career change practitioner, she brings a 360-degree perspective on retail transformation—from product creation to customer experience—shaped by her work with hyper-growth startups to Fortune 500 retailers, consulting firms and tech companies. As a strategic partner and top industry voice, she collaborates with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/rethink-industries/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/retailwire/" rel="nofollow">RetailWire</a> and the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/retail-ai-council/" rel="nofollow">RetailAICouncil</a> to drive conversations that shape the future of the industry.</p><p><br></p><p>As the founder of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/retail-women-in-tech/" rel="nofollow">Retail Women in Tech</a>, Shannon has built a global community dedicated to creating life-changing connections for women and allies who share a passion for retail and technology. As social as retail is, there are surprisingly very few communities representing every facet of the industry. Shannon is on a mission to change that—stay tuned for more to come!</p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Preview </p><p>00:51 Show Intro </p><p>05:26 Welcome Shannon Flanagan </p><p>06:14 Shannon&#39;s Retail Journey Begins </p><p>08:47 Insights on Change Management </p><p>10:21 The Importance of Diverse Perspectives </p><p>15:03 Challenges in Hiring for Innovation </p><p>24:00 The Birth of Retail Women in Tech (RWIT) </p><p>34:42 Addressing the Leadership Gap </p><p>38:39 The Challenge of Asking for Help </p><p>40:36 The Harsh Reality for Female Founders </p><p>45:08 The Importance of Allies </p><p>49:01 Building a Supportive Community </p><p>59:32 The Future of Retail Women in Tech </p><p>01:06:22 Final Thoughts and Call to Action </p><p>01:08:53 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> &amp; a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, &amp; Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by <a href="http://imunobeats.com/" rel="nofollow">imunobeats.com</a>, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive</em> from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> c2bd20fa-5149-4741-a8f3-a18a27b80912 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/breaking-barriers-retail-women-in-tech Thu, 03 Jul 2025 21:58:02 +0000 4203 no full Unlocking Human Pride: Thriving in the Age of AI with Ron Thurston Unlocking Human Pride: Thriving in the Age of AI with Ron Thurston 3 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Unlocking Human Pride: Thriving in the Age of AI with Ron Thurston S5:E3 From Retail Pride to Human Pride: Navigating Leadership and Connection with Ron Thurston In this episode, Ron Thurston returns to discuss his new book 'Human Pride' and its themes of optimizing human potential in a world increasing its reliance on technology and AI. The conversation takes us through Ron’s extensive experience leading major retail brands, his journey from publishing his first book 'Retail Pride' to 'Human Pride', and the crucial balance between human connection and technological efficiency. We explore various aspects of leadership, including the importance of empathy, curiosity, and the significant role of human connection in the workplace. Ron emphasizes the need for self-reflection, understanding core values, and maintaining strong interpersonal relationships despite technological advancements. Rejecting 'hustle culture' in favor of fostering meaningful connections and optimizing individual strengths, Ron highlights the need for human-centric approaches to recruitment, leadership, and career development via examples and insights from his own career. Tune in for an engaging conversation filled with practical insights and inspirational stories that underscore the power of pride and human potential in the workplace! About this episode's partner newsletter: The SKUpe Running a retail business means making nonstop decisions—inventory, staffing, marketing, tech. The SKUpe is the weekly newsletter designed to help you make smarter calls, faster. Curated by industry experts, The SKUpe delivers clear, trustworthy insights on what’s working for small and mid-sized retailers today. Join 20,000 retail decision makers who rely on it to stay sharp and ahead of the game. Subscribe to The SKUpe at https://www.theskupe.co/?cid=678aaa6cd5126?cid=679bca6723dd3 About Ron Thurston: Author, “Human Pride: Optimizing Your Potential In A Digital Job Market” Ron Thurston is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and bold voice in the movement to reimagine leadership in a world transformed by technology. His new book, HUMAN PRIDE: Optimizing Your Human Potential in a Digital Job Market (May 2025), delivers a powerful roadmap for standing out, staying relevant, and thriving in the future of work. With over 30 years of executive experience leading teams at iconic brands like Apple, Gap, West Elm, Tory Burch, Bonobos, and Saint Laurent, Ron knows how to build winning cultures that drive performance. His first book, RETAIL PRIDE (2020) became a career-defining guide for thousands of industry professionals, helping them reclaim confidence and purpose in their work. As the creator and host of the Retail in America tour and podcast, Ron spent over a year traveling across 30 states in an Airstream to spotlight the real stories and remarkable people shaping retail’s future. Today, he serves on multiple retail tech supplier advisory boards, helping brands integrate AI and digital tools without losing sight of what matters most: people. A sought-after keynote speaker, Ron brings energy, insight, and inspiration to global conferences, C-suite offsites, and corporate events. His message resonates across industries: your greatest competitive advantage is human. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube 00:00 The SKUpe Newsletter 00:34 Show Intro 06:51 Welcome Back, Ron Thurston! 07:43 Discussing Ron's New Book: Human Pride 08:46 The Importance of Human Connection in Retail 10:24 Optimizing Human Potential in a Tech-Driven World 15:37 Defining and Standing by Non-Negotiables in Job Search 22:54 The Role of Empathy and Curiosity in Leadership 26:48 Challenges in Modern Hiring Practices 35:11 The Future of Work: Balancing Technology and Human Connection 38:15 Career Longevity and Brand Affinity in Retail 41:56 Navigating the Fast-Paced Industry 43:36 Adapting to Office Culture 44:39 Broadening Job Search Perspectives 47:40 Leadership with Empathy and Emotional Intelligence, But Without Titles 51:21 The Future of Work and Technology 59:11 Balancing Technology and Human Connection 01:05:26 Final Thoughts and Takeaways 01:09:58 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2024. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5:E3 From Retail Pride to Human Pride: Navigating Leadership and Connection with Ron Thurston


In this episode, Ron Thurston returns to discuss his new book 'Human Pride' and its themes of optimizing human potential in a world increasing its reliance on technology and AI. The conversation takes us through Ron’s extensive experience leading major retail brands, his journey from publishing his first book 'Retail Pride' to 'Human Pride', and the crucial balance between human connection and technological efficiency. We explore various aspects of leadership, including the importance of empathy, curiosity, and the significant role of human connection in the workplace. 


Ron emphasizes the need for self-reflection, understanding core values, and maintaining strong interpersonal relationships despite technological advancements. Rejecting 'hustle culture' in favor of fostering meaningful connections and optimizing individual strengths, Ron highlights the need for human-centric approaches to recruitment, leadership, and career development via examples and insights from his own career. Tune in for an engaging conversation filled with practical insights and inspirational stories that underscore the power of pride and human potential in the workplace!


About this episode's partner newsletter: The SKUpe

Running a retail business means making nonstop decisions—inventory, staffing, marketing, tech. The SKUpe is the weekly newsletter designed to help you make smarter calls, faster. Curated by industry experts, The SKUpe delivers clear, trustworthy insights on what’s working for small and mid-sized retailers today. Join 20,000 retail decision makers who rely on it to stay sharp and ahead of the game.

Subscribe to The SKUpe at www.theskupe.co


About Ron Thurston:

Author, “Human Pride: Optimizing Your Potential In A Digital Job Market”

Ron Thurston is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and bold voice in the movement to reimagine leadership in a world transformed by technology. His new book, HUMAN PRIDE: Optimizing Your Human Potential in a Digital Job Market (May 2025), delivers a powerful roadmap for standing out, staying relevant, and thriving in the future of work. With over 30 years of executive experience leading teams at iconic brands like Apple, Gap, West Elm, Tory Burch, Bonobos, and Saint Laurent, Ron knows how to build winning cultures that drive performance. His first book, *RETAIL PRIDE (*2020) became a career-defining guide for thousands of industry professionals, helping them reclaim confidence and purpose in their work.


As the creator and host of the Retail in America tour and podcast, Ron spent over a year traveling across 30 states in an Airstream to spotlight the real stories and remarkable people shaping retail’s future. Today, he serves on multiple retail tech supplier advisory boards, helping brands integrate AI and digital tools without losing sight of what matters most: people. A sought-after keynote speaker, Ron brings energy, insight, and inspiration to global conferences, C-suite offsites, and corporate events. His message resonates across industries: your greatest competitive advantage is human.


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


00:00 The SKUpe Newsletter

00:34 Show Intro

06:51 Welcome Back, Ron Thurston!

07:43 Discussing Ron's New Book: Human Pride

08:46 The Importance of Human Connection in Retail

10:24 Optimizing Human Potential in a Tech-Driven World

15:37 Defining and Standing by Non-Negotiables in Job Search

22:54 The Role of Empathy and Curiosity in Leadership

26:48 Challenges in Modern Hiring Practices

35:11 The Future of Work: Balancing Technology and Human Connection

38:15 Career Longevity and Brand Affinity in Retail

41:56 Navigating the Fast-Paced Industry

43:36 Adapting to Office Culture

44:39 Broadening Job Search Perspectives

47:40 Leadership with Empathy and Emotional Intelligence, But Without Titles

51:21 The Future of Work and Technology

59:11 Balancing Technology and Human Connection

01:05:26 Final Thoughts and Takeaways

01:09:58 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2024. Thinkers 360has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S5:E3 From Retail Pride to Human Pride: Navigating Leadership and Connection with Ron Thurston</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In this episode, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rthurston/" rel="nofollow">Ron Thurston</a> returns to discuss his new book &#39;<a href="https://geni.us/humanpride" rel="nofollow"><em>Human Pride</em></a>&#39; and its themes of optimizing human potential in a world increasing its reliance on technology and AI. The conversation takes us through Ron’s extensive experience leading major retail brands, his journey from publishing his first book &#39;<em>Retail Pride</em>&#39; to &#39;<em>Human Pride</em>&#39;, and the crucial balance between human connection and technological efficiency. We explore various aspects of leadership, including the importance of empathy, curiosity, and the significant role of human connection in the workplace. </p><p><br></p><p>Ron emphasizes the need for self-reflection, understanding core values, and maintaining strong interpersonal relationships despite technological advancements. Rejecting &#39;hustle culture&#39; in favor of fostering meaningful connections and optimizing individual strengths, Ron highlights the need for human-centric approaches to recruitment, leadership, and career development via examples and insights from his own career. Tune in for an engaging conversation filled with practical insights and inspirational stories that underscore the power of pride and human potential in the workplace!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>About this episode&#39;s partner newsletter: The SKUpe</strong></p><p>Running a retail business means making nonstop decisions—inventory, staffing, marketing, tech. The SKUpe is the weekly newsletter designed to help you make smarter calls, faster. Curated by industry experts, The SKUpe delivers clear, trustworthy insights on what’s working for small and mid-sized retailers today. Join 20,000 retail decision makers who rely on it to stay sharp and ahead of the game.</p><p>Subscribe to The SKUpe at <a href="https://www.theskupe.co/?cid=678aaa6cd5126%3Fcid%3D679bca6723dd3" rel="nofollow">www.theskupe.co</a> </p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>About Ron Thurston:</em></strong></p><p>Author, “<em>Human Pride: Optimizing Your Potential In A Digital Job Market</em>”</p><p>Ron Thurston is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and bold voice in the movement to reimagine leadership in a world transformed by technology. His new book, <em>HUMAN PRIDE: Optimizing Your Human Potential in a Digital Job Market</em> (May 2025), delivers a powerful roadmap for standing out, staying relevant, and thriving in the future of work. With over 30 years of executive experience leading teams at iconic brands like Apple, Gap, West Elm, Tory Burch, Bonobos, and Saint Laurent, Ron knows how to build winning cultures that drive performance. His first book, *RETAIL PRIDE (*2020) became a career-defining guide for thousands of industry professionals, helping them reclaim confidence and purpose in their work.</p><p><br></p><p>As the creator and host of the Retail in America tour and podcast, Ron spent over a year traveling across 30 states in an Airstream to spotlight the real stories and remarkable people shaping retail’s future. Today, he serves on multiple retail tech supplier advisory boards, helping brands integrate AI and digital tools without losing sight of what matters most: people. A sought-after keynote speaker, Ron brings energy, insight, and inspiration to global conferences, C-suite offsites, and corporate events. His message resonates across industries: <em>your greatest competitive advantage is human</em>.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p>00:00 The SKUpe Newsletter</p><p>00:34 Show Intro</p><p>06:51 Welcome Back, Ron Thurston!</p><p>07:43 Discussing Ron&#39;s New Book: Human Pride</p><p>08:46 The Importance of Human Connection in Retail</p><p>10:24 Optimizing Human Potential in a Tech-Driven World</p><p>15:37 Defining and Standing by Non-Negotiables in Job Search</p><p>22:54 The Role of Empathy and Curiosity in Leadership</p><p>26:48 Challenges in Modern Hiring Practices</p><p>35:11 The Future of Work: Balancing Technology and Human Connection</p><p>38:15 Career Longevity and Brand Affinity in Retail</p><p>41:56 Navigating the Fast-Paced Industry</p><p>43:36 Adapting to Office Culture</p><p>44:39 Broadening Job Search Perspectives</p><p>47:40 Leadership with Empathy and Emotional Intelligence, But Without Titles</p><p>51:21 The Future of Work and Technology</p><p>59:11 Balancing Technology and Human Connection</p><p>01:05:26 Final Thoughts and Takeaways</p><p>01:09:58 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2024. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a>has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is the CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2023 and 2024, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> 4bf6008d-9039-4c06-a08b-5b9296b28312 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/unlocking-human-pride-thriving-in-the-age-of-ai Wed, 14 May 2025 07:25:00 +0000 4267 no full The New Playbook for Digital Marketing with Chris Carl The New Playbook for Digital Marketing with Chris Carl 2 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert The New Playbook for Digital Marketing with Chris Carl S5:E2 Influencers, Gen Z, & Beyond Social Commerce: Lessons from AliExpress with Chris Carl Welcome to the second episode of Season 5 of the Retail Razor Show! Join hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden as they dive into the fresh tactics and cutting-edge strategies that are driving the future of retail and e-commerce with Gen Z. In this episode, they are joined by Chris Carl, the US Head of Marketing for AliExpress (Alibaba Group), to discuss ‘the new playbook for digital marketing’ fresh from his insightful session on marketing to Gen Z at eTail West! Discover how AliExpress is capturing Gen Z's attention, building a robust social media presence, leveraging influencers like David Beckham, and exploring the future of cross-border shopping with a full-funnel marketing strategy. Chris shares the impressive growth metrics (500% increase in social media following, for example) and innovative campaigns that have set AliExpress apart - think social commerce, live shopping, Gen AI, and TikTok Shops. Plus, new enticing innovations in logistics to help onboard more US-based sellers to the AliExpress marketplace. Whether you're a product junkie, retail leader, or commerce technologist, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss! About Chris Carl: Chris Carl is a strategy, operations, and marketing executive with a proven track record in retail, beauty, spirits, lifestyle, hospitality, and luxury goods. As the first US Head of Marketing for AliExpress, Chris focuses on making online shopping more engaging and affordable. Since May 2023, Chris has increased order volume by 60%, increased brand share of voice by 75%, expanded headcount by 400%, boosted social media following by 500%, and doubled brand awareness. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube 00:00 Show Intro 03:04 Introducing Christopher Carl from AliExpress & His Background 05:43 Conversation with Chris Carl, Head of US Marketing for AliExpress 08:52 Cracking the Code with Gen Z 16:00 AliExpress's Social Media and Influencer Strategy 21:22 Leveraging Social Media for Brand Growth 23:30 Navigating the Shifting Digital Marketing Landscape 25:46 The Future of Social Commerce and Live Shopping 28:17 The Importance of Brand Personality and Humor 31:50 AliExpress: A Unique Business Model 35:09 Expanding AliExpress's US Presence 38:45 The Future of Cross-Border E-Commerce 42:20 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2024. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5:E2 Influencers, Gen Z, & Beyond Social Commerce: Lessons from AliExpress with Chris Carl


Welcome to the second episode of Season 5 of the Retail Razor Show! Join hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden as they dive into the fresh tactics and cutting-edge strategies that are driving the future of retail and e-commerce with Gen Z. In this episode, they are joined by Chris Carl, the US Head of Marketing for AliExpress (Alibaba Group), to discuss ‘the new playbook for digital marketing’ fresh from his insightful session on marketing to Gen Z at eTail West!


Discover how AliExpress is capturing Gen Z's attention, building a robust social media presence, leveraging influencers like David Beckham, and exploring the future of cross-border shopping with a full-funnel marketing strategy. Chris shares the impressive growth metrics (500% increase in social media following, for example) and innovative campaigns that have set AliExpress apart - think social commerce, live shopping, Gen AI, and TikTok Shops. Plus, new enticing innovations in logistics to help onboard more US-based sellers to the AliExpress marketplace. Whether you're a product junkie, retail leader, or commerce technologist, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss!


About Chris Carl:

Chris Carl is a strategy, operations, and marketing executive with a proven track record in retail, beauty, spirits, lifestyle, hospitality, and luxury goods. As the first US Head of Marketing for AliExpress, Chris focuses on making online shopping more engaging and affordable. Since May 2023, Chris has increased order volume by 60%, increased brand share of voice by 75%, expanded headcount by 400%, boosted social media following by 500%, and doubled brand awareness.


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


00:00 Show Intro

03:04 Introducing Christopher Carl from AliExpress & His Background

05:43 Conversation with Chris Carl, Head of US Marketing for AliExpress

08:52 Cracking the Code with Gen Z

16:00 AliExpress's Social Media and Influencer Strategy

21:22 Leveraging Social Media for Brand Growth

23:30 Navigating the Shifting Digital Marketing Landscape

25:46 The Future of Social Commerce and Live Shopping

28:17 The Importance of Brand Personality and Humor

31:50 AliExpress: A Unique Business Model

35:09 Expanding AliExpress's US Presence

38:45 The Future of Cross-Border E-Commerce

42:20 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2024. Thinkers 360has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S5:E2 Influencers, Gen Z, &amp; Beyond Social Commerce: Lessons from AliExpress with Chris Carl</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Welcome to the second episode of Season 5 of the Retail Razor Show! Join hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden as they dive into the fresh tactics and cutting-edge strategies that are driving the future of retail and e-commerce with Gen Z. In this episode, they are joined by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophercarl/" rel="nofollow">Chris Carl</a>, the US Head of Marketing for <a href="https://www.aliexpress.com/" rel="nofollow">AliExpress</a> (<a href="https://www.alibaba.com/" rel="nofollow">Alibaba Group</a>), to discuss ‘the new playbook for digital marketing’ fresh from his insightful session on marketing to Gen Z at <a href="https://etailwest.wbresearch.com/" rel="nofollow">eTail West</a>!</p><p><br></p><p>Discover how AliExpress is capturing Gen Z&#39;s attention, building a robust social media presence, leveraging influencers like David Beckham, and exploring the future of cross-border shopping with a full-funnel marketing strategy. Chris shares the impressive growth metrics (500% increase in social media following, for example) and innovative campaigns that have set AliExpress apart - think social commerce, live shopping, Gen AI, and TikTok Shops. Plus, new enticing innovations in logistics to help onboard more US-based sellers to the AliExpress marketplace. Whether you&#39;re a product junkie, retail leader, or commerce technologist, this episode is packed with insights you won&#39;t want to miss!</p><p><br></p><p><em>About Chris Carl:</em></p><p>Chris Carl is a strategy, operations, and marketing executive with a proven track record in retail, beauty, spirits, lifestyle, hospitality, and luxury goods. As the first US Head of Marketing for AliExpress, Chris focuses on making online shopping more engaging and affordable. Since May 2023, Chris has increased order volume by 60%, increased brand share of voice by 75%, expanded headcount by 400%, boosted social media following by 500%, and doubled brand awareness.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Show Intro</p><p>03:04 Introducing Christopher Carl from AliExpress &amp; His Background</p><p>05:43 Conversation with Chris Carl, Head of US Marketing for AliExpress</p><p>08:52 Cracking the Code with Gen Z</p><p>16:00 AliExpress&#39;s Social Media and Influencer Strategy</p><p>21:22 Leveraging Social Media for Brand Growth</p><p>23:30 Navigating the Shifting Digital Marketing Landscape</p><p>25:46 The Future of Social Commerce and Live Shopping</p><p>28:17 The Importance of Brand Personality and Humor</p><p>31:50 AliExpress: A Unique Business Model</p><p>35:09 Expanding AliExpress&#39;s US Presence</p><p>38:45 The Future of Cross-Border E-Commerce</p><p>42:20 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2024. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a>has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is the CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2023 and 2024, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> aab6dd2d-abde-43e1-b4b2-c642a4ea7a20 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/the-new-playbook-for-digital-marketing Thu, 24 Apr 2025 09:30:00 +0000 2606 no full Transforming Retail Media into a Growth Engine with Drew Cashmore Transforming Retail Media into a Growth Engine with Drew Cashmore 1 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Transforming Retail Media into a Growth Engine with Drew Cashmore S5:E1 Unleashing Retail Media's Potential: A Conversation with Drew Cashmore Welcome to Season 5 of the Retail Razor Show! In our premiere episode, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden dive deep into retail media with special guest Drew Cashmore, Chief Strategy Officer at Vantage and a pioneer in the retail media space, with a background scaling Walmart Connect to a $2 billion business. Drew shares his insights on the evolution of retail media, the driving forces behind its rapid growth, and the challenges retailers face in scaling their media networks. Drew also discusses the importance of workflow automation, the use of first-party data, and the balance between digital and in-store media. We highlight the necessity for retailers to invest in their media capabilities to stay competitive and speculate on the future direction of retail media. We also touch on the complexities of managing multiple media platforms and the potential for consolidation within the industry. Packed with valuable insights, don't miss out on this must-listen episode for product junkies, commerce technologists, retail leaders, and everyone in retail tech! Plus, learn about the Retail Razor Podcast Network's exciting new shows! About Drew Cashmore: Drew is a retail media strategist and thought leader with a background in building, commercializing and scaling new business models in the retail sector across the globe. Heading up strategy for Vantage - the platform that powers self-serve and managed-service for The Home Depot among other retailers - Drew is helping to architect the next generation of unified retail media technologies. He was an original architect of and former executive at Walmart Connect in the U.S. and Canada, helping to scale the retail media business to $2BN and beyond. In addition, Drew was a founding member of Walmart eCommerce and the CMO of SoftBank-backed Live Shopping platform, Firework. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube 00:00 Show Intro 07:38 Unleashing Retail Media's Potential: A Conversation with Drew Cashmore 08:43 Drew's Background in Retail Media 10:28 The Evolution and Challenges of Retail Media 14:18 ROI and Measurement in Retail Media 18:34 The Future of Retail Media 26:41 First-Party Data and Consumer Privacy 34:47 In-Store Media and Workflow Automation 47:21 Retail Media is a Different Business Model 50:06 Conclusion and Final Thoughts 51:05 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2024. Thinkers 360has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S5:E1 Unleashing Retail Media's Potential: A Conversation with Drew Cashmore


Welcome to Season 5 of the Retail Razor Show! In our premiere episode, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden dive deep into retail media with special guest Drew Cashmore, Chief Strategy Officer at Vantage and a pioneer in the retail media space, with a background scaling Walmart Connect to a $2 billion business. Drew shares his insights on the evolution of retail media, the driving forces behind its rapid growth, and the challenges retailers face in scaling their media networks. Drew also discusses the importance of workflow automation, the use of first-party data, and the balance between digital and in-store media. We highlight the necessity for retailers to invest in their media capabilities to stay competitive and speculate on the future direction of retail media. We also touch on the complexities of managing multiple media platforms and the potential for consolidation within the industry. 


Packed with valuable insights, don't miss out on this must-listen episode for product junkies, commerce technologists, retail leaders, and everyone in retail tech! Plus, learn about the Retail Razor Podcast Network's exciting new shows!


About Drew Cashmore:

Drew is a retail media strategist and thought leader with a background in building, commercializing and scaling new business models in the retail sector across the globe. Heading up strategy for Vantage - the platform that powers self-serve and managed-service for The Home Depot among other retailers - Drew is helping to architect the next generation of unified retail media technologies. He was an original architect of and former executive at Walmart Connect in the U.S. and Canada, helping to scale the retail media business to $2BN and beyond. In addition, Drew was a founding member of Walmart eCommerce and the CMO of SoftBank-backed Live Shopping platform, Firework.


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


00:00 Show Intro

07:38 Unleashing Retail Media's Potential: A Conversation with Drew Cashmore

08:43 Drew's Background in Retail Media

10:28 The Evolution and Challenges of Retail Media

14:18 ROI and Measurement in Retail Media

18:34 The Future of Retail Media

26:41 First-Party Data and Consumer Privacy

34:47 In-Store Media and Workflow Automation

47:21 Retail Media is a Different Business Model

50:06 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

51:05 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2024. Thinkers 360has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S5:E1 Unleashing Retail Media&#39;s Potential: A Conversation with Drew Cashmore</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Welcome to Season 5 of the Retail Razor Show! In our premiere episode, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden dive deep into retail media with special guest <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewcashmore/" rel="nofollow">Drew Cashmore</a>, Chief Strategy Officer at <a href="https://gotvantage.com/" rel="nofollow">Vantage</a> and a pioneer in the retail media space, with a background scaling Walmart Connect to a $2 billion business. Drew shares his insights on the evolution of retail media, the driving forces behind its rapid growth, and the challenges retailers face in scaling their media networks. Drew also discusses the importance of workflow automation, the use of first-party data, and the balance between digital and in-store media. We highlight the necessity for retailers to invest in their media capabilities to stay competitive and speculate on the future direction of retail media. We also touch on the complexities of managing multiple media platforms and the potential for consolidation within the industry. </p><p><br></p><p>Packed with valuable insights, don&#39;t miss out on this must-listen episode for product junkies, commerce technologists, retail leaders, and everyone in retail tech! Plus, learn about the Retail Razor Podcast Network&#39;s exciting new shows!</p><p><br></p><p><em>About Drew Cashmore:</em></p><p>Drew is a retail media strategist and thought leader with a background in building, commercializing and scaling new business models in the retail sector across the globe. Heading up strategy for Vantage - the platform that powers self-serve and managed-service for The Home Depot among other retailers - Drew is helping to architect the next generation of unified retail media technologies. He was an original architect of and former executive at Walmart Connect in the U.S. and Canada, helping to scale the retail media business to $2BN and beyond. In addition, Drew was a founding member of Walmart eCommerce and the CMO of SoftBank-backed Live Shopping platform, Firework.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Show Intro</p><p>07:38 Unleashing Retail Media&#39;s Potential: A Conversation with Drew Cashmore</p><p>08:43 Drew&#39;s Background in Retail Media</p><p>10:28 The Evolution and Challenges of Retail Media</p><p>14:18 ROI and Measurement in Retail Media</p><p>18:34 The Future of Retail Media</p><p>26:41 First-Party Data and Consumer Privacy</p><p>34:47 In-Store Media and Workflow Automation</p><p>47:21 Retail Media is a Different Business Model</p><p>50:06 Conclusion and Final Thoughts</p><p>51:05 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2024. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a>has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is the CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2023 and 2024, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> 6a972083-8e28-48a9-9bc8-07f360d6acdd https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/transforming-retail-media-into-a-growth-engine Thu, 10 Apr 2025 09:05:00 +0000 3203 no trailer Season 5 Trailer - Retail Revolution: AI, Media, and Human Connection Season 5 Trailer - Retail Revolution: AI, Media, and Human Connection 5 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Season 5 Trailer - Retail Revolution: AI, Media, and Human Connection S5 Trailer - Retail's Next Chapter: AI and Media Meet Humanity Join hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden in Season Five of The Retail Razor Show as they explore the intersection of AI, media, and human connection in retail. This season will examine the power of AI-powered personalization, retail media evolution, and the role of in-store associates in enhancing customer experiences. Key discussions will include how AI makes retailers more resilient, the impact of media on commerce, and the next wave of retail tech innovation. Tune in to understand how technology transforms shopping, selling, and scaling while emphasizing that retail's core is human connection. Subscribe and follow for sharp insights and expert opinions so you don't miss out on unlocking new opportunities in retail! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! S5 Trailer - Retail's Next Chapter: AI and Media Meet Humanity


Join hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden in Season Five of The Retail Razor Show as they explore the intersection of AI, media, and human connection in retail. This season will examine the power of AI-powered personalization, retail media evolution, and the role of in-store associates in enhancing customer experiences. Key discussions will include how AI makes retailers more resilient, the impact of media on commerce, and the next wave of retail tech innovation. Tune in to understand how technology transforms shopping, selling, and scaling while emphasizing that retail's core is human connection. Subscribe and follow for sharp insights and expert opinions so you don't miss out on unlocking new opportunities in retail!


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!

]]> <p><strong>S5 Trailer - Retail&#39;s Next Chapter: AI and Media Meet Humanity</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Join hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden in Season Five of The Retail Razor Show as they explore the intersection of AI, media, and human connection in retail. This season will examine the power of AI-powered personalization, retail media evolution, and the role of in-store associates in enhancing customer experiences. Key discussions will include how AI makes retailers more resilient, the impact of media on commerce, and the next wave of retail tech innovation. Tune in to understand how technology transforms shopping, selling, and scaling while emphasizing that retail&#39;s core is human connection. Subscribe and follow for sharp insights and expert opinions so you don&#39;t miss out on unlocking new opportunities in retail!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a>has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is the CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p> f41a9fad-9e34-490d-8f2c-50f32d2de8d4 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show/episode/season-5-trailer-retail-revolution-ai-media-and-human-connection Wed, 12 Mar 2025 09:05:00 +0000 234 no full Cutting Through the Clutter: Retail Razor's Season Four Finale Cutting Through the Clutter: Retail Razor's Season Four Finale 10 4 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Cutting Through the Clutter: Retail Razor's Season Four Finale S4:E10 On the Razor's Edge: The Season Four Final Cut In the season four grand finale of the Retail Razor Show, guest host J.P. Kamel, managing director of RFID Sherpas, takes over to interview our regular hosts, Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden. This episode first reviews the top 10 retail predictions the team had for 2024, evaluating which ones hit the mark and which ones were a total miss! Then the discussion spans a range of topics from throughout Season 4 including the rise of retail media, the evolution from omni-channel to unified commerce, and the transformative potential of AI in retail. Key takeaways include the importance of unified commerce strategies, the necessity for retail media, and the enduring need for human connection in the retail experience. The episode also reflects on memorable moments from the season, the future of department stores, and evolving career paths in retail. Both insightful and entertaining, this grand finale offers an in-depth look into the current and future trends shaping the retail industry, and gives you a behind the scenes view of how our two hosts think about retail and the show! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube 00:00 Show Intro 02:52 2024 Top 10 Check-in 03:03 Prediction No 1 05:00 Prediction No 2 06:31 Prediction No 3 10:31 Prediction No 4 12:45 Prediction No 5 16:33 Prediction No 6 18:43 Prediction No 7 21:19 Prediction No 8 23:12 Prediction No 9 30:41 Prediction No 10 33:13 Season 4 Recap 33:43 Favorite Moment 35:34 Most Surprising Moment 38:07 The Big Retail Avengers Reunion Episode 45:04 Smart Fitting Rooms 48:39 Unified Commerce & Everything Shoppable 52:39 Immersive Commerce & Livestreaming 59:47 Retail Media 3.0 01:02:08 Responsible AI 01:08:56 Retail Career Paths 01:15:21 Generative AI Transformation 01:17:43 Relay Race vs Rugby Approach 01:21:48 Data-Driven Decision Making 01:22:36 Key Takeaways from Season 4 01:24:56 Any hints for Season 5 and beyond? 01:28:33 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S4:E10 On the Razor's Edge: The Season Four Final Cut


In the season four grand finale of the Retail Razor Show, guest host J.P. Kamel, managing director of RFID Sherpas, takes over to interview our regular hosts, Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden. This episode first reviews the top 10 retail predictions the team had for 2024, evaluating which ones hit the mark and which ones were a total miss! Then the discussion spans a range of topics from throughout Season 4 including the rise of retail media, the evolution from omni-channel to unified commerce, and the transformative potential of AI in retail. Key takeaways include the importance of unified commerce strategies, the necessity for retail media, and the enduring need for human connection in the retail experience. The episode also reflects on memorable moments from the season, the future of department stores, and evolving career paths in retail. Both insightful and entertaining, this grand finale offers an in-depth look into the current and future trends shaping the retail industry, and gives you a behind the scenes view of how our two hosts think about retail and the show!


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


00:00 Show Intro

02:52 2024 Top 10 Check-in 

03:03 Prediction No 1 

05:00 Prediction No 2 

06:31 Prediction No 3 

10:31 Prediction No 4 

12:45 Prediction No 5 

16:33 Prediction No 6 

18:43 Prediction No 7 

21:19 Prediction No 8 

23:12 Prediction No 9 

30:41 Prediction No 10 

33:13 Season 4 Recap 

33:43 Favorite Moment 

35:34 Most Surprising Moment 

38:07 The Big Retail Avengers Reunion Episode 

45:04 Smart Fitting Rooms 

48:39 Unified Commerce & Everything Shoppable 

52:39 Immersive Commerce & Livestreaming 

59:47 Retail Media 3.0 

01:02:08 Responsible AI 

01:08:56 Retail Career Paths 

01:15:21 Generative AI Transformation 

01:17:43 Relay Race vs Rugby Approach 

01:21:48 Data-Driven Decision Making 

01:22:36 Key Takeaways from Season 4 

01:24:56 Any hints for Season 5 and beyond? 

01:28:33 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S4:E10 On the Razor&#39;s Edge: The Season Four Final Cut</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In the season four grand finale of the Retail Razor Show, guest host <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpkamel/" rel="nofollow">J.P. Kamel</a>, managing director of <a href="https://rfidsherpas.com/" rel="nofollow">RFID Sherpas</a>, takes over to interview our regular hosts, Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden. This episode first reviews the top 10 retail predictions the team had for 2024, evaluating which ones hit the mark and which ones were a total miss! Then the discussion spans a range of topics from throughout Season 4 including the rise of retail media, the evolution from omni-channel to unified commerce, and the transformative potential of AI in retail. Key takeaways include the importance of unified commerce strategies, the necessity for retail media, and the enduring need for human connection in the retail experience. The episode also reflects on memorable moments from the season, the future of department stores, and evolving career paths in retail. Both insightful and entertaining, this grand finale offers an in-depth look into the current and future trends shaping the retail industry, and gives you a behind the scenes view of how our two hosts think about retail and the show!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Show Intro</p><p>02:52 2024 Top 10 Check-in </p><p>03:03 Prediction No 1 </p><p>05:00 Prediction No 2 </p><p>06:31 Prediction No 3 </p><p>10:31 Prediction No 4 </p><p>12:45 Prediction No 5 </p><p>16:33 Prediction No 6 </p><p>18:43 Prediction No 7 </p><p>21:19 Prediction No 8 </p><p>23:12 Prediction No 9 </p><p>30:41 Prediction No 10 </p><p>33:13 Season 4 Recap </p><p>33:43 Favorite Moment </p><p>35:34 Most Surprising Moment </p><p>38:07 The Big Retail Avengers Reunion Episode </p><p>45:04 Smart Fitting Rooms </p><p>48:39 Unified Commerce &amp; Everything Shoppable </p><p>52:39 Immersive Commerce &amp; Livestreaming </p><p>59:47 Retail Media 3.0 </p><p>01:02:08 Responsible AI </p><p>01:08:56 Retail Career Paths </p><p>01:15:21 Generative AI Transformation </p><p>01:17:43 Relay Race vs Rugby Approach </p><p>01:21:48 Data-Driven Decision Making </p><p>01:22:36 Key Takeaways from Season 4 </p><p>01:24:56 Any hints for Season 5 and beyond? </p><p>01:28:33 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2025. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a>has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is the CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2023 - 2025, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> f8be3d2b-a4a7-4fae-9b50-61c3554d3f35 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 31 Jan 2025 21:05:00 +0000 5369 no full Reimagining Department Stores: Nostalgia Meets Innovation Reimagining Department Stores: Nostalgia Meets Innovation 9 4 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Reimagining Department Stores: Nostalgia Meets Innovation S4:E9 Department Stores 2.0: Building Experiences for Tomorrow In this episode, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden bring back the original Retail Avengers team for a highly anticipated reunion. What discussion could bring the team back together again? The current struggles and future opportunity for department stores! Welcome back Jeff Roster, Shish Shridhar, and Brandon Rael to explore why these once-iconic shopping destinations have lost their appeal and what innovations can bring them back into relevance. Key themes include the use of AI, retail media, and enhancing the human connection in shopping. The team covers detailed insights such as the need for improved customer data usage, creating engaging in-store experiences, and leveraging technology to empower store staff. The conversation also touches on successful strategies from other retailers like Target and the importance of loyalty and community in retaining customers. If you’re wondering how (or if) department stores can return to relevance with consumers, this is a can’t miss discussion full of insights and recommendations! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube 00:00 Show Introduction 04:28 Retail Avengers Reunion - The Future of Department Stores 06:36 The Decline of Department Stores 14:01 Challenges and Opportunities 18:23 Future Strategies and Innovations 32:39 The Decline of Department Stores 33:52 The Marketplace Model for Department Stores 38:10 The Role of Technology in Retail 4 3:14 Creating Human Connections in Retail 46:38 The Future of Retail Experiences 55:37 Leveraging Technology for Better Retail 01:01:42 The Role of Department Stores in Modern Retail 01:03:57 The Balance Between Technology and Human Interaction 01:07:01 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2024. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S4:E9 Department Stores 2.0: Building Experiences for Tomorrow


In this episode, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden bring back the original Retail Avengers team for a highly anticipated reunion. What discussion could bring the team back together again? The current struggles and future opportunity for department stores! Welcome back Jeff Roster, Shish Shridhar, and Brandon Rael to explore why these once-iconic shopping destinations have lost their appeal and what innovations can bring them back into relevance. Key themes include the use of AI, retail media, and enhancing the human connection in shopping. The team covers detailed insights such as the need for improved customer data usage, creating engaging in-store experiences, and leveraging technology to empower store staff. The conversation also touches on successful strategies from other retailers like Target and the importance of loyalty and community in retaining customers. If you’re wondering how (or if) department stores can return to relevance with consumers, this is a can’t miss discussion full of insights and recommendations!


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


00:00 Show Introduction 

04:28 Retail Avengers Reunion - The Future of Department Stores 

06:36 The Decline of Department Stores 

14:01 Challenges and Opportunities 

18:23 Future Strategies and Innovations 

32:39 The Decline of Department Stores 

33:52 The Marketplace Model for Department Stores 

38:10 The Role of Technology in Retail 4

3:14 Creating Human Connections in Retail 

46:38 The Future of Retail Experiences 

55:37 Leveraging Technology for Better Retail 

01:01:42 The Role of Department Stores in Modern Retail 

01:03:57 The Balance Between Technology and Human Interaction 

01:07:01 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2024. Thinkers 360has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.


]]> <p><strong>S4:E9 Department Stores 2.0: Building Experiences for Tomorrow</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In this episode, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden bring back the original Retail Avengers team for a highly anticipated reunion. What discussion could bring the team back together again? The current struggles and future opportunity for department stores! Welcome back <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-8828b8257/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Roster</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shishs/" rel="nofollow">Shish Shridhar</a>, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonrael/" rel="nofollow">Brandon Rael</a> to explore why these once-iconic shopping destinations have lost their appeal and what innovations can bring them back into relevance. Key themes include the use of AI, retail media, and enhancing the human connection in shopping. The team covers detailed insights such as the need for improved customer data usage, creating engaging in-store experiences, and leveraging technology to empower store staff. The conversation also touches on successful strategies from other retailers like Target and the importance of loyalty and community in retaining customers. If you’re wondering how (or if) department stores can return to relevance with consumers, this is a can’t miss discussion full of insights and recommendations!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Show Introduction </p><p>04:28 Retail Avengers Reunion - The Future of Department Stores </p><p>06:36 The Decline of Department Stores </p><p>14:01 Challenges and Opportunities </p><p>18:23 Future Strategies and Innovations </p><p>32:39 The Decline of Department Stores </p><p>33:52 The Marketplace Model for Department Stores </p><p>38:10 The Role of Technology in Retail 4</p><p>3:14 Creating Human Connections in Retail </p><p>46:38 The Future of Retail Experiences </p><p>55:37 Leveraging Technology for Better Retail </p><p>01:01:42 The Role of Department Stores in Modern Retail </p><p>01:03:57 The Balance Between Technology and Human Interaction </p><p>01:07:01 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2024. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a>has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is the CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2023 and 2024, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p> 7f2ce4dd-eda4-4978-8c49-b81a2b5c90aa https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Tue, 31 Dec 2024 10:05:00 +0000 4085 no full Unlocking Retail: AI, Ethics, and the Future of Commerce Unlocking Retail: AI, Ethics, and the Future of Commerce 8 4 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Unlocking Retail: AI, Ethics, and the Future of Commerce S4:E8 Navigating Responsible AI in Retail: Trust in a Digital World In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden dive deep into the ethical implications of AI and commerce technology in the retail industry. They reflect on past discussions about AI innovations and the necessity of critical groundwork before deploying new technologies. They cover the balance between leveraging synthetic media for marketing and maintaining brand trust, highlighting examples like Levi's virtual AI models. The conversation touches on the potential of generative AI, virtual influencers, and the risk of losing authenticity. They stress the importance of building an ethical framework for technology initiatives and the long-standing questions of deception in advertising, emphasizing transparency and responsible AI use. Ricardo and Casey also explore how brands can balance cost-saving measures with realistic, authentic representations and the impact of these decisions on sustainability and customer trust. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube 00:00 Show Intro 00:43 Reflecting on Past Discussions 01:27 The Role of AI in Retail 02:49 Ethical Considerations in AI 03:50 Building Brand Trust 04:52 Listener Engagement and Feedback 06:31 AI and Virtual Influencers 07:07 The Future of Influencer Marketing 10:51 Cost and Authenticity in AI Marketing 11:45 Engineered Influencers 15:57 Transparency in AI Content 17:35 Aspirational vs. Unrealistic Marketing 22:10 The Evolution of Body Diversity in Fashion 23:36 Balancing Real and Virtual Models 25:44 Ethical Implications of AI in Fashion 29:35 Sustainability and AI in the Fashion Industry 30:48 The Impact of AI on Marketing and Operations 33:02 Navigating Ethical AI Deployment 36:52 The Future of AI in Retail and Fashion 42:20 Final Thoughts and Call to Action Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2024. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno. S4:E8 Navigating Responsible AI in Retail: Trust in a Digital World


In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden dive deep into the ethical implications of AI and commerce technology in the retail industry. They reflect on past discussions about AI innovations and the necessity of critical groundwork before deploying new technologies. They cover the balance between leveraging synthetic media for marketing and maintaining brand trust, highlighting examples like Levi's virtual AI models. The conversation touches on the potential of generative AI, virtual influencers, and the risk of losing authenticity. They stress the importance of building an ethical framework for technology initiatives and the long-standing questions of deception in advertising, emphasizing transparency and responsible AI use. Ricardo and Casey also explore how brands can balance cost-saving measures with realistic, authentic representations and the impact of these decisions on sustainability and customer trust.


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


00:00 Show Intro

00:43 Reflecting on Past Discussions

01:27 The Role of AI in Retail

02:49 Ethical Considerations in AI

03:50 Building Brand Trust

04:52 Listener Engagement and Feedback

06:31 AI and Virtual Influencers

07:07 The Future of Influencer Marketing

10:51 Cost and Authenticity in AI Marketing

11:45 Engineered Influencers

15:57 Transparency in AI Content

17:35 Aspirational vs. Unrealistic Marketing

22:10 The Evolution of Body Diversity in Fashion

23:36 Balancing Real and Virtual Models

25:44 Ethical Implications of AI in Fashion

29:35 Sustainability and AI in the Fashion Industry

30:48 The Impact of AI on Marketing and Operations

33:02 Navigating Ethical AI Deployment

36:52 The Future of AI in Retail and Fashion

42:20 Final Thoughts and Call to Action


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2024. Thinkers 360has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.


]]> <p><strong>S4:E8 Navigating Responsible AI in Retail: Trust in a Digital World</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden dive deep into the ethical implications of AI and commerce technology in the retail industry. They reflect on past discussions about AI innovations and the necessity of critical groundwork before deploying new technologies. They cover the balance between leveraging synthetic media for marketing and maintaining brand trust, highlighting examples like Levi&#39;s virtual AI models. The conversation touches on the potential of generative AI, virtual influencers, and the risk of losing authenticity. They stress the importance of building an ethical framework for technology initiatives and the long-standing questions of deception in advertising, emphasizing transparency and responsible AI use. Ricardo and Casey also explore how brands can balance cost-saving measures with realistic, authentic representations and the impact of these decisions on sustainability and customer trust.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Show Intro</p><p>00:43 Reflecting on Past Discussions</p><p>01:27 The Role of AI in Retail</p><p>02:49 Ethical Considerations in AI</p><p>03:50 Building Brand Trust</p><p>04:52 Listener Engagement and Feedback</p><p>06:31 AI and Virtual Influencers</p><p>07:07 The Future of Influencer Marketing</p><p>10:51 Cost and Authenticity in AI Marketing</p><p>11:45 Engineered Influencers</p><p>15:57 Transparency in AI Content</p><p>17:35 Aspirational vs. Unrealistic Marketing</p><p>22:10 The Evolution of Body Diversity in Fashion</p><p>23:36 Balancing Real and Virtual Models</p><p>25:44 Ethical Implications of AI in Fashion</p><p>29:35 Sustainability and AI in the Fashion Industry</p><p>30:48 The Impact of AI on Marketing and Operations</p><p>33:02 Navigating Ethical AI Deployment</p><p>36:52 The Future of AI in Retail and Fashion</p><p>42:20 Final Thoughts and Call to Action</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2024. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a>has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is the CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2023 and 2024, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p> 9f53fca3-3d6f-4384-b868-6191cf17e91f https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 18 Dec 2024 10:05:00 +0000 2626 no full Converting Customer Insights to Action Through Smart Fitting Rooms Converting Customer Insights to Action Through Smart Fitting Rooms 7 4 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Converting Customer Insights to Action Through Smart Fitting Rooms Converting Customer Insights to Action Through Smart Fitting Rooms S4:E7 How Smart Fitting Rooms’ Data Insights Transform Store Operations & Shopper Conversion Hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden dive into the transformative potential of smart fitting rooms in the fashion and apparel industry. Joined by Matthew Cyr, founder and CEO of Crave Retail, the discussion explores how digital fitting rooms enhance customer experience, boost conversion rates, and provide invaluable analytics that can revolutionize store operations and merchandising strategies. The episode emphasizes the importance of integrating technology with personalized service to create a seamless and satisfying shopping experience. Discover how retailers can leverage smart fitting rooms to gain deeper insights into customer behavior, optimize in-store performance, and ultimately drive revenue. About Matthew Cyr & Crave Retail: Matthew is a seasoned and three-time founder, CEO and co-founder of Crave Retail. Starting back with Abercrombie and Fitch and Skechers, he developed the commit to convert program that led Skechers expansion across southeast Asia, opening over 250 stores and optimizing in store experiences. Matthew has earned a 40 under 40 recognition from Retail Touch Points. Crave Retail helps retailers elevate their stores by giving shoppers the best-in-class digital fitting room experience. Crave's proprietary fitting room technology and touchless experiences allow retailers to meet each customer's unique needs, access real-time insights into all customer activity, increase conversion, and improve customer satisfaction.. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube 00:00 Show Intro 03:31 Converting Customer Insights to Action Through Smart Fitting Rooms 06:40 Challenges and Benefits of Smart Fitting Rooms 10:37 Customer Journey: Enhancing the Fitting Room Experience 18:16 Impact on Retail Operations and Return Rates 20:36 Leveraging Data for Retail Success 23:55 Implementing Smart Fitting Room Technology 26:56 Importance of Executive Leadership in Retail Strategy 28:28 Engaging Store Operations for Smart Fitting Rooms 30:15 Understanding Store Performance Metrics 32:47 Leveraging Fitting Room Data for Business Insights 38:03 Enhancing Customer Experience with AI and Technology 47:43 Future of Smart Fitting Rooms in Retail 54:39 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2024. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. S4:E7 How Smart Fitting Rooms’ Data Insights Transform Store Operations & Shopper Conversion


Hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden dive into the transformative potential of smart fitting rooms in the fashion and apparel industry. Joined by Matthew Cyr, founder and CEO of Crave Retail, the discussion explores how digital fitting rooms enhance customer experience, boost conversion rates, and provide invaluable analytics that can revolutionize store operations and merchandising strategies. The episode emphasizes the importance of integrating technology with personalized service to create a seamless and satisfying shopping experience. Discover how retailers can leverage smart fitting rooms to gain deeper insights into customer behavior, optimize in-store performance, and ultimately drive revenue.


About Matthew Cyr & Crave Retail:

Matthew is a seasoned and three-time founder, CEO and co-founder of Crave Retail. Starting back with Abercrombie and Fitch and Skechers, he developed the commit to convert program that led Skechers expansion across southeast Asia, opening over 250 stores and optimizing in store experiences. Matthew has earned a 40 under 40 recognition from Retail Touch Points.


Crave Retail helps retailers elevate their stores by giving shoppers the best-in-class digital fitting room experience. Crave's proprietary fitting room technology and touchless experiences allow retailers to meet each customer's unique needs, access real-time insights into all customer activity, increase conversion, and improve customer satisfaction..


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


00:00 Show Intro

03:31 Converting Customer Insights to Action Through Smart Fitting Rooms

06:40 Challenges and Benefits of Smart Fitting Rooms

10:37 Customer Journey: Enhancing the Fitting Room Experience

18:16 Impact on Retail Operations and Return Rates

20:36 Leveraging Data for Retail Success

23:55 Implementing Smart Fitting Room Technology

26:56 Importance of Executive Leadership in Retail Strategy

28:28 Engaging Store Operations for Smart Fitting Rooms

30:15 Understanding Store Performance Metrics

32:47 Leveraging Fitting Room Data for Business Insights

38:03 Enhancing Customer Experience with AI and Technology

47:43 Future of Smart Fitting Rooms in Retail

54:39 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2024. Thinkers 360has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


]]> <p><strong>S4:E7 How Smart Fitting Rooms’ Data Insights Transform Store Operations &amp; Shopper Conversion</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden dive into the transformative potential of smart fitting rooms in the fashion and apparel industry. Joined by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewcyr/" rel="nofollow">Matthew Cyr</a>, founder and CEO of <a href="https://www.craveretail.com/" rel="nofollow">Crave Retail</a>, the discussion explores how digital fitting rooms enhance customer experience, boost conversion rates, and provide invaluable analytics that can revolutionize store operations and merchandising strategies. The episode emphasizes the importance of integrating technology with personalized service to create a seamless and satisfying shopping experience. Discover how retailers can leverage smart fitting rooms to gain deeper insights into customer behavior, optimize in-store performance, and ultimately drive revenue.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>About Matthew Cyr &amp; Crave Retail:</strong></p><p>Matthew is a seasoned and three-time founder, CEO and co-founder of Crave Retail. Starting back with Abercrombie and Fitch and Skechers, he developed the commit to convert program that led Skechers expansion across southeast Asia, opening over 250 stores and optimizing in store experiences. Matthew has earned a 40 under 40 recognition from Retail Touch Points.</p><p><br></p><p>Crave Retail helps retailers elevate their stores by giving shoppers the best-in-class digital fitting room experience. Crave&#39;s proprietary fitting room technology and touchless experiences allow retailers to meet each customer&#39;s unique needs, access real-time insights into all customer activity, increase conversion, and improve customer satisfaction..</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Show Intro</p><p>03:31 Converting Customer Insights to Action Through Smart Fitting Rooms</p><p>06:40 Challenges and Benefits of Smart Fitting Rooms</p><p>10:37 Customer Journey: Enhancing the Fitting Room Experience</p><p>18:16 Impact on Retail Operations and Return Rates</p><p>20:36 Leveraging Data for Retail Success</p><p>23:55 Implementing Smart Fitting Room Technology</p><p>26:56 Importance of Executive Leadership in Retail Strategy</p><p>28:28 Engaging Store Operations for Smart Fitting Rooms</p><p>30:15 Understanding Store Performance Metrics</p><p>32:47 Leveraging Fitting Room Data for Business Insights</p><p>38:03 Enhancing Customer Experience with AI and Technology</p><p>47:43 Future of Smart Fitting Rooms in Retail</p><p>54:39 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2024. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a>has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is the CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2023 and 2024, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p> e23f1f63-4614-4131-b78d-bf2a1ee9d17f https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 27 Nov 2024 10:05:00 +0000 3346 no full Generative AI in Retail: Challenges and Opportunities for Retail CEOs with Peter Cohan Generative AI in Retail: Challenges and Opportunities for Retail CEOs with Peter Cohan 6 4 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Generative AI in Retail: Challenges and Opportunities for Retail CEOs with Peter Cohan S4:E6 Unlocking Generative AI for the Retail C-Suite with Peter Cohan In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden explore the transformative potential of generative AI in retail, featuring insights from Peter Cohan, an associate professor, strategy consultant, startup investor, book author, columnist and AI expert. The discussion covers AI's evolution compared to the dot-com era, the influence of large tech companies, and the substantial growth opportunities AI presents for retailers. Key topics include the contrast between the relay vs. rugby approaches to AI transformation, the crucial role of CEOs in AI adoption, and the importance of a quality data foundation for AI inputs. The episode highlights strategic investment, customer-centric innovations, and practical examples of successful AI implementations, guiding C-suite listeners on how to embrace AI as a long-term investment for unlocking new revenue streams versus a short-term quick fix. About Peter Cohan: Peter is an Associate Professor of Management Practice at Babson College, he is the faculty lead for the core undergraduate strategy course and has created popular electives on Startup Cities and Scaling Strategy. His strategy consulting firm has completed over 150 projects to help companies identify, evaluate, and profit from growth opportunities created by changing technology. He has invested in seven startups, three of which were sold for over $2 billion and one of which, SoFi, went public in 2021 at an $18 billion valuation. He is the author of 17 books, most recently "Brain Rush: How to Invest and Compete in the Real World of Generative AI" and he is a senior contributor at Forbes and a contributor at Inc. RETHINK Retail named him a Top Retail Expert every year between 2021 and 2024 and chose him as a Top AI Leader for 2024 this year. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube 00:00 Show Intro 02:49 Meet Our Guest: Peter Cohan 04:21 Unlocking Generative AI for the Retail C-Suite 05:40 Peter Cohan's Background and Journey 10:25 Impact of Generative AI in Retail 12:48 Challenges and Risks of AI in Customer Service 16:34 Strategies for Embracing AI in Retail 17:21 Relay Race vs. Rugby Approach in Product Development 28:48 Best Practices for AI Implementation 32:43 Driving Company Growth: The CEO's Role 35:15 The Value Pyramid Framework 39:36 AI's Role in Retail Innovation 47:49 Challenges and Opportunities with AI Data 53:19 Entrepreneurial Insights and Cognitive Hunger 57:18 Concluding Thoughts and Future Directions 58:56 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2021 – 2024, and a Thinkers 360 Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. S4:E6 Unlocking Generative AI for the Retail C-Suite with Peter Cohan


In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden explore the transformative potential of generative AI in retail, featuring insights from Peter Cohan, an associate professor, strategy consultant, startup investor, book author, columnist and AI expert. The discussion covers AI's evolution compared to the dot-com era, the influence of large tech companies, and the substantial growth opportunities AI presents for retailers. Key topics include the contrast between the relay vs. rugby approaches to AI transformation, the crucial role of CEOs in AI adoption, and the importance of a quality data foundation for AI inputs. The episode highlights strategic investment, customer-centric innovations, and practical examples of successful AI implementations, guiding C-suite listeners on how to embrace AI as a long-term investment for unlocking new revenue streams versus a short-term quick fix.


About Peter Cohan:

Peter is an Associate Professor of Management Practice at Babson College, he is the faculty lead for the core undergraduate strategy course and has created popular electives on Startup Cities and Scaling Strategy. His strategy consulting firm has completed over 150 projects to help companies identify, evaluate, and profit from growth opportunities created by changing technology. He has invested in seven startups, three of which were sold for over $2 billion and one of which, SoFi, went public in 2021 at an $18 billion valuation. He is the author of 17 books, most recently "Brain Rush: How to Invest and Compete in the Real World of Generative AI" and he is a senior contributor at Forbes and a contributor at Inc. RETHINK Retail named him a Top Retail Expert every year between 2021 and 2024 and chose him as a Top AI Leader for 2024 this year.


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


00:00 Show Intro

02:49 Meet Our Guest: Peter Cohan

04:21   Unlocking Generative AI for the Retail C-Suite

05:40 Peter Cohan's Background and Journey

10:25 Impact of Generative AI in Retail

12:48 Challenges and Risks of AI in Customer Service

16:34 Strategies for Embracing AI in Retail

17:21 Relay Race vs. Rugby Approach in Product Development

28:48 Best Practices for AI Implementation

32:43 Driving Company Growth: The CEO's Role

35:15 The Value Pyramid Framework

39:36 AI's Role in Retail Innovation

47:49 Challenges and Opportunities with AI Data

53:19 Entrepreneurial Insights and Cognitive Hunger

57:18 Concluding Thoughts and Future Directions

58:56 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2024. Thinkers 360has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and is the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, is the CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2023 and 2024, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.

]]> <p><strong>S4:E6 Unlocking Generative AI for the Retail C-Suite with Peter Cohan</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden explore the transformative potential of generative AI in retail, featuring insights from <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-cohan/" rel="nofollow">Peter Cohan</a>, an associate professor, strategy consultant, startup investor, book author, columnist and AI expert. The discussion covers AI&#39;s evolution compared to the dot-com era, the influence of large tech companies, and the substantial growth opportunities AI presents for retailers. Key topics include the contrast between the relay vs. rugby approaches to AI transformation, the crucial role of CEOs in AI adoption, and the importance of a quality data foundation for AI inputs. The episode highlights strategic investment, customer-centric innovations, and practical examples of successful AI implementations, guiding C-suite listeners on how to embrace AI as a long-term investment for unlocking new revenue streams versus a short-term quick fix.</p><p><br></p><p>About <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-cohan/" rel="nofollow">Peter Cohan</a>:</p><p>Peter is an Associate Professor of Management Practice at Babson College, he is the faculty lead for the core undergraduate strategy course and has created popular electives on <em>Startup Cities </em>and<em> Scaling Strategy</em>. His strategy consulting firm has completed over 150 projects to help companies identify, evaluate, and <em>profit</em> from growth opportunities created by changing technology. He has invested in seven startups, three of which were sold for <em>over</em> $2 billion and one of which, SoFi, went public in 2021 at an $18 billion valuation. He is the author of 17 books, most recently &#34;<a href="https://a.co/d/gwxVbuo" rel="nofollow"><em>Brain Rush: How to Invest and Compete in the Real World of Generative AI</em></a>&#34; and he is a senior contributor at <em>Forbes</em> and a contributor at <em>Inc.</em> RETHINK Retail named him a <em>Top Retail Expert</em> every year between 2021 and 2024 and chose him as a <em>Top AI Leader</em> for 2024 this year.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Show Intro</p><p>02:49 Meet Our Guest: Peter Cohan</p><p>04:21   Unlocking Generative AI for the Retail C-Suite</p><p>05:40 Peter Cohan&#39;s Background and Journey</p><p>10:25 Impact of Generative AI in Retail</p><p>12:48 Challenges and Risks of AI in Customer Service</p><p>16:34 Strategies for Embracing AI in Retail</p><p>17:21 Relay Race vs. Rugby Approach in Product Development</p><p>28:48 Best Practices for AI Implementation</p><p>32:43 Driving Company Growth: The CEO&#39;s Role</p><p>35:15 The Value Pyramid Framework</p><p>39:36 AI&#39;s Role in Retail Innovation</p><p>47:49 Challenges and Opportunities with AI Data</p><p>53:19 Entrepreneurial Insights and Cognitive Hunger</p><p>57:18 Concluding Thoughts and Future Directions</p><p>58:56 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is an <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/retail-voices" rel="nofollow">NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025</a> and a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> from 2021 – 2024. <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a>has named him a Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader, and a Top Digital Voice for 2024. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and is the director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, is the CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2023 and 2024, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p> 3e4b7172-993e-4d64-8c2a-c980bb383433 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Tue, 22 Oct 2024 09:00:00 +0000 3599 no full Unlocking Retail Media 3.0: Measurement and Innovation Unlocking Retail Media 3.0: Measurement and Innovation 5 4 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Unlocking Retail Media 3.0: Measurement and Innovation S4:E5 Unlocking Retail Media: Measurement, Innovation, and Customer Engagement In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden explore the evolving landscape of retail media with expert insights from Andrew Lipsman, analyst and founder of Media, Ads + Commerce, and James Bauer, CEO and founder of Venvee. They discuss the progression of retail media 1.0 with online ads to retail media 2.0 - in-store media, highlighting key metrics like closed-loop attribution and incrementality. The conversation moves into innovative technologies such as spatial AI, the importance of first-party data, and privacy concerns. They also emphasize the collaborative efforts needed to integrate these advancements effectively for full funnel customer conversion and attribution in retail media 3.0. This episode delivers a comprehensive overview of how retailers and brands can use modern technology to bring the same level of measurement currently enjoyed in the 15% of retail sales happening in ecommerce, to the larger 85% of sales happening in stores! About Andrew Lipsman: Andrew Lipsman is an independent analyst and consultant at Media, Ads + Commerce. His industry coverage specializes in retail media—which he is known for anointing as “digital advertising’s third big wave”—and other areas of the digital media, advertising, and commerce ecosystem. He has published more than a half dozen articles in the Journal of Advertising Research and is frequently quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Financial Times, and Advertising Age. About James Bauer: James Bauer is the Founder and CEO of Venvee, a retail media technology company that is closing the loop on in-store measurement and attribution. Venvee leverages AI-generated digital twins of physical stores, combined with computer vision running on existing cameras, to enable precise measurement of impressions, interactions, and conversions on a shopper-by-shopper basis. This innovative approach requires no changes to the store and provides comprehensive aggregate measurement for in-store video, audio, fixtures, and products. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube 00:00 Show Intro 02:50 Exploring Retail Media 3.0 & Measurement 03:29 Evolution of Retail Media 07:08 In-Store Attribution and Measurement 14:44 Challenges and Opportunities in Retail Media 32:37 Future of Retail Media and Final Thoughts 44:43 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2021 – 2024, and a Thinkers 360 Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, and Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. S4:E5 Unlocking Retail Media: Measurement, Innovation, and Customer Engagement


In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden explore the evolving landscape of retail media with expert insights from Andrew Lipsman, analyst and founder of Media, Ads + Commerce, and James Bauer, CEO and founder of Venvee. They discuss the progression of retail media 1.0 with online ads to retail media 2.0 - in-store media, highlighting key metrics like closed-loop attribution and incrementality. The conversation moves into innovative technologies such as spatial AI, the importance of first-party data, and privacy concerns. They also emphasize the collaborative efforts needed to integrate these advancements effectively for full funnel customer conversion and attribution in retail media 3.0. This episode delivers a comprehensive overview of how retailers and brands can use modern technology to bring the same level of measurement currently enjoyed in the 15% of retail sales happening in ecommerce, to the larger 85% of sales happening in stores!


About Andrew Lipsman:

Andrew Lipsman is an independent analyst and consultant at Media, Ads + Commerce. His industry coverage specializes in retail media—which he is known for anointing as “digital advertising’s third big wave”—and other areas of the digital media, advertising, and commerce ecosystem. He has published more than a half dozen articles in the Journal of Advertising Research and is frequently quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Financial Times, and Advertising Age.


About James Bauer:

James Bauer is the Founder and CEO of Venvee, a retail media technology company that is closing the loop on in-store measurement and attribution. Venvee leverages AI-generated digital twins of physical stores, combined with computer vision running on existing cameras, to enable precise measurement of impressions, interactions, and conversions on a shopper-by-shopper basis. This innovative approach requires no changes to the store and provides comprehensive aggregate measurement for in-store video, audio, fixtures, and products.


Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube


00:00 Show Intro

02:50 Exploring Retail Media 3.0 & Measurement 

03:29 Evolution of Retail Media 

07:08 In-Store Attribution and Measurement 

14:44 Challenges and Opportunities in Retail Media 

32:37 Future of Retail Media and Final Thoughts 

44:43 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2021 – 2024, and a Thinkers 360 Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, and Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


]]> <p><strong>S4:E5 Unlocking Retail Media: Measurement, Innovation, and Customer Engagement</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden explore the evolving landscape of retail media with expert insights from <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-lipsman-10b2162/" rel="nofollow">Andrew Lipsman</a>, analyst and founder of <a href="https://mediaadsandcommerce.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">Media, Ads + Commerce</a>, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-bauer-venvee/" rel="nofollow">James Bauer</a>, CEO and founder of <a href="https://venvee.com/" rel="nofollow">Venvee</a>. They discuss the progression of retail media 1.0 with online ads to retail media 2.0 - in-store media, highlighting key metrics like closed-loop attribution and incrementality. The conversation moves into innovative technologies such as spatial AI, the importance of first-party data, and privacy concerns. They also emphasize the collaborative efforts needed to integrate these advancements effectively for full funnel customer conversion and attribution in retail media 3.0. This episode delivers a comprehensive overview of how retailers and brands can use modern technology to bring the same level of measurement currently enjoyed in the 15% of retail sales happening in ecommerce, to the larger 85% of sales happening in stores!</p><p><br></p><p><em>About Andrew Lipsman:</em></p><p>Andrew Lipsman is an independent analyst and consultant at Media, Ads + Commerce. His industry coverage specializes in retail media—which he is known for anointing as “digital advertising’s third big wave”—and other areas of the digital media, advertising, and commerce ecosystem. He has published more than a half dozen articles in the Journal of Advertising Research and is frequently quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Financial Times, and Advertising Age.</p><p><br></p><p><em>About James Bauer:</em></p><p>James Bauer is the Founder and CEO of Venvee, a retail media technology company that is closing the loop on in-store measurement and attribution. Venvee leverages AI-generated digital twins of physical stores, combined with computer vision running on existing cameras, to enable precise measurement of impressions, interactions, and conversions on a shopper-by-shopper basis. This innovative approach requires no changes to the store and provides comprehensive aggregate measurement for in-store video, audio, fixtures, and products.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our Newsletter</strong>: <a href="https://retailrazor.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://retailrazor.substack.com</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe to our YouTube channel:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Show Intro</p><p>02:50 Exploring Retail Media 3.0 &amp; Measurement </p><p>03:29 Evolution of Retail Media </p><p>07:08 In-Store Attribution and Measurement </p><p>14:44 Challenges and Opportunities in Retail Media </p><p>32:37 Future of Retail Media and Final Thoughts </p><p>44:43 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a> is a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2021 – 2024, and a <a href="https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/3427" rel="nofollow">Thinkers 360</a> Top 10 Retail Thought Leader, Top 50 Management Thought Leader, and Top 100 Digital Transformation Thought Leader. He is an advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2024 and 2023, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p> d52e7774-b255-49fc-acae-bfecec64ada3 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 11 Sep 2024 09:00:00 +0000 2749 no full Beyond Omnichannel: Michael Zakkour on Immersive Commerce Beyond Omnichannel: Michael Zakkour on Immersive Commerce 4 4 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Beyond Omnichannel: Michael Zakkour on Immersive Commerce S4:E4 Retail Transformers: Michael Zakkour In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden are joined by special guest Michael Zakkour, founder of 5 New Digital and author of two Amazon #1 bestselling books, to discuss the transformative power of unified and immersive commerce in the retail industry. Michael, a thought leader and practitioner in digital commerce with 25 years of experience as a CEO, CMO, and Founder, shares his extensive expertise on retail strategies, AI, the evolution of e-commerce, and the impact of video as a foundational tool for immersive commerce. Together they explore key topics such as the shift from omnichannel to unified commerce, the impact of social commerce and livestreaming from Asia on global markets, and future opportunities with AI in retail. Michael also provides practical advice for retailers to enhance both digital and physical store experiences that resonate with today's digitally savvy consumers, while aiming for higher conversions, better customer engagement, and sustainable profitability. 00:00 Show Intro 04:36 Retail Transformer - Michael Zakkour 06:42 The Evolution of Retail 12:36 Challenges in E-commerce 16:35 The Future of Immersive Commerce 26:07 Video Commerce: The Next Frontier 28:39 The Evolution of E-commerce 30:04 The Importance of Immersive Commerce 32:10 Case Study: Live Streaming Success 38:47 The Role of AI in Retail 48:04 Navigating the Future of Retail 50:57 Future Trends 58:05 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024, 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. Follow The Retail Razor Show on Social: LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Facebook: https://bit.ly/TRRSface Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads BlueSky: https://bit.ly/TRRSbsky Host → Ricardo Belmar Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey S4:E4 Retail Transformers: Michael Zakkour


In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden are joined by special guest Michael Zakkour, founder of 5 New Digital and author of two Amazon #1 bestselling books, to discuss the transformative power of unified and immersive commerce in the retail industry. Michael, a thought leader and practitioner in digital commerce with 25 years of experience as a CEO, CMO, and Founder, shares his extensive expertise on retail strategies, AI, the evolution of e-commerce, and the impact of video as a foundational tool for immersive commerce. Together they explore key topics such as the shift from omnichannel to unified commerce, the impact of social commerce and livestreaming from Asia on global markets, and future opportunities with AI in retail. Michael also provides practical advice for retailers to enhance both digital and physical store experiences that resonate with today's digitally savvy consumers, while aiming for higher conversions, better customer engagement, and sustainable profitability.


00:00 Show Intro 

04:36 Retail Transformer - Michael Zakkour 

06:42 The Evolution of Retail

12:36 Challenges in E-commerce 

16:35 The Future of Immersive Commerce 

26:07 Video Commerce: The Next Frontier 

28:39 The Evolution of E-commerce 

30:04 The Importance of Immersive Commerce 

32:10 Case Study: Live Streaming Success 

38:47 The Role of AI in Retail 

48:04 Navigating the Future of Retail 

50:57 Future Trends 

58:05 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024, 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


Follow The Retail Razor Show on Social

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Facebook: https://bit.ly/TRRSface

Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

BlueSky: https://bit.ly/TRRSbsky


Host → Ricardo Belmar

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey


]]> <p><strong>S4:E4 Retail Transformers: Michael Zakkour</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden are joined by special guest <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-zakkour-150b865/" rel="nofollow">Michael Zakkour</a>, founder of <a href="https://www.5newdigital.com/" rel="nofollow">5 New Digital</a> and author of two <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/Michael-Zakkour/author/B00LXOT3AU" rel="nofollow">Amazon #1 bestselling books</a>, to discuss the transformative power of unified and immersive commerce in the retail industry. Michael, a thought leader and practitioner in digital commerce with 25 years of experience as a CEO, CMO, and Founder, shares his extensive expertise on retail strategies, AI, the evolution of e-commerce, and the impact of video as a foundational tool for immersive commerce. Together they explore key topics such as the shift from omnichannel to unified commerce, the impact of social commerce and livestreaming from Asia on global markets, and future opportunities with AI in retail. Michael also provides practical advice for retailers to enhance both digital and physical store experiences that resonate with today&#39;s digitally savvy consumers, while aiming for higher conversions, better customer engagement, and sustainable profitability.</p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Show Intro </p><p>04:36 Retail Transformer - Michael Zakkour </p><p>06:42 The Evolution of Retail</p><p>12:36 Challenges in E-commerce </p><p>16:35 The Future of Immersive Commerce </p><p>26:07 Video Commerce: The Next Frontier </p><p>28:39 The Evolution of E-commerce </p><p>30:04 The Importance of Immersive Commerce </p><p>32:10 Case Study: Live Streaming Success </p><p>38:47 The Role of AI in Retail </p><p>48:04 Navigating the Future of Retail </p><p>50:57 Future Trends </p><p>58:05 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2024, 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2024 and 2023, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Follow The Retail Razor Show on Social</strong></p><p><strong>LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Facebook:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSface" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSface</a></p><p><strong>Instagram</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p><strong>Threads</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p><strong>BlueSky</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSbsky" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSbsky</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p><br></p> d36b34cb-bbd9-4b34-b3a6-0e1568cd711c https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 14 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000 3551 no full Future of Retail Recruitment: An Interview with OSSY Founder Ron Thurston Future of Retail Recruitment: An Interview with OSSY Founder Ron Thurston 3 4 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Future of Retail Recruitment: An Interview with OSSY Founder Ron Thurston S4:E3 Revolutionizing Retail Hiring: A Conversation with Ron Thurston In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden welcome back Ron Thurston, founder of OSSY, and author of 'Retail Pride’, to discuss the company's innovative approach to transforming the retail hiring process. Focusing on the integration of AI and the human touch, Ron shares insights into how OSSY is addressing common retail recruitment challenges, such as speed to hire, candidate experience, and the importance of clear career paths. The discussion highlights the broader implications for the retail industry and the immense value of creating supportive and accountable hiring practices. This episode is a must-listen for anyone involved in retail and retail hiring. 00:00 Show Intro 02:35 Revolutionizing Retail Recruitment with Ron Thurston and OSSY 04:07 Ron Thurston's Journey and OSSY's Mission 08:58 Challenges and Innovations in Retail Hiring 22:01 Best Practices for Retail Hiring and Career Development 27:23 The Influence of People on Your Success 28:02 Accidental Careers in Retail 28:58 The Importance of Mentorship and Leadership 30:41 Preparing for the Holiday Season 37:02 The Role of AI in Retail Hiring 42:21 Building a Retail Community 46:38 How to Get Started with OSSY 47:51 Show Close Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024, 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. Follow The Retail Razor Show on Social LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Facebook: https://bit.ly/TRRSface Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads BlueSky: https://bit.ly/TRRSbsky Host → Ricardo Belmar Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey S4:E3 Revolutionizing Retail Hiring: A Conversation with Ron Thurston


In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden welcome back Ron Thurston, founder of OSSY, and author of 'Retail Pride’, to discuss the company's innovative approach to transforming the retail hiring process. Focusing on the integration of AI and the human touch, Ron shares insights into how OSSY is addressing common retail recruitment challenges, such as speed to hire, candidate experience, and the importance of clear career paths. The discussion highlights the broader implications for the retail industry and the immense value of creating supportive and accountable hiring practices. This episode is a must-listen for anyone involved in retail and retail hiring.


00:00 Show Intro

02:35 Revolutionizing Retail Recruitment with Ron Thurston and OSSY

04:07 Ron Thurston's Journey and OSSY's Mission

08:58 Challenges and Innovations in Retail Hiring

22:01 Best Practices for Retail Hiring and Career Development

27:23 The Influence of People on Your Success

28:02 Accidental Careers in Retail

28:58 The Importance of Mentorship and Leadership

30:41 Preparing for the Holiday Season

37:02 The Role of AI in Retail Hiring

42:21 Building a Retail Community

46:38 How to Get Started with OSSY

47:51 Show Close


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024, 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


Follow The Retail Razor Show on Social

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Facebook: https://bit.ly/TRRSface

Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

BlueSky: https://bit.ly/TRRSbsky


Host → Ricardo Belmar

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

]]> <p><strong>S4:E3 Revolutionizing Retail Hiring: A Conversation with Ron Thurston</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden welcome back <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rthurston/" rel="nofollow">Ron Thurston</a>, founder of <a href="https://www.useossy.com/" rel="nofollow">OSSY</a>, and author of <a href="https://a.co/d/0hMJHylk" rel="nofollow">&#39;Retail Pride</a>’, to discuss the company&#39;s innovative approach to transforming the retail hiring process. Focusing on the integration of AI and the human touch, Ron shares insights into how OSSY is addressing common retail recruitment challenges, such as speed to hire, candidate experience, and the importance of clear career paths. The discussion highlights the broader implications for the retail industry and the immense value of creating supportive and accountable hiring practices. This episode is a must-listen for anyone involved in retail and retail hiring.</p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Show Intro</p><p>02:35 Revolutionizing Retail Recruitment with Ron Thurston and OSSY</p><p>04:07 Ron Thurston&#39;s Journey and OSSY&#39;s Mission</p><p>08:58 Challenges and Innovations in Retail Hiring</p><p>22:01 Best Practices for Retail Hiring and Career Development</p><p>27:23 The Influence of People on Your Success</p><p>28:02 Accidental Careers in Retail</p><p>28:58 The Importance of Mentorship and Leadership</p><p>30:41 Preparing for the Holiday Season</p><p>37:02 The Role of AI in Retail Hiring</p><p>42:21 Building a Retail Community</p><p>46:38 How to Get Started with OSSY</p><p>47:51 Show Close</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2024, 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2024 and 2023, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Follow The Retail Razor Show on Social</strong></p><p><strong>LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Facebook:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSface" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSface</a></p><p><strong>Instagram</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p><strong>Threads</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p><strong>BlueSky</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSbsky" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSbsky</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p> e7242f80-9f80-4748-a61f-ac937a8a32b8 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 28 Jun 2024 09:00:00 +0000 2932 no full The Future of Commerce is Unified Commerce, with Giri Agarwal of Incisiv The Future of Commerce is Unified Commerce, with Giri Agarwal of Incisiv 2 4 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert The Future of Commerce is Unified Commerce, with Giri Agarwal of Incisiv S4:E2 The Evolution from Omnichannel to Unified Commerce with Giri Agarwal In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden discuss the shift from omnichannel to unified commerce in the retail industry. Special guest Giri Agarwal, Chief Strategy Officer at Incisiv, joins to share insights on how unified commerce is transforming customer experiences and driving revenue growth. They explore the concept of unified commerce, the integration of AI, and the challenges retailers face in adopting this approach. Key highlights include the importance of customer identification, empowering frontline staff, and rethinking store experiences. Giri also addresses the financial implications, generational differences in consumer behaviors, and the need for a cultural shift towards unified commerce. Tune in for an in-depth discussion on why now is the critical moment for retailers to embrace this change. Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024, 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey S4:E2 The Evolution from Omnichannel to Unified Commerce with Giri Agarwal


In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden discuss the shift from omnichannel to unified commerce in the retail industry. Special guest Giri Agarwal, Chief Strategy Officer at Incisiv, joins to share insights on how unified commerce is transforming customer experiences and driving revenue growth. They explore the concept of unified commerce, the integration of AI, and the challenges retailers face in adopting this approach. Key highlights include the importance of customer identification, empowering frontline staff, and rethinking store experiences. Giri also addresses the financial implications, generational differences in consumer behaviors, and the need for a cultural shift towards unified commerce. Tune in for an in-depth discussion on why now is the critical moment for retailers to embrace this change.


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024, 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey


00:00 Show Start

00:20 Show Intro

02:35 Unified Commerce with Giri Agarwal from Incisiv

05:10 Defining Unified Commece

09:24 Challenges and Strategies for Unified Commerce

16:43 The Role of AI in Unified Commerce

23:10 The State of Unified Commerce in 2024

26:19 Generational Differences and Consumer Behavior

31:10 Key Differentiators for Unified Commerce

35:20 Financial Implications and Future Outlook

38:46 Risks of NOT Embracing Unified Commerce

44:51 Show Close


]]> <p><strong>S4:E2 The Evolution from Omnichannel to Unified Commerce with Giri Agarwal</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden discuss the shift from omnichannel to unified commerce in the retail industry. Special guest <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/girijesh-a-556325/" rel="nofollow">Giri Agarwal</a>, <em>Chief Strategy Officer</em> at <a href="https://www.incisiv.com/" rel="nofollow">Incisiv</a>, joins to share insights on how unified commerce is transforming customer experiences and driving revenue growth. They explore the concept of unified commerce, the integration of AI, and the challenges retailers face in adopting this approach. Key highlights include the importance of customer identification, empowering frontline staff, and rethinking store experiences. Giri also addresses the financial implications, generational differences in consumer behaviors, and the need for a cultural shift towards unified commerce. Tune in for an in-depth discussion on why now is the critical moment for retailers to embrace this change.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2024, 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2024 and 2023, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p>Follow us on Threads: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Show Start</p><p>00:20 Show Intro</p><p>02:35 Unified Commerce with Giri Agarwal from Incisiv</p><p>05:10 Defining Unified Commece</p><p>09:24 Challenges and Strategies for Unified Commerce</p><p>16:43 The Role of AI in Unified Commerce</p><p>23:10 The State of Unified Commerce in 2024</p><p>26:19 Generational Differences and Consumer Behavior</p><p>31:10 Key Differentiators for Unified Commerce</p><p>35:20 Financial Implications and Future Outlook</p><p>38:46 Risks of NOT Embracing Unified Commerce</p><p>44:51 Show Close</p><p><br></p> 2f21e552-c8bf-45c5-8538-6c9c28ca688d https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Tue, 28 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000 2746 no full Top 10 Predictions for Retail in 2024 with Ben Miller, ShopTalk Top 10 Predictions for Retail in 2024 with Ben Miller, ShopTalk 1 4 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S4E1 – Top 10 Predictions for Retail in 2024 with Ben Miller, ShopTalk S4:E1 – Top 10 Predictions for Retail in 2024 with Ben Miller, ShopTalk In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden kick off season 4 by discussing their top 10 predictions for the retail industry in 2024. Amid personal anecdotes and a tribute to Ricardo's late father, the episode dives deep into the future of retail alongside guest Ben Miller, VP of Original Content and Strategy at Shoptalk & Groceryshop. Key predictions include the Temu-fication of retail, the evolution of Retail Media Networks (RMNs) and their impact on digitizing physical stores, the integration with streaming and social commerce platforms, and the re-emergence of heritage brands leveraging digital commerce. The conversation also touches on the increasing consumer expectations around sustainability versus the temptation of low-cost options like Temu, the potential of AI in enhancing customer experience and operational efficiency, and the death of the term 'Omnichannel' in favor of 'Unified Commerce' to better represent seamless retail experiences. The episode concludes with a look forward to the Shoptalk event and the importance of staying ahead in a rapidly evolving retail landscape. Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024, 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey S4:E1 – Top 10 Predictions for Retail in 2024 with Ben Miller, ShopTalk


In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden kick off season 4 by discussing their top 10 predictions for the retail industry in 2024. Amid personal anecdotes and a tribute to Ricardo's late father, the episode dives deep into the future of retail alongside guest Ben Miller, VP of Original Content and Strategy at Shoptalk & Groceryshop. Key predictions include the Temu-fication of retail, the evolution of Retail Media Networks (RMNs) and their impact on digitizing physical stores, the integration with streaming and social commerce platforms, and the re-emergence of heritage brands leveraging digital commerce. The conversation also touches on the increasing consumer expectations around sustainability versus the temptation of low-cost options like Temu, the potential of AI in enhancing customer experience and operational efficiency, and the death of the term 'Omnichannel' in favor of 'Unified Commerce' to better represent seamless retail experiences. The episode concludes with a look forward to the Shoptalk event and the importance of staying ahead in a rapidly evolving retail landscape.


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024, 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey


00:00 A Personal Tribute and the Power of Inspiration

01:40 Show Intro

03:14 2024 Predictions with Ben Miller

04:23 Prediction #1: The Temu-fication of Retail

09:18 The Evolution of Retail Media and Digitization of Physical Stores

12:48 Retail Media Networks and the Future of Advertising

15:48 Social Commerce: The Next Frontier in Retail Media Disruption

19:03 Prediction #5: The Resurgence of Heritage Brands in the Digital Age

28:10 Prediction #6: AI's Growing Influence in Retail and Its Tangible ROI

31:09 The Evolution of Frontline Retail: AI-Augmented Engineered Influencers

35:21 Prediction #8: The Potential of Apple's Vision Pro in Retail

39:54 Consumer Expectations in 2024: Sustainability & Accountability vs. Temu-fication

45:07 Prediction #10: The End of Omnichannel - Embracing Unified Commerce

47:55 2024 Retail Predictions: A Year of Optimism and Challenges

50:44 Closing Thoughts and Looking Ahead to ShopTalk

51:48 Show Close


]]> <p>S4:E1 – Top 10 Predictions for Retail in 2024 with Ben Miller, ShopTalk</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden kick off season 4 by discussing their top 10 predictions for the retail industry in 2024. Amid personal anecdotes and a tribute to Ricardo&#39;s late father, the episode dives deep into the future of retail alongside guest <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmillershoptalk/" rel="nofollow">Ben Miller</a>, VP of Original Content and Strategy at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/shoptalk/" rel="nofollow">Shoptalk</a> &amp; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/groceryshop/" rel="nofollow">Groceryshop</a>. Key predictions include the Temu-fication of retail, the evolution of Retail Media Networks (RMNs) and their impact on digitizing physical stores, the integration with streaming and social commerce platforms, and the re-emergence of heritage brands leveraging digital commerce. The conversation also touches on the increasing consumer expectations around sustainability versus the temptation of low-cost options like Temu, the potential of AI in enhancing customer experience and operational efficiency, and the death of the term &#39;Omnichannel&#39; in favor of &#39;Unified Commerce&#39; to better represent seamless retail experiences. The episode concludes with a look forward to the Shoptalk event and the importance of staying ahead in a rapidly evolving retail landscape.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2024, 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2024 and 2023, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p>Follow us on Threads: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p><br></p><p>00:00 A Personal Tribute and the Power of Inspiration</p><p>01:40 Show Intro</p><p>03:14 2024 Predictions with Ben Miller</p><p>04:23 Prediction #1: The Temu-fication of Retail</p><p>09:18 The Evolution of Retail Media and Digitization of Physical Stores</p><p>12:48 Retail Media Networks and the Future of Advertising</p><p>15:48 Social Commerce: The Next Frontier in Retail Media Disruption</p><p>19:03 Prediction #5: The Resurgence of Heritage Brands in the Digital Age</p><p>28:10 Prediction #6: AI&#39;s Growing Influence in Retail and Its Tangible ROI</p><p>31:09 The Evolution of Frontline Retail: AI-Augmented Engineered Influencers</p><p>35:21 Prediction #8: The Potential of Apple&#39;s Vision Pro in Retail</p><p>39:54 Consumer Expectations in 2024: Sustainability &amp; Accountability vs. Temu-fication</p><p>45:07 Prediction #10: The End of Omnichannel - Embracing Unified Commerce</p><p>47:55 2024 Retail Predictions: A Year of Optimism and Challenges</p><p>50:44 Closing Thoughts and Looking Ahead to ShopTalk</p><p>51:48 Show Close</p><p><br></p> e718a70f-b653-4b0f-8cf5-cf2ebdc1ae4e https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Tue, 19 Mar 2024 14:10:38 +0000 3170 no trailer Season 4 Trailer - Unlocking Retail with AI, Humans, and Media Season 4 Trailer - Unlocking Retail with AI, Humans, and Media 4 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert Season 4 Trailer - Unlocking Retail with AI, Humans, and Media In Season Four of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden explore the theme of Unlocking Retail with the Integration of AI, Humans, and Media. This involves discussing how artificial intelligence, human interaction, and innovative retail media are transforming the industry. Topics will include optimizing inventory, pricing, merchandising for online and offline channels with AI, enhancing customer service, connecting brands with consumers through engaging content, creating strong communities and increasing loyalty. The show will also discuss human centered design and the crafting of memorable retail experiences. Moreover, two of its mini-series from last season, Blade to Greatness and Data Blades, will be transformed into their own podcasts. Ricardo and Casey remind everyone that this season has more surprises in store for listeners! And we can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments. Your support allow sus to hit the top of the charts for Indie Management and Indie Marketing podcasts! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024, 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey In Season Four of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden explore the theme of Unlocking Retail with the Integration of AI, Humans, and Media. This involves discussing how artificial intelligence, human interaction, and innovative retail media are transforming the industry. Topics will include optimizing inventory, pricing, merchandising for online and offline channels with AI, enhancing customer service, connecting brands with consumers through engaging content, creating strong communities and increasing loyalty. The show will also discuss human centered design and the crafting of memorable retail experiences. Moreover, two of its mini-series from last season, Blade to Greatness and Data Blades, will be transformed into their own podcasts. Ricardo and Casey remind everyone that this season has more surprises in store for listeners!


And we can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments. Your support allow sus to hit the top of the charts for Indie Management and Indie Marketing podcasts!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024, 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey


]]> <p>In <strong>Season Four</strong> of the <strong>Retail Razor Show</strong>, hosts <em>Ricardo Belmar</em> and <em>Casey Golden</em> explore the theme of <em>Unlocking Retail with the Integration of AI, Humans, and Media</em>. This involves discussing how artificial intelligence, human interaction, and innovative retail media are transforming the industry. Topics will include optimizing inventory, pricing, merchandising for online and offline channels with AI, enhancing customer service, connecting brands with consumers through engaging content, creating strong communities and increasing loyalty. The show will also discuss human centered design and the crafting of memorable retail experiences. Moreover, two of its mini-series from last season, Blade to Greatness and Data Blades, will be transformed into their own podcasts. Ricardo and Casey remind everyone that this season has more surprises in store for listeners!</p><p><br></p><p>And we can’t thank our <strong>Goodpods</strong> listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments. Your support allow sus to hit the top of the charts for Indie Management and Indie Marketing podcasts!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2024, 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2024 and 2023, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p>Follow us on Threads: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p><br></p> 96b9ed00-771c-4028-b7eb-dad209433dc2 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Mon, 12 Feb 2024 09:30:00 +0000 317 no full S3E19 – The Razor’s Edge – Season 3 Recap and Predictions Check-In S3E19 – The Razor’s Edge – Season 3 Recap and Predictions Check-In 19 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E19 – The Razor’s Edge – Season 3 Recap and Predictions Check-In In the season three finale of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden provide a detailed recap of their journey throughout the season, discussing their top ten predictions for 2023 and evaluating their accuracy – did they nail it or miss the mark? The hosts touch upon diverse topics including private label domination, the evolution of retail media networks, investment in returns management, and the growth of store automation, among others. They also highlight a few memorable moments and important insights from their guests throughout the season. The episode concludes with a lively discussion on their expectations for retail and technology in 2024, teasing the audience with a glimpse of what's to come in season four. WOW! As we march into a new year on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform on multiple episodes! We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024, 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey In the season three finale of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden provide a detailed recap of their journey throughout the season, discussing their top ten predictions for 2023 and evaluating their accuracy – did they nail it or miss the mark? The hosts touch upon diverse topics including private label domination, the evolution of retail media networks, investment in returns management, and the growth of store automation, among others. They also highlight a few memorable moments and important insights from their guests throughout the season. The episode concludes with a lively discussion on their expectations for retail and technology in 2024, teasing the audience with a glimpse of what's to come in season four.


WOW! As we march into a new year on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpodspodcast platform on multiple episodes!


We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024, 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2024 and 2023, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey


]]> <p>In the season three finale of the <strong>Retail Razor Show</strong>, hosts <strong>Ricardo Belmar</strong> and <strong>Casey Golden</strong> provide a detailed recap of their journey throughout the season, discussing their top ten predictions for 2023 and evaluating their accuracy – <em>did they nail it or miss the mark?</em> The hosts touch upon diverse topics including private label domination, the evolution of retail media networks, investment in returns management, and the growth of store automation, among others. They also highlight a few memorable moments and important insights from their guests throughout the season. The episode concludes with a lively discussion on their expectations for retail and technology in 2024, teasing the audience with a glimpse of what&#39;s to come in season four.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>WOW!</strong> As we march into a new year on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the <strong><em>top of the charts</em></strong> on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a>podcast platform on multiple episodes!</p><p><br></p><p>We can’t thank our <strong>Goodpods</strong> listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2024, 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, <a href="https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2024/#%23top" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert</a> for 2024 and 2023, and <a href="https://www.retailcloudalliance.com/our-community" rel="nofollow">Retail Cloud Alliance</a> advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, and E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p>Follow us on Threads: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p><br></p> c64b012d-92ed-44fc-8a32-b279c6174322 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Mon, 05 Feb 2024 09:55:00 +0000 2299 no full S3E18 – Focusing on Customer Experience with Retail Transformer – Nadina Guglielmetti, Chief Customer Officer, The Vitamin Shoppe S3E18 – Focusing on Customer Experience with Retail Transformer – Nadina Guglielmetti, Chief Customer Officer, The Vitamin Shoppe 18 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E18 – Focusing on Customer Experience with Retail Transformer – Nadina Guglielmetti, Chief Customer Officer, The Vitamin Shoppe As we approach the end of Season 3 of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden engage in a rich dialogue with The Vitamin Shoppe’s Chief Customer Officer, Nadina Guglielmetti. They explore how customer behavior insights guide business decisions, the interplay between acquiring new customers and nurturing existing ones, and the evolution of customer experience amidst changing health trends. Nadina also details the role of The Vitamin Shoppe’s in-store health enthusiasts in enhancing customer engagement and trust, and their careful approach towards leveraging AI and 'headless commerce' platforms to enhance efficiency and personalization. In this final Retail Transformer episode of the season, you’ll learn why Nadina is truly more than meets the eye! We also bring you the final episode in Season 1 of our "Blade to Greatness" mini-series. This episode features an insightful conversation with retail expert, Ron Thurston, co-founder of Ossy, author of Retail Pride, the Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career, host of the Retail in America nationwide tour and podcast, speaker, advisor, board member, and former retail operations leader at numerous famous retail brands. Ron shares his three pillars of success in retail and life- empathy, curiosity, and focus. He illuminates strategies to bridge the communication gap between corporate offices and stores, emphasizing the importance of empathy in grasping the pressures faced by in-store teams, the power of curiosity to understand their needs and experiences, and the role of focus in dealing with the information obtained. Ron also emphasizes the importance of maintaining transparency and dialogue with retail employees from the recruitment stage, thus enhancing their sense of belonging and commitment. NEWS! We are thrilled to report that our fans support propelled us as a finalist in The Retail Voice Award for the Vendors In Partnership award gala at NRF 2024! You’re votes made a difference and we’re honored to be one of 3 finalists for this prestigious award! WOW! As we march into our 3rd year on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform! #1 in the Top 100 Indie Management Weekly chart #3 in the Top 100 Indie Management Monthly chart #3 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Weekly chart #5 in the Top 100 Marketing Weekly chart #6 in the Top 100 Marketing Monthly chart We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey As we approach the end of Season 3 of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden engage in a rich dialogue with The Vitamin Shoppe’s Chief Customer Officer, Nadina Guglielmetti. They explore how customer behavior insights guide business decisions, the interplay between acquiring new customers and nurturing existing ones, and the evolution of customer experience amidst changing health trends. Nadina also details the role of The Vitamin Shoppe’s in-store health enthusiasts in enhancing customer engagement and trust, and their careful approach towards leveraging AI and 'headless commerce' platforms to enhance efficiency and personalization. In this final Retail Transformer episode of the season, you’ll learn why Nadina is truly more than meets the eye!


We also bring you the final episode in Season 1 of our "Blade to Greatness" mini-series. This episode features an insightful conversation with retail expert, Ron Thurston, co-founder of Ossy, author of Retail Pride, the Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career, host of the Retail in America nationwide tour and podcast, speaker, advisor, board member, and former retail operations leader at numerous famous retail brands. Ron shares his three pillars of success in retail and life- empathy, curiosity, and focus. He illuminates strategies to bridge the communication gap between corporate offices and stores, emphasizing the importance of empathy in grasping the pressures faced by in-store teams, the power of curiosity to understand their needs and experiences, and the role of focus in dealing with the information obtained. Ron also emphasizes the importance of maintaining transparency and dialogue with retail employees from the recruitment stage, thus enhancing their sense of belonging and commitment.


NEWS! We are thrilled to report that our fans support propelled us as a finalist in The Retail Voice Award for the Vendors In Partnership award gala at NRF 2024! You’re votes made a difference and we’re honored to be one of 3 finalists for this prestigious award!


WOW! As we march into our 3rd year on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpodspodcast platform!


#1 in the Top 100 Indie Management Weekly chart

#3 in the Top 100 Indie Management Monthly chart

#3 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Weekly chart

#5 in the Top 100 Marketing Weekly chart

#6 in the Top 100 Marketing Monthly chart


We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

]]> <p>As we approach the end of Season 3 of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden engage in a rich dialogue with <a href="https://www.vitaminshoppe.com/" rel="nofollow">The Vitamin Shoppe’s</a> <em>Chief Customer Officer</em>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadinag/" rel="nofollow">Nadina Guglielmetti</a>. They explore how <strong>customer behavior insights guide business decisions</strong>, the interplay between acquiring new customers and nurturing existing ones, and the evolution of customer experience amidst changing health trends. Nadina also details the role of The Vitamin Shoppe’s in-store health enthusiasts in enhancing customer engagement and trust, and their careful approach towards leveraging AI and &#39;headless commerce&#39; platforms to enhance efficiency and personalization. In this final <strong>Retail Transformer</strong> episode of the season, you’ll learn why Nadina is truly <em>more than meets the eye</em>!</p><p><br></p><p>We also bring you the final episode in Season 1 of our &#34;<strong>Blade to Greatness</strong>&#34; mini-series. This episode features an insightful conversation with retail expert, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rthurston/" rel="nofollow">Ron Thurston</a>, co-founder of <a href="https://www.useossy.com/" rel="nofollow">Ossy</a>, author of <a href="https://a.co/d/7SFCBxx" rel="nofollow"><em>Retail Pride, the Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career</em></a>, host of the <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/retail-in-america/id1618323713?i=1000586268458" rel="nofollow">Retail in America nationwide tour and podcast</a>, speaker, advisor, board member, and former retail operations leader at numerous famous retail brands. Ron shares his three pillars of success in retail and life- <em>empathy</em>, <em>curiosity</em>, and <em>focus</em>. He illuminates strategies to <strong>bridge the communication gap between corporate offices and stores</strong>, emphasizing the importance of <em>empathy</em> in grasping the pressures faced by in-store teams, the power of <em>curiosity</em> to understand their needs and experiences, and the role of <em>focus</em> in dealing with the information obtained. Ron also emphasizes the importance of maintaining transparency and dialogue with retail employees <em>from the recruitment stage</em>, thus enhancing their sense of belonging and commitment.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>NEWS</strong>! We are thrilled to report that our fans support propelled us as a finalist in <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vip-awards_vipawards-activity-7140055480747380737-bV2s?utm_medium=member_desktop&utm_source=share" rel="nofollow">The Retail Voice Award</a> for the <a href="https://www.vendorawards.com/" rel="nofollow">Vendors In Partnership</a> award gala at NRF 2024! You’re votes made a difference and we’re honored to be one of 3 finalists for this prestigious award!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>WOW!</strong> As we march into our 3<sup>rd</sup> year on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the <strong><em>top of the charts</em></strong> on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a>podcast platform!</p><p><br></p><p>#1 in the Top 100 Indie Management Weekly chart</p><p>#3 in the Top 100 Indie Management Monthly chart</p><p>#3 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Weekly chart</p><p>#5 in the Top 100 Marketing Weekly chart</p><p>#6 in the Top 100 Marketing Monthly chart</p><p><br></p><p>We can’t thank our <strong>Goodpods</strong> listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, E-Motive, </em>and<em> Swag, Tag &amp; Brag </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p>Follow us on Threads: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p> 26839c7a-d956-4dee-8cc1-730e6c441f6a https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Sun, 31 Dec 2023 11:00:00 +0000 3040 no full S3E17 – #NRFforBeginners with Andrew Laudato, Taylor’s Version S3E17 – #NRFforBeginners with Andrew Laudato, Taylor’s Version 17 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E17 – #NRFforBeginners with Andrew Laudato, Taylor’s Version In this episode of Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden talk about preparing for NRF 2024, celebrate being a finalist in the Vendors in Partnership gala for The Retail Voice Award, and bring the latest episode of Blade to Greatness, all in under an hour! They host a special “Taylor’s Version” replay of a prior interview with Andy Laudato, COO of The Vitamin Shoppe, sharing his comprehensive guide for maximizing your attendance at the NRF Big Show. Andy returns to the show for a new discussion of his anticipation for the combined NRF and supply chain shows, and the buzz surrounding AI, plus expectations for a great RetailROI Super Saturday event. In the latest episode of the ‘Blade to Greatness’ segment, April Sabral, founder of retailu and The Positivity Company, returns to share her insights on leadership and how to counteract negativity in the retail industry She explains why retail leaders need to stop enrolling in negativity and reinforce a positive attitude with their teams. After listening to this episode, you, too, will be ready for #NRF2024 in January in New York City! NEWS! We are thrilled to report that our fans support propelled us as a finalist in The Retail Voice Award for the Vendors In Partnership award gala at NRF 2024! You’re votes made a difference and we’re honored to be one of 3 finalists for this prestigious award! WOW! As we march into our 3rd year on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform! #1 in the Top 100 Indie Management Monthly chart #2 in the Top 100 Indie Management Weekly chart #2 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Weekly chart #3 in the Top 100 Marketing Weekly chart #4 in the Top 100 Marketing Monthly chart We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey In this episode of Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden talk about preparing for NRF 2024, celebrate being a finalist in the Vendors in Partnership gala for The Retail Voice Award, and bring the latest episode of Blade to Greatness, all in under an hour!


They host a special “Taylor’s Version” replay of a prior interview with Andy Laudato, COO of The Vitamin Shoppe, sharing his comprehensive guide for maximizing your attendance at the NRF Big Show. Andy returns to the show for a new discussion of his anticipation for the combined NRF and supply chain shows, and the buzz surrounding AI, plus expectations for a great RetailROI Super Saturday event. 


In the latest episode of the ‘Blade to Greatness’ segment, April Sabral, founder of retailu and The Positivity Company, returns to share her insights on leadership and how to counteract negativity in the retail industry She explains why retail leaders need to stop enrolling in negativity and reinforce a positive attitude with their teams. 


After listening to this episode, you, too, will be ready for #NRF2024 in January in New York City!


NEWS! We are thrilled to report that our fans support propelled us as a finalist in The Retail Voice Award for the Vendors In Partnership award gala at NRF 2024! You’re votes made a difference and we’re honored to be one of 3 finalists for this prestigious award!


WOW! As we march into our 3rd year on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpodspodcast platform!


#1 in the Top 100 Indie Management Monthly chart

#2 in the Top 100 Indie Management Weekly chart

#2 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Weekly chart

#3 in the Top 100 Marketing Weekly chart

#4 in the Top 100 Marketing Monthly chart


We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

]]> <p>In this episode of Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden talk about preparing for NRF 2024, celebrate being a finalist in the Vendors in Partnership gala for The Retail Voice Award, and bring the latest episode of Blade to Greatness, all in under an hour!</p><p><br></p><p>They host a special “Taylor’s Version” replay of a prior interview with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewlaudato/" rel="nofollow">Andy Laudato</a>, COO of <a href="https://www.vitaminshoppe.com/" rel="nofollow">The Vitamin Shoppe</a>, sharing his comprehensive guide for maximizing your attendance at the <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com/" rel="nofollow">NRF Big Show</a>. Andy returns to the show for a new discussion of his anticipation for the combined NRF and supply chain shows, and the buzz surrounding AI, plus expectations for a great RetailROI Super Saturday event. </p><p><br></p><p>In the latest episode of the ‘Blade to Greatness’ segment, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprilsabral/" rel="nofollow">April Sabral</a>, founder of <a href="https://retailu.ca/" rel="nofollow">retailu</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/apri-sabral-leadership-coaching/about/" rel="nofollow">The Positivity Company</a>, returns to share her insights on leadership and how to counteract negativity in the retail industry She explains why retail leaders need to <em>stop enrolling in negativity</em> and reinforce a positive attitude with their teams. </p><p><br></p><p>After listening to this episode, you, too, will be ready for #NRF2024 in January in New York City!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>NEWS</strong>! We are thrilled to report that our fans support propelled us as a finalist in <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vip-awards_vipawards-activity-7140055480747380737-bV2s?utm_medium=member_desktop&utm_source=share" rel="nofollow">The Retail Voice Award</a> for the <a href="https://www.vendorawards.com/" rel="nofollow">Vendors In Partnership</a> award gala at NRF 2024! You’re votes made a difference and we’re honored to be one of 3 finalists for this prestigious award!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>WOW!</strong> As we march into our 3<sup>rd</sup> year on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the <strong><em>top of the charts</em></strong> on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a>podcast platform!</p><p><br></p><p>#1 in the Top 100 Indie Management Monthly chart</p><p>#2 in the Top 100 Indie Management Weekly chart</p><p>#2 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Weekly chart</p><p>#3 in the Top 100 Marketing Weekly chart</p><p>#4 in the Top 100 Marketing Monthly chart</p><p><br></p><p>We can’t thank our <strong>Goodpods</strong> listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, E-Motive, </em>and<em> Swag, Tag &amp; Brag </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p>Follow us on Threads: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p> ff74d825-c7ee-4e75-9c97-47aebcb45ebd https://retailrazor.com/episode/s3e17-nrfforbeginners2 Wed, 13 Dec 2023 11:05:00 +0000 3254 no full S3E16 – I Am A RetailROI Champion, Taylor’s Version S3E16 – I Am A RetailROI Champion, Taylor’s Version 16 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E16 – I Am A RetailROI Champion, Taylor’s Version In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden discuss their partnership with Retail ROI. The episode is dedicated to how the retail industry can make a difference in the lives of children in need around the world. Highlights of the episode include discussions with Greg Buzek, president of IHL Group and Vicki Cantrell, CEO of Vendors in Partnership, detailing the history of RetailROI, a unique charity supported by the retail industry. Together they discuss different initiatives that have been undertaken by Retail ROI, including providing technology resources to children in Liberia during the Ebola crisis and supporting schools lacking necessary utilities for education. Greg and Vicki share highlights of the upcoming Super Saturday event during NRF in January including the special guest keynote! Join us to learn how everyone can make a difference for so many children by supporting this amazing organization! Retailers that attend Super Saturday help bring clean water to 100 children just by showing up! Learn more about RetailROI and the Super Sturday event, including how to register at RetailROI.org! WOW! As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform! We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked and E-Motive, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden discuss their partnership with Retail ROI. The episode is dedicated to how the retail industry can make a difference in the lives of children in need around the world. Highlights of the episode include discussions with Greg Buzek, president of IHL Group and Vicki Cantrell, CEO of Vendors in Partnership, detailing the history of RetailROI, a unique charity supported by the retail industry. Together they discuss different initiatives that have been undertaken by Retail ROI, including providing technology resources to children in Liberia during the Ebola crisis and supporting schools lacking necessary utilities for education. Greg and Vicki share highlights of the upcoming Super Saturday event during NRF in January including the special guest keynote! Join us to learn how everyone can make a difference for so many children by supporting this amazing organization! Retailers that attend Super Saturday help bring clean water to 100 children just by showing up! Learn more about RetailROI and the Super Sturday event, including how to register at RetailROI.org! 


WOW! As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform!


We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked and E-Motive, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

]]> <p>In this episode of the Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden discuss their partnership with Retail ROI. The episode is dedicated to how the retail industry can make a difference in the lives of children in need around the world. Highlights of the episode include discussions with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbuzek/" rel="nofollow">Greg Buzek</a>, president of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/ihl-services/" rel="nofollow">IHL Group</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickicantrell/" rel="nofollow">Vicki Cantrell</a>, CEO of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/vendors-in-partnership/" rel="nofollow">Vendors in Partnership</a>, detailing the history of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/retailroi" rel="nofollow">RetailROI</a>, a unique charity supported by the retail industry. Together they discuss different initiatives that have been undertaken by Retail ROI, including providing technology resources to children in Liberia during the Ebola crisis and supporting schools lacking necessary utilities for education. Greg and Vicki share highlights of the upcoming <strong>Super Saturday</strong> event during NRF in January including the special guest keynote! Join us to learn how everyone can make a difference for so many children by supporting this amazing organization! Retailers that attend Super Saturday help bring clean water to 100 children just by showing up! Learn more about RetailROI and the Super Sturday event, including how to register at <a href="https://www.retailroi.org/supersaturday" rel="nofollow">RetailROI.org</a>! </p><p><br></p><p><strong>WOW!</strong> As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the <strong><em>top of the charts</em></strong> on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast platform!</p><p><br></p><p>We can’t thank our <strong>Goodpods</strong> listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked </em>and<em> E-Motive, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p>Follow us on Threads: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p> 7024919b-542f-42c2-b5e0-32c0f3bc8591 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Tue, 05 Dec 2023 10:05:00 +0000 4316 no full S3E15 – The Intersection of Data & AI with Retail Transformer – Mir Ali of Kraft Heinz S3E15 – The Intersection of Data & AI with Retail Transformer – Mir Ali of Kraft Heinz 15 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E15 – The Intersection of Data & AI with Retail Transformer – Mir Ali of Kraft Heinz Join hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden in Episode 15 of the Retail Razor Show, as they dive deep into the world of data and AI within the retail sector. This episode features our latest Retail Transformer, Mir Ali, head of digital engineering at The Kraft Heinz Company. They discuss Kraft Heinz's journey developing a robust data foundation, the influence of AI tools, and strategies for integrating these within the business. Also highlighted is the importance of interconnecting insights from various channels of data. Together they critically discuss examples of practical issues faced by Kraft Heinz in their digital transformation journey that they aim to resolve with AI tools. Watch and learn about Kraft Heinz's unique challenges, and future directions in the area of data and AI with our latest Retail Transformer! You’ll learn why Mir Ali is unquestionably more than meets the eye! Plus, Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating, returns for our latest episode in the Retail Razor: Data Blades min-series where we discuss real-world numbers and consumer insights based on research at the point of sale! It's episode 6 and Georgina emphasizes data that explains the strategic advantage of well-informed store teams and shares a successful global sporting goods retailer's experience where they saw a 27 percent increase in average shopper spend when customers were given several product options by store associates. Georgina also emphasizes how these consumer insights can help in personalizing the shopping experience, suggesting complimentary products through cross-selling or premium options through upselling, and eventually leads to higher overall purchase values. WOW! As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform! We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Tech Lore from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Join hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden in Episode 15 of the Retail Razor Show, as they dive deep into the world of data and AI within the retail sector. This episode features our latest Retail Transformer, Mir Ali, head of digital engineering at The Kraft Heinz Company. They discuss Kraft Heinz's journey developing a robust data foundation, the influence of AI tools, and strategies for integrating these within the business. Also highlighted is the importance of interconnecting insights from various channels of data. Together they critically discuss examples of practical issues faced by Kraft Heinz in their digital transformation journey that they aim to resolve with AI tools. Watch and learn about Kraft Heinz's unique challenges, and future directions in the area of data and AI with our latest Retail Transformer! You’ll learn why Mir Ali is unquestionably more than meets the eye!


Plus, Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating, returns for our latest episode in the Retail Razor: Data Blades min-series where we discuss real-world numbers and consumer insights based on research at the point of sale! It's episode 6 and Georgina emphasizes data that explains the strategic advantage of well-informed store teams and shares a successful global sporting goods retailer's experience where they saw a 27 percent increase in average shopper spend when customers were given several product options by store associates. Georgina also emphasizes how these consumer insights can help in personalizing the shopping experience, suggesting complimentary products through cross-selling or premium options through upselling, and eventually leads to higher overall purchase values. 


WOW! As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform!


We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Tech Lore from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

]]> <p>Join hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden in Episode 15 of the Retail Razor Show, as they dive deep into the world of data and AI within the retail sector. This episode features our latest <strong><em>Retail Transformer</em></strong>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/miryali/" rel="nofollow">Mir Ali</a>, head of digital engineering at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-kraft-heinz-company/" rel="nofollow">The Kraft Heinz Company</a>. They discuss Kraft Heinz&#39;s journey developing a robust data foundation, the influence of AI tools, and strategies for integrating these within the business. Also highlighted is the importance of interconnecting insights from various channels of data. Together they critically discuss examples of practical issues faced by Kraft Heinz in their digital transformation journey that they aim to resolve with AI tools. Watch and learn about Kraft Heinz&#39;s unique challenges, and future directions in the area of data and AI with our latest Retail Transformer! You’ll learn why Mir Ali is unquestionably <em>more than meets the eye</em>!</p><p><br></p><p>Plus, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgina-nelson-11ab0631/" rel="nofollow">Georgina Nelson</a>, CEO of <a href="https://trurating.com/" rel="nofollow">TruRating</a>, returns for our latest episode in the Retail Razor: Data Blades min-series where we discuss real-world numbers and consumer insights based on research at the point of sale! It&#39;s episode 6 and Georgina emphasizes data that explains the strategic advantage of well-informed store teams and shares a successful global sporting goods retailer&#39;s experience where they saw a 27 percent increase in average shopper spend when customers were given several product options by store associates. Georgina also emphasizes how these consumer insights can help in personalizing the shopping experience, suggesting complimentary products through cross-selling or premium options through upselling, and eventually leads to higher overall purchase values. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>WOW!</strong> As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the <strong><em>top of the charts</em></strong> on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast platform!</p><p><br></p><p>We can’t thank our <strong>Goodpods</strong> listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, E-Motive, </em>and<em> Tech Lore </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p>Follow us on Threads: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p> 797b7e02-cc4b-42e5-ad60-b9defbe6bdf1 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Thu, 30 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000 2987 no full S3E14 - Unwrapping 2023 Holiday Season Trends with Roshan Jhunja & Andrew Lipsman S3E14 - Unwrapping 2023 Holiday Season Trends with Roshan Jhunja & Andrew Lipsman 14 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E14 - Unwrapping 2023 Holiday Season Trends with Roshan Jhunja & Andrew Lipsman Wondering how retail businesses are strategizing to enhance the role of physical stores for a more festive shopping journey this holiday season? What sales impact will Gen Z and millennials have this season? To find out, we asked two of our favorite commerce experts to share their insights and help us unwrap this holiday season’s mysteries! Roshan Jhunja, head of retail at Square, and Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail & ecommerce at Insider Intelligence join hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden for an enlightening analysis of the 2023 holiday shopping season! We explore the unpredictable behaviors of consumers since the pandemic and examine consumer and seller sentiment going into Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We also consider the evolving dynamics of mobile and social commerce, AI, the continued importance of omnichannel, and Buy Now Pay Later, touching on established e-commerce giants and up and coming platforms. The conversation also reviews how businesses strategies have shifted regarding staffing and technology augmentations, and the implications of such changes on customer experience. There’s much to unwrap in this episode and it’s all covered in less than 50 minutes! Reports mentioned in the podcast: Square and Afterpay Festive Forecast 2023: https://squareup.com/us/en/press/festive-forecast-2023 Insider Intelligence Holiday Shopping 2023 Forecast: https://content-na1.emarketer.com/holiday-shopping-2023 NEWS! We are pleased to announce that the Retail Razor Show is a Vendors In Partnership Awards nominee for The Retail Voice Award at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We're asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls: Here's how you can help by voting: 1. Visit https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X 2. Register to vote. 3. Vote for The Retail Razor Show in The Retail Voice Award category. WOW! As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform! We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Made It On Stream (Xmas), from the album Lo-Fi Christmas, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. Incldues sound effects provided by Free Sounds Library. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Wondering how retail businesses are strategizing to enhance the role of physical stores for a more festive shopping journey this holiday season? What sales impact will Gen Z and millennials have this season? To find out, we asked two of our favorite commerce experts to share their insights and help us unwrap this holiday season’s mysteries! Roshan Jhunja, head of retail at Square, and Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail & ecommerce at Insider Intelligence join hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden for an enlightening analysis of the 2023 holiday shopping season!


We explore the unpredictable behaviors of consumers since the pandemic and examine consumer and seller sentiment going into Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We also consider the evolving dynamics of mobile and social commerce, AI, the continued importance of omnichannel, and Buy Now Pay Later, touching on established e-commerce giants and up and coming platforms. The conversation also reviews how businesses strategies have shifted regarding staffing and technology augmentations, and the implications of such changes on customer experience.


There’s much to unwrap in this episode and it’s all covered in less than 50 minutes!


Reports mentioned in the podcast:

Square and Afterpay Festive Forecast 2023: https://squareup.com/us/en/press/festive-forecast-2023

Insider Intelligence Holiday Shopping 2023 Forecast: https://content-na1.emarketer.com/holiday-shopping-2023


NEWS! We are pleased to announce that the Retail Razor Show is a Vendors In Partnership Awards nominee for The Retail Voice Award at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We're asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls:


Here's how you can help by voting:

1. Visit https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X

2. Register to vote.

3. Vote for The Retail Razor Show in The Retail Voice Award category.


WOW! As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform!


We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Made It On Stream (Xmas), from the album Lo-Fi Christmas, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. Incldues sound effects provided by Free Sounds Library.


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey


]]> <p>Wondering how retail businesses are strategizing to enhance the role of physical stores for a more festive shopping journey this holiday season? What sales impact will Gen Z and millennials have this season? To find out, we asked two of our favorite commerce experts to share their insights and help us unwrap this holiday season’s mysteries! <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjhunja/" rel="nofollow">Roshan Jhunja</a>, head of retail at <a href="https://squareup.com/us/en/home/a3hb8" rel="nofollow">Square</a>, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-lipsman-10b2162/" rel="nofollow">Andrew Lipsman</a>, principal analyst for retail &amp; ecommerce at <a href="https://topics-na1.emarketer.com/industry/ecommerce-retail" rel="nofollow">Insider Intelligence</a> join hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden for an enlightening analysis of the 2023 holiday shopping season!</p><p><br></p><p>We explore the unpredictable behaviors of consumers since the pandemic and examine consumer and seller sentiment going into Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We also consider the evolving dynamics of mobile and social commerce, AI, the continued importance of omnichannel, and Buy Now Pay Later, touching on established e-commerce giants and up and coming platforms. The conversation also reviews how businesses strategies have shifted regarding staffing and technology augmentations, and the implications of such changes on customer experience.</p><p><br></p><p>There’s much to unwrap in this episode and it’s all covered in less than 50 minutes!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Reports mentioned in the podcast:</strong></p><p>Square and Afterpay <a href="https://squareup.com/us/en/press/festive-forecast-2023" rel="nofollow">Festive Forecast 2023</a>: <a href="https://squareup.com/us/en/press/festive-forecast-2023" rel="nofollow">https://squareup.com/us/en/press/festive-forecast-2023</a></p><p>Insider Intelligence <a href="https://content-na1.emarketer.com/holiday-shopping-2023" rel="nofollow">Holiday Shopping 2023</a> Forecast: <a href="https://content-na1.emarketer.com/holiday-shopping-2023" rel="nofollow">https://content-na1.emarketer.com/holiday-shopping-2023</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>NEWS!</strong> We are pleased to announce that the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/retail-razor/" rel="nofollow">Retail Razor </a>Show is a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/vip-awards/" rel="nofollow">Vendors In Partnership Awards</a> nominee for <strong>The Retail Voice Award</strong> at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We&#39;re asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls:</p><p><br></p><p>Here&#39;s how you can help by voting:</p><p>1. Visit <a href="https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X</a></p><p>2. Register to vote.</p><p>3. Vote for <em>The Retail Razor Show</em> in <strong>The Retail Voice Award</strong> category.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>WOW!</strong> As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the <strong><em>top of the charts</em></strong> on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast platform!</p><p><br></p><p>We can’t thank our <strong>Goodpods</strong> listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Made It On Stream (Xmas)</em>, from the album <em>Lo-Fi Christmas</em>, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. Incldues sound effects provided by Free Sounds Library.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p>Follow us on Threads: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p><br></p> 50f3d059-3590-4eab-8f4a-521827ff3cda https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 22 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0000 2983 no full S3E13 Unpacking The Magic of RFID with JP Kamel S3E13 Unpacking The Magic of RFID with JP Kamel 13 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E13 Unpacking The Magic of RFID with JP Kamel Hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden explore the diverse applications and benefits of RFID technology in the retail landscape, unlocking the potential for innovation from supply chain to in-store operations. Special guest John Pierre Kamel, managing director of RFID Sherpas, demonstrates how RFID excels in offering inventory visibility and accuracy to drive significant performance increases in retail business operations and sales. We also bring you the latest episode in our "Blade to Greatness" mini-series. In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we'll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. April Sabral, founder of retailu.ca, an online leadership development portal for field leaders and the author of two books, The Positive Effect, and her latest, Incurable Positivity, joins us to share her insights on an incredibly important topic that every retail leader needs to master: how to cultivate a positive culture for your retail employees! NEWS! We are pleased to announce that the Retail Razor Show is a Vendors In Partnership Awards nominee for The Retail Voice Award at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We're asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls: Here's how you can help by voting: 1. Visit https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X 2. Register to vote. 3. Vote for The Retail Razor Show in The Retail Voice Award category. WOW! As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform! We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! About our Guest: With over two decades of experience, JP Kamel is a seasoned retail technology veteran, with a keen focus on RFID, Mobility and Omni solutions. As the Managing Director of RFID Sherpas since 2010, JP has been a driving force behind transformative change for global retailers, branded suppliers, and technology companies implementing RFID. He specializes in helping to effect transformational change for his clients by harnessing the power of data, inventory accuracy & visibility, process re-engineering, and Artificial Intelligence. JP is a regular contributor to leading retail publications on the value of Inventory Accuracy and Visibility and has been a guest speaker and keynote at multiple conferences around the world. Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag, And Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden explore the diverse applications and benefits of RFID technology in the retail landscape, unlocking the potential for innovation from supply chain to in-store operations. Special guest John Pierre Kamel, managing director of RFID Sherpas, demonstrates how RFID excels in offering inventory visibility and accuracy to drive significant performance increases in retail business operations and sales.


We also bring you the latest episode in our "Blade to Greatness" mini-series. In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we'll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. April Sabral, founder of retailu.ca, an online leadership development portal for field leaders and the author of two books, The Positive Effect, and her latest, Incurable Positivity, joins us to share her insights on an incredibly important topic that every retail leader needs to master: how to cultivate a positive culture for your retail employees!


NEWS! We are pleased to announce that the Retail Razor Show is a Vendors In Partnership Awards nominee for The Retail Voice Award at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We're asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls:


Here's how you can help by voting:

1. Visit https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X

2. Register to vote.

3. Vote for The Retail Razor Show in The Retail Voice Award category.


WOW! As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform!


We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


About our Guest:

With over two decades of experience, JP Kamel is a seasoned retail technology veteran, with a keen focus on RFID, Mobility and Omni solutions. As the Managing Director of RFID Sherpas since 2010, JP has been a driving force behind transformative change for global retailers, branded suppliers, and technology companies implementing RFID. He specializes in helping to effect transformational change for his clients by harnessing the power of data, inventory accuracy & visibility, process re-engineering, and Artificial Intelligence. JP is a regular contributor to leading retail publications on the value of Inventory Accuracy and Visibility and has been a guest speaker and keynote at multiple conferences around the world.  


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag, And Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey


]]> <p>Hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden explore the diverse applications and benefits of RFID technology in the retail landscape, unlocking the potential for innovation from supply chain to in-store operations. Special guest <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpkamel/" rel="nofollow">John Pierre Kamel</a>, managing director of <a href="https://rfidsherpas.com/" rel="nofollow">RFID Sherpas</a>, demonstrates how RFID excels in offering inventory visibility and accuracy to drive significant performance increases in retail business operations and sales.</p><p><br></p><p>We also bring you the latest episode in our &#34;<strong>Blade to Greatness</strong>&#34; mini-series. In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we&#39;ll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprilsabral/" rel="nofollow">April Sabral</a>, founder of <a href="https://retailu.ca/" rel="nofollow">retailu.ca</a>, an online leadership development portal for field leaders and the author of two books, <a href="https://a.co/d/bALahmz" rel="nofollow">The Positive Effect</a>, and her latest, <a href="https://a.co/d/9ymiKiS" rel="nofollow">Incurable Positivity</a>, joins us to share her insights on an incredibly important topic that every retail leader needs to master: how to cultivate a positive culture for your retail employees!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>NEWS!</strong> We are pleased to announce that the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/retail-razor/" rel="nofollow">Retail Razor </a>Show is a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/vip-awards/" rel="nofollow">Vendors In Partnership Awards</a> nominee for <strong>The Retail Voice Award</strong> at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We&#39;re asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls:</p><p><br></p><p>Here&#39;s how you can help by voting:</p><p>1. Visit <a href="https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X</a></p><p>2. Register to vote.</p><p>3. Vote for <em>The Retail Razor Show</em> in <strong>The Retail Voice Award</strong> category.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>WOW!</strong> As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the <strong><em>top of the charts</em></strong> on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast platform!</p><p><br></p><p>We can’t thank our <strong>Goodpods</strong> listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guest:</strong></p><p>With over two decades of experience, JP Kamel is a seasoned retail technology veteran, with a keen focus on RFID, Mobility and Omni solutions. As the Managing Director of RFID Sherpas since 2010, JP has been a driving force behind transformative change for global retailers, branded suppliers, and technology companies implementing RFID. He specializes in helping to effect transformational change for his clients by harnessing the power of data, inventory accuracy &amp; visibility, process re-engineering, and Artificial Intelligence. JP is a regular contributor to leading retail publications on the value of Inventory Accuracy and Visibility and has been a guest speaker and keynote at multiple conferences around the world.  </p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, E-Motive, </em>and<em> Swag, Tag, And Brag </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p>Follow us on Threads: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p><br></p> 5ef35ab2-737f-463e-9739-25a4f1ef648e https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 17 Nov 2023 12:05:00 +0000 3194 no full S3E12 Harnessing the Power of Spatial Computing with Neil Redding | #GroceryshopLive S3E12 Harnessing the Power of Spatial Computing with Neil Redding | #GroceryshopLive 12 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E12 Harnessing the Power of Spatial Computing with Neil Redding | #GroceryshopLive Our final recording, live and in-person, raw and uncut, from Groceryshop 2023 has our hosts, Ricardo Belmar and guest host Jeff Roster learning how to harness the power of spatial computing with returning guest, Neil Redding, Founder and CEO of Redding Futures! Part of our special cross-over event with This Week in Innovation podcast, Jeff and Ricardo sat down with Neil to understand how Auki Labs new product release is redefining retail operations via the benefits of spatial computing and augmented reality, resulting in increased productivity and efficiency for store teams. The trio discuss what the future looks like for spatial computing use cases in retail, attempt to forecast the market for spatial computing, consider applications with autonomous vehicles and robotics, and close the discussion with a fun look at how Apple’s mainstreaming of spatial computing might impact the technology’s future! We also bring you the latest episode in our "Blade to Greatness" mini-series. In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we'll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. Ron Thurston, co-founder of Ossy, author of Retail Pride, the Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career, host of the Retail in America nationwide tour and podcast, speaker, advisor, board member, and former retail operations leader at Intermix, Saint Laurent, Bonobos, Tory Burch, Apple, and Williams-Sonoma joins us to share his insights on the issues facing frontline retail workers and retail leaders today. In this episode, Ron talks to us about why it’s so important for retail leaders to implement a career development culture as the first step to change their mindset and make change in the recruiting and retention of retail employees! NEWS! We are pleased to announce that the Retail Razor Show is a Vendors In Partnership Awards nominee for The Retail Voice Award at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We're asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls: Here's how you can help by voting: 1. Visit https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X 2. Register to vote. 3. Vote for The Retail Razor Show in The Retail Voice Award category. WOW! As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform! No. 1 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts of the week chart No. 2 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts of the month chart No. 5 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Podcasts of the week chart We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! About our Guest: Neil Redding is a keynote speaker, author, Innovation Architect and Near Futurist. Neil has worked at the convergence of digital and physical for decades, and is an expert in spatial computing, virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), AI and convergent brand ecosystems. Neil currently leads Redding Futures, a boutique consultancy that enables brands and businesses to powerfully the Near Future. Prior to founding Redding Futures, Neil held leadership roles at Mediacom, Proximity/BBDO, Gensler, ThoughtWorks, Auki Labs, and Lab49. Neil is also editor of Near Future of Retail, author of the forthcoming book The Ecosystem Paradigm, and advises multiple startups at the leading edge of the digital-physical convergence. Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag, And Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Our final recording, live and in-person, raw and uncut, from Groceryshop 2023 has our hosts, Ricardo Belmar and guest host Jeff Roster learning how to harness the power of spatial computing with returning guest, Neil Redding, Founder and CEO of Redding Futures! Part of our special cross-over event with This Week in Innovation podcast, Jeff and Ricardo sat down with Neil to understand how Auki Labs new product release is redefining retail operations via the benefits of spatial computing and augmented reality, resulting in increased productivity and efficiency for store teams. The trio discuss what the future looks like for spatial computing use cases in retail, attempt to forecast the market for spatial computing, consider applications with autonomous vehicles and robotics, and close the discussion with a fun look at how Apple’s mainstreaming of spatial computing might impact the technology’s future!


We also bring you the latest episode in our "Blade to Greatness" mini-series. In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we'll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. Ron Thurston, co-founder of Ossy, author of Retail Pride, the Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career, host of the Retail in America nationwide tour and podcast, speaker, advisor, board member, and former retail operations leader at Intermix, Saint Laurent, Bonobos, Tory Burch, Apple, and Williams-Sonoma joins us to share his insights on the issues facing frontline retail workers and retail leaders today.


In this episode, Ron talks to us about why it’s so important for retail leaders to implement a career development culture as the first step to change their mindset and make change in the recruiting and retention of retail employees!


NEWS! We are pleased to announce that the Retail Razor Show is a Vendors In Partnership Awards nominee for The Retail Voice Award at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We're asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls:


Here's how you can help by voting:

1. Visit https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X

2. Register to vote.

3. Vote for The Retail Razor Show in The Retail Voice Award category.


WOW! As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform!


No. 1 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts of the week chart

No. 2 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts of the month chart

No. 5 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Podcasts of the week chart


We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


About our Guest:

Neil Redding is a keynote speaker, author, Innovation Architect and Near Futurist. Neil has worked at the convergence of digital and physical for decades, and is an expert in spatial computing, virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), AI and convergent brand ecosystems. Neil currently leads Redding Futures, a boutique consultancy that enables brands and businesses to powerfully the Near Future. Prior to founding Redding Futures, Neil held leadership roles at Mediacom, Proximity/BBDO, Gensler, ThoughtWorks, Auki Labs, and Lab49. Neil is also editor of Near Future of Retail, author of the forthcoming book The Ecosystem Paradigm, and advises multiple startups at the leading edge of the digital-physical convergence.


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag, And Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

]]> <p>Our final recording, live and in-person, raw and uncut, from <a href="https://groceryshop.com/" rel="nofollow">Groceryshop 2023</a> has our hosts, Ricardo Belmar and guest host <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-8828b8257/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Roster</a> learning how to harness the power of <strong>spatial computing</strong> with returning guest, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/reddingneil/" rel="nofollow">Neil Redding</a>, Founder and CEO of Redding Futures! Part of our special cross-over event with <a href="https://thisweekininnovation.com/" rel="nofollow">This Week in Innovation</a> podcast, Jeff and Ricardo sat down with Neil to understand how Auki Labs new product release is redefining retail operations via the benefits of spatial computing and augmented reality, resulting in increased productivity and efficiency for store teams. The trio discuss what the future looks like for spatial computing use cases in retail, attempt to forecast the market for spatial computing, consider applications with autonomous vehicles and robotics, and close the discussion with a fun look at how Apple’s mainstreaming of spatial computing might impact the technology’s future!</p><p><br></p><p>We also bring you the latest episode in our <strong>&#34;Blade to Greatness&#34;</strong> mini-series. In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we&#39;ll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rthurston/" rel="nofollow">Ron Thurston</a>, co-founder of <a href="https://www.useossy.com/" rel="nofollow">Ossy</a>, author of <a href="https://a.co/d/7SFCBxx" rel="nofollow"><em>Retail Pride, the Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career</em></a>, host of the <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/retail-in-america/id1618323713?i=1000586268458" rel="nofollow">Retail in America nationwide tour and podcast</a>, speaker, advisor, board member, and former retail operations leader at Intermix, Saint Laurent, Bonobos, Tory Burch, Apple, and Williams-Sonoma joins us to share his insights on the issues facing frontline retail workers and retail leaders today.</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode, Ron talks to us about why it’s so important for retail leaders to implement a career development culture as the first step to change their mindset and make change in the recruiting and retention of retail employees!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>NEWS!</strong> We are pleased to announce that the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/retail-razor/" rel="nofollow">Retail Razor </a>Show is a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/vip-awards/" rel="nofollow">Vendors In Partnership Awards</a> nominee for <strong>The Retail Voice Award</strong> at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We&#39;re asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls:</p><p><br></p><p>Here&#39;s how you can help by voting:</p><p>1. Visit <a href="https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X</a></p><p>2. Register to vote.</p><p>3. Vote for <em>The Retail Razor Show</em> in <strong>The Retail Voice Award</strong> category.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>WOW!</strong> As we zoom past our 2-year anniversary on the show, we’re honored and humbled to have hit the <strong><em>top of the charts</em></strong> on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast platform!</p><p><br></p><p>No. 1 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts of the week chart</p><p>No. 2 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts of the month chart</p><p>No. 5 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Podcasts of the week chart</p><p><br></p><p>We can’t thank our <strong>Goodpods</strong> listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>About our Guest:</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/reddingneil/" rel="nofollow">Neil Redding</a> is a <a href="https://www.neilredding.com/" rel="nofollow">keynote speaker</a>, author, Innovation Architect and Near Futurist. Neil has worked at the convergence of digital and physical for decades, and is an expert in spatial computing, virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), AI and convergent brand ecosystems. Neil currently leads <a href="https://reddingfutures.com/" rel="nofollow">Redding Futures</a>, a boutique consultancy that enables brands and businesses to powerfully the Near Future. Prior to founding Redding Futures, Neil held leadership roles at Mediacom, Proximity/BBDO, Gensler, ThoughtWorks, Auki Labs, and Lab49. Neil is also editor of Near Future of Retail, author of the forthcoming book <a href="https://theecosystemparadigm.com/" rel="nofollow"><em>The Ecosystem Paradigm</em></a>, and advises multiple startups at the leading edge of the digital-physical convergence.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Meet your hosts,</strong> helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, E-Motive, </em>and<em> Swag, Tag, And Brag </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p>Follow us on Threads: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p> 844d16ff-1b12-435e-aca0-335bba2ceb87 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 03 Nov 2023 10:05:00 +0000 3241 no full S3E11 State of Retail Media with Andrew Lipsman | #GroceryshopLive S3E11 State of Retail Media with Andrew Lipsman | #GroceryshopLive 11 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E11 State of Retail Media with Andrew Lipsman | #GroceryshopLive Our latest recording, live and in-person, raw and uncut, from Groceryshop 2023 shines a light on one of the top trends from the show – Retail Media Networks! Part of our special cross-over event with guest host, Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar invited leading retail media analyst, Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail & e-commerce at Insider Intelligence, to the mic. Together they analyze everything from Instacart’s IPO, which landed on Day 1 of Groceryshop, to defining what it takes to create a successful retail media network, to identifying how RMNs will expand beyond search, and beyond in-store media. Hint – start thinking about connected TV and streaming TV! What will the future hold for retail media? Our trio spells it out in about 30 minutes! We also bring you the latest episode in our "Retail Razor Data Blades" mini-series, where we discuss real-world numbers and consumer insights based on research at the point of sale with the help of Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating. In this episode, Georgina continues our exploration of self-checkout to help retailers understand why the perception of choice is essential during the checkout experience for consumers! NEWS! We are pleased to announce that the Retail Razor Show is a Vendors In Partnership Awards nominee for The Retail Voice Award at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We're asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls: Here's how you can help by voting: 1. Visit https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X 2. Register to vote. 3. Vote for The Retail Razor Show in The Retail Voice Award category. WOW! As we reach our 2-year anniversary with the show, we’re honored and humbled to hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform! No. 1 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts of the week chart No. 2 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts of the month chart No. 5 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Podcasts of the week chart We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Tech Lore from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Our latest recording, live and in-person, raw and uncut, from Groceryshop 2023 shines a light on one of the top trends from the show – Retail Media Networks! Part of our special cross-over event with guest host, Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar invited leading retail media analyst, Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail & e-commerce at Insider Intelligence, to the mic. Together they analyze everything from Instacart’s IPO, which landed on Day 1 of Groceryshop, to defining what it takes to create a successful retail media network, to identifying how RMNs will expand beyond search, and beyond in-store media. Hint – start thinking about connected TV and streaming TV! What will the future hold for retail media? Our trio spells it out in about 30 minutes!


We also bring you the latest episode in our "Retail Razor Data Blades" mini-series, where we discuss real-world numbers and consumer insights based on research at the point of sale with the help of Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating. In this episode, Georgina continues our exploration of self-checkout to help retailers understand why the perception of choice is essential during the checkout experience for consumers!


NEWS! We are pleased to announce that the Retail Razor Show is a Vendors In Partnership Awards nominee for The Retail Voice Award at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We're asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls:


Here's how you can help by voting:

1. Visit https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X

2. Register to vote.

3. Vote for The Retail Razor Show in The Retail Voice Award category.


WOW! As we reach our 2-year anniversary with the show, we’re honored and humbled to hit the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform!


No. 1 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts of the week chart

No. 2 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts of the month chart

No. 5 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Podcasts of the week chart


We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Tech Lore from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

]]> <p>Our latest recording, live and in-person, raw and uncut, from <a href="https://groceryshop.com/" rel="nofollow">Groceryshop 2023</a> shines a light on one of the top trends from the show – Retail Media Networks! Part of our special cross-over event with guest host, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-8828b8257/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Roster</a>, host of <a href="https://thisweekininnovation.com/" rel="nofollow">This Week in Innovation</a> podcast, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar invited leading retail media analyst, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-lipsman-10b2162/" rel="nofollow">Andrew Lipsman</a>, principal analyst for retail &amp; e-commerce at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/insider-intelligence/" rel="nofollow">Insider Intelligence</a>, to the mic. Together they analyze everything from <strong>Instacart’s</strong> IPO, which landed on Day 1 of Groceryshop, to defining what it takes to create a successful retail media network, to identifying how RMNs will expand <em>beyond</em> search, and <em>beyond</em> in-store media. <strong>Hint</strong> – start thinking about connected TV and streaming TV! What will the future hold for retail media? Our trio spells it out in about 30 minutes!</p><p><br></p><p>We also bring you the latest episode in our <strong>&#34;Retail Razor Data Blades&#34; </strong>mini-series, where we discuss real-world numbers and consumer insights based on research at the point of sale with the help of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgina-nelson-11ab0631/" rel="nofollow">Georgina Nelson</a>, CEO of <a href="https://trurating.com/" rel="nofollow">TruRating</a>. In this episode, Georgina continues our exploration of self-checkout to help retailers understand why <strong>the perception of choice is essential during the checkout experience for consumers</strong>!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>NEWS! </strong>We are pleased to announce that the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/retail-razor/" rel="nofollow">Retail Razor </a>Show is a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/vip-awards/" rel="nofollow">Vendors In Partnership Awards</a> nominee for The Retail Voice Award at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We&#39;re asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls:</p><p><br></p><p>Here&#39;s how you can help by voting:</p><p>1. Visit <a href="https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X</a></p><p>2. Register to vote.</p><p>3. Vote for <em>The Retail Razor Show</em> in The Retail Voice Award category.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>WOW!</strong> As we reach our <em>2-year anniversary</em> with the show, we’re honored and humbled to hit the <strong><em>top of the charts</em></strong> on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast platform!</p><p><br></p><p>No. 1 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts of the week chart</p><p>No. 2 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts of the month chart</p><p>No. 5 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Podcasts of the week chart</p><p><br></p><p><em>We can’t thank our </em><strong><em>Goodpods</em></strong><em> listeners enough</em>! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in <strong>retail</strong> &amp; <strong>retail tech</strong>:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, E-Motive, </em>and<em> Tech Lore </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p>Follow us on Threads: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p> 5f7ed0c8-c839-49ef-8522-6a76af2a2776 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Tue, 24 Oct 2023 11:30:00 +0000 3052 no full S3E10 Startup Trends with Shish Shridhar | #GroceryshopLive S3E10 Startup Trends with Shish Shridhar | #GroceryshopLive 10 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E10 Startup Trends with Shish Shridhar | #GroceryshopLive We continue our series of recordings live and in-person at Groceryshop 2023 this episode with a fascinating exploration of trends in the world of startups with Microsoft for Startups global retail lead, Shish Shridhar. Part of our special cross-over event with guest host, Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar sat down with Shish to discuss 3 trends at Groceryshop in the context of the startup community – Generative AI, meal planning, and automation. Plus, the trio take a look at what we should expect in the broader retail tech community over the next 6 months going into 2024. It’s a Retail Avengers reunion from back in our original Clubhouse days – get ready for a fun discussion with the potential to go in any direction with this trio! We also bring you the latest episode in our ‘Blade to Greatness’ mini-series! In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we'll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. Jeffrey McNulty, Founder and CEO of New Retail Ethos Consultancy, author of The Ultimate Retail Manual, and creator of The Ultimate Retail Course: Become a Retail RockStar returns to the show for this powerful new segment to discuss an incredibly important skill retail leaders need – fostering intrapreneurship! NEWS! We are pleased to announce that the Retail Razor Show is a Vendors In Partnership Awards nominee for The Retail Voice Award at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We're asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls: Here's how you can help by voting: 1. Visit https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X 2. Register to vote. 3. Vote for The Retail Razor Show in The Retail Voice Award category. WOW! As we hit our 2-year anniversary with the show, we’re honored and humbled to reach the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform! No. 1 in the Top Indie Management Podcasts of the week chart No. 3 in the Top Indie Management Podcasts of the month chart No. 7 in the Top Marketing Podcasts of the week chart We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! UPDATE - We're currently at number 20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts & help us move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey We continue our series of recordings live and in-person at Groceryshop 2023 this episode with a fascinating exploration of trends in the world of startups with Microsoft for Startups global retail lead, Shish Shridhar. Part of our special cross-over event with guest host, Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar sat down with Shish to discuss 3 trends at Groceryshop in the context of the startup community – Generative AI, meal planning, and automation. Plus, the trio take a look at what we should expect in the broader retail tech community over the next 6 months going into 2024. It’s a Retail Avengers reunion from back in our original Clubhouse days – get ready for a fun, raw and uncut, discussion with the potential to go in any direction with this trio!


We also bring you the latest episode in our ‘Blade to Greatness’ mini-series! In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we'll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. Jeffrey McNulty, Founder and CEO of New Retail Ethos Consultancy, author of The Ultimate Retail Manual, and creator of The Ultimate Retail Course: Become a Retail RockStarreturns to the show for this powerful new segment to discuss an incredibly important skill retail leaders need – fostering intrapreneurship!


NEWS! We are pleased to announce that the Retail Razor Show is a Vendors In Partnership Awards nominee for The Retail Voice Award at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We're asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls:


Here's how you can help by voting:

1. Visit https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X

2. Register to vote.

3. Vote for The Retail Razor Show in The Retail Voice Award category.


WOW! As we hit our 2-year anniversary with the show, we’re honored and humbled to reach the top of the charts on the Goodpods podcast platform!


No. 1 in the Top Indie Management Podcasts of the week chart

No. 3 in the Top Indie Management Podcasts of the month chart

No. 7 in the Top Marketing Podcasts of the week chart


We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


UPDATE - We're currently at number 20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts & help us move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta

Follow us on Threads: https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

]]> <p>We continue our series of recordings live and in-person at <a href="https://groceryshop.com/" rel="nofollow">Groceryshop 2023</a> this episode with a fascinating exploration of <strong>trends in the world of startups</strong> with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoftforstartups/" rel="nofollow">Microsoft for Startups</a> <em>global retail lead</em>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shishs/" rel="nofollow">Shish Shridhar</a>. Part of our special cross-over event with guest host, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-8828b8257/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Roster</a>, host of <a href="https://thisweekininnovation.com/" rel="nofollow">This Week in Innovation</a> podcast, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar sat down with Shish to discuss 3 trends at Groceryshop in the context of the startup community – <strong>Generative AI, meal planning</strong>, and <strong>automation</strong>. Plus, the trio take a look at what we should expect in the broader retail tech community over the next 6 months going into 2024. It’s a Retail Avengers reunion from back in our original Clubhouse days – get ready for a fun, raw and uncut, discussion with the potential to go in any direction with this trio!</p><p><br></p><p>We also bring you the latest episode in our ‘Blade to Greatness’ mini-series! In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we&#39;ll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypmcnulty/" rel="nofollow">Jeffrey McNulty</a>, Founder and CEO of <a href="http://www.newretailethos.com/" rel="nofollow">New Retail Ethos Consultancy</a>, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Retail-Manual-Strategies-Retailers/dp/1732565414" rel="nofollow">The Ultimate Retail Manual</a>, and creator of <a href="https://theultimateretailcourse.thinkific.com/courses/BECOME-A-RETAIL-ROCKSTAR" rel="nofollow">The Ultimate Retail Course: Become a Retail RockStar</a>returns to the show for this powerful new segment to discuss an incredibly important skill retail leaders need – fostering intrapreneurship!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>NEWS! </strong>We are pleased to announce that the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/retail-razor/" rel="nofollow">Retail Razor </a>Show is a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/vip-awards/" rel="nofollow">Vendors In Partnership Awards</a> nominee for <strong>The Retail Voice Award</strong> at the upcoming NRF Big Show 2024! We&#39;re asking all our listeners and YouTube viewers to help us win by showing your love for our show in the voting polls:</p><p><br></p><p>Here&#39;s how you can help by voting:</p><p>1. Visit <a href="https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/3QlKr4X</a></p><p>2. Register to vote.</p><p>3. Vote for <em>The Retail Razor Show</em> in The Retail Voice Award category.</p><p><br></p><p>WOW! As we hit our 2-year anniversary with the show, we’re honored and humbled to reach the <strong><em>top of the charts</em></strong> on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast platform!</p><p><br></p><p>No. 1 in the Top Indie Management Podcasts of the week chart</p><p>No. 3 in the Top Indie Management Podcasts of the month chart</p><p>No. 7 in the Top Marketing Podcasts of the week chart</p><p><br></p><p><em>We can’t thank our Goodpods listeners enough!</em> We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p>UPDATE - We&#39;re currently at number 20 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list</a> – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts &amp; help us move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, E-Motive, </em>and<em> Swag, Tag &amp; Brag </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSinsta</a></p><p>Follow us on Threads: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSthreads</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p> e2788685-6a82-4241-b5a0-97958e1f4a85 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 13 Oct 2023 13:03:22 +0000 3300 no full S3E9 Groceryshop Recap with Krystina Gustafson & Ben Miller | #GroceryshopLive S3E9 Groceryshop Recap with Krystina Gustafson & Ben Miller | #GroceryshopLive 9 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E9 Groceryshop Recap with Krystina Gustafson & Ben Miller | #GroceryshopLive Did you miss Groceryshop 2023? Or were you so busy there that you missed out on the best sessions and are left wondering what were the big, raw themes from the show? No worries – we teamed up once again with special guest host, Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast, to bring you the best live, in-person interviews from the Groceryshop podcast room! So, to bring you the final word on what really happened at this year’s conference, including all the hot topics and themes, we went straight to the source – the Groceryshop content team! Jeff Roster and Ricardo Belmar sat down with Krystina Gustafson, SVP of Content, and Ben Miller, Director of Original Content to cover all the details you need to know. What was the mood at the show? What were the hottest topics? What technologies had all the buzz? You can probably guess at least two of them – all things AI and retail media, but there’s more to the story and Krystina and Ben break it down for you in this insightful, candid, raw, unedited conversation with Jeff and Ricardo. UPDATE - We're currently at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts & help us move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ WOW! Join us in celebrating our latest top of the charts achievements on the Goodpods podcast platform! No. 4 in the Weekly Top 100 Indie Management charts No. 5 in the Monthly Top 100 Indie Management charts No. 8 in the Weekly Top 100 Indie Marketing charts No. 9 in the Monthly Top 100 Indie Marketing charts Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclockedand E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Did you miss Groceryshop 2023? Or were you so busy there that you missed out on the best sessions and are left wondering what were the big, raw themes from the show? No worries – we teamed up once again with special guest host, Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast, to bring you the best live, in-person interviews from the Groceryshop podcast room! So, to bring you the final word on what really happened at this year’s conference, including all the hot topics and themes, we went straight to the source – the Groceryshop content team!


Jeff Roster and Ricardo Belmar sat down with Krystina Gustafson, SVP of Content, and Ben Miller, Director of Original Content to cover all the details you need to know. What was the mood at the show? What were the hottest topics? What technologies had all the buzz? You can probably guess at least two of them – all things AI and retail media, but there’s more to the story and Krystina and Ben break it down for you in this insightful, candid, raw, unedited conversation with Jeff and Ricardo.


UPDATE - We're currently at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts & help us move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


WOW! Join us in celebrating our latest top of the charts achievements on the Goodpods podcast platform!


No. 4 in the Weekly Top 100 Indie Management charts

No. 5 in the Monthly Top 100 Indie Management charts

No. 8 in the Weekly Top 100 Indie Marketing charts

No. 9 in the Monthly Top 100 Indie Marketing charts


Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclockedand E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey



]]> <p>Did you miss <a href="https://groceryshop.com/" rel="nofollow">Groceryshop 2023</a>? Or were you so busy there that you missed out on the best sessions and are left wondering what were the big, raw themes from the show? No worries – we teamed up once again with special guest host, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-8828b8257/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Roster</a>, host of <a href="https://thisweekininnovation.com/" rel="nofollow">This Week in Innovation</a> podcast, to bring you the best live, in-person interviews from the Groceryshop podcast room! So, to bring you the final word on what really happened at this year’s conference, including all the hot topics and themes, we went straight to the source – the Groceryshop content team!</p><p><br></p><p>Jeff Roster and Ricardo Belmar sat down with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystina-gustafson-908a5a14/" rel="nofollow">Krystina Gustafson</a>, SVP of Content, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmillershoptalk/" rel="nofollow">Ben Miller</a>, Director of Original Content to cover all the details you need to know. What was the mood at the show? What were the hottest topics? What technologies had all the buzz? You can probably guess at least two of them – all things AI and retail media, but there’s more to the story and Krystina and Ben break it down for you in this insightful, candid, raw, unedited conversation with Jeff and Ricardo.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>UPDATE</strong> - We&#39;re currently at number 19 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list</a> – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts &amp; help us move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</p><p><br></p><p><strong>WOW!</strong> Join us in celebrating our latest <strong>top of the charts</strong> achievements on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast platform!</p><p><br></p><p>No. 4 in the Weekly <em>Top 100 Indie Management</em> charts</p><p>No. 5 in the Monthly <em>Top 100 Indie Management</em> charts</p><p>No. 8 in the Weekly <em>Top 100 Indie Marketing</em> charts</p><p>No. 9 in the Monthly <em>Top 100 Indie Marketing</em> charts</p><p><br></p><p>Thank you <strong>Goodpods</strong> listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked</em>and<em> E-Motive </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p> 944be332-b8ff-457a-9a96-e658aff40733 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Sun, 01 Oct 2023 03:25:00 +0000 2309 no full S3E8 Unlocking Retail – Part One S3E8 Unlocking Retail – Part One 8 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E8 Unlocking Retail – Part One This episode has our hosts, Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden, reflect on this season’s three themes and past episodes, focusing on the technology that will unlock business potential for retailers and enhance the shopping experience for consumers. Ricardo and Casey share their vision for a personalized virtual shopping experience, where we can preview products and interact with sales associates before visiting the store. Underpinning the many experiences they highlight – customer data platforms! Ricardo and Casey discuss how CDPs are critical to the future of retail and how this critical technology will help retailers and brands diversify their channels to reach consumers effectively, as traditional channels are becoming less effective. Of course, that means a quick debate on where retail media is headed! We also bring back last season’s fan favorite segment, "Retail Razor Data Blades" to discuss real-world numbers and consumer insights based on research at the point of sale with the help of Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating. In this episode, Georgina highlights the power of self-checkout – exactly why do consumers like self-checkout, or do they? Georgina has the data that shows us the answer! We're currently at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts & help us move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Wow! Join us in celebrating our latest top of the charts achievements on the Goodpods podcast platform! No. 3 in the Weekly Top 100 Indie Management charts No. 6 in the Monthly Top 100 Indie Management charts No. 9 in the Monthly Top 100 Indie Marketing charts Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Tech Lore from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey This episode has our hosts, Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden, reflect on this season’s three themes and past episodes, focusing on the technology that will unlock business potential for retailers and enhance the shopping experience for consumers. Ricardo and Casey share their vision for a personalized virtual shopping experience, where we can preview products and interact with sales associates before visiting the store. 


Underpinning the many experiences they highlight – customer data platforms! Ricardo and Casey discuss how CDPs are critical to the future of retail and how this critical technology will help retailers and brands diversify their channels to reach consumers effectively, as traditional channels are becoming less effective. Of course, that means a quick debate on where retail media is headed!


We also bring back last season’s fan favorite segment, "Retail Razor Data Blades" to discuss real-world numbers and consumer insights based on research at the point of sale with the help of Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating. 


In this episode, Georgina highlights the power of self-checkout – exactly why do consumers like self-checkout, or do they? Georgina has the data that shows us the answer!


We're currently at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts & help us move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Wow! Join us in celebrating our latest top of the charts achievements on the Goodpods podcast platform!


No. 3 in the Weekly Top 100 Indie Management charts

No. 6 in the Monthly Top 100 Indie Management charts

No. 9 in the Monthly Top 100 Indie Marketing charts


Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Tech Lore from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey



]]> <p>This episode has our hosts, Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden, reflect on this season’s three themes and past episodes, focusing on the technology that will unlock business potential for retailers and enhance the shopping experience for consumers. Ricardo and Casey share their vision for a personalized virtual shopping experience, where we can preview products and interact with sales associates before visiting the store. </p><p><br></p><p>Underpinning the many experiences they highlight – customer data platforms! Ricardo and Casey discuss how CDPs are critical to the future of retail and how this critical technology will help retailers and brands diversify their channels to reach consumers effectively, as traditional channels are becoming less effective. Of course, that means a quick debate on where retail media is headed!</p><p><br></p><p>We also bring back last season’s fan favorite segment, &#34;Retail Razor Data Blades&#34; to discuss real-world numbers and consumer insights based on research at the point of sale with the help of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgina-nelson-11ab0631/" rel="nofollow">Georgina Nelson</a>, CEO of <a href="https://trurating.com/" rel="nofollow">TruRating</a>. </p><p><br></p><p>In this episode, Georgina highlights the power of self-checkout – exactly why do consumers like self-checkout, or do they? Georgina has the data that shows us the answer!</p><p><br></p><p>We&#39;re currently at number 19 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list</a> – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts &amp; help us move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</p><p><br></p><p>Wow! Join us in celebrating our latest top of the charts achievements on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast platform!</p><p><br></p><p>No. 3 in the Weekly Top 100 Indie Management charts</p><p>No. 6 in the Monthly Top 100 Indie Management charts</p><p>No. 9 in the Monthly Top 100 Indie Marketing charts</p><p><br></p><p>Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, E-Motive, </em>and<em> Tech Lore </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p> aa0ebd22-70ae-49e4-b2e6-89828fe9ee78 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 22 Sep 2023 11:30:00 +0000 1985 no full S3E7 What is the Future of Video Commerce? S3E7 What is the Future of Video Commerce? 7 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E7 What is the Future of Video Commerce? Our spotlight shines again on immersive commerce this episode! We are answering a critically important question for retailers - what is the future of video commerce? To answer this question and truly dive deep into the treasure trove of conversion that is video commerce we've invited Vincent Yang, co-founder and CEO of Firework to the show! Vincent guides us through understanding the true nature and capabilities of video commerce. It's a fascinating discussion where you'll come away with an incredible list of insights and best practices you can apply to your retail business! We start with livestreaming, move to shoppable video and areas far beyond. Join us as we venture into mid-funnel and bottom funnel marketing strategies, to brand awareness tactics, to understanding marketing vs advertising and learn how video drives human engagement online. If you thought livestreaming was all there is to video in retail – think again! You’ll learn why a video commerce strategy is the digital equivalent to having an engaging store associate guide your customer journey. Plus, we bring you the fourth topic in our new leadership segment on the show – ‘Blade to Greatness’! Ron Thurston, co-founder of Ossy, author of Retail Pride, the Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career, host of the Retail in America nationwide tour and podcast, speaker, advisor, board member, and former retail operations leader at Intermix, Saint Laurent, Bonobos, Tory Burch, Apple, and Williams-Sonoma joins us to share his insights on the issues facing frontline retail workers and retail leaders today. In this episode, Ron talks to us about one of the most important skills a retail leader needs to master: How to reframe your current job search processes to hire the right person! We're currently at number 18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts & help keep moving our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Wow! Join us in celebrating our top of the charts achievements on the Goodpods podcast player! No. 2 Podcast of the Week on the Management charts Top 5 Podcast of the Month in the Management charts Top 5 Podcast of the Week on the Marketing Charts Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Our spotlight shines again on immersive commerce this episode! We are answering a critically important question for retailers - what is the future of video commerce? To answer this question and truly dive deep into the treasure trove of conversion that is video commerce we've invited Vincent Yang, co-founder and CEO of Firework to the show! Vincent guides us through understanding the true nature and capabilities of video commerce. It's a fascinating discussion where you'll come away with an incredible list of insights and best practices you can apply to your retail business! We start with livestreaming, move to shoppable video and areas far beyond. Join us as we venture into mid-funnel and bottom funnel marketing strategies, to brand awareness tactics, to understanding marketing vs advertising and learn how video drives human engagement online. If you thought livestreaming was all there is to video in retail – think again! You’ll learn why a video commerce strategy is the digital equivalent to having an engaging store associate guide your customer journey.


Plus, we bring you the fourth topic in our new leadership segment on the show – ‘Blade to Greatness’! Ron Thurston, co-founder of Ossy, author of Retail Pride, the Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career, host of the Retail in America nationwide tour and podcast, speaker, advisor, board member, and former retail operations leader at Intermix, Saint Laurent, Bonobos, Tory Burch, Apple, and Williams-Sonoma joins us to share his insights on the issues facing frontline retail workers and retail leaders today.


In this episode, Ron talks to us about one of the most important skills a retail leader needs to master:


How to reframe your current job search processes to hire the right person!


We're currently at number 18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts & help keep moving our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Wow! Join us in celebrating our top of the charts achievements on the Goodpods podcast player!


No. 2 Podcast of the Week on the Management charts

Top 5 Podcast of the Month in the Management charts

Top 5 Podcast of the Week on the Marketing Charts


Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey


]]> <p>Our spotlight shines again on immersive commerce this episode! We are answering a critically important question for retailers - <em>what is the future of video commerce</em>? To answer this question and truly dive deep into the treasure trove of conversion that is video commerce we&#39;ve invited <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincentyangfirework/" rel="nofollow">Vincent Yang</a>, co-founder and CEO of <a href="https://firework.com/" rel="nofollow">Firework</a> to the show! Vincent guides us through understanding the true nature and capabilities of video commerce. It&#39;s a fascinating discussion where you&#39;ll come away with an incredible list of insights and best practices you can apply to your retail business! We start with livestreaming, move to shoppable video and areas far beyond. Join us as we venture into mid-funnel and bottom funnel marketing strategies, to brand awareness tactics, to understanding marketing vs advertising and learn how video drives human engagement online. If you thought livestreaming was all there is to video in retail – think again! You’ll learn why a video commerce strategy is the digital equivalent to having an engaging store associate guide your customer journey.</p><p><br></p><p>Plus, we bring you the fourth topic in our new leadership segment on the show – ‘Blade to Greatness’! <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rthurston/" rel="nofollow">Ron Thurston</a>, co-founder of <a href="https://www.useossy.com/" rel="nofollow">Ossy</a>, author of <a href="https://a.co/d/7SFCBxx" rel="nofollow"><em>Retail Pride, the Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career</em></a>, host of the <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/retail-in-america/id1618323713?i=1000586268458" rel="nofollow">Retail in America nationwide tour and podcast</a>, speaker, advisor, board member, and former retail operations leader at Intermix, Saint Laurent, Bonobos, Tory Burch, Apple, and Williams-Sonoma joins us to share his insights on the issues facing frontline retail workers and retail leaders today.</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode, Ron talks to us about one of the most important skills a retail leader needs to master:</p><p><br></p><p>How to reframe your current job search processes to hire the right person!</p><p><br></p><p>We&#39;re currently at number 18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts &amp; help keep moving our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</p><p><br></p><p>Wow! Join us in celebrating our top of the charts achievements on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast player!</p><p><br></p><p>No. 2 Podcast of the Week on the Management charts</p><p>Top 5 Podcast of the Month in the Management charts</p><p>Top 5 Podcast of the Week on the Marketing Charts</p><p><br></p><p>Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, E-Motive, </em>and<em> Swag, Tag &amp; Brag </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p><br></p> 2988aaba-7ad2-4794-bf1a-111ea80572f8 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 30 Aug 2023 11:00:00 +0000 3373 no full S3E6 Retail Transformers - Cynthia Hollen - mavi.io S3E6 Retail Transformers - Cynthia Hollen - mavi.io 6 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E6 Retail Transformers - Cynthia Hollen - mavi.io We return to our anywhere commerce theme for this season and shine a light on the future of in-car commerce! We’re answering a very important question - Will shopping on the go become the most important commerce channel for product discovery? We'll dig into what's new and what’s next for in-car product recommendation, BOPIS, and its impact on local search by meeting our latest Retail Transformer – Cynthia Hollen, CEO & co-founder of mavi.io! If you thought your mobile phone was all the mobile commerce you needed, you’ll think again after listening to this episode. Join us as we uncover the connection between car manufacturers, consumers, retailers, and brands that will deliver a new way of shopping from the convenience of your car. Did we mention how this will automate your routine shopping habits? And did you know that retail media networks have an important role to play in your car? All this and more in a fully loaded podcast episode! Plus, we have the third topic in our new leadership segment– ‘Blade to Greatness’! In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we'll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. April Sabral, founder of retailu.ca, an online leadership development portal for field leaders and author of two books, The Positive Effect, and her latest, Incurable Positivity, joins us to share her valuable insights into an incredibly important skill every retail leader needs to master: why having a positive mindset is an advantage in growing your business! We’re currently at No. 18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us continue our climb up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Join us in celebrating our latest top of the charts achievements on the Goodpods podcast player! #2 in the Top Indie Management Podcasts chart #9 in the Top Management Podcasts chart #7 in the Top Indie Marketing Podcasts charts Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey We return to our anywhere commerce theme for this season and shine a light on the future of in-car commerce! We’re answering a very important question - Will shopping on the go become the most important commerce channel for product discovery? We'll dig into what's new and what’s next for in-car product recommendation, BOPIS, and its impact on local search by meeting our latest Retail Transformer – Cynthia Hollen, CEO & co-founder of mavi.io! If you thought your mobile phone was all the mobile commerce you needed, you’ll think again after listening to this episode. Join us as we uncover the connection between car manufacturers, consumers, retailers, and brands that will deliver a new way of shopping from the convenience of your car. Did we mention how this will automate your routine shopping habits? And did you know that retail media networks have an important role to play in your car? All this and more in a fully loaded podcast episode!


Plus, we have the third topic in our new leadership segment– ‘Blade to Greatness’! In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we'll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. April Sabral, founder of retailu.ca, an online leadership development portal for field leaders and author of two books, The Positive Effect, and her latest, Incurable Positivity, joins us to share her valuable insights into an incredibly important skill every retail leader needs to master: why having a positive mindset is an advantage in growing your business!


We’re currently at No. 18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us continue our climb up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Join us in celebrating our latest top of the charts achievements on the Goodpods podcast player!


#2 in the Top Indie Management Podcasts chart

#9 in the Top Management Podcasts chart

#7 in the Top Indie Marketing Podcasts charts


Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey


]]> <p>We return to our anywhere commerce theme for this season and shine a light on the future of in-car commerce! We’re answering a very important question - Will shopping on the go become the most important commerce channel for product discovery? We&#39;ll dig into what&#39;s new and what’s next for in-car product recommendation, BOPIS, and its impact on local search by meeting our latest Retail Transformer – <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthiahollen/" rel="nofollow">Cynthia Hollen</a>, CEO &amp; co-founder of <a href="https://mavi.io/" rel="nofollow">mavi.io</a>! If you thought your mobile phone was all the mobile commerce you needed, you’ll think again after listening to this episode. Join us as we uncover the connection between car manufacturers, consumers, retailers, and brands that will deliver a new way of shopping from the convenience of your car. Did we mention how this will automate your routine shopping habits? And did you know that retail media networks have an important role to play in your car? All this and more in a fully loaded podcast episode!</p><p><br></p><p>Plus, we have the third topic in our new leadership segment– ‘<em>Blade to Greatness’</em>! In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we&#39;ll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprilsabral/" rel="nofollow">April Sabral</a>, founder of <a href="https://retailu.ca/" rel="nofollow">retailu.ca</a>, an online leadership development portal for field leaders and author of two books, <a href="https://a.co/d/bALahmz" rel="nofollow">The Positive Effect</a>, and her latest, <a href="https://a.co/d/9ymiKiS" rel="nofollow">Incurable Positivity</a>, joins us to share her valuable insights into an incredibly important skill every retail leader needs to master: why having a positive mindset is an advantage in growing your business!</p><p><br></p><p>We’re currently at No. 18 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us continue our climb up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</p><p><br></p><p>Join us in celebrating our latest top of the charts achievements on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast player!</p><p><br></p><p>#2 in the <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/management?indie=true&period=week#21237414" rel="nofollow">Top Indie Management Podcasts</a> chart</p><p>#9 in the <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/management?period=week#21237402" rel="nofollow">Top Management Podcasts</a> chart</p><p>#7 in the <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/marketing?indie=true&period=week#21236945" rel="nofollow">Top Indie Marketing Podcasts</a> charts</p><p><br></p><p>Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and send us your comments!</p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, E-Motive, </em>and<em> Swag, Tag &amp; Brag </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p><br></p> 1005992c-fa49-429a-b34a-7a529853af59 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 18 Aug 2023 11:30:00 +0000 3525 no full S3E5 Retail Transformers – Ron Thurston - Ossy S3E5 Retail Transformers – Ron Thurston - Ossy 5 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E5 Retail Transformers – Ron Thurston - Ossy Today as part of our Back to Basics of Retailing theme this season, we are once again focusing on people – the frontline workers in retail stores, and the process of hiring and retaining the best candidates. In this episode we answer two incredibly important questions– How do we change how we hire, connect, and match retail brands to retail workers, respectfully, transparently, and humanly? And can technology help? To answer these questions and more, we meet our latest Retail Transformer & fan favorite - Ron Thurston, author of Retail Pride, the Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career, Host of the Retail in America nationwide tour and podcast, former retail operations leader at Intermix, Saint Laurent, Bonobos, Tory Burch, Apple, and Williams-Sonoma, and now co-founder of Ossy, a business we’ll hear more about in the episode and how it’s disrupting the hiring process! Plus, we bring you the second topic in our new leadership segment on the show – ‘Blade to Greatness’! In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we'll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. Jeffrey McNulty, Founder and CEO of New Retail Ethos Consultancy, author of The Ultimate Retail Manual, and creator of The Ultimate Retail Course: Become a Retail RockStar returns to the show for this powerful new segment to discuss an incredibly important skill retail leaders need – supporting employee autonomy! Jeffrey is offering a special discount on his retail course for Retail Razor Show listeners with discount code RETAILROCKSTAR100OFF at this website: http://www.theultimateretailcourse.com/ We’ve moved up to No. 17 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us continue our climb up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Wow! Join us in celebrating our recent top of the charts achievements on the Goodpods podcast player! #1 in the Top Indie Management Podcasts chart #2 in the Top Management Podcasts chart #4 in the Top Marketing Podcasts charts Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and provide your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Today as part of our Back to Basics of Retailing theme this season, we are once again focusing on people – the frontline workers in retail stores, and the process of hiring and retaining the best candidates. In this episode we answer two incredibly important questions– How do we change how we hire, connect, and match retail brands to retail workers, respectfully, transparently, and humanly? And can technology help? To answer these questions and more, we meet our latest Retail Transformer & fan favorite - Ron Thurston, author of Retail Pride, the Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career, Host of the Retail in America nationwide tour and podcast, former retail operations leader at Intermix, Saint Laurent, Bonobos, Tory Burch, Apple, and Williams-Sonoma, and now co-founder of Ossy, a business we’ll hear more about in the episode and how it’s disrupting the hiring process!


Plus, we bring you the second topic in our new leadership segment on the show – ‘Blade to Greatness’! In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we'll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. Jeffrey McNulty, Founder and CEO of New Retail Ethos Consultancy, author of The Ultimate Retail Manual, and creator of The Ultimate Retail Course: Become a Retail RockStar returns to the show for this powerful new segment to discuss an incredibly important skill retail leaders need – supporting employee autonomy!


Jeffrey is offering a special discount on his retail course for Retail Razor Show listeners with discount code RETAILROCKSTAR100OFF at this website: http://www.theultimateretailcourse.com/


We’ve moved up to No. 16 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us continue our climb up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Wow! Join us in celebrating our recent top of the charts achievements on the Goodpods podcast player!


#1 in the Top Indie Management Podcasts chart

#2 in the Top Management Podcasts chart

#4 in the Top Marketing Podcasts charts


Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and provide your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:


Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey


]]> <p>Today as part of our Back to Basics of Retailing theme this season, we are once again focusing on people – the frontline workers in retail stores, and the process of hiring and retaining the best candidates. In this episode we answer two incredibly important questions– How do we change how we hire, connect, and match retail brands to retail workers, respectfully, transparently, and humanly? And can technology help? To answer these questions and more, we meet our latest Retail Transformer &amp; fan favorite - <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rthurston/" rel="nofollow">Ron Thurston</a>, author of <a href="https://a.co/d/7SFCBxx" rel="nofollow"><em>Retail Pride, the Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career</em></a><em>,</em> Host of the <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/retail-in-america/id1618323713?i=1000586268458" rel="nofollow">Retail in America nationwide tour and podcast</a>, former retail operations leader at Intermix, Saint Laurent, Bonobos, Tory Burch, Apple, and Williams-Sonoma, and now co-founder of Ossy, a business we’ll hear more about in the episode and how it’s disrupting the hiring process!</p><p><br></p><p>Plus, we bring you the second topic in our new leadership segment on the show – ‘<em>Blade to Greatness’</em>! In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we&#39;ll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypmcnulty/" rel="nofollow">Jeffrey McNulty</a>, Founder and CEO of <a href="http://www.newretailethos.com/" rel="nofollow">New Retail Ethos Consultancy</a>, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Retail-Manual-Strategies-Retailers/dp/1732565414" rel="nofollow">The Ultimate Retail Manual</a>, and creator of <a href="https://theultimateretailcourse.thinkific.com/courses/BECOME-A-RETAIL-ROCKSTAR" rel="nofollow">The Ultimate Retail Course: Become a Retail RockStar</a> returns to the show for this powerful new segment to discuss an incredibly important skill retail leaders need – supporting employee autonomy!</p><p><br></p><p>Jeffrey is offering a special discount on his retail course for Retail Razor Show listeners with discount code RETAILROCKSTAR100OFF at this website: <a href="http://www.theultimateretailcourse.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theultimateretailcourse.com/</a></p><p><br></p><p>We’ve moved up to No. 16 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us continue our climb up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</p><p><br></p><p>Wow! Join us in celebrating our recent top of the charts achievements on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast player!</p><p><br></p><p>#1 in the <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/management?indie=true&period=week#21237414" rel="nofollow">Top Indie Management Podcasts</a> chart</p><p>#2 in the <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/management?period=week#21237402" rel="nofollow">Top Management Podcasts</a> chart</p><p>#4 in the <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/marketing?indie=true&period=week#21236945" rel="nofollow">Top Marketing Podcasts</a> charts</p><p><br></p><p>Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star ratings and provide your comments!</p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, E-Motive, </em>and<em> Swag, Tag &amp; Brag </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p><br></p> 0dd4d20f-0be9-4675-95f8-d59c5b010ccd https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 26 Jul 2023 12:30:00 +0000 3818 no full S3E4 The Future of Delivery with Shipt S3E4 The Future of Delivery with Shipt 4 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E4 The Future of Delivery with Shipt In this episode we answer an incredibly important question in retail – what is the future of local delivery services? Delivery has become a core convenience service for most consumers in recent years. How will retailers continue to offer these services in a cost-effective manner for both them and their customers? The market for these 3rd party providers has also changed. Can business models adapt or will we continue to see consolidation and market exits from providers such as quick commerce delivery services? We’ve invited Raj Kapoor, COO of Shipt to help us answer these questions, and more, about the future of delivery! Plus, we introduce a new leadership segment on the show – ‘Blade to Greatness’! In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we'll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. Jeffrey McNulty, Founder and CEO of New Retail Ethos Consultancy, author of The Ultimate Retail Manual, and creator of The Ultimate Retail Course: Become a Retail RockStar returns to the show for this powerful new segment! Jeffrey is offering a special discount on his retail course for Retail Razor Show listeners with discount code RETAILROCKSTAR100OFF at this website: http://www.theultimateretailcourse.com/ We’ve moved up to No. 17 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us continue our climb up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Wow! Join us in celebrating our top of the charts achievements on the Goodpods podcast player! #1 in the Top Indie Management Podcasts chart #2 in the Top Management Podcasts chart #4 in the Top Marketing Podcasts charts Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star rating and provide your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey In this episode we answer an incredibly important question in retail – what is the future of local delivery services? Delivery has become a core convenience service for most consumers in recent years. How will retailers continue to offer these services in a cost-effective manner for both them and their customers? The market for these 3rd party providers has also changed. Can business models adapt or will we continue to see consolidation and market exits from providers such as quick commerce delivery services? We’ve invited Raj Kapoor, COO of Shipt to help us answer these questions, and more, about the future of delivery!


Plus, we introduce a new leadership segment on the show – ‘Blade to Greatness’! In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we'll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. Jeffrey McNulty, Founder and CEO of New Retail Ethos Consultancy, author of The Ultimate Retail Manual, and creator of The Ultimate Retail Course: Become a Retail RockStar returns to the show for this powerful new segment!

Jeffrey is offering a special discount on his retail course for Retail Razor Show listeners with discount code RETAILROCKSTAR100OFF at this website: http://www.theultimateretailcourse.com/


We’ve moved up to No. 17 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us continue our climb up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Wow! Join us in celebrating our top of the charts achievements on the Goodpods podcast player!


#1 in the Top Indie Management Podcasts chart

#2 in the Top Management Podcasts chart

#4 in the Top Marketing Podcasts charts


Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star rating and provide your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, E-Motive, and Swag, Tag & Brag from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey

]]> <p>In this episode we answer an incredibly important question in retail – <em>what is the future of local delivery services? </em>Delivery has become a core convenience service for most consumers in recent years. How will retailers continue to offer these services in a cost-effective manner for both them and their customers? The market for these 3<sup>rd</sup> party providers has also changed. Can business models adapt or will we continue to see consolidation and market exits from providers such as quick commerce delivery services? We’ve invited <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/raj-kapoor/" rel="nofollow">Raj Kapoor</a>, COO of <a href="https://www.shipt.com/" rel="nofollow">Shipt</a> to help us answer these questions, and more, about the future of delivery!</p><p><br></p><p>Plus, we introduce a new leadership segment on the show – ‘<em>Blade to Greatness’</em>! In this segment, we invite a retail industry leader to offer one skill or trait that all retail executives need to become great leaders. Whether in stores or at corporate, we&#39;ll uncover valuable tips and advice that you can apply to your own retail career path. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypmcnulty/" rel="nofollow">Jeffrey McNulty</a>, Founder and CEO of <a href="http://www.newretailethos.com/" rel="nofollow">New Retail Ethos Consultancy</a>, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Retail-Manual-Strategies-Retailers/dp/1732565414" rel="nofollow">The Ultimate Retail Manual</a>, and creator of <a href="https://theultimateretailcourse.thinkific.com/courses/BECOME-A-RETAIL-ROCKSTAR" rel="nofollow">The Ultimate Retail Course: Become a Retail RockStar</a> returns to the show for this powerful new segment!</p><p>Jeffrey is offering a special discount on his retail course for Retail Razor Show listeners with discount code RETAILROCKSTAR100OFF at this website: <a href="http://www.theultimateretailcourse.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theultimateretailcourse.com/</a></p><p><br></p><p>We’ve moved up to No. 17 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us continue our climb up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</p><p><br></p><p>Wow! Join us in celebrating our top of the charts achievements on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast player!</p><p><br></p><p>#1 in the <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/management?indie=true&period=week#21237414" rel="nofollow">Top Indie Management Podcasts</a> chart</p><p>#2 in the <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/management?period=week#21237402" rel="nofollow">Top Management Podcasts</a> chart</p><p>#4 in the <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/marketing?indie=true&period=week#21236945" rel="nofollow">Top Marketing Podcasts</a> charts</p><p><br></p><p>Thank you Goodpods listeners! We love your support! Please continue giving us those 5-star rating and provide your comments!</p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, E-Motive, </em>and<em> Swag, Tag &amp; Brag </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p>Follow us on Goodpods: <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p>Connect with us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p>Subscribe on YouTube: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p>Retail Razor Show Episode Page: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p> 63a9b875-4641-4d2a-b107-629242ad4a75 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 12 Jul 2023 13:24:04 +0000 2966 no full S3E3 Retail Transformers - Jeffrey P. McNulty - New Retail Ethos S3E3 Retail Transformers - Jeffrey P. McNulty - New Retail Ethos 3 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E3 Retail Transformers - Jeffrey McNulty - New Retail Ethos What makes a great retail leader, especially during constrained times like retailers are experiencing this year? How do you develop executive retail leadership? How do these leaders shape the success of their entire organization? What qualities do they need to create that success? We’re speaking with Jeffrey P. McNulty, Founder and CEO of New Retail Ethos Consultancy, author of The Ultimate Retail Manual, and creator of The Ultimate Retail Course: Become a Retail RockStar to answer these questions and more! You’ll learn why Jeffrey, our latest Retail Transformer, is more than meets the eye! Our conversation with Jeffrey will look at what he’s learned from successful retail leaders throughout his 30-year retail career, and how this has helped him develop an extensive training program and framework for developing great retail leaders that lead successful retail organizations. We’ll learn just how a strong retail business begins with the right leadership skills and qualities. We’re at number 18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us move our way up the Top 20! We're really feeling the love on the Goodpods platform! So far this season, we’ve hit these major milestones on the Top Charts: #2 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts chart #8 in the Top 100 Management Podcasts chart #9 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Podcasts chart Thank you Goodpods listeners! Please share your feedback with us! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked and E-Motive, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod What makes a great retail leader, especially during constrained times like retailers are experiencing this year? How do you develop executive retail leadership? How do these leaders shape the success of their entire organization? What qualities do they need to create that success? We’re speaking with Jeffrey P. McNulty, Founder and CEO of New Retail Ethos Consultancy, author of The Ultimate Retail Manual, and creator of The Ultimate Retail Course: Become a Retail RockStar to answer these questions and more! 


You’ll learn why Jeffrey, our latest Retail Transformer, is more than meets the eye! Our conversation with Jeffrey will look at what he’s learned from successful retail leaders throughout his 30-year retail career, and how this has helped him develop an extensive training program and framework for developing great retail leaders that lead successful retail organizations. We’ll learn just how a strong retail business begins with the right leadership skills and qualities.


We’re at number 18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us move our way up the Top 20! 


We're really feeling the love on the Goodpods platform! So far this season, we’ve hit these major milestones on the Top Charts:


#2 in the Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts chart

#8 in the Top 100 Management Podcasts chart

#9 in the Top 100 Indie Marketing Podcasts chart


Thank you Goodpods listeners! Please share your feedback with us!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked and E-Motive, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


]]> <p>What makes a great retail leader, especially during constrained times like retailers are experiencing this year? How do you develop executive retail leadership? How do these leaders shape the success of their entire organization? What qualities do they need to create that success? We’re speaking with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypmcnulty/" rel="nofollow">Jeffrey P. McNulty</a>, Founder and CEO of <a href="http://www.newretailethos.com/" rel="nofollow">New Retail Ethos Consultancy</a>, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Retail-Manual-Strategies-Retailers/dp/1732565414" rel="nofollow">The Ultimate Retail Manual</a>, and creator of <a href="https://theultimateretailcourse.thinkific.com/courses/BECOME-A-RETAIL-ROCKSTAR" rel="nofollow">The Ultimate Retail Course: Become a Retail RockStar</a> to answer these questions and more! </p><p><br></p><p>You’ll learn why Jeffrey, our latest Retail Transformer, is more than meets the eye! Our conversation with Jeffrey will look at what he’s learned from successful retail leaders throughout his 30-year retail career, and how this has helped him develop an extensive training program and framework for developing great retail leaders that lead successful retail organizations. We’ll learn just how a strong retail business begins with the right leadership skills and qualities.</p><p><br></p><p>We’re at number 18 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us move our way up the Top 20! </p><p><br></p><p>We&#39;re really feeling the love on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> platform! So far this season, we’ve hit these major milestones on the Top Charts:</p><p><br></p><p>#2 in the <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/management?indie=true&period=week#21237414" rel="nofollow">Top 100 Indie Management Podcasts</a> chart</p><p>#8 in the <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/management?period=week#21237402" rel="nofollow">Top 100 Management Podcasts</a> chart</p><p>#9 in the <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/marketing?indie=true&period=week#21236945" rel="nofollow">Top 100 Indie Marketing Podcasts</a> chart</p><p><br></p><p>Thank you Goodpods listeners! Please share your feedback with us!</p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbelmar/" rel="nofollow"><em>Ricardo Belmar</em></a>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/cgoldenone/" rel="nofollow"><em>Casey Golden</em></a>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked </em>and<em> E-Motive, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>Follow us on Goodpods: </strong><a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p> be11a426-6a87-4ea7-bbf7-34e0c2e3ff56 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 05 Jul 2023 16:34:33 +0000 3152 no full S3E2 Retail Transformers - Neil Redding - Auki Labs S3E2 Retail Transformers - Neil Redding - Auki Labs 2 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E2 Retail Transformers - Neil Redding - Auki Labs How will retailers embrace immersive commerce? Will it be via AR or VR or both? To answer this question, we meet our latest Retail Transformer – Neil Redding, head of product at Auki Labs. Plus, we welcome special guest host back to the show, Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast. Together we explore why AR and spatial computing may be the answer retailers are looking for to give digital assets a physical presence in the shopper journey. We also examine the impact of Apple’s new Vision Pro mixed reality headset and how this both legitimizes and forever changes the AR/VR landscape. Join us for a unique discussion where we unpack why and how this matters for retail – our conclusions may surprise you! We’re at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us move our way up the Top 20! Even more accolades! We’re feeling the love on the Goodpods podcast player! After our Season 3 launch with Generative AI, this past week we hit these major milestones on the Top Charts: Top 100 Business Podcasts - at #26 and Top 45 Indie Business Podcasts – at #15 Top 25 Management Podcasts – at #5 and Top 8 Indie Management Podcasts – at #3 Top 47 Marketing Podcasts – at #7 and Top 17 Indie Marketing Podcasts – at #6 Thank you Goodpod listeners! Keep it coming and post your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked and E-Motive, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey How will retailers embrace immersive commerce? Will it be via AR or VR or both? To answer this question, we meet our latest Retail Transformer – Neil Redding, head of product at Auki Labs. Plus, we welcome special guest host back to the show, Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast. Together we explore why AR and spatial computing may be the answer retailers are looking for to give digital assets a physical presence in the shopper journey. We also examine the impact of Apple’s new Vision Pro mixed reality headset and how this both legitimizes and forever changes the AR/VR landscape. Join us for a unique discussion where we unpack why and how this matters for retail – our conclusions may surprise you!


We’re at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us move our way up the Top 20! 


Even more accolades! We’re feeling the love on the Goodpods podcast player! After our Season 3 launch with Generative AI, this past week we hit these major milestones on the Top Charts:


Top 100 Business Podcasts - at #26 and Top 45 Indie Business Podcasts – at #15

Top 25 Management Podcasts – at #5 and Top 8 Indie Management Podcasts – at #3

Top 47 Marketing Podcasts – at #7 and Top 17 Indie Marketing Podcasts – at #6


Thank you Goodpod listeners! Keep it coming and post your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked and E-Motive, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey

]]> <p>How will retailers embrace immersive commerce? Will it be via AR or VR or both? To answer this question, we meet our latest Retail Transformer – <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/reddingneil/" rel="nofollow">Neil Redding</a>, head of product at <a href="https://aukilabs.com/retail" rel="nofollow">Auki Labs</a>. Plus, we welcome special guest host back to the show, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-bb51b8/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Roster</a>, host of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/this-week-in-innovation/" rel="nofollow">This Week in Innovation</a> podcast. Together we explore why AR and spatial computing may be the answer retailers are looking for to give digital assets a physical presence in the shopper journey. We also examine the impact of Apple’s new Vision Pro mixed reality headset and how this both legitimizes and forever changes the AR/VR landscape. Join us for a unique discussion where we unpack why and how this matters for retail – our conclusions may surprise you!</p><p><br></p><p>We’re at number 19 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts and help us move our way up the Top 20! </p><p><br></p><p>Even more accolades! We’re feeling the love on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast player! After our Season 3 launch with Generative AI, this past week we hit these major milestones on the Top Charts:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/all-business" rel="nofollow">Top 100 Business Podcasts</a> - at #26 and <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/all-business" rel="nofollow">Top 45 Indie Business Podcasts</a> – at #15</p><p><a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/management?period=week#20266101" rel="nofollow">Top 25 Management Podcasts</a> – at #5 and <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/management?period=week#20266101" rel="nofollow">Top 8 Indie Management Podcasts</a> – at #3</p><p><a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/marketing?indie=true&period=week#20265650" rel="nofollow">Top 47 Marketing Podcasts</a> – at #7 and <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/marketing?indie=true&period=week#20265650" rel="nofollow">Top 17 Indie Marketing Podcasts</a> – at #6</p><p><br></p><p>Thank you Goodpod listeners! Keep it coming and post your comments!</p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked </em>and<em> E-Motive, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Goodpods: </strong><a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p> bf01933b-3d15-4fa9-9731-8cbdb27e955b https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 16 Jun 2023 12:58:50 +0000 4331 no full S3E1 What Can Be Done With Generative AI? S3E1 What Can Be Done With Generative AI? 1 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S3E1 What Can Be Done With Generative AI? What’s the buzz on everyone’s mind in retail right now? Yes, it’s Generative AI! Taking the industry by storm, but exactly what can you do with generative AI that’s so transformative for retailers and brands? We break it down in what’s likely the most grounded discussion you could hear today on this topic with two special guests: our Retail Avenger, Shish Shridhar, Global Retail Lead at Microsoft for Startups, and Michelle Bacharach, CEO of FindMine. We cover the use cases for today and tomorrow, plus we go deep on the caveats and risks you should know before you dive in headfirst to this amazing technology. We’re now standing at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Even more accolades! We’re feeling the love on the Goodpods podcast player! This past week we hit these major milestones on the Top Charts: Top 100 Business Podcasts - at #89 and Top 34 Indie Business Podcasts – at #28 Top 18 Management Podcasts – at #10 and Top 6 Indie Management Podcasts – at #5 Top 31 Marketing Podcasts – at #21 and Top 12 Indie Marketing Podcasts – at #11 Thank you Goodpod listeners! Keep it coming and post your comments! Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked and E-Motive, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey What’s the buzz on everyone’s mind in retail right now? Yes, it’s Generative AI! Taking the industry by storm, but exactly what can you do with generative AI that’s so transformative for retailers and brands? We break it down in what’s likely the most grounded discussion you could hear today on this topic with two special guests: our Retail Avenger, Shish Shridhar, Global Retail Lead at Microsoft for Startups, and Michelle Bacharach, CEO of FindMine. We cover the use cases for today and tomorrow, plus we go deep on the caveats and risks you should know before you dive in headfirst to this amazing technology.


We’re now standing at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Even more accolades! We’re feeling the love on the Goodpods podcast player! This past week we hit these major milestones on the Top Charts:


Top 100 Business Podcasts - at #89 and Top 34 Indie Business Podcasts – at #28

Top 18 Management Podcasts – at #10 and Top 6 Indie Management Podcasts – at #5

Top 31 Marketing Podcasts – at #21 and Top 12 Indie Marketing Podcasts – at #11


Thank you Goodpod listeners! Keep it coming and post your comments!


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked and E-Motive, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Goodpods: https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey


]]> <p>What’s the buzz on everyone’s mind in retail right now? Yes, it’s Generative AI! Taking the industry by storm, but exactly what can you do with generative AI that’s so transformative for retailers and brands? We break it down in what’s likely the most grounded discussion you could hear today on this topic with two special guests: our Retail Avenger, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shishs/" rel="nofollow">Shish Shridhar</a>, Global Retail Lead at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoftforstartups/" rel="nofollow">Microsoft for Startups</a>, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelleharrisonbacharach/" rel="nofollow">Michelle Bacharach</a>, CEO of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/findmine/" rel="nofollow">FindMine</a>. We cover the use cases for today and tomorrow, plus we go deep on the caveats and risks you should know before you dive in headfirst to this amazing technology.</p><p><br></p><p>We’re now standing at number 19 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Even more accolades! We’re feeling the love on the <a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">Goodpods</a> podcast player! This past week we hit these major milestones on the Top Charts:</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/all-business" rel="nofollow">Top 100 Business Podcasts</a> - at #89 and <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/all-business" rel="nofollow">Top 34 Indie Business Podcasts</a> – at #28</p><p><a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/management?period=week#20266101" rel="nofollow">Top 18 Management Podcasts</a> – at #10 and <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/management?period=week#20266101" rel="nofollow">Top 6 Indie Management Podcasts</a> – at #5</p><p><a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/marketing?indie=true&period=week#20265650" rel="nofollow">Top 31 Marketing Podcasts</a> – at #21 and <a href="https://goodpods.com/leaderboard/top-100-shows-by-category/business/marketing?indie=true&period=week#20265650" rel="nofollow">Top 12 Indie Marketing Podcasts</a> – at #11</p><p><br></p><p>Thank you Goodpod listeners! Keep it coming and post your comments!</p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked </em>and<em> E-Motive, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Goodpods: </strong><a href="https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TRRSgoodpods</a></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p> 7ec7c9c3-d05c-4d51-ac9f-230393e858cc https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 09 Jun 2023 11:30:00 +0000 4021 no trailer The Retail Razor Show - Season 3 Trailer The Retail Razor Show - Season 3 Trailer 3 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert The Retail Razor Show - Season 3 Trailer Ready or not, it’s Season 3 of the Retail Razor Show! Hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden are back to cut through the clutter to guide you through the most important trends in retail and retail technology. This season we’re bringing you more expert guests to explore 3 themes: Automation and AI, Immersive and Anywhere Commerce, and both of those against a backdrop of ‘back to basics’ retailing. Join us on the journey from store operations, to supply chain, to customer experience and back again – whether you’re a retailer, or a retail tech supplier, you’ll find something just for you this season. Coming soon to your favorite podcast player, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a minute! We’re currently at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ About Your Hosts: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S3 Trailer [00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: Ready or not. It's season three of the Retail Razor Show. The podcast where we cut through the clutter to give you sharp insights on the retail industry and retail technology. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar, retail tech strategist and top retail influencer. Currently the lead partner marketing advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft. [00:00:38] Casey Golden: And I'm Casey Golden, top retail influencer and retail tech founder of Luxlock, a unified experience platform. We're back for a new season of commerce conversations featuring a lineup of leading industry guests and unforgettable discussions you can execute against immediately. [00:00:56] Ricardo Belmar: That's right Casey. Listeners subscribe now to get new [00:01:00] drop notifications. In season three, we are exploring three major themes that are shaping the future of retail. [00:01:07] Automation and AI, immersive and anywhere commerce, and perhaps most important of all, how both of those themes are coming to us full steam against a backdrop of back to basics retailing. [00:01:20] First up, let's talk automation and AI. If there's one set of tech that's transforming how retailers operate, supply chain, store operations to customer service, and everything in between, it's AI. [00:01:32] Casey Golden: We're digging in to how retailers can leverage leading and emerging technologies to reduce costs, improve efficiency, automate and optimize operations while still enhancing the customer experience. We'll address the underlying challenges and undeniable opportunities that come with deploying artificial intelligence. [00:01:52] And implementing automation workflows in the real retail world, not a dreamy white paper or dreams [00:02:00] made of vaporware. If it's not real, there's no room for it in retail. [00:02:05] Ricardo Belmar: And jumping to the customer's perspective, immersive commerce and anywhere commerce are redefining how consumers shop. Online, offline, and everywhere in between, we'll uncover the technologies retailers are leveraging to monetizing engaging moments and personalized shopping experiences across sales channels and touchpoints. [00:02:23] Our hot take on hot topics will include live streaming, augmented reality, social commerce, computer vision, and open retail-tainment as a strategic initiative rather than just a buzzword. [00:02:34] Casey Golden: We'll also be exploring how retailers can adapt to keep up with rapid changing customer behaviors and expectations in a post pandemic world. Let's face it, we've all experienced some business whiplash and loved the view with our rose gold ray bans, but if we don't bring it back to center, the vision of our business will never become an experienced reality. [00:02:56] Back to basics retailing focuses on the core [00:03:00] elements of retail success, product, price, place, promotion, and most importantly, people. Oh, and profitability. That's another important p. [00:03:13] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. What's that? Like six Ps? [00:03:15] Casey Golden: I'd make it seven with process, but you might say that's a bit more than meets the eye. [00:03:21] Ricardo Belmar: Wait, that's supposed to be my line. [00:03:23] Casey Golden: Kind of known for stealing some good one-liners. [00:03:25] Ricardo Belmar: That's so true. It always happens. So we'll examine how retailers can optimize their performance marketing, conversion optimization, merchandising, pricing, and assortment strategies. We'll also look at how retailers can invest in their frontline store teams who, yes, it's true, they really are the face of the brand and the key to customer loyalty. [00:03:45] Casey Golden: Okay, Ricardo. Not only do we have these three incredible themes, we've also stacked new show segments we're introducing after teasing our fans with the retail razor data blades in season two.[00:04:00] [00:04:00] Ricardo Belmar: That's right Casey. In addition to the three themes, we'll have conversations with retail leaders about their most valuable leadership traits and best practices. We'll share insights based on data from consumer surveys and research, and we'll take a fresh academic viewpoint of retail technology issues with professors and experts from leading universities. [00:04:19] Casey Golden: We have killer content lined up for you this season. Not to give too much away, but here's some of the highlights that it's gonna include. [00:04:27] Ricardo Belmar: How live streaming is revolutionizing online shopping and creating new opportunities for retailers and a new generation of engineered influencers. [00:04:36] Casey Golden: How augmented reality and virtual or reality create immersive and interactive shopping experiences that drive more engagement for product discovery and drive conversion. [00:04:47] Ricardo Belmar: And how retailers can invest short term to reduce cost long term by adopting the right technologies like R F I D, cloud computing and new AI-driven prescriptive analytics, [00:04:56] Casey Golden: How performance marketing helps retailers acquire, [00:05:00] retain, and grow their customer base with data-driven strategies. [00:05:03] Ricardo Belmar: how retailers can manage and invest in their frontline store teams by providing the right training, tools, incentives and empowerment. [00:05:11] Casey Golden: And digital humans can create new possibilities for customer service, personalization and storytelling in retail and so much more. [00:05:20] Ricardo Belmar: So stay tuned for the third season of the Retail Razor Show. Coming soon to your favorite podcast platform. [00:05:25] Casey Golden: We can't wait to share our insights. Tune in with us and our special guests for the important conversations we should all be having to support the business of retail. Thank you for listening and supporting us. [00:05:38] Ricardo Belmar: I'm your host Ricardo Belmar. [00:05:40] Casey Golden: And I'm your host, Casey Golden. Ricardo, this trailer is a wrap. [00:05:45] Ricardo Belmar: Signing off for now. And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. [00:06:00] Ready or not, it’s Season 3 of the Retail Razor Show! Hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden are back to cut through the clutter to guide you through the most important trends in retail and retail technology. This season we’re bringing you more expert guests to explore 3 themes: Automation and AI, Immersive and Anywhere Commerce, and both of those against a backdrop of ‘back to basics’ retailing. Join us on the journey from store operations, to supply chain, to customer experience and back again – whether you’re a retailer, or a retail tech supplier, you’ll find something just for you this season. Coming soon to your favorite podcast player, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a minute!


We’re currently at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


About Your Hosts:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey


TRANSCRIPT

S3 Trailer

[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: Ready or not. It's season three of the Retail Razor Show. The podcast where we cut through the clutter to give you sharp insights on the retail industry and retail technology. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar, retail tech strategist and top retail influencer. Currently the lead partner marketing advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft.

[00:00:38] Casey Golden: And I'm Casey Golden, top retail influencer and retail tech founder of Luxlock, a unified experience platform. We're back for a new season of commerce conversations featuring a lineup of leading industry guests and unforgettable discussions you can execute against immediately.

[00:00:56] Ricardo Belmar: That's right Casey. Listeners subscribe now to get new [00:01:00] drop notifications. In season three, we are exploring three major themes that are shaping the future of retail.

[00:01:07] Automation and AI, immersive and anywhere commerce, and perhaps most important of all, how both of those themes are coming to us full steam against a backdrop of back to basics retailing.

[00:01:20] First up, let's talk automation and AI. If there's one set of tech that's transforming how retailers operate, supply chain, store operations to customer service, and everything in between, it's AI.

[00:01:32] Casey Golden: We're digging in to how retailers can leverage leading and emerging technologies to reduce costs, improve efficiency, automate and optimize operations while still enhancing the customer experience. We'll address the underlying challenges and undeniable opportunities that come with deploying artificial intelligence.

[00:01:52] And implementing automation workflows in the real retail world, not a dreamy white paper or dreams [00:02:00] made of vaporware. If it's not real, there's no room for it in retail.

[00:02:05] Ricardo Belmar: And jumping to the customer's perspective, immersive commerce and anywhere commerce are redefining how consumers shop. Online, offline, and everywhere in between, we'll uncover the technologies retailers are leveraging to monetizing engaging moments and personalized shopping experiences across sales channels and touchpoints.

[00:02:23] Our hot take on hot topics will include live streaming, augmented reality, social commerce, computer vision, and open retail-tainment as a strategic initiative rather than just a buzzword.

[00:02:34] Casey Golden: We'll also be exploring how retailers can adapt to keep up with rapid changing customer behaviors and expectations in a post pandemic world. Let's face it, we've all experienced some business whiplash and loved the view with our rose gold ray bans, but if we don't bring it back to center, the vision of our business will never become an experienced reality.

[00:02:56] Back to basics retailing focuses on the core [00:03:00] elements of retail success, product, price, place, promotion, and most importantly, people. Oh, and profitability. That's another important p.

[00:03:13] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. What's that? Like six Ps?

[00:03:15] Casey Golden: I'd make it seven with process, but you might say that's a bit more than meets the eye.

[00:03:21] Ricardo Belmar: Wait, that's supposed to be my line.

[00:03:23] Casey Golden: Kind of known for stealing some good one-liners.

[00:03:25] Ricardo Belmar: That's so true. It always happens. So we'll examine how retailers can optimize their performance marketing, conversion optimization, merchandising, pricing, and assortment strategies. We'll also look at how retailers can invest in their frontline store teams who, yes, it's true, they really are the face of the brand and the key to customer loyalty.

[00:03:45] Casey Golden: Okay, Ricardo. Not only do we have these three incredible themes, we've also stacked new show segments we're introducing after teasing our fans with the retail razor data blades in season two.[00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Ricardo Belmar: That's right Casey. In addition to the three themes, we'll have conversations with retail leaders about their most valuable leadership traits and best practices. We'll share insights based on data from consumer surveys and research, and we'll take a fresh academic viewpoint of retail technology issues with professors and experts from leading universities.

[00:04:19] Casey Golden: We have killer content lined up for you this season. Not to give too much away, but here's some of the highlights that it's gonna include.

[00:04:27] Ricardo Belmar: How live streaming is revolutionizing online shopping and creating new opportunities for retailers and a new generation of engineered influencers.

[00:04:36] Casey Golden: How augmented reality and virtual or reality create immersive and interactive shopping experiences that drive more engagement for product discovery and drive conversion.

[00:04:47] Ricardo Belmar: And how retailers can invest short term to reduce cost long term by adopting the right technologies like R F I D, cloud computing and new AI-driven prescriptive analytics,

[00:04:56] Casey Golden: How performance marketing helps retailers acquire, [00:05:00] retain, and grow their customer base with data-driven strategies.

[00:05:03] Ricardo Belmar: how retailers can manage and invest in their frontline store teams by providing the right training, tools, incentives and empowerment.

[00:05:11] Casey Golden: And digital humans can create new possibilities for customer service, personalization and storytelling in retail and so much more.

[00:05:20] Ricardo Belmar: So stay tuned for the third season of the Retail Razor Show. Coming soon to your favorite podcast platform.

[00:05:25] Casey Golden: We can't wait to share our insights. Tune in with us and our special guests for the important conversations we should all be having to support the business of retail. Thank you for listening and supporting us.

[00:05:38] Ricardo Belmar: I'm your host Ricardo Belmar.

[00:05:40] Casey Golden: And I'm your host, Casey Golden. Ricardo, this trailer is a wrap.

[00:05:45] Ricardo Belmar: Signing off for now. And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. [00:06:00]



]]> <p>Ready or not, it’s Season 3 of the Retail Razor Show! Hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden are back to cut through the clutter to guide you through the most important trends in retail and retail technology. This season we’re bringing you more expert guests to explore 3 themes: Automation and AI, Immersive and Anywhere Commerce, and both of those against a backdrop of ‘back to basics’ retailing. Join us on the journey from store operations, to supply chain, to customer experience and back again – whether you’re a retailer, or a retail tech supplier, you’ll find something just for you this season. Coming soon to your favorite podcast player, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a minute!</p><p><br></p><p>We’re currently at number 19 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>About Your Hosts:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>S3 Trailer</strong></p><p><span>[00:00:00]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Ready or not. It&#39;s season three of the Retail Razor Show. The podcast where we cut through the clutter to give you sharp insights on the retail industry and retail technology. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar, retail tech strategist and top retail influencer. Currently the lead partner marketing advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><span>[00:00:38]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m Casey Golden, top retail influencer and retail tech founder of Luxlock, a unified experience platform. We&#39;re back for a new season of commerce conversations featuring a lineup of leading industry guests and unforgettable discussions you can execute against immediately.</p><p><span>[00:00:56]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right Casey. Listeners subscribe now to get new <span>[00:01:00]</span> drop notifications. In season three, we are exploring three major themes that are shaping the future of retail.</p><p><span>[00:01:07]</span> Automation and AI, immersive and anywhere commerce, and perhaps most important of all, how both of those themes are coming to us full steam against a backdrop of back to basics retailing.</p><p><span>[00:01:20]</span> First up, let&#39;s talk automation and AI. If there&#39;s one set of tech that&#39;s transforming how retailers operate, supply chain, store operations to customer service, and everything in between, it&#39;s AI.</p><p><span>[00:01:32]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We&#39;re digging in to how retailers can leverage leading and emerging technologies to reduce costs, improve efficiency, automate and optimize operations while still enhancing the customer experience. We&#39;ll address the underlying challenges and undeniable opportunities that come with deploying artificial intelligence.</p><p><span>[00:01:52]</span> And implementing automation workflows in the real retail world, not a dreamy white paper or dreams <span>[00:02:00]</span> made of vaporware. If it&#39;s not real, there&#39;s no room for it in retail.</p><p><span>[00:02:05]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And jumping to the customer&#39;s perspective, immersive commerce and anywhere commerce are redefining how consumers shop. Online, offline, and everywhere in between, we&#39;ll uncover the technologies retailers are leveraging to monetizing engaging moments and personalized shopping experiences across sales channels and touchpoints.</p><p><span>[00:02:23]</span> Our hot take on hot topics will include live streaming, augmented reality, social commerce, computer vision, and open retail-tainment as a strategic initiative rather than just a buzzword.</p><p><span>[00:02:34]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We&#39;ll also be exploring how retailers can adapt to keep up with rapid changing customer behaviors and expectations in a post pandemic world. Let&#39;s face it, we&#39;ve all experienced some business whiplash and loved the view with our rose gold ray bans, but if we don&#39;t bring it back to center, the vision of our business will never become an experienced reality.</p><p><span>[00:02:56]</span> Back to basics retailing focuses on the core <span>[00:03:00]</span> elements of retail success, product, price, place, promotion, and most importantly, people. Oh, and profitability. That&#39;s another important p.</p><p><span>[00:03:13]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. What&#39;s that? Like six Ps?</p><p><span>[00:03:15]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I&#39;d make it seven with process, but you might say that&#39;s a bit more than meets the eye.</p><p><span>[00:03:21]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Wait, that&#39;s supposed to be my line.</p><p><span>[00:03:23]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Kind of known for stealing some good one-liners.</p><p><span>[00:03:25]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s so true. It always happens. So we&#39;ll examine how retailers can optimize their performance marketing, conversion optimization, merchandising, pricing, and assortment strategies. We&#39;ll also look at how retailers can invest in their frontline store teams who, yes, it&#39;s true, they really are the face of the brand and the key to customer loyalty.</p><p><span>[00:03:45]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Okay, Ricardo. Not only do we have these three incredible themes, we&#39;ve also stacked new show segments we&#39;re introducing after teasing our fans with the retail razor data blades in season two.<span>[00:04:00]</span></p><p><span>[00:04:00]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right Casey. In addition to the three themes, we&#39;ll have conversations with retail leaders about their most valuable leadership traits and best practices. We&#39;ll share insights based on data from consumer surveys and research, and we&#39;ll take a fresh academic viewpoint of retail technology issues with professors and experts from leading universities.</p><p><span>[00:04:19]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We have killer content lined up for you this season. Not to give too much away, but here&#39;s some of the highlights that it&#39;s gonna include.</p><p><span>[00:04:27]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> How live streaming is revolutionizing online shopping and creating new opportunities for retailers and a new generation of engineered influencers.</p><p><span>[00:04:36]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> How augmented reality and virtual or reality create immersive and interactive shopping experiences that drive more engagement for product discovery and drive conversion.</p><p><span>[00:04:47]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And how retailers can invest short term to reduce cost long term by adopting the right technologies like R F I D, cloud computing and new AI-driven prescriptive analytics,</p><p><span>[00:04:56]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> How performance marketing helps retailers acquire, <span>[00:05:00]</span> retain, and grow their customer base with data-driven strategies.</p><p><span>[00:05:03]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> how retailers can manage and invest in their frontline store teams by providing the right training, tools, incentives and empowerment.</p><p><span>[00:05:11]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And digital humans can create new possibilities for customer service, personalization and storytelling in retail and so much more.</p><p><span>[00:05:20]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So stay tuned for the third season of the Retail Razor Show. Coming soon to your favorite podcast platform.</p><p><span>[00:05:25]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We can&#39;t wait to share our insights. Tune in with us and our special guests for the important conversations we should all be having to support the business of retail. Thank you for listening and supporting us.</p><p><span>[00:05:38]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I&#39;m your host Ricardo Belmar.</p><p><span>[00:05:40]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden. Ricardo, this trailer is a wrap.</p><p><span>[00:05:45]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Signing off for now. And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. <span>[00:06:00]</span></p><p><br></p><p><br></p> 6fea00b2-b615-430f-afe2-d6e3b664b643 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 17 May 2023 11:30:00 +0000 363 no full S2E13 The Razor's Edge - Season 2 Finale S2E13 The Razor's Edge - Season 2 Finale 13 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E13 The Razor's Edge - Season 2 Finale We’ve been on quite a wild ride this season with topics ranging from the metaverse, to retail media networks, to the future of ecommerce and DTC, plus our Retail Transformers, and including special interviews and recaps of three major industry events – Grocery Shop, NRF, and Shop Talk! But now we’ve reached The Razor’s Edge, our Season 2 finale, with special guest host Paul do Forno, Managing Director of the Commerce Practice at Deloitte Digital, turning the tables on our dynamic duo to walk through the season calling out all the highlights! In this episode, Paul turns our regular hosts, Ricardo and Casey, into the show’s guests and starts with a check-in on how their Top 10 Predictions for 2023 are holding up so far this year. Then he looks back through the season and asks our hosts what some of their favorites were in each of our min-series and special episodes. What were your favorites? Who was your favorite Retail Transformer? Find out how you match up to our hosts’ choices! And of course, Paul can’t resist but ask for hints on what’s to come in Season 3! We’re now standing at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E13 The Razor's Edge - S2 Finale [00:00:00] Season 2 Finale [00:00:20] Paul do Forno: Hello, Retail Razor listeners, and welcome to Season Two Grand Finale. As you might have noticed, I am not your usual host. I'm Paul do Forno. I'm part of the leadership team at Commerce Practice at Deloitte Digital. We're one of the largest commerce consulting companies in the world, and we help everything from strategy to design to implementing platforms. [00:00:42] But today I am your guest hosts and I'm turning the tables on the Dynamic Duo interviewing them. So let's bring in these weeks guests, Ricardo and Casey. Casey, Ricardo, thank you so much for having me as your guest host for season two finale. [00:00:59] Ricardo Belmar: Hey [00:01:00] Paul, it is awesome having you here with us. [00:01:01] Casey Golden: I mean, how lucky are we to have you on the actual podcast? it's so nice to have you over here. Thanks for doing this. [00:01:10] Paul do Forno: Well, how does it feel being on the other side? Do you feel a little pressure now? I you don't know what I'm gonna ask. [00:01:16] Casey Golden: It's always a bit awkward to be your own guest, but I'm excited to answer some questions since I am usually on the side of asking questions. [00:01:25] Paul do Forno: Okay. [00:01:26] Ricardo Belmar: feeling the same way it is a little odd being, not being the one asking the questions on your own podcast. but this is gonna be fun. So I'm glad you're joining us. I'm thrilled we're turning things around and I can't wait to see how you're gonna try to trip us up here in the finale. [00:01:39] Paul do Forno: All right. All right. Well, I can't wait to dive in. So here we go. First I wanna check in with both of you. You had top 10 list of predictions this year, and I know we're not all the way through the year, but we wanna check in to see where you're at and which ones you feel that are totally on track, or which ones are totally off track.[00:02:00] So Ricardo. [00:02:01] Ricardo Belmar: this could get interesting. Good thing there's no audience to throw things at us. [00:02:05] Paul do Forno: You ready for the questions, Casey? [00:02:08] Casey Golden: Yeah, and Ricardo, I'm a good catch, but I love q and a, so I do miss having a live audience. I'm feeling pretty good, but Ricardo and I come from two different perspectives. That's why I think we're a little bit more fun to listen to. We do not agree on everything. [00:02:24] Paul do Forno: All right. All right. That's good. That's why we're here. All right. For the second part, I'm also gonna ask you about your favorite parts of the season and a few surprise questions along the way and follow up. I'm gonna test some of the things that you come back with. [00:02:39] Checking in on those 2023 predictions [00:02:39] Paul do Forno: okay, let's jump in. First question, Ricardo. Let's start with you. You each gave five prediction this year and so , which you think maybe are the long shot and out, out of those long shots, which one do you think will really come true by the end of the year and why? [00:02:59] Ricardo Belmar: [00:03:00] Oh, you really went for that one, didn't you? I like 'em all though. [00:03:03] Paul do Forno: Wow. Just pick one. Let's focus on one for today. [00:03:06] Ricardo Belmar: All right. I guess I'll pick one. , if I have to pick one, I guess I would have to pick the one I gave on the anywhere commerce versus immersive commerce. [00:03:15] Paul do Forno: Okay. Let's hear some more about it. [00:03:17] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I, feel like that's the one that's maybe the most far out there of the predictions I did in that it's not just about retailers being the one to seriously adopt immersive tech, like AR and VR. And embracing other new technologies to get commerce in the right context in new locations. Like we talked about integrating it in your car, being in a stadium at a game or something like that. [00:03:41] But it's not just about the retailers integrating the tech. It also requires consumers to be willing to adopt these at the same time. So there's a little bit of an element of the stars aligning on this one to make it come true and work out. So I think maybe that's my long shot. I'm still sticking with it though. [00:03:58] Paul do Forno: Okay, it's gonna take a [00:04:00] little bit longer. Ca. Casey, what do you think? [00:04:02] Casey Golden: I'm completely opposite, I believe a hundred percent and anywhere commerce and contextual commerce that every single consumer touchpoint is gonna turn into a point of sale, but it is gonna be a little bit more of a long shot as far as it's gonna take longer, but I believe that it is a hundred percent there. [00:04:22] This punch in immersive has massive demand and I think it's moved a lot of builders into creating better foundational structures so that we can get interesting experiences and more virtual experiences that I think is gonna fuel that. But we really need better checkout and I think everybody in that space that's very forward and immersive shopping and this, these metaverse plays and virtual experiences, they're learning supply chain right now. And so once I think this kind of bridges, [00:05:00] there's gonna be some beautiful magic. [00:05:01] Paul do Forno: So I noticed you guys didn't say the word as part of all that. You didn't say the word omnichannel. Is [00:05:07] Casey Golden: It doesn't exist. It never has. [00:05:10] Paul do Forno: What's that? [00:05:11] Casey Golden: It doesn't exist. It never has. [00:05:13] Paul do Forno: Ah, okay. [00:05:14] Ricardo Belmar: all just commerce. I'm gonna keep saying it's just commerce. We don't need to label it omnichannel or anything because I think all that ever, I dunno. It feels like all we ended up accomplishing was confusion with that. [00:05:25] Paul do Forno: All right. No good perspectives. It I think this is the one it'll be interesting, it may take longer to get the full view, but then I think once we get closer to that, the goalposts will change again. So it will be interesting. Alright. Casey, same question to you. What's your biggest long shot and why? [00:05:46] Casey Golden: So my biggest long shot is, B N P L. I just don't feel that it's good for consumers and there will be more consumer protection initiatives around the entire entity. It's [00:06:00] bulking customers up with debt does not help your customer experience and brand relationship when that payment that might be coming at you every single month is coming because it's a branded product, it, I think it does negatively infect the brand. [00:06:15] But I understand the value of it opening up cash flow for like younger demographics and just for people in general. It does open up cash flow to buy things that you want or need but I'm very conflicted on the two sides of it. However, Apple Pay Later has now launched so that kind of throws a wrench in my biggest long shot. So, Now that Apple users can split their purchases into four interest free payments over six months without a fee, I think it might be a long shot that Affirm, After Pay, Klarna, and PayPal make it. [00:06:50] Paul do Forno: So what? What do you think Ricardo? [00:06:54] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah I don't know. I think, When we recorded that one and Casey went through that prediction I think the thought was, is [00:07:00] it gonna be a little bit of a blow up or explosion in terms of consumer protections, but now maybe it's gonna blow up in a different direction with Apple launching Apple Pay Later. [00:07:10] May, maybe it's more now a matter of, are the other company, like you just said in Casey are these all these other companies gonna survive doing that now that they're gonna have to compete directly with Apple on their platform [00:07:20] Casey Golden: I mean, Apple's done. Now we just need a Google one and [00:07:23] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, if Google comes out with a pay later now, then it's really gonna be done. [00:07:27] Paul do Forno: I guess, I guess I might be here in being a little bit of the counter to this. So actually the stats came out and the numbers on B N P L last year, I don't have it right in front of me, but it was multiple billions of dollars. It was the fastest growing payment channel. And so it's not a long, it's here. [00:07:47] But I think your point, Casey's a nuanced one where the effect on the brand and how it's used, that's something that I think, needs to be figured out that's [00:08:00] the concern long term, right? Like I think that buy now pay later is here for a long time. In fact, I actually first saw this and it was weird. [00:08:10] I went to Brazil for the first time in 2011, and everywhere you went, buy now, pay later was, that was just the standard way that they paid because that's the demographics that were there and that's the way they paid. And so I, especially given, some of the economic trends and how people are buying, I think this is a long-term stay. [00:08:33] The question is gonna be who and then how best to use it within the brand. That ju just my two, my 2 cents there. All right. Next question. Now that we got these long shots outta the way, Ricardo, which one for you are you most sure of and why? [00:08:53] Ricardo Belmar: Ah, okay. This, I think this one's a little easier for me to pick, cuz honestly, all you have to do is look at any of the news outlets [00:09:00] that are out there today covering tech and covering retail and just everywhere. I mean it, it's an obvious one for me. It's a prediction on generative ai. So things like, whether it's chat, g p t, dall-e two g p t four, there's the Microsoft co-pilot announcement. [00:09:13] All these things coming out. I think it was the last prediction we had in, in our list. We saved the best for last maybe, but I think this is this is one is all as close to an automatic win. I think as we're gonna get in one of these predictions, just given where it's trending is pretty much every retailer I talk to just about every account manager and field rep I talk to at Microsoft is saying the same thing, every customer is looking at this and asking, how do I use this? [00:09:36] Everybody's got a long list of use cases they wanna apply it to. They wanna understand. How to build with it, how to apply it. When we had our top retail influencers calls with Rethink Retail, it was two months in a row it was a topic that everybody wanted to talk about. [00:09:51] Everyone had something to say about it. Everyone's got an opinion about it. And they're just, I don't know, so many use cases. I mean, one of my favorite ones seeing [00:10:00] CarMax doing , where they're using the AI tools to help a customer doing research on their site to automatically summarize all the reviews on cars. [00:10:08] So instead of having to read thousands and thousands of reviews, you just ask a few questions and it gives you a summary with everything you need to know. So just coolest. And that's such a simple, if I can explain it in two sentences, you can ask the two sentences and get a summary. [00:10:21] Can't get much better than that. [00:10:23] Paul do Forno: That, that seems the most obvious one, but I, just to put you on the spot, I know you, you talked about an interesting one and, but let's talk specifically about commerce. What component of commerce do you think this would apply most? Like what area? [00:10:40] Ricardo Belmar: I think we're gonna see it apply in, in, in stages. I think initially anything related to discovery and product discovery, new ways of searching. So search will move I think from trying to think of what keyword do I use? We don't wanna search for a product ,now I can really be super descriptive. [00:10:56] I can talk about what my intent is when I wanna search for something. [00:11:00] Like just, I'm just thinking examples. Like if I'm searching for new, for apparel products instead of having to use keywords like it's, I'm searching for, jeans right, or shirts or whatever it's gonna be. I can describe how I'm gonna wear it and where I'm gonna wear it, and now as part of that search process and these tools are gonna give me different responses based on that. [00:11:18] So I think being able to apply intent and more, almost a point more emotional feeling of how I'm gonna use this product in that search. I think that's gonna be the, probably the first area where it's gonna have a big impact on commerce. [00:11:31] Casey Golden: And that's exactly what I don't agree on anything. AI is not gonna help you get dressed in the morning. I promise. [00:11:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:11:44] Casey Golden: But no, I think that, Listen, I think when we're buying clothing it's emotional and I don't think we can have a non-emotional entity help us make these emotional decisions. But when it comes to function, a hundred percent, I [00:12:00] think affecting mass commerce and I don't get excited about buying another cell phone charger. [00:12:07] I need to buy some recording information like pieces. So I look like Ricardo and I have a mic and all these things. Yes, that I definitely see, like there's these ways that AI is gonna definitely impact search. I think it could for a period of time dis disrupt. Why? The only way we see things is if there's ad money behind it. [00:12:29] And I think we can get a lot better information and products teed up to us based off of function. But. Leave it to me to make sure you have the right clothes, Ricardo. Um, I think the immediate [00:12:43] Ricardo Belmar: do better than the AI [00:12:45] Casey Golden: well, yeah, we'll do much better, but I think the number one thing I'm seeing right now is managing products and uploading products into e-comm is painful and often a very manual process. [00:12:58] And so product [00:13:00] descriptions right outta the box, being able to create clear product descriptions that are interesting, compelling, and again, going back to your point, Ricardo, that will impact search. But coming up with the tags different categorizes categories for everything on there in e-comm I think will be good. [00:13:19] Uploading products, changing image sizes, being able to do some of these things more automated and painful processes I think is an immediate lift. [00:13:31] Paul do Forno: Yeah, make makes sense. That makes sense and I think there will be more stuff that we haven't even thought of and adjacent to it. It's something that's gonna fit the whole stack of everything. So just to take another example of helping the coders, right? There's all these tools to help on the coding side. [00:13:49] So the turnaround time on some of the coding and looking at coding is, it is gonna be helped. So if you start looking at your whole, and [00:14:00] you mentioned supply chain earlier, right? If you start looking at everything, if everything gets improved, 5 10% that's where that whole effect comes in. [00:14:08] So beyond just the experience part, I think it's gonna affect the whole stack. [00:14:15] Casey Golden: yeah, Canva had an update last this week. That was probably the best product update release I've ever seen. And there is generative art, there is redesigning your slides with ai. You have chat sheet bts in there. All of these solutions and all of these pieces just kind of came in, wrapped up like a present. [00:14:39] And I have to say, they've like 10 Xed my speed to create. And it did a phenomenal job. And, there's designers that are using it to create, they'll design one product and then they'll use the generative AI to create 10 more styles. And that's where I'm like, okay, now I'm getting a little bit [00:15:00] conflicted again between, I believe designers should be talented human beings that get to achieve their dreams versus being replaced. [00:15:10] So I think we'll see what kind of happens here. As of today, Italy's ban, g p t Chat, G P t. They'll come around. Everybody always does, but I think that that's kind of interesting. They feel that there are unlawfully processing people's data and privacy issues. So [00:15:27] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. [00:15:28] Paul do Forno: Interesting. Yeah. So how long before we all become prompt engineers? Right. I've already seen those. I've already seen people start to publish like, Hey, I'm a prompt engineer. I'm an expert, so there you go. New roles popping up all the time [00:15:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yep, new roles. [00:15:47] Paul do Forno: All right. Casey, what about you? What's your sure thing prediction. [00:15:52] Casey Golden: sure thing is the explosion of CDPs. So customer data platforms, there is really [00:16:00] no excuse anymore for a customer to have of a bad experience with your brand. Not being able to produce like basic functional care to shoppers. Is unacceptable. And the main reason that we still have this is because a lot of the customer experience and customer support is fragmented and none of that data is really available to anybody that needs it. [00:16:26] It's available to everybody who doesn't need it in a lot of the time. Like when the customer is with you and you need it, they don't have access. And so I think that having CDPs essentially come in and start pulling all of this data together so that everybody has one point system, whether or not it's checking on an order, which hopefully , AI's gonna take care of. [00:16:48] You don't need to do that anymore. But we're gonna have different database systems to be able to pull all this customer information together and really be able to craft more around the consumer. [00:17:00] And I think that this is just gonna cause more of an extinction of traditional CRMs over maybe the next five years. [00:17:07] The way we think of a CRM, the way we, the box we put it in, I think it's, not gonna be there anymore. And so, the CDP is becoming mission critical for a company I believe this year needs to enter and see essentially how it's gonna be deployed over the next, like 18 to 24 months. But I don't see a company being able to operate in 2024 without a C D P. [00:17:37] Paul do Forno: Well, that's a great commercial for my C D P group, but, uh, but let, let me challenge you on that, of the one that you want this to happen earlier, knowing, especially some of the big enterprise brands that we work with, some of the challenges that they have of just tying all the [00:18:00] different systems. It's one thing if it, if you're dealing with a direct to consumer, one brand, smaller when you get into acquisitions and a holding company that owns all these different retailers, bringing 'em together, CDP is not easy and trying to get it. [00:18:15] Or they might have a version, kind of a C D P here, kind of c d p there. How do you coordinate it all together and so, I a hundred percent agree on this might, you might have jumped a question like, this is what you want to have as to, cuz this is harder. This ends up being a lot harder in my experience to get adoption earlier just because of all of the change management, all the different things that are out there. [00:18:44] But I a hundred percent agree they people need to go to this. [00:18:47] Casey Golden: Well, I think you're right. I mean, it can be, it can be a lot more complicated. It's not in a lot of other companies best interest to want to integrate with your C D P, [00:19:00] and so I think that, there's gonna be a lot of change management there, but the way I see it is consumers are going to gain more and more and more. [00:19:11] Protection over their rights to their data. And if your GDPR compliant, like they already have more rights than we can service today. And so this is going to, it's going to be mandatory whether or not it's executed well or at a hundred percent. I just don't think that we can really go into next year without making sure that you're operating in compliance because compliance is gonna be, is already moving faster than the software companies. [00:19:45] Paul do Forno: What do you think Ricardo? [00:19:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I mean I definitely agree in principle and the need, right? And the want. I'm thinking about your point and Paul about how it's not easy necessarily, right? Especially the larger the organization, the more potential [00:20:00] disconnected systems there are that need to be connected to create that c d P. [00:20:04] I think it's doable. I work with some partners that are in this space as well. And I think they're doing a good job at something where, again it's where you wanna plug in the AI models into it to help with some of that. [00:20:13] So I think it's a doable thing, it may be one of those where when we're looking at it at the end of the year maybe it's not complete for some of the largest organizations and it's still in progress. But I think the, I think maybe Casey's point is, it as everyone moves to this that want and need is going to cause some action, right. [00:20:30] And people are gonna start doing things about it and moving in that direction. So even if they don't have it fully deployed and ready I, I think it, it's a valid point. And I, think from a prediction point of view, yeah. It means people are gonna be trying to leverage a C D P as much as they can by the end of the year. [00:20:47] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, I think really they're gonna make the purchase. I think last year, 640 billion was spent on customer experience software. They all need a c D P to power. Everything is [00:21:00] gonna need the c d P to power customer experiences. But we kind of have to start with where our core is. And so I think if I had to deploy monies or say, what's a sure thing, you're gonna need one and you, the sooner the better. [00:21:18] Paul do Forno: Awesome, Casey. Thank you for that. You just, I just, you just recorded my commercial for me that it's gonna be my pre roll intro to our CDP presentations, but let's move on. All right. I got one for you, for your other four predictions. Which ones do you think you most want to actually come to life? [00:21:39] Right? And you wanna see go big. So Casey, let's start with you. [00:21:44] Casey Golden: I want loyalty programs to mean something again. I think that there's a lot of emphasis on loyalty programs right now, and I've seen a lot of companies scaling back rewards at the same time and taking away common [00:22:00] perks. And so I'd really like to just see this loyalty program just facilitate into something that's actually going to build loyalty, not a marketing campaign. [00:22:14] I think that this is the moment where it could really be a differentiator in the brand, the customer experience, but if we keep diluting it or disrupting them, like it's just not, it seems more marketing than it is actually provide any services. And so, I think that this is a place where there's gonna be a lot of movement. And I see, anybody who's scaling back rewards I think that they're gonna have a negative impact onto their business. [00:22:46] And I think loyalty programs are just gonna really start meaning something interesting from access to product first. Access to buy at a discount, or even shop sale first. I think the loyalty programs [00:23:00] could turn into something really meaningful and have some really interesting perks that haven't really been the point. [00:23:07] Maybe not points, you know? [00:23:09] Paul do Forno: So, so Casey, is this part of your, your favorite hotel chain? Making sure you get that nice omelet and premium breakfast [00:23:17] Casey Golden: All right [00:23:18] Paul do Forno: of the old bagel. [00:23:19] Casey Golden: yeah. So like I get, you know, they, they put a little goldfish in my room and they make sure that Mr. Darcy's there. I don't expect the rest of the retail industry to be able to compare to the way that I might be treated at a hotel, or you might be treated at a hotel. But I do feel that there's an opportunity, if that's the top, why is the bottom like 10% off your next coffee after you buy a hundred? , what does it take to get a reward, like 50,000 points [00:24:00] for a dollar off your next order? , come on, let's do something. And I think that this is the moment where everybody's been talking about loyalty, whether or not they're adding more, taking it away. And there's a lot of loyalty programs out there, and I think that we're gonna get a, it's gonna turn into an actual program, not just about, pricing. [00:24:25] It's not just about discounts. I think it can be a lot more, and I think even mass merchants are gonna find something more than a discount. [00:24:32] Paul do Forno: Okay, Ricardo. [00:24:34] Ricardo Belmar: Ooh. So for me I would have to say it's that prediction had about automation in, in stores for frontline workers. Over the years, what I think there's always a lot of predictions around what's gonna change for store teams , years back or sort of really only talked about that in the context of better training for employees. [00:24:52] But I think now in, in recent years since the pandemic we're, we have a different perspective on what those store teams are doing and, and how they [00:25:00] work. And now that with, with labor shortages and things for retailers, I think there's more of a view of you have to actually make this environment better. [00:25:07] You've gotta provide the right tools that aren't intended to necessarily replace people in the store, but it's intended to make them. Make their jobs more efficient, more effective, more productive, hopefully getting rid of a lot of the annoying tasks that we force onto store teams to, that they have to take care of, but they keep them away from customers. [00:25:27] So I, I think we'll finally start to see some meaningful things done here with real deployments of technologies that , are having an impact. And I think with an end goal of trying to really make that environment so it's not just a job, but it's more about creating a career path where you might even, finally start looking at those em employee roles as not all being equal in that, some folks on your store team may have different skills and you need to actually take advantage of that in the sense that, , give them things they can do that are built on, [00:26:00] on those skills so that some of those store associates might have a different role than others. [00:26:04] And that's okay. That's a good thing because that helps create those career paths. So I think that's gonna be the one that I really wanna see go big. [00:26:13] Casey Golden: Thank you for amplifying the real retail heroes, Ricardo. I mean, Paul, if I bring this up, it's a sales pitch, so I don't talk about frontline workers very much on here, but I just, if you're moving forward, I think we just need to, to bring our people with us. [00:26:34] Paul do Forno: Yeah. And, it's a fascinating area in fact, I noticed at NRF, if you walk the floor, some of the biggest booths were actually targeted towards the frontline industry. I was actually surprised right at the front door. So some friends of mine, actually, startups that are now massive, and I, I know we're working with some fascinating, very large grocery retailers that to [00:27:00] automate, when they get into work, how can they prioritize their tasks, and also really interestingly, things change so much. Some, you know, there's a storm coming in h how do you rally the troops very quickly and things like that. So I, I think we're just at, at a tipping point of finding ways to really drive and empower the, frontline worker. So ,exciting. [00:27:23] I agree with that one. That will be really good. [00:27:26] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. [00:27:27] Looking back across the whole season [00:27:27] Paul do Forno: Okay, now let's step back and look at the season as a whole. You had two mini series, I'll call them. Both were based on live recordings, one at Grocery Shop and one at N R F. Now, usually we're doing, you're recording kind of like this virtually, so, talk about how it was to be live and, , talking live with, the people right in front of you. [00:27:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll, I'll jump in on this one. Cause unfortunately Casey wasn't able to to join me on, on, on those. But you know, it was, um, [00:28:00] I know we, we [00:28:01] Casey Golden: I'm gonna be at grocery shop. I'm like literally at the store grocery shopping. I've never been to that show. [00:28:08] Ricardo Belmar: I know, I know. But you're right, it is di it is different though because you, you get a little it feels a little more authentic. Maybe you get a little bit more dynamic reactions when you're seeing someone face-to-face and in person versus just seeing them in a little video square on the screen. [00:28:22] So, so there is that. I think that creates a different excitement level from, from guests on the show when you're live versus remote. And I think that really comes out right in both, in both series, the grocery shop one and the NRF ones. [00:28:33] Paul do Forno: Cool. All right. All right. I'd have to ask you about your special guest host and crossover companion at nrf. That that, that was kind of interesting. [00:28:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. So, special shout out to Jeff Roster, host of This Week In Innovation podcast. We did a, crossover there. He's been with us as one of our esteemed Retail Avengers from them the first season where we like to refer to him as the analyst. So Jeff and I decided to team up a little bit at N R F and see what can we do[00:29:00] to do this in person. [00:29:01] And it was interesting experience because, it's a little different than when I did a grocery shop, you know, grocery shop, shop talk. They're, they're good at providing you an entire facility with recording equipment in a dedicated room that you can use. N R F is a little more complicated and that, that we didn't technically qualify to, to use their facilities for that. [00:29:20] So we kind of had to figure it out for ourselves and, and, and understand, okay, what, what do we need to, what equipment do we need? And, and then of course the biggest challenge is figuring out, well, where are we gonna do this? And we were lucky. We had our friends and fans of the show at Avanade allowed us to use their lounge space as our mobile recording studio. [00:29:36] For both Jeff and I think that was a new experience. We learned a lot from that and, and hopefully upped our podcast game to do more of these live in-person recordings that way. [00:29:45] Paul do Forno: Gotcha. So question. am I an honorary Avenger since I was there in the clubhouse? In the Clubhouse case? [00:29:52] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. Yep. [00:29:53] Paul do Forno: the clubhouse, [00:29:55] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Right. That, that, that's why you get invited to guest, host, come on. [00:29:58] Paul do Forno: Woo. [00:30:00] Alright, so question for you, Casey. What interview stood out to you? The most, both at Grocery Shop and nrf. [00:30:08] Casey Golden: So, both of which I missed. So the, the episode with Ron and Vicki, it really stood out at N R F that it is, it is absolutely something magical when we're together in, in real life. And I think that those, there's nothing that can compare to everybody being, having that energy and bringing it all to the same table and having these great conversations. [00:30:35] So I mean, it was something where I didn't tune out. I was listening to it and I think that it just brings like a very different dynamic to podcasts. But I mean, it goes to show we have really talented people in this space that are so passionate about retail. And so the Ron and Vicki episode just, you know, moved right up to my top as the most memorable.[00:31:00] [00:31:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I, I have to say on, on that one too, I mean, o one of the things that worked so great with that, I mean, we, we didn't plan anything in advance for, for that one. We were all, all four of us were at the Retail ROI Super Saturday event that we were, we were hosting at the Microsoft office. [00:31:16] And right at the end of the day when everything was wrapping up, we said, why don't we sit down and just record a quick 15 minute conversation, just on some thoughts about what we, what we experienced in the day, kinda what we were hoping to see at nrf. And then of course, we got so into it, it turned into 50 minutes, not 15 ... so we went a little bit longer. [00:31:32] Paul do Forno: Wow. That's great. So what, what did you think Casey, about that. [00:31:38] Casey Golden: So like, I mean, Ron Thurston, I'm like a super fan. We'll just say that I am a super fan and Vicki Cantrell is, is phenomenal. So, I mean, I wish I, I wish I could have been there. It was just really special and Gabriella, what was it? Gabriella Bach from Rethink Retail. She was filming the video [00:32:00] for [00:32:00] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. She recorded the video for us. [00:32:02] Casey Golden: walking around in that tiny room with her video way longer than she was supposed to. [00:32:08] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, she, she was really re a real good I I don't even know what to say you, cause we talked, she heard us talking about wanting to do it and said, Hey, do you guys want me to record the video for that, that you can use? I don't, I don't mind doing it. So, yeah. We're only gonna be 15 minutes or so. [00:32:20] Oh, sure. No problem. And she's sitting there holding all the video equipment and this, and you can see in the video, this was such a tiny conference room that we ended up picking and she's trying to kind of move around all of us to get the right angles in this. She had to change batteries midway through it and then ran outta battery power cause we went so long. [00:32:38] So that was, that was definitely something. [00:32:39] Paul do Forno: Cool. Alright. So you definitely have to keep doing more of those in the future. [00:32:45] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, oh, for sure. So, so stay tuned. We, we, we have one of very much like that coming from Shop Talk that we just did. [00:32:51] All those Retail Transformers were more than meets the eye! [00:32:51] Paul do Forno: Awesome. All right, now let's talk about one of your fun series within a series, so to speak, [00:33:00] the retail transformer series. You started the series in series one, but it really took off with this season with four special retail transformation episodes. But honestly, you could have called it both grocery shop and NRF series the same, couldn't you? [00:33:15] Casey Golden: Yes, true. I mean, we're all essentially Transformers. That's why we brought them on the show. [00:33:23] Paul do Forno: I, I think Casey was just about to go. Transformers. [00:33:30] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. Yep. Stealing my line there. [00:33:32] Casey Golden: I'm like [00:33:33] Paul do Forno: That's what we were [00:33:34] Casey Golden: playing my composure. [00:33:37] Paul do Forno: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That we're, we're supposed to have yeah, we're professional here. All right. Okay. Back, back to the story here. So which one stood out the most for you, Casey? [00:33:50] Casey Golden: So, my favorite Retail Transformer during that this series was Brian Dove with Commerce Hub. We could have, [00:34:00] that podcast could have gone on for hours. Literally I would've been fine if Ricardo stopped record, and I just continued talking to Brian for the rest of the day. His approach is really compelling. [00:34:15] He's solving. Solving supply chain is probably one of the ugliest and most complex sites of the business. And making changes in supply chain are like, they're, they're like complete, they're not even a heart transplant. It's a complete nervous system transplant. And, just think that our supplies, chains need the most transformation and it's just hard, ugly work. [00:34:41] You don't get a lot of rainbows and sunshines and like glitter doing things in supply chain. It's waking up in the morning, day in, day out, doing the stuff that nobody else wants to do. And I think he came out with a very his approach is incredible and I think that we're [00:35:00] just gonna see more drop shipping directly from manufacturers than managing their own distribution and, and selling inventory in and third party logistics warehouses. [00:35:11] This. Piece of supply chain that is part of Commerce Hub. They're only like a fraction of what could be. But I think for, for what he's done and what they're doing now and where they're going, he is my top re Retail Transformer that stood out during that series. [00:35:34] Paul do Forno: Wow. I, I can't have my guys listening to this podcast because now before you're talking up the c d p guys, now my supply chain guys is, see, we're we're more important than everybody else. [00:35:46] Casey Golden: Wants to work with me. Paul, [00:35:47] Paul do Forno: I know. Geez. I, I dunno how, what, what about us? Come on. No. Yeah. Hundred percent. [00:35:56] Casey Golden: there's so many angels in this space that I [00:36:00] just feel like a lot of, a lot of it, the attention goes to the marketers. In general, and I just feel like marketing is just not retail. It takes so much to make that product [00:36:17] Paul do Forno: And honestly in the last couple years, right? I think people got, oh, all we have to do is just drop ship stuff and things just show up and [00:36:25] it, you know, [00:36:26] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah. It's magic, [00:36:28] Paul do Forno: and nobody has to make profit off of it. Now, the real world, oh damn, we've got a sources. And to scale it, you actually have to do it profitably, right? [00:36:38] And so now this, we had a little bubble of this magic, every, all this funding and these tools that made, it, enabled all of this to look like it didn't, it was super easy and anybody could do it, but now the real vendors are coming out. And, and so you really have to focus on back to the basics, right? [00:37:00] And, and how to tie all these together. [00:37:02] Casey Golden: I agree. [00:37:03] Paul do Forno: So, Ricardo, how about you? [00:37:05] Ricardo Belmar: So continuing on on that theme you just brought up there, Paul. So, so my, one of my favorites is the, the retail transformer we did with Polly Wong. Cuz she reinforced something that both Casey and I, I think absolutely loved when she said it. I, I think we almost had to stop recording to regain some composure from, from the comment that she just so casually dropped about how you can't have a profitable, business when you're only focused on acquisition as a fact. [00:37:30] And she just rolled that phrase out so matter of factly, like it was just the most fundamental thing that everybody had been lost on. That one to me to kind of set the tone for the whole rest of the recording on that one. Cause that was pretty early on. I think that was just gold. When she brought that up and, you know, we, we had been wanting to do some direct to consumer focus episodes, so Polly gave us a chance to talk about how is D T C really moving forward and bringing it back to this idea of profitability. [00:37:58] How do you shift from customer acquisition [00:38:00] focus to actually building customer loyalty, maintaining that community of customers. And, she, I just love how she gave us , this picture of, all these different ways and methods that those brands are now marketing to consumers that, that kind of brought things back. [00:38:14] Like when she mentioned, print catalogs where a as if they're the brand new thing that DTC brands were doing and being successful at it. I think that was, that was just something I don't think anybody who was listening expected to hear that. And that, that, I just love that one. [00:38:28] Casey Golden: I agree. I think everything that was old is new again. It is that, it is this moment of back to the basics. I think Facebook essentially broke our foundation for digital. It created this false foundation for digital, let's say that. And so now that companies are really pulling back into, I don't want to rely on Facebook ads, and now I'm not even getting that eight x or 12 x or 30 x, I'm like, [00:39:00] lucky if I can get a two x return right now. Because of all of the different changes, I think we're going back to just building better with the newer technologies. And a lot of this is foundational, it's just a new foundation for digital. [00:39:16] That's just, I think we too many people over overbuilt on relying on a, the Facebook platform and ads. [00:39:26] Paul do Forno: Hey, I think omnichannel is back. [00:39:30] Casey Golden: Say that word, unified commerce. If you need to use a word unified, [00:39:34] Ricardo Belmar: you go. There you go. Unified commerce. [00:39:37] Paul do Forno: That's probably, that should be another, that should be another podcast. The, the Battle. Battle of Semantics. [00:39:44] Casey Golden: Yeah, [00:39:44] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, there we, there we go. [00:39:46] Casey Golden: no consum. What is it? I just saw it. Composable commerce. [00:39:51] Ricardo Belmar: right. Yeah. [00:39:53] Paul do Forno: The, the battle of the, the terms. All right. [00:39:56] Ricardo Belmar: there. [00:39:56] Paul do Forno: All right. So [00:39:57] Casey Golden: it's a dictionary. [00:39:58] Love those "Special" episodes... [00:39:58] Paul do Forno: now that wasn't the [00:40:00] only topical series you had. You also had a special episode. We already talked about one, your predictions episode, but you also had an interesting one with Andy Laudato from NRF beginners and of course the holiday special guests from Square and others. [00:40:15] How did you come about with those. [00:40:18] Casey Golden: Well, I mean, speaking of the holiday season, we knew we wanted to make a holiday themed episode, but you know, every retail podcast seems to do this and focuses on predicting retail sales, right? And so we wanted to do something different. We brought together Bridget John's founder of to and from, to share her perspective on what customers were actually shopping for gifts. [00:40:44] And what inspired them. And then we added Roshaun from Square to share their recent survey report on what retailers were doing to gear up for the holiday. So we really felt like our holiday episode delivered perspectives on both [00:41:00] sides of the equation from the retailer and the consumer. [00:41:03] Instead of focusing on the number, we really wanted to focus on actually what's happening in this shopping experience and this thought process coming into holiday and how retailers could use that information to make their season more successful and hit those numbers that everybody's projecting. And I found it very much more insightful, really learning from the sides of Roshan, from Square and Bridget from To and From. [00:41:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's what we really call cutting through the clutter. [00:41:36] Paul do Forno: Interesting. Okay. All right. What about the NRF for Beginner's episode? [00:41:42] Ricardo Belmar: So, so that one, we wanted to do something special leading up to N R F. Obviously, we gotta call it our industry's biggest moment of the year, right? It's the biggest show. So we knew we had to do something as a retail podcast, but lucky enough for us, Andy reached out to me and said, Hey, I got a great idea for a podcast episode. [00:41:57] Let's talk about what. Beginners to NRF [00:42:00] need to know by and, and le leveraging the experience of those of us who've been there for so many years and years. So we thought, oh, this is a brilliant idea. Yeah, no, nobody's ever talking about that. Everyone always talks about N R F on the assumption that everyone knows what it is and knows what they're doing when they get there. [00:42:14] But the fact is every year, right, they're always beginners that have, have never been to N R F before. So let, let's focus on that. So, off we went. Andy came on. We, we highlighted, you know, how does a newbie to the show tackle it? What are the, the, the, the secret things you, you need to know that nobody really ever shares or tells you that you wished you knew by the time you got to the end of the show. [00:42:34] And everybody got to really benefit from all of Andy's multitude of, of years of NRF wisdom. [00:42:39] Paul do Forno: Yeah. So what, what'd you think Casey? [00:42:41] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I am still an NRF newbie, I feel, even though I've been there most of my career. Cause there's, based off of how you go there and what contexts are you a vendor? Are you on the buying side? That changes throughout our career. [00:43:00] So you may have been a buyer for 10 years, but then you're going to n r F as a vendor for the first time. [00:43:07] And the tables turn, the experience is different. And yet, I think we're kind of all newbies because I'm going as a vendor. But then each year you are changing what that means, you know, like, Not everybody has the Microsoft booth or like the Salesforce booth. And so, for everybody else, I think that it is pretty interesting on aligning expectations and like strategy for some of these companies that are coming in on the vendor side for the first time to maximize and, and even just new people coming in to go shopping. [00:43:46] You know, it's a big floor. [00:43:48] Paul do Forno: Yeah, that, that probably would be pretty different if you were a buyer. I'm sure everybody wanted you to come to their event and take you out for dinner and everything. And then you're on the other side and you're like, oh crap, [00:44:00] I've got, [00:44:00] Casey Golden: Anybody. [00:44:01] Paul do Forno: get some attention. The hunted from the hunted, right? Like [00:44:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:44:07] Paul do Forno: it's a little bit different. [00:44:09] Okay. Alright. Gonna bring this home. Now with this one, one of the things I like about what you did this season was the introduction of the idea of new segments within each episode and your first one is what you guys call Retail Razor Data Blades, which you brought in a specialist for, right? [00:44:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So, and again, we, we didn't wanna make yet another retail podcast. I mean, there's like, what, over a hundred out there right now, have lost track. So we wanna do something unique that provides a value, not just to the retail tech community that, at the end of the day, right. Both Casey and I are part of right now, but also to retailers who are getting bombarded with information and that you realistically need some guidance on how to sift through all of that, all that data that gets published out there. [00:44:55] And like we're always saying, we want to cut through the clutter of that noise. [00:44:59] Casey Golden: [00:45:00] Yeah. And we worked with our friends over at True Rating and Georgina Nelson, their phenomenal c e o to leverage all the rich data that they've gone through. Their retailer customers from survey questions that they ask at the point of sale to offer our listeners and viewers some insights into what consumers are actually doing. [00:45:21] And not doing with their purchasing habits. [00:45:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, so we introduced this segment. We had it on I think three times this season, and we're, we're definitely gonna bring this one back next season. Big shout out to Georgina was so good at recording this with us when, when she was just days away from her baby's due date. So it was just a amazing that we were able to get that in. [00:45:40] We, we kept joking that we might not get these recordings done in time, but we managed to pull it off. So that was amazing. [00:45:47] Paul do Forno: All [00:45:47] Casey Golden: was prepared to have laptop with her. You know, like when we say she's a phenomenal Georgina, like props to this woman. She's, she's a great leader. [00:45:58] Coming up next season? [00:45:58] Paul do Forno: Wow. That's commitment. [00:46:00] Okay. Now for next year, next season, do you guys have a theme yet? [00:46:07] Casey Golden: Yeah. After season one focused on digital transformation and the impact of transformation on the people in the retail business, this season, our focus was, the evolution of channel operations in the retail business. That's why we started the season with a big one, two punch with the Metaverse and retail media networks. [00:46:32] Ricardo Belmar: and if you think about all the retail transformers we brought in this season, we really kept that focus. We started out with, with Alan Smithson to dive deeper into Metaverse what he was doing, building The Mall in the metaverse to, the episode I mentioned where we had Polly on. Talking about that. [00:46:45] And then, again, the one Casey mentioned with Bryan Dove from Commerce Hub we really drove into the future of e-commerce on that one and marketplaces. So for next season, where are we taking it? We're gonna try to focus a little bit more on some of these themes, a little, little bit sharper, things like anywhere [00:47:00] commerce and immersive commerce. [00:47:01] I think look at how that's happening with this in the middle of this backdrop that I, I think of as a, a back to basics kind of mood in retail. [00:47:10] Paul do Forno: Ah, back to my supply chain guys. All right. Yes, we need them, but, I got all the cool shows and I guess we gotta give them some work. All right, so let's tie in. You know, your predictions there, but what exactly do you mean? Back to basics. [00:47:29] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I, I think we, we really need to sort of acknowledge that retailers are focusing this year on, on how to get better at the business of retailers, retailing. So, past few years through the pandemic, right? What, what, what did retailers end up seeing? There's a lot of rapid growth in some specific areas for many retailers, but because a lot of it happened so fast, and I, I think we have to admit right, faster than most retailers were used to change and, and adopting new things. [00:47:55] So that meant that, they, the focus was just get it out there to deliver those [00:48:00] experiences for, for the consumers, for what consumers wanted at whatever the cost was because it just, it had to be done and it had to be done fast. So now most retailers, I think are figuring out, we did these things, maybe not in the best way we could have done it, so let's optimize it a little bit. [00:48:15] Let's make sure that we take out as much of the cost as we can, but c but, but still be able to do these things. How do we inject some profitability into it? We've got all these crazy new tools like the Generative AI that, mentioned in the predictions. We talked about the automation for, for the store teams. [00:48:31] How do we still inject those things? But let's not do it in the, in the crazy, do it at all costs way that we were forced into the last few years. Let's do it in a more methodical way that we know is gonna maintain some profitability. We're wa we're watching, we don't know what the outcome is gonna be, right? [00:48:48] In terms of shopping trends or consumers gonna keep buying at the pace they've been buying, are they going to slow down because of inflation? Are they gonna go back to saving more versus spending with all this [00:49:00] backdrop, how do we keep these things going? We can't take back any of the new things and capabilities we introduced cause consumers will, will find another brand, right, if we take these things away. [00:49:08] So we have to find ways to keep optimizing and keep doing them, but at least, the way I like to look at it is you can't just cost cut your way to success. You still have to invest in the future. And even though that near term investment is hopefully something that's gonna return you a, a cost reduction in the future, but you have to do it in a smart way. [00:49:26] So I think those are the kinds of things that, we're looking at these trendy things like immersive commerce and everywhere commerce and retailers, still need to do that, but it matters now how you do it more so than it did before. [00:49:39] Casey Golden: Yeah, I'm a hundred percent on this is going to be the time for reality. And we're gonna be spending a lot more time on. The, the reality of, of where our retail is today to build, to be able to adopt some of the new technology at scale. It's just we spend so much [00:50:00] time on marketing and acquisition and we saw that it just cost us too much money and a lot of turn. [00:50:07] And so focusing on retention and stable systems and being able to go ahead and say like, listen, why are there 400 messages a day of a customer looking for their package? Okay, that's not a customer service opportunity. That's an opportunity to fix it. Like this is like adding these things to plug problems and band-aids. [00:50:34] We've got to solve the actual problems. And I think that that's, everything that I've seen right now has been. I have, we have customers. We're gonna focus on keeping them, and we need to go ahead and make sure that we're ready for the next five years of retail. Otherwise, we, I don't know if we'll be here or we're going to lose our market share. [00:50:57] Paul do Forno: And I'll, and I'll just put a exclamation mark [00:51:00] on that. Like all I'm hearing is optimize. How do we optimize, how do we use what we have? We spend a ton of investments over the past couple years. How do we use 'em well, right? Like that's what I keep hearing. That's what, that's what my colleagues are hearing. [00:51:16] So I, I think the more that they can do better, and guess what the P word. You gotta be profitable, right? How do we optimize and be for profit and, and more so than ever, especially with the uncertainty on the economics and that, I think it's just gonna be more important. [00:51:36] Okay. One last thing I want to know. [00:51:39] Any new segments you're introducing? Like the Retail razor Data Blades. [00:51:44] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, since that's that's been pretty popular. So we are looking at adding more of those. So for example one, we're gonna bring a, a unique perspective to answer the, the hot questions of the day from an academic's viewpoint. I think that's gonna be maybe eye-opening for some folks based on, on what kind of [00:52:00] responses we, we hear there and what kind of discussion we have. [00:52:02] But I think it'll be a unique independent viewpoint people aren't used to hearing necessarily. Then another one we're thinking about doing is a segment that'll focus on retail leadership qualities. There's been some interesting news media reports lately talking about how there seems to be a shortage of, of CEOs in retail and a shortage of, of quality executives. [00:52:22] So we're gonna dig in a little bit, I think in, in a new segment there and bring in some folks to. Give some tips on, you know, what are those leadership roles? What are those skills that those leaderships, what traits do they need to have to really be successful in, in retail that maybe not everyone has developed or, or needs to develop better. [00:52:39] Paul do Forno: I, I think back to what I just said, the P word, we need the CEOs driving the profitability, right? [00:52:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. [00:52:47] Casey Golden: Yeah, I think they're gonna come from unexpected places. You know, we've had a lot of executives that have been running the top for 25 years. I think retail in general it's been, [00:53:00] leadership has been plugged. I know a lot of VPs and SVPs that had their jobs for 28 years, they're not going anywhere and they didn't let anybody rise through. [00:53:09] And so there's a lot of talent out there that could probably hop some steps and really make some big changes and some positive profitable changes at these companies. And I'm excited to have those, those sessions cuz there's a lot of untapped talent out in this industry. Nobody's in this industry to get rich, right? [00:53:31] Like we are all here on pure fricking passion. Cause it would be a lot easier working some other industries than it is in this space. We're here with like committed love. [00:53:42] Paul do Forno: Yes. Yes. So all of that's pretty interesting. So any hints for the expert speakers to come? [00:53:50] Casey Golden: We can't give everything away on this episode I'm gonna leave that on on Ricardo if he wants to add any spoilers. [00:53:57] Ricardo Belmar: I think we can afford to make people wait and [00:54:00] see and, and make it a surprise. [00:54:01] Paul do Forno: Well, maybe you guys can give us a preview trailer soon and, you know, a teaser. [00:54:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Be in the lookout for that. [00:54:08] Paul do Forno: All right. Well guys, thank you so much for inviting me on the show to guest host and be an honorary Avenger. It's been a year, Casey and Ricardo since we saw y y you know, the comeback at The Shop Talk last year. And we just got done another Shop Talk. But Ricardo, I didn't see you. I, I, I tried to [00:54:27] Ricardo Belmar: don't know how we missed each other, so, so [00:54:29] Paul do Forno: I know [00:54:29] it was crazy. But thank you. I had a lot of fun and looking forward to next year. [00:54:36] Casey Golden: Thank you so much, Paul. I loved having you on the show and we'll work on that honorary Avenger title. [00:54:42] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. I mean, this is a great, fantastic experience. We can't wait to have you back on the show again soon. [00:54:47] Paul do Forno: All right, thanks guys. [00:54:49] [00:54:49] Show Close [00:54:49] Ricardo Belmar: We'll give a big thanks out to all of our Retail Razor Show fans this season. Casey, I think that means this show[00:55:00] for that matter, this whole season is a wrap now. [00:55:02] Casey Golden: Yeah. If you enjoyed our show this season, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. And if you'd rather watch us instead of listening, subscribe to our YouTube channel and like, and comment there's a new season out there too. [00:55:23] And of course, if you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a full transcript of each episode look at the show notes for handy links to more deets. I'm your cohost, Casey Golden. [00:55:34] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter, at Retail Razor, on LinkedIn for the latest updates. And stay tuned for a season three trailer like Paul was asking us for. [00:55:50] Coming soon. We promise, it'll be worth the wait. I'm your host Ricardo Belmar. [00:55:55] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:55:56] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail [00:56:00] if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. We’ve been on quite a wild ride this season with topics ranging from the metaverse, to retail media networks, to the future of ecommerce and DTC, plus our Retail Transformers, and including special interviews and recaps of three major industry events – Grocery Shop, NRF, and Shop Talk! But now we’ve reached The Razor’s Edge, our Season 2 finale, with special guest host Paul do Forno, Managing Director of the Commerce Practice at Deloitte Digital, turning the tables on our dynamic duo to walk through the season calling out all the highlights!


In this episode, Paul turns our regular hosts, Ricardo and Casey, into the show’s guests and starts with a check-in on how their Top 10 Predictions for 2023 are holding up so far this year. Then he looks back through the season and asks our hosts what some of their favorites were in each of our min-series and special episodes. What were your favorites? Who was your favorite Retail Transformer? Find out how you match up to our hosts’ choices! And of course, Paul can’t resist but ask for hints on what’s to come in Season 3!


We’re now standing at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey



TRANSCRIPT

S2E13 The Razor's Edge - S2 Finale

[00:00:00] Season 2 Finale

[00:00:20] Paul do Forno: Hello, Retail Razor listeners, and welcome to Season Two Grand Finale. As you might have noticed, I am not your usual host. I'm Paul do Forno. I'm part of the leadership team at Commerce Practice at Deloitte Digital. We're one of the largest commerce consulting companies in the world, and we help everything from strategy to design to implementing platforms.

[00:00:42] But today I am your guest hosts and I'm turning the tables on the Dynamic Duo interviewing them. So let's bring in these weeks guests, Ricardo and Casey. Casey, Ricardo, thank you so much for having me as your guest host for season two finale.

[00:00:59] Ricardo Belmar: Hey [00:01:00] Paul, it is awesome having you here with us.

[00:01:01] Casey Golden: I mean, how lucky are we to have you on the actual podcast? it's so nice to have you over here. Thanks for doing this.

[00:01:10] Paul do Forno: Well, how does it feel being on the other side? Do you feel a little pressure now? I you don't know what I'm gonna ask.

[00:01:16] Casey Golden: It's always a bit awkward to be your own guest, but I'm excited to answer some questions since I am usually on the side of asking questions.

[00:01:25] Paul do Forno: Okay. 

[00:01:26] Ricardo Belmar: feeling the same way it is a little odd being, not being the one asking the questions on your own podcast. but this is gonna be fun. So I'm glad you're joining us. I'm thrilled we're turning things around and I can't wait to see how you're gonna try to trip us up here in the finale.

[00:01:39] Paul do Forno: All right. All right. Well, I can't wait to dive in. So here we go. First I wanna check in with both of you. You had top 10 list of predictions this year, and I know we're not all the way through the year, but we wanna check in to see where you're at and which ones you feel that are totally on track, or which ones are totally off track.[00:02:00] So Ricardo.

[00:02:01] Ricardo Belmar: this could get interesting. Good thing there's no audience to throw things at us.

[00:02:05] Paul do Forno: You ready for the questions, Casey?

[00:02:08] Casey Golden: Yeah, and Ricardo, I'm a good catch, but I love q and a, so I do miss having a live audience. I'm feeling pretty good, but Ricardo and I come from two different perspectives. That's why I think we're a little bit more fun to listen to. We do not agree on everything.

[00:02:24] Paul do Forno: All right. All right. That's good. That's why we're here. All right. For the second part, I'm also gonna ask you about your favorite parts of the season and a few surprise questions along the way and follow up. I'm gonna test some of the things that you come back with. 

[00:02:39] Checking in on those 2023 predictions

[00:02:39] Paul do Forno: okay, let's jump in. First question, Ricardo. Let's start with you. You each gave five prediction this year and so , which you think maybe are the long shot and out, out of those long shots, which one do you think will really come true by the end of the year and why?

[00:02:59] Ricardo Belmar: [00:03:00] Oh, you really went for that one, didn't you? I like 'em all though.

[00:03:03] Paul do Forno: Wow. Just pick one. Let's focus on one for today.

[00:03:06] Ricardo Belmar: All right. I guess I'll pick one. , if I have to pick one, I guess I would have to pick the one I gave on the anywhere commerce versus immersive commerce.

[00:03:15] Paul do Forno: Okay. Let's hear some more about it.

[00:03:17] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I, feel like that's the one that's maybe the most far out there of the predictions I did in that it's not just about retailers being the one to seriously adopt immersive tech, like AR and VR. And embracing other new technologies to get commerce in the right context in new locations. Like we talked about integrating it in your car, being in a stadium at a game or something like that.

[00:03:41] But it's not just about the retailers integrating the tech. It also requires consumers to be willing to adopt these at the same time. So there's a little bit of an element of the stars aligning on this one to make it come true and work out. So I think maybe that's my long shot. I'm still sticking with it though.

[00:03:58] Paul do Forno: Okay, it's gonna take a [00:04:00] little bit longer. Ca. Casey, what do you think?

[00:04:02] Casey Golden: I'm completely opposite, I believe a hundred percent and anywhere commerce and contextual commerce that every single consumer touchpoint is gonna turn into a point of sale, but it is gonna be a little bit more of a long shot as far as it's gonna take longer, but I believe that it is a hundred percent there.

[00:04:22] This punch in immersive has massive demand and I think it's moved a lot of builders into creating better foundational structures so that we can get interesting experiences and more virtual experiences that I think is gonna fuel that. But we really need better checkout and I think everybody in that space that's very forward and immersive shopping and this, these metaverse plays and virtual experiences, they're learning supply chain right now. And so once I think this kind of bridges, [00:05:00] there's gonna be some beautiful magic.

[00:05:01] Paul do Forno: So I noticed you guys didn't say the word as part of all that. You didn't say the word omnichannel. Is 

[00:05:07] Casey Golden: It doesn't exist. It never has.

[00:05:10] Paul do Forno: What's that?

[00:05:11] Casey Golden: It doesn't exist. It never has.

[00:05:13] Paul do Forno: Ah, okay.

[00:05:14] Ricardo Belmar: all just commerce. I'm gonna keep saying it's just commerce. We don't need to label it omnichannel or anything because I think all that ever, I dunno. It feels like all we ended up accomplishing was confusion with that.

[00:05:25] Paul do Forno: All right. No good perspectives. It I think this is the one it'll be interesting, it may take longer to get the full view, but then I think once we get closer to that, the goalposts will change again. So it will be interesting. Alright. Casey, same question to you. What's your biggest long shot and why?

[00:05:46] Casey Golden: So my biggest long shot is, B N P L. I just don't feel that it's good for consumers and there will be more consumer protection initiatives around the entire entity. It's [00:06:00] bulking customers up with debt does not help your customer experience and brand relationship when that payment that might be coming at you every single month is coming because it's a branded product, it, I think it does negatively infect the brand.

[00:06:15] But I understand the value of it opening up cash flow for like younger demographics and just for people in general. It does open up cash flow to buy things that you want or need but I'm very conflicted on the two sides of it. However, Apple Pay Later has now launched so that kind of throws a wrench in my biggest long shot. So, Now that Apple users can split their purchases into four interest free payments over six months without a fee, I think it might be a long shot that Affirm, After Pay, Klarna, and PayPal make it.

[00:06:50] Paul do Forno: So what? What do you think Ricardo?

[00:06:54] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah I don't know. I think, When we recorded that one and Casey went through that prediction I think the thought was, is [00:07:00] it gonna be a little bit of a blow up or explosion in terms of consumer protections, but now maybe it's gonna blow up in a different direction with Apple launching Apple Pay Later.

[00:07:10] May, maybe it's more now a matter of, are the other company, like you just said in Casey are these all these other companies gonna survive doing that now that they're gonna have to compete directly with Apple on their platform

[00:07:20] Casey Golden: I mean, Apple's done. Now we just need a Google one and

[00:07:23] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, if Google comes out with a pay later now, then it's really gonna be done.

[00:07:27] Paul do Forno: I guess, I guess I might be here in being a little bit of the counter to this. So actually the stats came out and the numbers on B N P L last year, I don't have it right in front of me, but it was multiple billions of dollars. It was the fastest growing payment channel. And so it's not a long, it's here.

[00:07:47] But I think your point, Casey's a nuanced one where the effect on the brand and how it's used, that's something that I think, needs to be figured out that's [00:08:00] the concern long term, right? Like I think that buy now pay later is here for a long time. In fact, I actually first saw this and it was weird.

[00:08:10] I went to Brazil for the first time in 2011, and everywhere you went, buy now, pay later was, that was just the standard way that they paid because that's the demographics that were there and that's the way they paid. And so I, especially given, some of the economic trends and how people are buying, I think this is a long-term stay.

[00:08:33] The question is gonna be who and then how best to use it within the brand. That ju just my two, my 2 cents there. All right. Next question. Now that we got these long shots outta the way, Ricardo, which one for you are you most sure of and why?

[00:08:53] Ricardo Belmar: Ah, okay. This, I think this one's a little easier for me to pick, cuz honestly, all you have to do is look at any of the news outlets [00:09:00] that are out there today covering tech and covering retail and just everywhere. I mean it, it's an obvious one for me. It's a prediction on generative ai. So things like, whether it's chat, g p t, dall-e two g p t four, there's the Microsoft co-pilot announcement.

[00:09:13] All these things coming out. I think it was the last prediction we had in, in our list. We saved the best for last maybe, but I think this is this is one is all as close to an automatic win. I think as we're gonna get in one of these predictions, just given where it's trending is pretty much every retailer I talk to just about every account manager and field rep I talk to at Microsoft is saying the same thing, every customer is looking at this and asking, how do I use this?

[00:09:36] Everybody's got a long list of use cases they wanna apply it to. They wanna understand. How to build with it, how to apply it. When we had our top retail influencers calls with Rethink Retail, it was two months in a row it was a topic that everybody wanted to talk about.

[00:09:51] Everyone had something to say about it. Everyone's got an opinion about it. And they're just, I don't know, so many use cases. I mean, one of my favorite ones seeing [00:10:00] CarMax doing , where they're using the AI tools to help a customer doing research on their site to automatically summarize all the reviews on cars.

[00:10:08] So instead of having to read thousands and thousands of reviews, you just ask a few questions and it gives you a summary with everything you need to know. So just coolest. And that's such a simple, if I can explain it in two sentences, you can ask the two sentences and get a summary.

[00:10:21] Can't get much better than that.

[00:10:23] Paul do Forno: That, that seems the most obvious one, but I, just to put you on the spot, I know you, you talked about an interesting one and, but let's talk specifically about commerce. What component of commerce do you think this would apply most? Like what area?

[00:10:40] Ricardo Belmar: I think we're gonna see it apply in, in, in stages. I think initially anything related to discovery and product discovery, new ways of searching. So search will move I think from trying to think of what keyword do I use? We don't wanna search for a product ,now I can really be super descriptive.

[00:10:56] I can talk about what my intent is when I wanna search for something. [00:11:00] Like just, I'm just thinking examples. Like if I'm searching for new, for apparel products instead of having to use keywords like it's, I'm searching for, jeans right, or shirts or whatever it's gonna be. I can describe how I'm gonna wear it and where I'm gonna wear it, and now as part of that search process and these tools are gonna give me different responses based on that.

[00:11:18] So I think being able to apply intent and more, almost a point more emotional feeling of how I'm gonna use this product in that search. I think that's gonna be the, probably the first area where it's gonna have a big impact on commerce.

[00:11:31] Casey Golden: And that's exactly what I don't agree on anything. AI is not gonna help you get dressed in the morning. I promise.

[00:11:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:11:44] Casey Golden: But no, I think that, Listen, I think when we're buying clothing it's emotional and I don't think we can have a non-emotional entity help us make these emotional decisions. But when it comes to function, a hundred percent, I [00:12:00] think affecting mass commerce and I don't get excited about buying another cell phone charger.

[00:12:07] I need to buy some recording information like pieces. So I look like Ricardo and I have a mic and all these things. Yes, that I definitely see, like there's these ways that AI is gonna definitely impact search. I think it could for a period of time dis disrupt. Why? The only way we see things is if there's ad money behind it.

[00:12:29] And I think we can get a lot better information and products teed up to us based off of function. But. Leave it to me to make sure you have the right clothes, Ricardo. Um, I think the immediate

[00:12:43] Ricardo Belmar: do better than the AI

[00:12:45] Casey Golden: well, yeah, we'll do much better, but I think the number one thing I'm seeing right now is managing products and uploading products into e-comm is painful and often a very manual process.

[00:12:58] And so product [00:13:00] descriptions right outta the box, being able to create clear product descriptions that are interesting, compelling, and again, going back to your point, Ricardo, that will impact search. But coming up with the tags different categorizes categories for everything on there in e-comm I think will be good.

[00:13:19] Uploading products, changing image sizes, being able to do some of these things more automated and painful processes I think is an immediate lift. 

[00:13:31] Paul do Forno: Yeah, make makes sense. That makes sense and I think there will be more stuff that we haven't even thought of and adjacent to it. It's something that's gonna fit the whole stack of everything. So just to take another example of helping the coders, right? There's all these tools to help on the coding side.

[00:13:49] So the turnaround time on some of the coding and looking at coding is, it is gonna be helped. So if you start looking at your whole, and [00:14:00] you mentioned supply chain earlier, right? If you start looking at everything, if everything gets improved, 5 10% that's where that whole effect comes in.

[00:14:08] So beyond just the experience part, I think it's gonna affect the whole stack.

[00:14:15] Casey Golden: yeah, Canva had an update last this week. That was probably the best product update release I've ever seen. And there is generative art, there is redesigning your slides with ai. You have chat sheet bts in there. All of these solutions and all of these pieces just kind of came in, wrapped up like a present.

[00:14:39] And I have to say, they've like 10 Xed my speed to create. And it did a phenomenal job. And, there's designers that are using it to create, they'll design one product and then they'll use the generative AI to create 10 more styles. And that's where I'm like, okay, now I'm getting a little bit [00:15:00] conflicted again between, I believe designers should be talented human beings that get to achieve their dreams versus being replaced.

[00:15:10] So I think we'll see what kind of happens here. As of today, Italy's ban, g p t Chat, G P t. They'll come around. Everybody always does, but I think that that's kind of interesting. They feel that there are unlawfully processing people's data and privacy issues. So

[00:15:27] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm.

[00:15:28] Paul do Forno: Interesting. Yeah. So how long before we all become prompt engineers? Right. I've already seen those. I've already seen people start to publish like, Hey, I'm a prompt engineer. I'm an expert, so there you go. New roles popping up all the time

[00:15:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yep, new roles.

[00:15:47] Paul do Forno: All right. Casey, what about you? What's your sure thing prediction.

[00:15:52] Casey Golden: sure thing is the explosion of CDPs. So customer data platforms, there is really [00:16:00] no excuse anymore for a customer to have of a bad experience with your brand. Not being able to produce like basic functional care to shoppers. Is unacceptable. And the main reason that we still have this is because a lot of the customer experience and customer support is fragmented and none of that data is really available to anybody that needs it.

[00:16:26] It's available to everybody who doesn't need it in a lot of the time. Like when the customer is with you and you need it, they don't have access. And so I think that having CDPs essentially come in and start pulling all of this data together so that everybody has one point system, whether or not it's checking on an order, which hopefully , AI's gonna take care of.

[00:16:48] You don't need to do that anymore. But we're gonna have different database systems to be able to pull all this customer information together and really be able to craft more around the consumer. [00:17:00] And I think that this is just gonna cause more of an extinction of traditional CRMs over maybe the next five years.

[00:17:07] The way we think of a CRM, the way we, the box we put it in, I think it's, not gonna be there anymore. And so, the CDP is becoming mission critical for a company I believe this year needs to enter and see essentially how it's gonna be deployed over the next, like 18 to 24 months. But I don't see a company being able to operate in 2024 without a C D P.

[00:17:37] Paul do Forno: Well, that's a great commercial for my C D P group, but, uh, but let, let me challenge you on that, of the one that you want this to happen earlier, knowing, especially some of the big enterprise brands that we work with, some of the challenges that they have of just tying all the [00:18:00] different systems. It's one thing if it, if you're dealing with a direct to consumer, one brand, smaller when you get into acquisitions and a holding company that owns all these different retailers, bringing 'em together, CDP is not easy and trying to get it.

[00:18:15] Or they might have a version, kind of a C D P here, kind of c d p there. How do you coordinate it all together and so, I a hundred percent agree on this might, you might have jumped a question like, this is what you want to have as to, cuz this is harder. This ends up being a lot harder in my experience to get adoption earlier just because of all of the change management, all the different things that are out there.

[00:18:44] But I a hundred percent agree they people need to go to this.

[00:18:47] Casey Golden: Well, I think you're right. I mean, it can be, it can be a lot more complicated. It's not in a lot of other companies best interest to want to integrate with your C D P, [00:19:00] and so I think that, there's gonna be a lot of change management there, but the way I see it is consumers are going to gain more and more and more.

[00:19:11] Protection over their rights to their data. And if your GDPR compliant, like they already have more rights than we can service today. And so this is going to, it's going to be mandatory whether or not it's executed well or at a hundred percent. I just don't think that we can really go into next year without making sure that you're operating in compliance because compliance is gonna be, is already moving faster than the software companies.

[00:19:45] Paul do Forno: What do you think Ricardo?

[00:19:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I mean I definitely agree in principle and the need, right? And the want. I'm thinking about your point and Paul about how it's not easy necessarily, right? Especially the larger the organization, the more potential [00:20:00] disconnected systems there are that need to be connected to create that c d P.

[00:20:04] I think it's doable. I work with some partners that are in this space as well. And I think they're doing a good job at something where, again it's where you wanna plug in the AI models into it to help with some of that.

[00:20:13] So I think it's a doable thing, it may be one of those where when we're looking at it at the end of the year maybe it's not complete for some of the largest organizations and it's still in progress. But I think the, I think maybe Casey's point is, it as everyone moves to this that want and need is going to cause some action, right.

[00:20:30] And people are gonna start doing things about it and moving in that direction. So even if they don't have it fully deployed and ready I, I think it, it's a valid point. And I, think from a prediction point of view, yeah. It means people are gonna be trying to leverage a C D P as much as they can by the end of the year.

[00:20:47] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, I think really they're gonna make the purchase. I think last year, 640 billion was spent on customer experience software. They all need a c D P to power. Everything is [00:21:00] gonna need the c d P to power customer experiences. But we kind of have to start with where our core is. And so I think if I had to deploy monies or say, what's a sure thing, you're gonna need one and you, the sooner the better.

[00:21:18] Paul do Forno: Awesome, Casey. Thank you for that. You just, I just, you just recorded my commercial for me that it's gonna be my pre roll intro to our CDP presentations, but let's move on. All right. I got one for you, for your other four predictions. Which ones do you think you most want to actually come to life?

[00:21:39] Right? And you wanna see go big. So Casey, let's start with you.

[00:21:44] Casey Golden: I want loyalty programs to mean something again. I think that there's a lot of emphasis on loyalty programs right now, and I've seen a lot of companies scaling back rewards at the same time and taking away common [00:22:00] perks. And so I'd really like to just see this loyalty program just facilitate into something that's actually going to build loyalty, not a marketing campaign. 

[00:22:14] I think that this is the moment where it could really be a differentiator in the brand, the customer experience, but if we keep diluting it or disrupting them, like it's just not, it seems more marketing than it is actually provide any services. And so, I think that this is a place where there's gonna be a lot of movement. And I see, anybody who's scaling back rewards I think that they're gonna have a negative impact onto their business.

[00:22:46] And I think loyalty programs are just gonna really start meaning something interesting from access to product first. Access to buy at a discount, or even shop sale first. I think the loyalty programs [00:23:00] could turn into something really meaningful and have some really interesting perks that haven't really been the point.

[00:23:07] Maybe not points, you know?

[00:23:09] Paul do Forno: So, so Casey, is this part of your, your favorite hotel chain? Making sure you get that nice omelet and premium breakfast 

[00:23:17] Casey Golden: All right 

[00:23:18] Paul do Forno: of the old bagel.

[00:23:19] Casey Golden: yeah. So like I get, you know, they, they put a little goldfish in my room and they make sure that Mr. Darcy's there. I don't expect the rest of the retail industry to be able to compare to the way that I might be treated at a hotel, or you might be treated at a hotel. But I do feel that there's an opportunity, if that's the top, why is the bottom like 10% off your next coffee after you buy a hundred? , what does it take to get a reward, like 50,000 points [00:24:00] for a dollar off your next order? , come on, let's do something. And I think that this is the moment where everybody's been talking about loyalty, whether or not they're adding more, taking it away. And there's a lot of loyalty programs out there, and I think that we're gonna get a, it's gonna turn into an actual program, not just about, pricing.

[00:24:25] It's not just about discounts. I think it can be a lot more, and I think even mass merchants are gonna find something more than a discount.

[00:24:32] Paul do Forno: Okay, Ricardo.

[00:24:34] Ricardo Belmar: Ooh. So for me I would have to say it's that prediction had about automation in, in stores for frontline workers. Over the years, what I think there's always a lot of predictions around what's gonna change for store teams , years back or sort of really only talked about that in the context of better training for employees.

[00:24:52] But I think now in, in recent years since the pandemic we're, we have a different perspective on what those store teams are doing and, and how they [00:25:00] work. And now that with, with labor shortages and things for retailers, I think there's more of a view of you have to actually make this environment better.

[00:25:07] You've gotta provide the right tools that aren't intended to necessarily replace people in the store, but it's intended to make them. Make their jobs more efficient, more effective, more productive, hopefully getting rid of a lot of the annoying tasks that we force onto store teams to, that they have to take care of, but they keep them away from customers.

[00:25:27] So I, I think we'll finally start to see some meaningful things done here with real deployments of technologies that , are having an impact. And I think with an end goal of trying to really make that environment so it's not just a job, but it's more about creating a career path where you might even, finally start looking at those em employee roles as not all being equal in that, some folks on your store team may have different skills and you need to actually take advantage of that in the sense that, , give them things they can do that are built on, [00:26:00] on those skills so that some of those store associates might have a different role than others.

[00:26:04] And that's okay. That's a good thing because that helps create those career paths. So I think that's gonna be the one that I really wanna see go big.

[00:26:13] Casey Golden: Thank you for amplifying the real retail heroes, Ricardo. I mean, Paul, if I bring this up, it's a sales pitch, so I don't talk about frontline workers very much on here, but I just, if you're moving forward, I think we just need to, to bring our people with us.

[00:26:34] Paul do Forno: Yeah. And, it's a fascinating area in fact, I noticed at NRF, if you walk the floor, some of the biggest booths were actually targeted towards the frontline industry. I was actually surprised right at the front door. So some friends of mine, actually, startups that are now massive, and I, I know we're working with some fascinating, very large grocery retailers that to [00:27:00]automate, when they get into work, how can they prioritize their tasks, and also really interestingly, things change so much. Some, you know, there's a storm coming in h how do you rally the troops very quickly and things like that. So I, I think we're just at, at a tipping point of finding ways to really drive and empower the, frontline worker. So ,exciting.

[00:27:23] I agree with that one. That will be really good.

[00:27:26] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:27] Looking back across the whole season

[00:27:27] Paul do Forno: Okay, now let's step back and look at the season as a whole. You had two mini series, I'll call them. Both were based on live recordings, one at Grocery Shop and one at N R F. Now, usually we're doing, you're recording kind of like this virtually, so, talk about how it was to be live and, , talking live with, the people right in front of you.

[00:27:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll, I'll jump in on this one. Cause unfortunately Casey wasn't able to to join me on, on, on those. But you know, it was, um, [00:28:00] I know we, we

[00:28:01] Casey Golden: I'm gonna be at grocery shop. I'm like literally at the store grocery shopping. I've never been to that show.

[00:28:08] Ricardo Belmar: I know, I know. But you're right, it is di it is different though because you, you get a little it feels a little more authentic. Maybe you get a little bit more dynamic reactions when you're seeing someone face-to-face and in person versus just seeing them in a little video square on the screen.

[00:28:22] So, so there is that. I think that creates a different excitement level from, from guests on the show when you're live versus remote. And I think that really comes out right in both, in both series, the grocery shop one and the NRF ones.

[00:28:33] Paul do Forno: Cool. All right. All right. I'd have to ask you about your special guest host and crossover companion at nrf. That that, that was kind of interesting.

[00:28:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. So, special shout out to Jeff Roster, host of This Week In Innovation podcast. We did a, crossover there. He's been with us as one of our esteemed Retail Avengers from them the first season where we like to refer to him as the analyst. So Jeff and I decided to team up a little bit at N R F and see what can we do[00:29:00] to do this in person.

[00:29:01] And it was interesting experience because, it's a little different than when I did a grocery shop, you know, grocery shop, shop talk. They're, they're good at providing you an entire facility with recording equipment in a dedicated room that you can use. N R F is a little more complicated and that, that we didn't technically qualify to, to use their facilities for that.

[00:29:20] So we kind of had to figure it out for ourselves and, and, and understand, okay, what, what do we need to, what equipment do we need? And, and then of course the biggest challenge is figuring out, well, where are we gonna do this? And we were lucky. We had our friends and fans of the show at Avanade allowed us to use their lounge space as our mobile recording studio.

[00:29:36] For both Jeff and I think that was a new experience. We learned a lot from that and, and hopefully upped our podcast game to do more of these live in-person recordings that way.

[00:29:45] Paul do Forno: Gotcha. So question. am I an honorary Avenger since I was there in the clubhouse? In the Clubhouse case?

[00:29:52] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. Yep.

[00:29:53] Paul do Forno: the clubhouse,

[00:29:55] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Right. That, that, that's why you get invited to guest, host, come on.

[00:29:58] Paul do Forno: Woo. [00:30:00] Alright, so question for you, Casey. What interview stood out to you? The most, both at Grocery Shop and nrf.

[00:30:08] Casey Golden: So, both of which I missed. So the, the episode with Ron and Vicki, it really stood out at N R F that it is, it is absolutely something magical when we're together in, in real life. And I think that those, there's nothing that can compare to everybody being, having that energy and bringing it all to the same table and having these great conversations.

[00:30:35] So I mean, it was something where I didn't tune out. I was listening to it and I think that it just brings like a very different dynamic to podcasts. But I mean, it goes to show we have really talented people in this space that are so passionate about retail. And so the Ron and Vicki episode just, you know, moved right up to my top as the most memorable.[00:31:00]

[00:31:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I, I have to say on, on that one too, I mean, o one of the things that worked so great with that, I mean, we, we didn't plan anything in advance for, for that one. We were all, all four of us were at the Retail ROI Super Saturday event that we were, we were hosting at the Microsoft office.

[00:31:16] And right at the end of the day when everything was wrapping up, we said, why don't we sit down and just record a quick 15 minute conversation, just on some thoughts about what we, what we experienced in the day, kinda what we were hoping to see at nrf. And then of course, we got so into it, it turned into 50 minutes, not 15 ... so we went a little bit longer.

[00:31:32] Paul do Forno: Wow. That's great. So what, what did you think Casey, about that.

[00:31:38] Casey Golden: So like, I mean, Ron Thurston, I'm like a super fan. We'll just say that I am a super fan and Vicki Cantrell is, is phenomenal. So, I mean, I wish I, I wish I could have been there. It was just really special and Gabriella, what was it? Gabriella Bach from Rethink Retail. She was filming the video [00:32:00] for 

[00:32:00] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. She recorded the video for us. 

[00:32:02] Casey Golden: walking around in that tiny room with her video way longer than she was supposed to.

[00:32:08] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, she, she was really re a real good I I don't even know what to say you, cause we talked, she heard us talking about wanting to do it and said, Hey, do you guys want me to record the video for that, that you can use? I don't, I don't mind doing it. So, yeah. We're only gonna be 15 minutes or so.

[00:32:20] Oh, sure. No problem. And she's sitting there holding all the video equipment and this, and you can see in the video, this was such a tiny conference room that we ended up picking and she's trying to kind of move around all of us to get the right angles in this. She had to change batteries midway through it and then ran outta battery power cause we went so long.

[00:32:38] So that was, that was definitely something.

[00:32:39] Paul do Forno: Cool. Alright. So you definitely have to keep doing more of those in the future.

[00:32:45] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, oh, for sure. So, so stay tuned. We, we, we have one of very much like that coming from Shop Talk that we just did.

[00:32:51] All those Retail Transformers were more than meets the eye!

[00:32:51] Paul do Forno: Awesome. All right, now let's talk about one of your fun series within a series, so to speak, [00:33:00] the retail transformer series. You started the series in series one, but it really took off with this season with four special retail transformation episodes. But honestly, you could have called it both grocery shop and NRF series the same, couldn't you?

[00:33:15] Casey Golden: Yes, true. I mean, we're all essentially Transformers. That's why we brought them on the show.

[00:33:23] Paul do Forno: I, I think Casey was just about to go. Transformers.

[00:33:30] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. Yep. Stealing my line there.

[00:33:32] Casey Golden: I'm like

[00:33:33] Paul do Forno: That's what we were 

[00:33:34] Casey Golden: playing my composure.

[00:33:37] Paul do Forno: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That we're, we're supposed to have yeah, we're professional here. All right. Okay. Back, back to the story here. So which one stood out the most for you, Casey?

[00:33:50] Casey Golden: So, my favorite Retail Transformer during that this series was Brian Dove with Commerce Hub. We could have, [00:34:00] that podcast could have gone on for hours. Literally I would've been fine if Ricardo stopped record, and I just continued talking to Brian for the rest of the day. His approach is really compelling.

[00:34:15] He's solving. Solving supply chain is probably one of the ugliest and most complex sites of the business. And making changes in supply chain are like, they're, they're like complete, they're not even a heart transplant. It's a complete nervous system transplant. And, just think that our supplies, chains need the most transformation and it's just hard, ugly work.

[00:34:41] You don't get a lot of rainbows and sunshines and like glitter doing things in supply chain. It's waking up in the morning, day in, day out, doing the stuff that nobody else wants to do. And I think he came out with a very his approach is incredible and I think that we're [00:35:00] just gonna see more drop shipping directly from manufacturers than managing their own distribution and, and selling inventory in and third party logistics warehouses.

[00:35:11] This. Piece of supply chain that is part of Commerce Hub. They're only like a fraction of what could be. But I think for, for what he's done and what they're doing now and where they're going, he is my top re Retail Transformer that stood out during that series.

[00:35:34] Paul do Forno: Wow. I, I can't have my guys listening to this podcast because now before you're talking up the c d p guys, now my supply chain guys is, see, we're we're more important than everybody else.

[00:35:46] Casey Golden: Wants to work with me. Paul,

[00:35:47] Paul do Forno: I know. Geez. I, I dunno how, what, what about us? Come on. No. Yeah. Hundred percent.

[00:35:56] Casey Golden: there's so many angels in this space that I [00:36:00] just feel like a lot of, a lot of it, the attention goes to the marketers. In general, and I just feel like marketing is just not retail. It takes so much to make that product

[00:36:17] Paul do Forno: And honestly in the last couple years, right? I think people got, oh, all we have to do is just drop ship stuff and things just show up and

[00:36:25] it, you know,

[00:36:26] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah. It's magic,

[00:36:28] Paul do Forno: and nobody has to make profit off of it. Now, the real world, oh damn, we've got a sources. And to scale it, you actually have to do it profitably, right?

[00:36:38] And so now this, we had a little bubble of this magic, every, all this funding and these tools that made, it, enabled all of this to look like it didn't, it was super easy and anybody could do it, but now the real vendors are coming out. And, and so you really have to focus on back to the basics, right? [00:37:00] And, and how to tie all these together.

[00:37:02] Casey Golden: I agree.

[00:37:03] Paul do Forno: So, Ricardo, how about you?

[00:37:05] Ricardo Belmar: So continuing on on that theme you just brought up there, Paul. So, so my, one of my favorites is the, the retail transformer we did with Polly Wong. Cuz she reinforced something that both Casey and I, I think absolutely loved when she said it. I, I think we almost had to stop recording to regain some composure from, from the comment that she just so casually dropped about how you can't have a profitable, business when you're only focused on acquisition as a fact.

[00:37:30] And she just rolled that phrase out so matter of factly, like it was just the most fundamental thing that everybody had been lost on. That one to me to kind of set the tone for the whole rest of the recording on that one. Cause that was pretty early on. I think that was just gold. When she brought that up and, you know, we, we had been wanting to do some direct to consumer focus episodes, so Polly gave us a chance to talk about how is D T C really moving forward and bringing it back to this idea of profitability.

[00:37:58] How do you shift from customer acquisition [00:38:00] focus to actually building customer loyalty, maintaining that community of customers. And, she, I just love how she gave us , this picture of, all these different ways and methods that those brands are now marketing to consumers that, that kind of brought things back.

[00:38:14] Like when she mentioned, print catalogs where a as if they're the brand new thing that DTC brands were doing and being successful at it. I think that was, that was just something I don't think anybody who was listening expected to hear that. And that, that, I just love that one.

[00:38:28] Casey Golden: I agree. I think everything that was old is new again. It is that, it is this moment of back to the basics. I think Facebook essentially broke our foundation for digital. It created this false foundation for digital, let's say that. And so now that companies are really pulling back into, I don't want to rely on Facebook ads, and now I'm not even getting that eight x or 12 x or 30 x, I'm like, [00:39:00] lucky if I can get a two x return right now. Because of all of the different changes, I think we're going back to just building better with the newer technologies. And a lot of this is foundational, it's just a new foundation for digital.

[00:39:16] That's just, I think we too many people over overbuilt on relying on a, the Facebook platform and ads.

[00:39:26] Paul do Forno: Hey, I think omnichannel is back.

[00:39:30] Casey Golden: Say that word, unified commerce. If you need to use a word unified,

[00:39:34] Ricardo Belmar: you go. There you go. Unified commerce.

[00:39:37] Paul do Forno: That's probably, that should be another, that should be another podcast. The, the Battle. Battle of Semantics.

[00:39:44] Casey Golden: Yeah,

[00:39:44] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, there we, there we go. 

[00:39:46] Casey Golden: no consum. What is it? I just saw it. Composable commerce.

[00:39:51] Ricardo Belmar: right. Yeah.

[00:39:53] Paul do Forno: The, the battle of the, the terms. All right.

[00:39:56] Ricardo Belmar: there.

[00:39:56] Paul do Forno: All right. So

[00:39:57] Casey Golden: it's a dictionary.

[00:39:58] Love those "Special" episodes...

[00:39:58] Paul do Forno: now that wasn't the [00:40:00] only topical series you had. You also had a special episode. We already talked about one, your predictions episode, but you also had an interesting one with Andy Laudato from NRF beginners and of course the holiday special guests from Square and others.

[00:40:15] How did you come about with those.

[00:40:18] Casey Golden: Well, I mean, speaking of the holiday season, we knew we wanted to make a holiday themed episode, but you know, every retail podcast seems to do this and focuses on predicting retail sales, right? And so we wanted to do something different. We brought together Bridget John's founder of to and from, to share her perspective on what customers were actually shopping for gifts.

[00:40:44] And what inspired them. And then we added Roshaun from Square to share their recent survey report on what retailers were doing to gear up for the holiday. So we really felt like our holiday episode delivered perspectives on both [00:41:00] sides of the equation from the retailer and the consumer.

[00:41:03] Instead of focusing on the number, we really wanted to focus on actually what's happening in this shopping experience and this thought process coming into holiday and how retailers could use that information to make their season more successful and hit those numbers that everybody's projecting. And I found it very much more insightful, really learning from the sides of Roshan, from Square and Bridget from To and From.

[00:41:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's what we really call cutting through the clutter.

[00:41:36] Paul do Forno: Interesting. Okay. All right. What about the NRF for Beginner's episode?

[00:41:42] Ricardo Belmar: So, so that one, we wanted to do something special leading up to N R F. Obviously, we gotta call it our industry's biggest moment of the year, right? It's the biggest show. So we knew we had to do something as a retail podcast, but lucky enough for us, Andy reached out to me and said, Hey, I got a great idea for a podcast episode.

[00:41:57] Let's talk about what. Beginners to NRF [00:42:00] need to know by and, and le leveraging the experience of those of us who've been there for so many years and years. So we thought, oh, this is a brilliant idea. Yeah, no, nobody's ever talking about that. Everyone always talks about N R F on the assumption that everyone knows what it is and knows what they're doing when they get there.

[00:42:14] But the fact is every year, right, they're always beginners that have, have never been to N R F before. So let, let's focus on that. So, off we went. Andy came on. We, we highlighted, you know, how does a newbie to the show tackle it? What are the, the, the, the secret things you, you need to know that nobody really ever shares or tells you that you wished you knew by the time you got to the end of the show.

[00:42:34] And everybody got to really benefit from all of Andy's multitude of, of years of NRF wisdom.

[00:42:39] Paul do Forno: Yeah. So what, what'd you think Casey?

[00:42:41] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I am still an NRF newbie, I feel, even though I've been there most of my career. Cause there's, based off of how you go there and what contexts are you a vendor? Are you on the buying side? That changes throughout our career. [00:43:00] So you may have been a buyer for 10 years, but then you're going to n r F as a vendor for the first time.

[00:43:07] And the tables turn, the experience is different. And yet, I think we're kind of all newbies because I'm going as a vendor. But then each year you are changing what that means, you know, like, Not everybody has the Microsoft booth or like the Salesforce booth. And so, for everybody else, I think that it is pretty interesting on aligning expectations and like strategy for some of these companies that are coming in on the vendor side for the first time to maximize and, and even just new people coming in to go shopping.

[00:43:46] You know, it's a big floor.

[00:43:48] Paul do Forno: Yeah, that, that probably would be pretty different if you were a buyer. I'm sure everybody wanted you to come to their event and take you out for dinner and everything. And then you're on the other side and you're like, oh crap, [00:44:00] I've got, 

[00:44:00] Casey Golden: Anybody. 

[00:44:01] Paul do Forno: get some attention. The hunted from the hunted, right? Like

[00:44:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:44:07] Paul do Forno: it's a little bit different.

[00:44:09] Okay. Alright. Gonna bring this home. Now with this one, one of the things I like about what you did this season was the introduction of the idea of new segments within each episode and your first one is what you guys call Retail Razor Data Blades, which you brought in a specialist for, right?

[00:44:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So, and again, we, we didn't wanna make yet another retail podcast. I mean, there's like, what, over a hundred out there right now, have lost track. So we wanna do something unique that provides a value, not just to the retail tech community that, at the end of the day, right. Both Casey and I are part of right now, but also to retailers who are getting bombarded with information and that you realistically need some guidance on how to sift through all of that, all that data that gets published out there.

[00:44:55] And like we're always saying, we want to cut through the clutter of that noise.

[00:44:59] Casey Golden: [00:45:00] Yeah. And we worked with our friends over at True Rating and Georgina Nelson, their phenomenal c e o to leverage all the rich data that they've gone through. Their retailer customers from survey questions that they ask at the point of sale to offer our listeners and viewers some insights into what consumers are actually doing.

[00:45:21] And not doing with their purchasing habits.

[00:45:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, so we introduced this segment. We had it on I think three times this season, and we're, we're definitely gonna bring this one back next season. Big shout out to Georgina was so good at recording this with us when, when she was just days away from her baby's due date. So it was just a amazing that we were able to get that in.

[00:45:40] We, we kept joking that we might not get these recordings done in time, but we managed to pull it off. So that was amazing.

[00:45:47] Paul do Forno: All 

[00:45:47] Casey Golden: was prepared to have laptop with her. You know, like when we say she's a phenomenal Georgina, like props to this woman. She's, she's a great leader.

[00:45:58] Coming up next season?

[00:45:58] Paul do Forno: Wow. That's commitment. [00:46:00] Okay. Now for next year, next season, do you guys have a theme yet?

[00:46:07] Casey Golden: Yeah. After season one focused on digital transformation and the impact of transformation on the people in the retail business, this season, our focus was, the evolution of channel operations in the retail business. That's why we started the season with a big one, two punch with the Metaverse and retail media networks.

[00:46:32] Ricardo Belmar: and if you think about all the retail transformers we brought in this season, we really kept that focus. We started out with, with Alan Smithson to dive deeper into Metaverse what he was doing, building The Mall in the metaverse to, the episode I mentioned where we had Polly on. Talking about that.

[00:46:45] And then, again, the one Casey mentioned with Bryan Dove from Commerce Hub we really drove into the future of e-commerce on that one and marketplaces. So for next season, where are we taking it? We're gonna try to focus a little bit more on some of these themes, a little, little bit sharper, things like anywhere [00:47:00] commerce and immersive commerce.

[00:47:01] I think look at how that's happening with this in the middle of this backdrop that I, I think of as a, a back to basics kind of mood in retail.

[00:47:10] Paul do Forno: Ah, back to my supply chain guys. All right. Yes, we need them, but, I got all the cool shows and I guess we gotta give them some work. All right, so let's tie in. You know, your predictions there, but what exactly do you mean? Back to basics.

[00:47:29] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I, I think we, we really need to sort of acknowledge that retailers are focusing this year on, on how to get better at the business of retailers, retailing. So, past few years through the pandemic, right? What, what, what did retailers end up seeing? There's a lot of rapid growth in some specific areas for many retailers, but because a lot of it happened so fast, and I, I think we have to admit right, faster than most retailers were used to change and, and adopting new things.

[00:47:55] So that meant that, they, the focus was just get it out there to deliver those [00:48:00]experiences for, for the consumers, for what consumers wanted at whatever the cost was because it just, it had to be done and it had to be done fast. So now most retailers, I think are figuring out, we did these things, maybe not in the best way we could have done it, so let's optimize it a little bit.

[00:48:15] Let's make sure that we take out as much of the cost as we can, but c but, but still be able to do these things. How do we inject some profitability into it? We've got all these crazy new tools like the Generative AI that, mentioned in the predictions. We talked about the automation for, for the store teams.

[00:48:31] How do we still inject those things? But let's not do it in the, in the crazy, do it at all costs way that we were forced into the last few years. Let's do it in a more methodical way that we know is gonna maintain some profitability. We're wa we're watching, we don't know what the outcome is gonna be, right?

[00:48:48] In terms of shopping trends or consumers gonna keep buying at the pace they've been buying, are they going to slow down because of inflation? Are they gonna go back to saving more versus spending with all this [00:49:00] backdrop, how do we keep these things going? We can't take back any of the new things and capabilities we introduced cause consumers will, will find another brand, right, if we take these things away.

[00:49:08] So we have to find ways to keep optimizing and keep doing them, but at least, the way I like to look at it is you can't just cost cut your way to success. You still have to invest in the future. And even though that near term investment is hopefully something that's gonna return you a, a cost reduction in the future, but you have to do it in a smart way.

[00:49:26] So I think those are the kinds of things that, we're looking at these trendy things like immersive commerce and everywhere commerce and retailers, still need to do that, but it matters now how you do it more so than it did before.

[00:49:39] Casey Golden: Yeah, I'm a hundred percent on this is going to be the time for reality. And we're gonna be spending a lot more time on. The, the reality of, of where our retail is today to build, to be able to adopt some of the new technology at scale. It's just we spend so much [00:50:00] time on marketing and acquisition and we saw that it just cost us too much money and a lot of turn.

[00:50:07] And so focusing on retention and stable systems and being able to go ahead and say like, listen, why are there 400 messages a day of a customer looking for their package? Okay, that's not a customer service opportunity. That's an opportunity to fix it. Like this is like adding these things to plug problems and band-aids.

[00:50:34] We've got to solve the actual problems. And I think that that's, everything that I've seen right now has been. I have, we have customers. We're gonna focus on keeping them, and we need to go ahead and make sure that we're ready for the next five years of retail. Otherwise, we, I don't know if we'll be here or we're going to lose our market share.

[00:50:57] Paul do Forno: And I'll, and I'll just put a exclamation mark [00:51:00] on that. Like all I'm hearing is optimize. How do we optimize, how do we use what we have? We spend a ton of investments over the past couple years. How do we use 'em well, right? Like that's what I keep hearing. That's what, that's what my colleagues are hearing.

[00:51:16] So I, I think the more that they can do better, and guess what the P word. You gotta be profitable, right? How do we optimize and be for profit and, and more so than ever, especially with the uncertainty on the economics and that, I think it's just gonna be more important. 

[00:51:36] Okay. One last thing I want to know.

[00:51:39] Any new segments you're introducing? Like the Retail razor Data Blades.

[00:51:44] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, since that's that's been pretty popular. So we are looking at adding more of those. So for example one, we're gonna bring a, a unique perspective to answer the, the hot questions of the day from an academic's viewpoint. I think that's gonna be maybe eye-opening for some folks based on, on what kind of [00:52:00] responses we, we hear there and what kind of discussion we have.

[00:52:02] But I think it'll be a unique independent viewpoint people aren't used to hearing necessarily. Then another one we're thinking about doing is a segment that'll focus on retail leadership qualities. There's been some interesting news media reports lately talking about how there seems to be a shortage of, of CEOs in retail and a shortage of, of quality executives.

[00:52:22] So we're gonna dig in a little bit, I think in, in a new segment there and bring in some folks to. Give some tips on, you know, what are those leadership roles? What are those skills that those leaderships, what traits do they need to have to really be successful in, in retail that maybe not everyone has developed or, or needs to develop better.

[00:52:39] Paul do Forno: I, I think back to what I just said, the P word, we need the CEOs driving the profitability, right?

[00:52:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:52:47] Casey Golden: Yeah, I think they're gonna come from unexpected places. You know, we've had a lot of executives that have been running the top for 25 years. I think retail in general it's been, [00:53:00] leadership has been plugged. I know a lot of VPs and SVPs that had their jobs for 28 years, they're not going anywhere and they didn't let anybody rise through.

[00:53:09] And so there's a lot of talent out there that could probably hop some steps and really make some big changes and some positive profitable changes at these companies. And I'm excited to have those, those sessions cuz there's a lot of untapped talent out in this industry. Nobody's in this industry to get rich, right?

[00:53:31] Like we are all here on pure fricking passion. Cause it would be a lot easier working some other industries than it is in this space. We're here with like committed love.

[00:53:42] Paul do Forno: Yes. Yes. So all of that's pretty interesting. So any hints for the expert speakers to come?

[00:53:50] Casey Golden: We can't give everything away on this episode I'm gonna leave that on on Ricardo if he wants to add any spoilers.

[00:53:57] Ricardo Belmar: I think we can afford to make people wait and [00:54:00] see and, and make it a surprise.

[00:54:01] Paul do Forno: Well, maybe you guys can give us a preview trailer soon and, you know, a teaser.

[00:54:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Be in the lookout for that.

[00:54:08] Paul do Forno: All right. Well guys, thank you so much for inviting me on the show to guest host and be an honorary Avenger. It's been a year, Casey and Ricardo since we saw y y you know, the comeback at The Shop Talk last year. And we just got done another Shop Talk. But Ricardo, I didn't see you. I, I, I tried to

[00:54:27] Ricardo Belmar: don't know how we missed each other, so, so

[00:54:29] Paul do Forno: I know

[00:54:29] it was crazy. But thank you. I had a lot of fun and looking forward to next year.

[00:54:36] Casey Golden: Thank you so much, Paul. I loved having you on the show and we'll work on that honorary Avenger title.

[00:54:42] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. I mean, this is a great, fantastic experience. We can't wait to have you back on the show again soon.

[00:54:47] Paul do Forno: All right, thanks guys.

[00:54:49] ​

[00:54:49] Show Close

[00:54:49] Ricardo Belmar: We'll give a big thanks out to all of our Retail Razor Show fans this season. Casey, I think that means this show[00:55:00] for that matter, this whole season is a wrap now.

[00:55:02] Casey Golden: Yeah. If you enjoyed our show this season, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. And if you'd rather watch us instead of listening, subscribe to our YouTube channel and like, and comment there's a new season out there too.

[00:55:23] And of course, if you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a full transcript of each episode look at the show notes for handy links to more deets. I'm your cohost, Casey Golden.

[00:55:34] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter, at Retail Razor, on LinkedIn for the latest updates. And stay tuned for a season three trailer like Paul was asking us for.

[00:55:50] Coming soon. We promise, it'll be worth the wait. I'm your host Ricardo Belmar.

[00:55:55] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:55:56] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail [00:56:00]if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show.


]]> <p>We’ve been on quite a wild ride this season with topics ranging from the metaverse, to retail media networks, to the future of ecommerce and DTC, plus our Retail Transformers, and including special interviews and recaps of three major industry events – Grocery Shop, NRF, and Shop Talk! But now we’ve reached The Razor’s Edge, our Season 2 finale, with special guest host <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauldoforno/" rel="nofollow">Paul do Forno,</a> Managing Director of the Commerce Practice at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/deloitte-digital/" rel="nofollow">Deloitte Digital</a>, turning the tables on our dynamic duo to walk through the season calling out all the highlights!</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode, Paul turns our regular hosts, Ricardo and Casey, into the show’s guests and starts with a check-in on how their Top 10 Predictions for 2023 are holding up so far this year. Then he looks back through the season and asks our hosts what some of their favorites were in each of our min-series and special episodes. What were your favorites? Who was your favorite Retail Transformer? Find out how you match up to our hosts’ choices! And of course, Paul can’t resist but ask for hints on what’s to come in Season 3!</p><p><br></p><p>We’re now standing at number 19 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Overclocked, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>S2E13 The Razor&#39;s Edge - S2 Finale</strong></p><h3>[00:00:00] Season 2 Finale</h3><p><span>[00:00:20]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Hello, Retail Razor listeners, and welcome to Season Two Grand Finale. As you might have noticed, I am not your usual host. I&#39;m Paul do Forno. I&#39;m part of the leadership team at Commerce Practice at Deloitte Digital. We&#39;re one of the largest commerce consulting companies in the world, and we help everything from strategy to design to implementing platforms.</p><p><span>[00:00:42]</span> But today I am your guest hosts and I&#39;m turning the tables on the Dynamic Duo interviewing them. So let&#39;s bring in these weeks guests, Ricardo and Casey. Casey, Ricardo, thank you so much for having me as your guest host for season two finale.</p><p><span>[00:00:59]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hey <span>[00:01:00]</span> Paul, it is awesome having you here with us.</p><p><span>[00:01:01]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I mean, how lucky are we to have you on the actual podcast? it&#39;s so nice to have you over here. Thanks for doing this.</p><p><span>[00:01:10]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Well, how does it feel being on the other side? Do you feel a little pressure now? I you don&#39;t know what I&#39;m gonna ask.</p><p><span>[00:01:16]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It&#39;s always a bit awkward to be your own guest, but I&#39;m excited to answer some questions since I am usually on the side of asking questions.</p><p><span>[00:01:25]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Okay. </p><p><span>[00:01:26]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> feeling the same way it is a little odd being, not being the one asking the questions on your own podcast. but this is gonna be fun. So I&#39;m glad you&#39;re joining us. I&#39;m thrilled we&#39;re turning things around and I can&#39;t wait to see how you&#39;re gonna try to trip us up here in the finale.</p><p><span>[00:01:39]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> All right. All right. Well, I can&#39;t wait to dive in. So here we go. First I wanna check in with both of you. You had top 10 list of predictions this year, and I know we&#39;re not all the way through the year, but we wanna check in to see where you&#39;re at and which ones you feel that are totally on track, or which ones are totally off track.<span>[00:02:00]</span> So Ricardo.</p><p><span>[00:02:01]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> this could get interesting. Good thing there&#39;s no audience to throw things at us.</p><p><span>[00:02:05]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> You ready for the questions, Casey?</p><p><span>[00:02:08]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, and Ricardo, I&#39;m a good catch, but I love q and a, so I do miss having a live audience. I&#39;m feeling pretty good, but Ricardo and I come from two different perspectives. That&#39;s why I think we&#39;re a little bit more fun to listen to. We do not agree on everything.</p><p><span>[00:02:24]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> All right. All right. That&#39;s good. That&#39;s why we&#39;re here. All right. For the second part, I&#39;m also gonna ask you about your favorite parts of the season and a few surprise questions along the way and follow up. I&#39;m gonna test some of the things that you come back with. </p><h3>[00:02:39] Checking in on those 2023 predictions</h3><p><span>[00:02:39]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> okay, let&#39;s jump in. First question, Ricardo. Let&#39;s start with you. You each gave five prediction this year and so , which you think maybe are the long shot and out, out of those long shots, which one do you think will really come true by the end of the year and why?</p><p><span>[00:02:59]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> <span>[00:03:00]</span> Oh, you really went for that one, didn&#39;t you? I like &#39;em all though.</p><p><span>[00:03:03]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Wow. Just pick one. Let&#39;s focus on one for today.</p><p><span>[00:03:06]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right. I guess I&#39;ll pick one. , if I have to pick one, I guess I would have to pick the one I gave on the anywhere commerce versus immersive commerce.</p><p><span>[00:03:15]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Okay. Let&#39;s hear some more about it.</p><p><span>[00:03:17]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, I, feel like that&#39;s the one that&#39;s maybe the most far out there of the predictions I did in that it&#39;s not just about retailers being the one to seriously adopt immersive tech, like AR and VR. And embracing other new technologies to get commerce in the right context in new locations. Like we talked about integrating it in your car, being in a stadium at a game or something like that.</p><p><span>[00:03:41]</span> But it&#39;s not just about the retailers integrating the tech. It also requires consumers to be willing to adopt these at the same time. So there&#39;s a little bit of an element of the stars aligning on this one to make it come true and work out. So I think maybe that&#39;s my long shot. I&#39;m still sticking with it though.</p><p><span>[00:03:58]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Okay, it&#39;s gonna take a <span>[00:04:00]</span> little bit longer. Ca. Casey, what do you think?</p><p><span>[00:04:02]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I&#39;m completely opposite, I believe a hundred percent and anywhere commerce and contextual commerce that every single consumer touchpoint is gonna turn into a point of sale, but it is gonna be a little bit more of a long shot as far as it&#39;s gonna take longer, but I believe that it is a hundred percent there.</p><p><span>[00:04:22]</span> This punch in immersive has massive demand and I think it&#39;s moved a lot of builders into creating better foundational structures so that we can get interesting experiences and more virtual experiences that I think is gonna fuel that. But we really need better checkout and I think everybody in that space that&#39;s very forward and immersive shopping and this, these metaverse plays and virtual experiences, they&#39;re learning supply chain right now. And so once I think this kind of bridges, <span>[00:05:00]</span> there&#39;s gonna be some beautiful magic.</p><p><span>[00:05:01]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> So I noticed you guys didn&#39;t say the word as part of all that. You didn&#39;t say the word omnichannel. Is </p><p><span>[00:05:07]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It doesn&#39;t exist. It never has.</p><p><span>[00:05:10]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> What&#39;s that?</p><p><span>[00:05:11]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It doesn&#39;t exist. It never has.</p><p><span>[00:05:13]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Ah, okay.</p><p><span>[00:05:14]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> all just commerce. I&#39;m gonna keep saying it&#39;s just commerce. We don&#39;t need to label it omnichannel or anything because I think all that ever, I dunno. It feels like all we ended up accomplishing was confusion with that.</p><p><span>[00:05:25]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> All right. No good perspectives. It I think this is the one it&#39;ll be interesting, it may take longer to get the full view, but then I think once we get closer to that, the goalposts will change again. So it will be interesting. Alright. Casey, same question to you. What&#39;s your biggest long shot and why?</p><p><span>[00:05:46]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So my biggest long shot is, B N P L. I just don&#39;t feel that it&#39;s good for consumers and there will be more consumer protection initiatives around the entire entity. It&#39;s <span>[00:06:00]</span> bulking customers up with debt does not help your customer experience and brand relationship when that payment that might be coming at you every single month is coming because it&#39;s a branded product, it, I think it does negatively infect the brand.</p><p><span>[00:06:15]</span> But I understand the value of it opening up cash flow for like younger demographics and just for people in general. It does open up cash flow to buy things that you want or need but I&#39;m very conflicted on the two sides of it. However, Apple Pay Later has now launched so that kind of throws a wrench in my biggest long shot. So, Now that Apple users can split their purchases into four interest free payments over six months without a fee, I think it might be a long shot that Affirm, After Pay, Klarna, and PayPal make it.</p><p><span>[00:06:50]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> So what? What do you think Ricardo?</p><p><span>[00:06:54]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah I don&#39;t know. I think, When we recorded that one and Casey went through that prediction I think the thought was, is <span>[00:07:00]</span> it gonna be a little bit of a blow up or explosion in terms of consumer protections, but now maybe it&#39;s gonna blow up in a different direction with Apple launching Apple Pay Later.</p><p><span>[00:07:10]</span> May, maybe it&#39;s more now a matter of, are the other company, like you just said in Casey are these all these other companies gonna survive doing that now that they&#39;re gonna have to compete directly with Apple on their platform</p><p><span>[00:07:20]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I mean, Apple&#39;s done. Now we just need a Google one and</p><p><span>[00:07:23]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah, if Google comes out with a pay later now, then it&#39;s really gonna be done.</p><p><span>[00:07:27]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> I guess, I guess I might be here in being a little bit of the counter to this. So actually the stats came out and the numbers on B N P L last year, I don&#39;t have it right in front of me, but it was multiple billions of dollars. It was the fastest growing payment channel. And so it&#39;s not a long, it&#39;s here.</p><p><span>[00:07:47]</span> But I think your point, Casey&#39;s a nuanced one where the effect on the brand and how it&#39;s used, that&#39;s something that I think, needs to be figured out that&#39;s <span>[00:08:00]</span> the concern long term, right? Like I think that buy now pay later is here for a long time. In fact, I actually first saw this and it was weird.</p><p><span>[00:08:10]</span> I went to Brazil for the first time in 2011, and everywhere you went, buy now, pay later was, that was just the standard way that they paid because that&#39;s the demographics that were there and that&#39;s the way they paid. And so I, especially given, some of the economic trends and how people are buying, I think this is a long-term stay.</p><p><span>[00:08:33]</span> The question is gonna be who and then how best to use it within the brand. That ju just my two, my 2 cents there. All right. Next question. Now that we got these long shots outta the way, Ricardo, which one for you are you most sure of and why?</p><p><span>[00:08:53]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Ah, okay. This, I think this one&#39;s a little easier for me to pick, cuz honestly, all you have to do is look at any of the news outlets <span>[00:09:00]</span> that are out there today covering tech and covering retail and just everywhere. I mean it, it&#39;s an obvious one for me. It&#39;s a prediction on generative ai. So things like, whether it&#39;s chat, g p t, dall-e two g p t four, there&#39;s the Microsoft co-pilot announcement.</p><p><span>[00:09:13]</span> All these things coming out. I think it was the last prediction we had in, in our list. We saved the best for last maybe, but I think this is this is one is all as close to an automatic win. I think as we&#39;re gonna get in one of these predictions, just given where it&#39;s trending is pretty much every retailer I talk to just about every account manager and field rep I talk to at Microsoft is saying the same thing, every customer is looking at this and asking, how do I use this?</p><p><span>[00:09:36]</span> Everybody&#39;s got a long list of use cases they wanna apply it to. They wanna understand. How to build with it, how to apply it. When we had our top retail influencers calls with Rethink Retail, it was two months in a row it was a topic that everybody wanted to talk about.</p><p><span>[00:09:51]</span> Everyone had something to say about it. Everyone&#39;s got an opinion about it. And they&#39;re just, I don&#39;t know, so many use cases. I mean, one of my favorite ones seeing <span>[00:10:00]</span> CarMax doing , where they&#39;re using the AI tools to help a customer doing research on their site to automatically summarize all the reviews on cars.</p><p><span>[00:10:08]</span> So instead of having to read thousands and thousands of reviews, you just ask a few questions and it gives you a summary with everything you need to know. So just coolest. And that&#39;s such a simple, if I can explain it in two sentences, you can ask the two sentences and get a summary.</p><p><span>[00:10:21]</span> Can&#39;t get much better than that.</p><p><span>[00:10:23]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> That, that seems the most obvious one, but I, just to put you on the spot, I know you, you talked about an interesting one and, but let&#39;s talk specifically about commerce. What component of commerce do you think this would apply most? Like what area?</p><p><span>[00:10:40]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I think we&#39;re gonna see it apply in, in, in stages. I think initially anything related to discovery and product discovery, new ways of searching. So search will move I think from trying to think of what keyword do I use? We don&#39;t wanna search for a product ,now I can really be super descriptive.</p><p><span>[00:10:56]</span> I can talk about what my intent is when I wanna search for something. <span>[00:11:00]</span> Like just, I&#39;m just thinking examples. Like if I&#39;m searching for new, for apparel products instead of having to use keywords like it&#39;s, I&#39;m searching for, jeans right, or shirts or whatever it&#39;s gonna be. I can describe how I&#39;m gonna wear it and where I&#39;m gonna wear it, and now as part of that search process and these tools are gonna give me different responses based on that.</p><p><span>[00:11:18]</span> So I think being able to apply intent and more, almost a point more emotional feeling of how I&#39;m gonna use this product in that search. I think that&#39;s gonna be the, probably the first area where it&#39;s gonna have a big impact on commerce.</p><p><span>[00:11:31]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And that&#39;s exactly what I don&#39;t agree on anything. AI is not gonna help you get dressed in the morning. I promise.</p><p><span>[00:11:42]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p><span>[00:11:44]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> But no, I think that, Listen, I think when we&#39;re buying clothing it&#39;s emotional and I don&#39;t think we can have a non-emotional entity help us make these emotional decisions. But when it comes to function, a hundred percent, I <span>[00:12:00]</span> think affecting mass commerce and I don&#39;t get excited about buying another cell phone charger.</p><p><span>[00:12:07]</span> I need to buy some recording information like pieces. So I look like Ricardo and I have a mic and all these things. Yes, that I definitely see, like there&#39;s these ways that AI is gonna definitely impact search. I think it could for a period of time dis disrupt. Why? The only way we see things is if there&#39;s ad money behind it.</p><p><span>[00:12:29]</span> And I think we can get a lot better information and products teed up to us based off of function. But. Leave it to me to make sure you have the right clothes, Ricardo. Um, I think the immediate</p><p><span>[00:12:43]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> do better than the AI</p><p><span>[00:12:45]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> well, yeah, we&#39;ll do much better, but I think the number one thing I&#39;m seeing right now is managing products and uploading products into e-comm is painful and often a very manual process.</p><p><span>[00:12:58]</span> And so product <span>[00:13:00]</span> descriptions right outta the box, being able to create clear product descriptions that are interesting, compelling, and again, going back to your point, Ricardo, that will impact search. But coming up with the tags different categorizes categories for everything on there in e-comm I think will be good.</p><p><span>[00:13:19]</span> Uploading products, changing image sizes, being able to do some of these things more automated and painful processes I think is an immediate lift. </p><p><span>[00:13:31]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Yeah, make makes sense. That makes sense and I think there will be more stuff that we haven&#39;t even thought of and adjacent to it. It&#39;s something that&#39;s gonna fit the whole stack of everything. So just to take another example of helping the coders, right? There&#39;s all these tools to help on the coding side.</p><p><span>[00:13:49]</span> So the turnaround time on some of the coding and looking at coding is, it is gonna be helped. So if you start looking at your whole, and <span>[00:14:00]</span> you mentioned supply chain earlier, right? If you start looking at everything, if everything gets improved, 5 10% that&#39;s where that whole effect comes in.</p><p><span>[00:14:08]</span> So beyond just the experience part, I think it&#39;s gonna affect the whole stack.</p><p><span>[00:14:15]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> yeah, Canva had an update last this week. That was probably the best product update release I&#39;ve ever seen. And there is generative art, there is redesigning your slides with ai. You have chat sheet bts in there. All of these solutions and all of these pieces just kind of came in, wrapped up like a present.</p><p><span>[00:14:39]</span> And I have to say, they&#39;ve like 10 Xed my speed to create. And it did a phenomenal job. And, there&#39;s designers that are using it to create, they&#39;ll design one product and then they&#39;ll use the generative AI to create 10 more styles. And that&#39;s where I&#39;m like, okay, now I&#39;m getting a little bit <span>[00:15:00]</span> conflicted again between, I believe designers should be talented human beings that get to achieve their dreams versus being replaced.</p><p><span>[00:15:10]</span> So I think we&#39;ll see what kind of happens here. As of today, Italy&#39;s ban, g p t Chat, G P t. They&#39;ll come around. Everybody always does, but I think that that&#39;s kind of interesting. They feel that there are unlawfully processing people&#39;s data and privacy issues. So</p><p><span>[00:15:27]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hmm.</p><p><span>[00:15:28]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Interesting. Yeah. So how long before we all become prompt engineers? Right. I&#39;ve already seen those. I&#39;ve already seen people start to publish like, Hey, I&#39;m a prompt engineer. I&#39;m an expert, so there you go. New roles popping up all the time</p><p><span>[00:15:46]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep, new roles.</p><p><span>[00:15:47]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> All right. Casey, what about you? What&#39;s your sure thing prediction.</p><p><span>[00:15:52]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> sure thing is the explosion of CDPs. So customer data platforms, there is really <span>[00:16:00]</span> no excuse anymore for a customer to have of a bad experience with your brand. Not being able to produce like basic functional care to shoppers. Is unacceptable. And the main reason that we still have this is because a lot of the customer experience and customer support is fragmented and none of that data is really available to anybody that needs it.</p><p><span>[00:16:26]</span> It&#39;s available to everybody who doesn&#39;t need it in a lot of the time. Like when the customer is with you and you need it, they don&#39;t have access. And so I think that having CDPs essentially come in and start pulling all of this data together so that everybody has one point system, whether or not it&#39;s checking on an order, which hopefully , AI&#39;s gonna take care of.</p><p><span>[00:16:48]</span> You don&#39;t need to do that anymore. But we&#39;re gonna have different database systems to be able to pull all this customer information together and really be able to craft more around the consumer. <span>[00:17:00]</span> And I think that this is just gonna cause more of an extinction of traditional CRMs over maybe the next five years.</p><p><span>[00:17:07]</span> The way we think of a CRM, the way we, the box we put it in, I think it&#39;s, not gonna be there anymore. And so, the CDP is becoming mission critical for a company I believe this year needs to enter and see essentially how it&#39;s gonna be deployed over the next, like 18 to 24 months. But I don&#39;t see a company being able to operate in 2024 without a C D P.</p><p><span>[00:17:37]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Well, that&#39;s a great commercial for my C D P group, but, uh, but let, let me challenge you on that, of the one that you want this to happen earlier, knowing, especially some of the big enterprise brands that we work with, some of the challenges that they have of just tying all the <span>[00:18:00]</span> different systems. It&#39;s one thing if it, if you&#39;re dealing with a direct to consumer, one brand, smaller when you get into acquisitions and a holding company that owns all these different retailers, bringing &#39;em together, CDP is not easy and trying to get it.</p><p><span>[00:18:15]</span> Or they might have a version, kind of a C D P here, kind of c d p there. How do you coordinate it all together and so, I a hundred percent agree on this might, you might have jumped a question like, this is what you want to have as to, cuz this is harder. This ends up being a lot harder in my experience to get adoption earlier just because of all of the change management, all the different things that are out there.</p><p><span>[00:18:44]</span> But I a hundred percent agree they people need to go to this.</p><p><span>[00:18:47]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, I think you&#39;re right. I mean, it can be, it can be a lot more complicated. It&#39;s not in a lot of other companies best interest to want to integrate with your C D P, <span>[00:19:00]</span> and so I think that, there&#39;s gonna be a lot of change management there, but the way I see it is consumers are going to gain more and more and more.</p><p><span>[00:19:11]</span> Protection over their rights to their data. And if your GDPR compliant, like they already have more rights than we can service today. And so this is going to, it&#39;s going to be mandatory whether or not it&#39;s executed well or at a hundred percent. I just don&#39;t think that we can really go into next year without making sure that you&#39;re operating in compliance because compliance is gonna be, is already moving faster than the software companies.</p><p><span>[00:19:45]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> What do you think Ricardo?</p><p><span>[00:19:48]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I mean I definitely agree in principle and the need, right? And the want. I&#39;m thinking about your point and Paul about how it&#39;s not easy necessarily, right? Especially the larger the organization, the more potential <span>[00:20:00]</span> disconnected systems there are that need to be connected to create that c d P.</p><p><span>[00:20:04]</span> I think it&#39;s doable. I work with some partners that are in this space as well. And I think they&#39;re doing a good job at something where, again it&#39;s where you wanna plug in the AI models into it to help with some of that.</p><p><span>[00:20:13]</span> So I think it&#39;s a doable thing, it may be one of those where when we&#39;re looking at it at the end of the year maybe it&#39;s not complete for some of the largest organizations and it&#39;s still in progress. But I think the, I think maybe Casey&#39;s point is, it as everyone moves to this that want and need is going to cause some action, right.</p><p><span>[00:20:30]</span> And people are gonna start doing things about it and moving in that direction. So even if they don&#39;t have it fully deployed and ready I, I think it, it&#39;s a valid point. And I, think from a prediction point of view, yeah. It means people are gonna be trying to leverage a C D P as much as they can by the end of the year.</p><p><span>[00:20:47]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I mean, I think really they&#39;re gonna make the purchase. I think last year, 640 billion was spent on customer experience software. They all need a c D P to power. Everything is <span>[00:21:00]</span> gonna need the c d P to power customer experiences. But we kind of have to start with where our core is. And so I think if I had to deploy monies or say, what&#39;s a sure thing, you&#39;re gonna need one and you, the sooner the better.</p><p><span>[00:21:18]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Awesome, Casey. Thank you for that. You just, I just, you just recorded my commercial for me that it&#39;s gonna be my pre roll intro to our CDP presentations, but let&#39;s move on. All right. I got one for you, for your other four predictions. Which ones do you think you most want to actually come to life?</p><p><span>[00:21:39]</span> Right? And you wanna see go big. So Casey, let&#39;s start with you.</p><p><span>[00:21:44]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I want loyalty programs to mean something again. I think that there&#39;s a lot of emphasis on loyalty programs right now, and I&#39;ve seen a lot of companies scaling back rewards at the same time and taking away common <span>[00:22:00]</span> perks. And so I&#39;d really like to just see this loyalty program just facilitate into something that&#39;s actually going to build loyalty, not a marketing campaign. </p><p><span>[00:22:14]</span> I think that this is the moment where it could really be a differentiator in the brand, the customer experience, but if we keep diluting it or disrupting them, like it&#39;s just not, it seems more marketing than it is actually provide any services. And so, I think that this is a place where there&#39;s gonna be a lot of movement. And I see, anybody who&#39;s scaling back rewards I think that they&#39;re gonna have a negative impact onto their business.</p><p><span>[00:22:46]</span> And I think loyalty programs are just gonna really start meaning something interesting from access to product first. Access to buy at a discount, or even shop sale first. I think the loyalty programs <span>[00:23:00]</span> could turn into something really meaningful and have some really interesting perks that haven&#39;t really been the point.</p><p><span>[00:23:07]</span> Maybe not points, you know?</p><p><span>[00:23:09]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> So, so Casey, is this part of your, your favorite hotel chain? Making sure you get that nice omelet and premium breakfast </p><p><span>[00:23:17]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> All right </p><p><span>[00:23:18]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> of the old bagel.</p><p><span>[00:23:19]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> yeah. So like I get, you know, they, they put a little goldfish in my room and they make sure that Mr. Darcy&#39;s there. I don&#39;t expect the rest of the retail industry to be able to compare to the way that I might be treated at a hotel, or you might be treated at a hotel. But I do feel that there&#39;s an opportunity, if that&#39;s the top, why is the bottom like 10% off your next coffee after you buy a hundred? , what does it take to get a reward, like 50,000 points <span>[00:24:00]</span> for a dollar off your next order? , come on, let&#39;s do something. And I think that this is the moment where everybody&#39;s been talking about loyalty, whether or not they&#39;re adding more, taking it away. And there&#39;s a lot of loyalty programs out there, and I think that we&#39;re gonna get a, it&#39;s gonna turn into an actual program, not just about, pricing.</p><p><span>[00:24:25]</span> It&#39;s not just about discounts. I think it can be a lot more, and I think even mass merchants are gonna find something more than a discount.</p><p><span>[00:24:32]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Okay, Ricardo.</p><p><span>[00:24:34]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Ooh. So for me I would have to say it&#39;s that prediction had about automation in, in stores for frontline workers. Over the years, what I think there&#39;s always a lot of predictions around what&#39;s gonna change for store teams , years back or sort of really only talked about that in the context of better training for employees.</p><p><span>[00:24:52]</span> But I think now in, in recent years since the pandemic we&#39;re, we have a different perspective on what those store teams are doing and, and how they <span>[00:25:00]</span> work. And now that with, with labor shortages and things for retailers, I think there&#39;s more of a view of you have to actually make this environment better.</p><p><span>[00:25:07]</span> You&#39;ve gotta provide the right tools that aren&#39;t intended to necessarily replace people in the store, but it&#39;s intended to make them. Make their jobs more efficient, more effective, more productive, hopefully getting rid of a lot of the annoying tasks that we force onto store teams to, that they have to take care of, but they keep them away from customers.</p><p><span>[00:25:27]</span> So I, I think we&#39;ll finally start to see some meaningful things done here with real deployments of technologies that , are having an impact. And I think with an end goal of trying to really make that environment so it&#39;s not just a job, but it&#39;s more about creating a career path where you might even, finally start looking at those em employee roles as not all being equal in that, some folks on your store team may have different skills and you need to actually take advantage of that in the sense that, , give them things they can do that are built on, <span>[00:26:00]</span> on those skills so that some of those store associates might have a different role than others.</p><p><span>[00:26:04]</span> And that&#39;s okay. That&#39;s a good thing because that helps create those career paths. So I think that&#39;s gonna be the one that I really wanna see go big.</p><p><span>[00:26:13]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thank you for amplifying the real retail heroes, Ricardo. I mean, Paul, if I bring this up, it&#39;s a sales pitch, so I don&#39;t talk about frontline workers very much on here, but I just, if you&#39;re moving forward, I think we just need to, to bring our people with us.</p><p><span>[00:26:34]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Yeah. And, it&#39;s a fascinating area in fact, I noticed at NRF, if you walk the floor, some of the biggest booths were actually targeted towards the frontline industry. I was actually surprised right at the front door. So some friends of mine, actually, startups that are now massive, and I, I know we&#39;re working with some fascinating, very large grocery retailers that to <span>[00:27:00]</span>automate, when they get into work, how can they prioritize their tasks, and also really interestingly, things change so much. Some, you know, there&#39;s a storm coming in h how do you rally the troops very quickly and things like that. So I, I think we&#39;re just at, at a tipping point of finding ways to really drive and empower the, frontline worker. So ,exciting.</p><p><span>[00:27:23]</span> I agree with that one. That will be really good.</p><p><span>[00:27:26]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.</p><h3>[00:27:27] Looking back across the whole season</h3><p><span>[00:27:27]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Okay, now let&#39;s step back and look at the season as a whole. You had two mini series, I&#39;ll call them. Both were based on live recordings, one at Grocery Shop and one at N R F. Now, usually we&#39;re doing, you&#39;re recording kind of like this virtually, so, talk about how it was to be live and, , talking live with, the people right in front of you.</p><p><span>[00:27:50]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I mean, I guess I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll jump in on this one. Cause unfortunately Casey wasn&#39;t able to to join me on, on, on those. But you know, it was, um, <span>[00:28:00]</span> I know we, we</p><p><span>[00:28:01]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I&#39;m gonna be at grocery shop. I&#39;m like literally at the store grocery shopping. I&#39;ve never been to that show.</p><p><span>[00:28:08]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I know, I know. But you&#39;re right, it is di it is different though because you, you get a little it feels a little more authentic. Maybe you get a little bit more dynamic reactions when you&#39;re seeing someone face-to-face and in person versus just seeing them in a little video square on the screen.</p><p><span>[00:28:22]</span> So, so there is that. I think that creates a different excitement level from, from guests on the show when you&#39;re live versus remote. And I think that really comes out right in both, in both series, the grocery shop one and the NRF ones.</p><p><span>[00:28:33]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Cool. All right. All right. I&#39;d have to ask you about your special guest host and crossover companion at nrf. That that, that was kind of interesting.</p><p><span>[00:28:41]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. So, special shout out to Jeff Roster, host of This Week In Innovation podcast. We did a, crossover there. He&#39;s been with us as one of our esteemed Retail Avengers from them the first season where we like to refer to him as the analyst. So Jeff and I decided to team up a little bit at N R F and see what can we do<span>[00:29:00]</span> to do this in person.</p><p><span>[00:29:01]</span> And it was interesting experience because, it&#39;s a little different than when I did a grocery shop, you know, grocery shop, shop talk. They&#39;re, they&#39;re good at providing you an entire facility with recording equipment in a dedicated room that you can use. N R F is a little more complicated and that, that we didn&#39;t technically qualify to, to use their facilities for that.</p><p><span>[00:29:20]</span> So we kind of had to figure it out for ourselves and, and, and understand, okay, what, what do we need to, what equipment do we need? And, and then of course the biggest challenge is figuring out, well, where are we gonna do this? And we were lucky. We had our friends and fans of the show at Avanade allowed us to use their lounge space as our mobile recording studio.</p><p><span>[00:29:36]</span> For both Jeff and I think that was a new experience. We learned a lot from that and, and hopefully upped our podcast game to do more of these live in-person recordings that way.</p><p><span>[00:29:45]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Gotcha. So question. am I an honorary Avenger since I was there in the clubhouse? In the Clubhouse case?</p><p><span>[00:29:52]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. That&#39;s right. Yep.</p><p><span>[00:29:53]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> the clubhouse,</p><p><span>[00:29:55]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. Right. That, that, that&#39;s why you get invited to guest, host, come on.</p><p><span>[00:29:58]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Woo. <span>[00:30:00]</span> Alright, so question for you, Casey. What interview stood out to you? The most, both at Grocery Shop and nrf.</p><p><span>[00:30:08]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So, both of which I missed. So the, the episode with Ron and Vicki, it really stood out at N R F that it is, it is absolutely something magical when we&#39;re together in, in real life. And I think that those, there&#39;s nothing that can compare to everybody being, having that energy and bringing it all to the same table and having these great conversations.</p><p><span>[00:30:35]</span> So I mean, it was something where I didn&#39;t tune out. I was listening to it and I think that it just brings like a very different dynamic to podcasts. But I mean, it goes to show we have really talented people in this space that are so passionate about retail. And so the Ron and Vicki episode just, you know, moved right up to my top as the most memorable.<span>[00:31:00]</span></p><p><span>[00:31:01]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I, I, I have to say on, on that one too, I mean, o one of the things that worked so great with that, I mean, we, we didn&#39;t plan anything in advance for, for that one. We were all, all four of us were at the Retail ROI Super Saturday event that we were, we were hosting at the Microsoft office.</p><p><span>[00:31:16]</span> And right at the end of the day when everything was wrapping up, we said, why don&#39;t we sit down and just record a quick 15 minute conversation, just on some thoughts about what we, what we experienced in the day, kinda what we were hoping to see at nrf. And then of course, we got so into it, it turned into 50 minutes, not 15 ... so we went a little bit longer.</p><p><span>[00:31:32]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Wow. That&#39;s great. So what, what did you think Casey, about that.</p><p><span>[00:31:38]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So like, I mean, Ron Thurston, I&#39;m like a super fan. We&#39;ll just say that I am a super fan and Vicki Cantrell is, is phenomenal. So, I mean, I wish I, I wish I could have been there. It was just really special and Gabriella, what was it? Gabriella Bach from Rethink Retail. She was filming the video <span>[00:32:00]</span> for </p><p><span>[00:32:00]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. She recorded the video for us. </p><p><span>[00:32:02]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> walking around in that tiny room with her video way longer than she was supposed to.</p><p><span>[00:32:08]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, she, she was really re a real good I I don&#39;t even know what to say you, cause we talked, she heard us talking about wanting to do it and said, Hey, do you guys want me to record the video for that, that you can use? I don&#39;t, I don&#39;t mind doing it. So, yeah. We&#39;re only gonna be 15 minutes or so.</p><p><span>[00:32:20]</span> Oh, sure. No problem. And she&#39;s sitting there holding all the video equipment and this, and you can see in the video, this was such a tiny conference room that we ended up picking and she&#39;s trying to kind of move around all of us to get the right angles in this. She had to change batteries midway through it and then ran outta battery power cause we went so long.</p><p><span>[00:32:38]</span> So that was, that was definitely something.</p><p><span>[00:32:39]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Cool. Alright. So you definitely have to keep doing more of those in the future.</p><p><span>[00:32:45]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh, oh, for sure. So, so stay tuned. We, we, we have one of very much like that coming from Shop Talk that we just did.</p><h3>[00:32:51] All those Retail Transformers were more than meets the eye!</h3><p><span>[00:32:51]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Awesome. All right, now let&#39;s talk about one of your fun series within a series, so to speak, <span>[00:33:00]</span> the retail transformer series. You started the series in series one, but it really took off with this season with four special retail transformation episodes. But honestly, you could have called it both grocery shop and NRF series the same, couldn&#39;t you?</p><p><span>[00:33:15]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yes, true. I mean, we&#39;re all essentially Transformers. That&#39;s why we brought them on the show.</p><p><span>[00:33:23]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> I, I think Casey was just about to go. Transformers.</p><p><span>[00:33:30]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. Yep. Stealing my line there.</p><p><span>[00:33:32]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I&#39;m like</p><p><span>[00:33:33]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> That&#39;s what we were </p><p><span>[00:33:34]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> playing my composure.</p><p><span>[00:33:37]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Oh, I&#39;m sorry. I&#39;m sorry. That we&#39;re, we&#39;re supposed to have yeah, we&#39;re professional here. All right. Okay. Back, back to the story here. So which one stood out the most for you, Casey?</p><p><span>[00:33:50]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So, my favorite Retail Transformer during that this series was Brian Dove with Commerce Hub. We could have, <span>[00:34:00]</span> that podcast could have gone on for hours. Literally I would&#39;ve been fine if Ricardo stopped record, and I just continued talking to Brian for the rest of the day. His approach is really compelling.</p><p><span>[00:34:15]</span> He&#39;s solving. Solving supply chain is probably one of the ugliest and most complex sites of the business. And making changes in supply chain are like, they&#39;re, they&#39;re like complete, they&#39;re not even a heart transplant. It&#39;s a complete nervous system transplant. And, just think that our supplies, chains need the most transformation and it&#39;s just hard, ugly work.</p><p><span>[00:34:41]</span> You don&#39;t get a lot of rainbows and sunshines and like glitter doing things in supply chain. It&#39;s waking up in the morning, day in, day out, doing the stuff that nobody else wants to do. And I think he came out with a very his approach is incredible and I think that we&#39;re <span>[00:35:00]</span> just gonna see more drop shipping directly from manufacturers than managing their own distribution and, and selling inventory in and third party logistics warehouses.</p><p><span>[00:35:11]</span> This. Piece of supply chain that is part of Commerce Hub. They&#39;re only like a fraction of what could be. But I think for, for what he&#39;s done and what they&#39;re doing now and where they&#39;re going, he is my top re Retail Transformer that stood out during that series.</p><p><span>[00:35:34]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Wow. I, I can&#39;t have my guys listening to this podcast because now before you&#39;re talking up the c d p guys, now my supply chain guys is, see, we&#39;re we&#39;re more important than everybody else.</p><p><span>[00:35:46]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Wants to work with me. Paul,</p><p><span>[00:35:47]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> I know. Geez. I, I dunno how, what, what about us? Come on. No. Yeah. Hundred percent.</p><p><span>[00:35:56]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> there&#39;s so many angels in this space that I <span>[00:36:00]</span> just feel like a lot of, a lot of it, the attention goes to the marketers. In general, and I just feel like marketing is just not retail. It takes so much to make that product</p><p><span>[00:36:17]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> And honestly in the last couple years, right? I think people got, oh, all we have to do is just drop ship stuff and things just show up and</p><p><span>[00:36:25]</span> it, you know,</p><p><span>[00:36:26]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. Yeah. It&#39;s magic,</p><p><span>[00:36:28]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> and nobody has to make profit off of it. Now, the real world, oh damn, we&#39;ve got a sources. And to scale it, you actually have to do it profitably, right?</p><p><span>[00:36:38]</span> And so now this, we had a little bubble of this magic, every, all this funding and these tools that made, it, enabled all of this to look like it didn&#39;t, it was super easy and anybody could do it, but now the real vendors are coming out. And, and so you really have to focus on back to the basics, right? <span>[00:37:00]</span> And, and how to tie all these together.</p><p><span>[00:37:02]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I agree.</p><p><span>[00:37:03]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> So, Ricardo, how about you?</p><p><span>[00:37:05]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So continuing on on that theme you just brought up there, Paul. So, so my, one of my favorites is the, the retail transformer we did with Polly Wong. Cuz she reinforced something that both Casey and I, I think absolutely loved when she said it. I, I think we almost had to stop recording to regain some composure from, from the comment that she just so casually dropped about how you can&#39;t have a profitable, business when you&#39;re only focused on acquisition as a fact.</p><p><span>[00:37:30]</span> And she just rolled that phrase out so matter of factly, like it was just the most fundamental thing that everybody had been lost on. That one to me to kind of set the tone for the whole rest of the recording on that one. Cause that was pretty early on. I think that was just gold. When she brought that up and, you know, we, we had been wanting to do some direct to consumer focus episodes, so Polly gave us a chance to talk about how is D T C really moving forward and bringing it back to this idea of profitability.</p><p><span>[00:37:58]</span> How do you shift from customer acquisition <span>[00:38:00]</span> focus to actually building customer loyalty, maintaining that community of customers. And, she, I just love how she gave us , this picture of, all these different ways and methods that those brands are now marketing to consumers that, that kind of brought things back.</p><p><span>[00:38:14]</span> Like when she mentioned, print catalogs where a as if they&#39;re the brand new thing that DTC brands were doing and being successful at it. I think that was, that was just something I don&#39;t think anybody who was listening expected to hear that. And that, that, I just love that one.</p><p><span>[00:38:28]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I agree. I think everything that was old is new again. It is that, it is this moment of back to the basics. I think Facebook essentially broke our foundation for digital. It created this false foundation for digital, let&#39;s say that. And so now that companies are really pulling back into, I don&#39;t want to rely on Facebook ads, and now I&#39;m not even getting that eight x or 12 x or 30 x, I&#39;m like, <span>[00:39:00]</span> lucky if I can get a two x return right now. Because of all of the different changes, I think we&#39;re going back to just building better with the newer technologies. And a lot of this is foundational, it&#39;s just a new foundation for digital.</p><p><span>[00:39:16]</span> That&#39;s just, I think we too many people over overbuilt on relying on a, the Facebook platform and ads.</p><p><span>[00:39:26]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Hey, I think omnichannel is back.</p><p><span>[00:39:30]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Say that word, unified commerce. If you need to use a word unified,</p><p><span>[00:39:34]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> you go. There you go. Unified commerce.</p><p><span>[00:39:37]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> That&#39;s probably, that should be another, that should be another podcast. The, the Battle. Battle of Semantics.</p><p><span>[00:39:44]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah,</p><p><span>[00:39:44]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh, there we, there we go. </p><p><span>[00:39:46]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> no consum. What is it? I just saw it. Composable commerce.</p><p><span>[00:39:51]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right. Yeah.</p><p><span>[00:39:53]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> The, the battle of the, the terms. All right.</p><p><span>[00:39:56]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> there.</p><p><span>[00:39:56]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> All right. So</p><p><span>[00:39:57]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> it&#39;s a dictionary.</p><h3>[00:39:58] Love those &#34;Special&#34; episodes...</h3><p><span>[00:39:58]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> now that wasn&#39;t the <span>[00:40:00]</span> only topical series you had. You also had a special episode. We already talked about one, your predictions episode, but you also had an interesting one with Andy Laudato from NRF beginners and of course the holiday special guests from Square and others.</p><p><span>[00:40:15]</span> How did you come about with those.</p><p><span>[00:40:18]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, I mean, speaking of the holiday season, we knew we wanted to make a holiday themed episode, but you know, every retail podcast seems to do this and focuses on predicting retail sales, right? And so we wanted to do something different. We brought together Bridget John&#39;s founder of to and from, to share her perspective on what customers were actually shopping for gifts.</p><p><span>[00:40:44]</span> And what inspired them. And then we added Roshaun from Square to share their recent survey report on what retailers were doing to gear up for the holiday. So we really felt like our holiday episode delivered perspectives on both <span>[00:41:00]</span> sides of the equation from the retailer and the consumer.</p><p><span>[00:41:03]</span> Instead of focusing on the number, we really wanted to focus on actually what&#39;s happening in this shopping experience and this thought process coming into holiday and how retailers could use that information to make their season more successful and hit those numbers that everybody&#39;s projecting. And I found it very much more insightful, really learning from the sides of Roshan, from Square and Bridget from To and From.</p><p><span>[00:41:32]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, that&#39;s what we really call cutting through the clutter.</p><p><span>[00:41:36]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Interesting. Okay. All right. What about the NRF for Beginner&#39;s episode?</p><p><span>[00:41:42]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So, so that one, we wanted to do something special leading up to N R F. Obviously, we gotta call it our industry&#39;s biggest moment of the year, right? It&#39;s the biggest show. So we knew we had to do something as a retail podcast, but lucky enough for us, Andy reached out to me and said, Hey, I got a great idea for a podcast episode.</p><p><span>[00:41:57]</span> Let&#39;s talk about what. Beginners to NRF <span>[00:42:00]</span> need to know by and, and le leveraging the experience of those of us who&#39;ve been there for so many years and years. So we thought, oh, this is a brilliant idea. Yeah, no, nobody&#39;s ever talking about that. Everyone always talks about N R F on the assumption that everyone knows what it is and knows what they&#39;re doing when they get there.</p><p><span>[00:42:14]</span> But the fact is every year, right, they&#39;re always beginners that have, have never been to N R F before. So let, let&#39;s focus on that. So, off we went. Andy came on. We, we highlighted, you know, how does a newbie to the show tackle it? What are the, the, the, the secret things you, you need to know that nobody really ever shares or tells you that you wished you knew by the time you got to the end of the show.</p><p><span>[00:42:34]</span> And everybody got to really benefit from all of Andy&#39;s multitude of, of years of NRF wisdom.</p><p><span>[00:42:39]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Yeah. So what, what&#39;d you think Casey?</p><p><span>[00:42:41]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I mean, I, I, I am still an NRF newbie, I feel, even though I&#39;ve been there most of my career. Cause there&#39;s, based off of how you go there and what contexts are you a vendor? Are you on the buying side? That changes throughout our career. <span>[00:43:00]</span> So you may have been a buyer for 10 years, but then you&#39;re going to n r F as a vendor for the first time.</p><p><span>[00:43:07]</span> And the tables turn, the experience is different. And yet, I think we&#39;re kind of all newbies because I&#39;m going as a vendor. But then each year you are changing what that means, you know, like, Not everybody has the Microsoft booth or like the Salesforce booth. And so, for everybody else, I think that it is pretty interesting on aligning expectations and like strategy for some of these companies that are coming in on the vendor side for the first time to maximize and, and even just new people coming in to go shopping.</p><p><span>[00:43:46]</span> You know, it&#39;s a big floor.</p><p><span>[00:43:48]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Yeah, that, that probably would be pretty different if you were a buyer. I&#39;m sure everybody wanted you to come to their event and take you out for dinner and everything. And then you&#39;re on the other side and you&#39;re like, oh crap, <span>[00:44:00]</span> I&#39;ve got, </p><p><span>[00:44:00]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Anybody. </p><p><span>[00:44:01]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> get some attention. The hunted from the hunted, right? Like</p><p><span>[00:44:06]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p><span>[00:44:07]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> it&#39;s a little bit different.</p><p><span>[00:44:09]</span> Okay. Alright. Gonna bring this home. Now with this one, one of the things I like about what you did this season was the introduction of the idea of new segments within each episode and your first one is what you guys call Retail Razor Data Blades, which you brought in a specialist for, right?</p><p><span>[00:44:31]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. So, and again, we, we didn&#39;t wanna make yet another retail podcast. I mean, there&#39;s like, what, over a hundred out there right now, have lost track. So we wanna do something unique that provides a value, not just to the retail tech community that, at the end of the day, right. Both Casey and I are part of right now, but also to retailers who are getting bombarded with information and that you realistically need some guidance on how to sift through all of that, all that data that gets published out there.</p><p><span>[00:44:55]</span> And like we&#39;re always saying, we want to cut through the clutter of that noise.</p><p><span>[00:44:59]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> <span>[00:45:00]</span> Yeah. And we worked with our friends over at True Rating and Georgina Nelson, their phenomenal c e o to leverage all the rich data that they&#39;ve gone through. Their retailer customers from survey questions that they ask at the point of sale to offer our listeners and viewers some insights into what consumers are actually doing.</p><p><span>[00:45:21]</span> And not doing with their purchasing habits.</p><p><span>[00:45:24]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, so we introduced this segment. We had it on I think three times this season, and we&#39;re, we&#39;re definitely gonna bring this one back next season. Big shout out to Georgina was so good at recording this with us when, when she was just days away from her baby&#39;s due date. So it was just a amazing that we were able to get that in.</p><p><span>[00:45:40]</span> We, we kept joking that we might not get these recordings done in time, but we managed to pull it off. So that was amazing.</p><p><span>[00:45:47]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> All </p><p><span>[00:45:47]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> was prepared to have laptop with her. You know, like when we say she&#39;s a phenomenal Georgina, like props to this woman. She&#39;s, she&#39;s a great leader.</p><h3>[00:45:58] Coming up next season?</h3><p><span>[00:45:58]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Wow. That&#39;s commitment. <span>[00:46:00]</span> Okay. Now for next year, next season, do you guys have a theme yet?</p><p><span>[00:46:07]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. After season one focused on digital transformation and the impact of transformation on the people in the retail business, this season, our focus was, the evolution of channel operations in the retail business. That&#39;s why we started the season with a big one, two punch with the Metaverse and retail media networks.</p><p><span>[00:46:32]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> and if you think about all the retail transformers we brought in this season, we really kept that focus. We started out with, with Alan Smithson to dive deeper into Metaverse what he was doing, building The Mall in the metaverse to, the episode I mentioned where we had Polly on. Talking about that.</p><p><span>[00:46:45]</span> And then, again, the one Casey mentioned with Bryan Dove from Commerce Hub we really drove into the future of e-commerce on that one and marketplaces. So for next season, where are we taking it? We&#39;re gonna try to focus a little bit more on some of these themes, a little, little bit sharper, things like anywhere <span>[00:47:00]</span> commerce and immersive commerce.</p><p><span>[00:47:01]</span> I think look at how that&#39;s happening with this in the middle of this backdrop that I, I think of as a, a back to basics kind of mood in retail.</p><p><span>[00:47:10]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Ah, back to my supply chain guys. All right. Yes, we need them, but, I got all the cool shows and I guess we gotta give them some work. All right, so let&#39;s tie in. You know, your predictions there, but what exactly do you mean? Back to basics.</p><p><span>[00:47:29]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, I, I think we, we really need to sort of acknowledge that retailers are focusing this year on, on how to get better at the business of retailers, retailing. So, past few years through the pandemic, right? What, what, what did retailers end up seeing? There&#39;s a lot of rapid growth in some specific areas for many retailers, but because a lot of it happened so fast, and I, I think we have to admit right, faster than most retailers were used to change and, and adopting new things.</p><p><span>[00:47:55]</span> So that meant that, they, the focus was just get it out there to deliver those <span>[00:48:00]</span>experiences for, for the consumers, for what consumers wanted at whatever the cost was because it just, it had to be done and it had to be done fast. So now most retailers, I think are figuring out, we did these things, maybe not in the best way we could have done it, so let&#39;s optimize it a little bit.</p><p><span>[00:48:15]</span> Let&#39;s make sure that we take out as much of the cost as we can, but c but, but still be able to do these things. How do we inject some profitability into it? We&#39;ve got all these crazy new tools like the Generative AI that, mentioned in the predictions. We talked about the automation for, for the store teams.</p><p><span>[00:48:31]</span> How do we still inject those things? But let&#39;s not do it in the, in the crazy, do it at all costs way that we were forced into the last few years. Let&#39;s do it in a more methodical way that we know is gonna maintain some profitability. We&#39;re wa we&#39;re watching, we don&#39;t know what the outcome is gonna be, right?</p><p><span>[00:48:48]</span> In terms of shopping trends or consumers gonna keep buying at the pace they&#39;ve been buying, are they going to slow down because of inflation? Are they gonna go back to saving more versus spending with all this <span>[00:49:00]</span> backdrop, how do we keep these things going? We can&#39;t take back any of the new things and capabilities we introduced cause consumers will, will find another brand, right, if we take these things away.</p><p><span>[00:49:08]</span> So we have to find ways to keep optimizing and keep doing them, but at least, the way I like to look at it is you can&#39;t just cost cut your way to success. You still have to invest in the future. And even though that near term investment is hopefully something that&#39;s gonna return you a, a cost reduction in the future, but you have to do it in a smart way.</p><p><span>[00:49:26]</span> So I think those are the kinds of things that, we&#39;re looking at these trendy things like immersive commerce and everywhere commerce and retailers, still need to do that, but it matters now how you do it more so than it did before.</p><p><span>[00:49:39]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I&#39;m a hundred percent on this is going to be the time for reality. And we&#39;re gonna be spending a lot more time on. The, the reality of, of where our retail is today to build, to be able to adopt some of the new technology at scale. It&#39;s just we spend so much <span>[00:50:00]</span> time on marketing and acquisition and we saw that it just cost us too much money and a lot of turn.</p><p><span>[00:50:07]</span> And so focusing on retention and stable systems and being able to go ahead and say like, listen, why are there 400 messages a day of a customer looking for their package? Okay, that&#39;s not a customer service opportunity. That&#39;s an opportunity to fix it. Like this is like adding these things to plug problems and band-aids.</p><p><span>[00:50:34]</span> We&#39;ve got to solve the actual problems. And I think that that&#39;s, everything that I&#39;ve seen right now has been. I have, we have customers. We&#39;re gonna focus on keeping them, and we need to go ahead and make sure that we&#39;re ready for the next five years of retail. Otherwise, we, I don&#39;t know if we&#39;ll be here or we&#39;re going to lose our market share.</p><p><span>[00:50:57]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> And I&#39;ll, and I&#39;ll just put a exclamation mark <span>[00:51:00]</span> on that. Like all I&#39;m hearing is optimize. How do we optimize, how do we use what we have? We spend a ton of investments over the past couple years. How do we use &#39;em well, right? Like that&#39;s what I keep hearing. That&#39;s what, that&#39;s what my colleagues are hearing.</p><p><span>[00:51:16]</span> So I, I think the more that they can do better, and guess what the P word. You gotta be profitable, right? How do we optimize and be for profit and, and more so than ever, especially with the uncertainty on the economics and that, I think it&#39;s just gonna be more important. </p><p><span>[00:51:36]</span> Okay. One last thing I want to know.</p><p><span>[00:51:39]</span> Any new segments you&#39;re introducing? Like the Retail razor Data Blades.</p><p><span>[00:51:44]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, since that&#39;s that&#39;s been pretty popular. So we are looking at adding more of those. So for example one, we&#39;re gonna bring a, a unique perspective to answer the, the hot questions of the day from an academic&#39;s viewpoint. I think that&#39;s gonna be maybe eye-opening for some folks based on, on what kind of <span>[00:52:00]</span> responses we, we hear there and what kind of discussion we have.</p><p><span>[00:52:02]</span> But I think it&#39;ll be a unique independent viewpoint people aren&#39;t used to hearing necessarily. Then another one we&#39;re thinking about doing is a segment that&#39;ll focus on retail leadership qualities. There&#39;s been some interesting news media reports lately talking about how there seems to be a shortage of, of CEOs in retail and a shortage of, of quality executives.</p><p><span>[00:52:22]</span> So we&#39;re gonna dig in a little bit, I think in, in a new segment there and bring in some folks to. Give some tips on, you know, what are those leadership roles? What are those skills that those leaderships, what traits do they need to have to really be successful in, in retail that maybe not everyone has developed or, or needs to develop better.</p><p><span>[00:52:39]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> I, I think back to what I just said, the P word, we need the CEOs driving the profitability, right?</p><p><span>[00:52:46]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah.</p><p><span>[00:52:47]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I think they&#39;re gonna come from unexpected places. You know, we&#39;ve had a lot of executives that have been running the top for 25 years. I think retail in general it&#39;s been, <span>[00:53:00]</span> leadership has been plugged. I know a lot of VPs and SVPs that had their jobs for 28 years, they&#39;re not going anywhere and they didn&#39;t let anybody rise through.</p><p><span>[00:53:09]</span> And so there&#39;s a lot of talent out there that could probably hop some steps and really make some big changes and some positive profitable changes at these companies. And I&#39;m excited to have those, those sessions cuz there&#39;s a lot of untapped talent out in this industry. Nobody&#39;s in this industry to get rich, right?</p><p><span>[00:53:31]</span> Like we are all here on pure fricking passion. Cause it would be a lot easier working some other industries than it is in this space. We&#39;re here with like committed love.</p><p><span>[00:53:42]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Yes. Yes. So all of that&#39;s pretty interesting. So any hints for the expert speakers to come?</p><p><span>[00:53:50]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We can&#39;t give everything away on this episode I&#39;m gonna leave that on on Ricardo if he wants to add any spoilers.</p><p><span>[00:53:57]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I think we can afford to make people wait and <span>[00:54:00]</span> see and, and make it a surprise.</p><p><span>[00:54:01]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> Well, maybe you guys can give us a preview trailer soon and, you know, a teaser.</p><p><span>[00:54:06]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. Be in the lookout for that.</p><p><span>[00:54:08]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> All right. Well guys, thank you so much for inviting me on the show to guest host and be an honorary Avenger. It&#39;s been a year, Casey and Ricardo since we saw y y you know, the comeback at The Shop Talk last year. And we just got done another Shop Talk. But Ricardo, I didn&#39;t see you. I, I, I tried to</p><p><span>[00:54:27]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> don&#39;t know how we missed each other, so, so</p><p><span>[00:54:29]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> I know</p><p><span>[00:54:29]</span> it was crazy. But thank you. I had a lot of fun and looking forward to next year.</p><p><span>[00:54:36]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thank you so much, Paul. I loved having you on the show and we&#39;ll work on that honorary Avenger title.</p><p><span>[00:54:42]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. That&#39;s right. I mean, this is a great, fantastic experience. We can&#39;t wait to have you back on the show again soon.</p><p><span>[00:54:47]</span> <strong>Paul do Forno:</strong> All right, thanks guys.</p><p><span>[00:54:49]</span> ​</p><h3>[00:54:49] Show Close</h3><p><span>[00:54:49]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> We&#39;ll give a big thanks out to all of our Retail Razor Show fans this season. Casey, I think that means this show<span>[00:55:00]</span> for that matter, this whole season is a wrap now.</p><p><span>[00:55:02]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. If you enjoyed our show this season, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don&#39;t miss a minute. And if you&#39;d rather watch us instead of listening, subscribe to our YouTube channel and like, and comment there&#39;s a new season out there too.</p><p><span>[00:55:23]</span> And of course, if you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a full transcript of each episode look at the show notes for handy links to more deets. I&#39;m your cohost, Casey Golden.</p><p><span>[00:55:34]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter, at Retail Razor, on LinkedIn for the latest updates. And stay tuned for a season three trailer like Paul was asking us for.</p><p><span>[00:55:50]</span> Coming soon. We promise, it&#39;ll be worth the wait. I&#39;m your host Ricardo Belmar.</p><p><span>[00:55:55]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p><span>[00:55:56]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail <span>[00:56:00]</span>if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show.</p><p><br></p> f79e1fd2-f3c7-4b42-b570-af4023d90560 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 05 May 2023 11:05:00 +0000 3372 no full S2E12d #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL – TRI Friends Fireside Chat S2E12d #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL – TRI Friends Fireside Chat 12 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E12d #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL – TRI Friends Fireside Chat Have you heard plenty of Shoptalk event and trend recaps by now? Did any of those dig into why those trends matter and what they really mean for the retail industry? Sometimes you just need to put four Top Retail Influencers into one recording session and let them talk about what those trends make them feel about the industry to get to the heart of the matter. And maybe ‘heart’ is what it’s truly all about – because retail is a people business. It’s Part 4 of our #ShoptalkLive podcast cross-over series with This Week in Innovation and special guest host Jeff Roster, but not quite recorded live and in-person at Shoptalk this time! Yes, there’s a story to that and you’ll find out in this episode where Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar are joined by retail legends, Vicki Cantrell, CEO of Vendors in Partnership, LLC, and Ron Thurston, author of Retail Pride, host of the Retail in America podcast and tour, and Co-Founder of OSSY. In this episode, Jeff, Ricardo, Vicki, and Ron discover the true meaning of Shoptalk this year – people and relationships – because in the end they realize that the experience is the relationship in retail and how this is NOT the year of shiny objects! Plus, we’re now standing at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E12d ShoptalkLive - TRI Friends Chat [00:00:00] Show Intro [00:00:20] Casey Golden: Hello Retail Razor Show listeners and viewers. Welcome to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. [00:00:33] Ricardo Belmar: And I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. Welcome to part four and the final installment in our Shop Talk Live crossover event with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation podcast. [00:00:44] Casey Golden: Wow. Are we really at the last one? This has been so much fun, so many incredible conversations and takeaways. Does it really have to end? [00:00:53] Ricardo Belmar: Well, yeah, it does. It does. But we have saved what I think is one of our best, if not the [00:01:00] best episode of the season for the last one. [00:01:02] Casey Golden: Okay. Wait a minute, you've, you've called every episode, the best episode of the season as being the one from N R F where you and Jeff sat down with Vicki Cantrell and Ron Thurston at the end of the Super Saturday retail ROI event. You know that 10 minute chat that turned into 50 minutes? [00:01:21] Ricardo Belmar: Well, okay. Yeah, I, I did say that I, I suppose I, I guess maybe I have said that may, maybe more than once, but funny you should mention that episode because this episode, our final Shop Talk crossover podcast is also a conversation Jeff and I have with Ron and Vicki. , it's, think of it as a repeat or a follow up, if you will, of that NRF discussion. [00:01:42] And I have to say, it's this sort of conversation that, you know, makes me so excited to be part of this industry. I'm so thankful for relationships like these with Jeff, Ron, Vicki, and so many others including you, Casey. It's just unlike any other industry I know. [00:01:55] Casey Golden: Aw, you're like a teddy bear. It's so true though. [00:02:00] Nothing lights a fire like passion. And I know now why you've been testing this recording for the last three episodes but at the risk of being a downer here, if I'm not mistaken, you guys had some challenges making this happen. [00:02:15] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, we did, we did. It turns out we only had one option to record this live and in person at Shop Talk, and that was at the end of the day on, I think it was the second to last day of the show. And it was right when Shop Talk had scheduled a happy hour on the show floor. Rethink Retail was kind enough to agree to let us use their booth space to record. [00:02:35] So Jeff and I get there to set up our equipment, right, and guess what happens? [00:02:39] Casey Golden: The equipment broke. [00:02:41] Ricardo Belmar: Okay, good guess, but no, not quite. just as we were about to plug everything in, suddenly loud music starts blaring over the speakers all over the expo hall. You figure it's happy hour right. So of course Shop Talk decided we all needed some high energy music to go with our free drinks. [00:02:56] Casey Golden: Oh my God, you're kidding me. What, what'd you [00:03:00] guys end up doing? [00:03:00] Ricardo Belmar: Well, we, we looked at each other and thought about what any experienced podcaster would do to, to compensate for that. And then instead we immediately decided that it was hopeless and we just needed to cancel the whole thing and reschedule. [00:03:11] Casey Golden: Grab a beer. [00:03:13] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. [00:03:16] Now, of course, I, I did say this was the only time we could work it out during the show, so we ended up scheduling a recording session remotely for about a week after Shop Talk. [00:03:24] So technically this episode is not, live and in-person recorded bet it is still recorded, so we're gonna go with that. But it does have the added benefit that, you know, we've got full video for this episode on our YouTube channel. So you actually get to watch us have the discussion, not just listen to it. [00:03:41] Casey Golden: All right. All right. Well, that's a pretty good trade off. I must say and you know, we just kind of upped the ante here. So sad you guys couldn't make it work in person. Hope there was some good drinks. But I mean, come on, of course you'd expect good music to go with happy hour, [00:04:00] right? I mean, [00:04:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:04:02] Casey Golden: you kind of expect like show closes, party's on, right. [00:04:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I guess we should have thought of that. We should have thought of that, I suppose. But you know, like, like I said, we're, we're, had we been experienced podcasters or not the you know, budding experts, we all aspire to be here. We might have planned for that, but I, I think this worked out in the end. [00:04:22] Either way. [00:04:23] Casey Golden: Well, let's not waste any more time. Let's get straight to the recording. Not live and in person at Shop Talk, but still a Shop Talk recap with you, Jeff Roster, Vicki Cantrell and Ron Thurston. [00:04:38] The TRI Friends Chat [00:04:38] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome everybody. I'm Ricardo Belmar, host of the Retail Razor Show, and I'm here with a good friend, Jeff Roster, host of This Week In Innovation. And you guessed it. This is the last episode in our Shop Talk related series. And I, if you're [00:05:00] watching us on video, yes. You may have noticed we are not live at Shop Talk right now. [00:05:05] We, we much like, one of the episodes, if you caught our crossover at NRF where we had some issues and couldn't quite make it work out. We sort of had a little bit of some coordination challenges this time. So we're catching up with each other after the event, but we're here to talk about our, our thoughts on the shop talk event. [00:05:24] Jeff, how you doing today? [00:05:25] Jeff Roster: You know, Ricardo, I'm doing fantastic. I had a good week's sleep and a lot of time to, to think about what we're gonna talk about today. So I, I'm actually kind of thinking this is really a cool vibe. Maybe we should do this on every show, like do the final wrap up, show off-premise, two, three days down, down the road couple, you know, a couple good night's sleep. [00:05:43] So I, I'm excited to get into this conversation. [00:05:45] Ricardo Belmar: Sounds good. Well, let me go ahead and introduce our, familiar guests. we have with us today, we've got Vicki Cantrell and Ron Thurston. Vicki, Ron, how are you two doing? [00:05:55] Vicki Cantrell: Great. Very nice to be uh, on a Friday entering in and, and it [00:06:00] did take a l uh, like it took a while to get over this trip, like physically, and so I'm all back. So happy to be here with you guys. [00:06:11] Ron Thurston: Yeah. Yeah, me too. Thank you Ricardo and Jeff. It's a, it's a pleasure. I, I felt trapped inside Mandalay Bay with no sun and nothing, and I was happy to come back to the west coast on the tour and be in San Diego because [00:06:25] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. [00:06:25] Ron Thurston: I needed some fresh air [00:06:27] Ricardo Belmar: It, it kind of, it's kind of funny. I, I noticed on the last day I was there thinking, wait a minute, I, have I seen the outside for the last few days since I've been here? Or have I not even seen daylight? [00:06:38] Jeff Roster: I actually one, one trip over, cause I stayed at the Luxor I, one trip over, I specifically went outside and went all the way around because I thought, you know, I probably at some point should literally have fresh air. So I [00:06:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. [00:06:49] Jeff Roster: force my way outside. [00:06:51] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right, [00:06:52] Vicki Cantrell: ahh, Vegas. [00:06:53] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. [00:06:54] Ron Thurston: Vegas. [00:06:55] 4 Shoptalk Themes [00:06:55] Ricardo Belmar: love it. Gotta love it. Well, so, so let, let me start by, before we [00:07:00] jump into our, our conversation here, let, let's kind of start with summarizing four key themes that shop talk themselves, the shop talk content team put out there at the end of the show is what they felt were the four main themes of the show. [00:07:12] and the first is what they termed as seamless stores, which I like to think of this as both a recognition that stores are a focal point of energy right now in, in retail, and that it is, it's maybe a way to think of this as the, the successor to omnichannel and maybe we put that term to rest. so that's theme one. [00:07:30] Theme two is about enabling workers and store teams which is a theme I like to see. And. I'm sure we'll get into this, but we, we talked about that at our, at our conversation, N R F and what we had hoped to hear then about how we're better enabling store teams. So that was theme two. [00:07:46] Theme three is shopper engagement. And this is sort of a, a, a catchall, I think that covers all the interesting technologies that we're all hearing about and talking about now that's impacting the customer experience in, in any channel, whether it's in stores, digital, [00:08:00] wherever it may be. [00:08:01] And then the fourth one which might actually be the most interesting of the four, Shop Talk calls this changing relationships and it, it's a reference to how on, on the one hand, you have retailers becoming more and more like a technology provider in that they're now offering services. To other retailers and other brands, and that could be you know, one of my favorite topics that I like to remind Jeff about every chance I get, and that's retail media networks. [00:08:28] it may be, yep. It may be things like GAP offering their logistics network as a service to other retailers. and it, but it really, I, I think. I, I find this an interesting one because maybe Shop Talk is onto something there thinking that the business is changing because of how the relationships are changing from the way they have been in, you know, for, for decades now. [00:08:49] so let's, let's start from there. [00:08:53] Vicki Cantrell: I um, you know, I love those four themes because they aren't kind of broken out into [00:09:00] technology. And if you remember we talked in January, Ron had such a good point in that freewheeling conversation that we had was about how do we respect the stores given what they're going through and how do we get them to do less and understand what their challenges are and because the customer is back in the stores. [00:09:22] It's a Relationship Show About People [00:09:22] Vicki Cantrell: And, and when we think about that uh, it felt there was a lot of content to address those things in while we were at Shop Talk, but I'd like to kind of flip that a little bit and talk about those four themes. And what I felt while I was there, I felt like it was, I have no other way to describe it other than it felt like it was a relationship show. [00:09:47] Uh, for me, the connections, everybody talked, no matter who you met on the floor, in a booth, at a party, wherever you were, it started with the human connection [00:10:00] and it no matter what and it way more time was spent on the human aspects and the human connection before it actually turned into a potential business connection. [00:10:14] So it felt very right. It felt very relationship focused. And when you think about that, how it relates to those themes is so true. The relationship with the customer, the relationship and partnerships, it just felt very connected and human. And I love the way they're kind of mapping this out. [00:10:37] Ron Thurston: I'll, I'll jump in. I, I agree with you, Vicki. I think it's also the space being like smaller than an N R F. I mean, I think Vicky, you and I saw each other like three times a day [00:10:47] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah. [00:10:48] Ron Thurston: And you know, like walking by, it's a, it's a high five, it's a hug. Oh, have you met this person? Oh my God. Like, let's get a picture. [00:10:55] Like, so I think that there's, there's power in the scale of, [00:11:00] of the conference at the same time, but as my first experience at Shop Talk, I would say retail is a relationship business and, and because coming from the stores, that's how you build a business. It isn't just about product and, and a beautiful space. [00:11:18] It is very much about relationships with each other. First, leading a team, it's relationships with the customers. It's with your corporate business partners, it's with your vendors. It's with your mall or your landlords, like, everything we do is about relationships and those relationships have, you know, are so important to me. [00:11:39] But when you, there was a sense of pride almost in our industry as much as we all have questions and maybe some, um, pressure to deliver. I, I felt a sense of pride about the general retail industry at, at a whole, and that, that felt really good to me. I left [00:12:00] on such a high because of that. [00:12:02] Vicki Cantrell: I love that. I love that. And, and I didn't realize that was your first [00:12:09] Ron Thurston: It was my first, [00:12:10] Vicki Cantrell: I had no idea. Oh my gosh. [00:12:14] Ricardo Belmar: How many shop talks have you been to Vicki? [00:12:15] Vicki Cantrell: uh, I've actually, I would say I missed one. I haven't gone to the ones outside of Las Vegas, but I missed, I was at the first one and last year and this year, so I would say at least three, potentially four. [00:12:31] Ricardo Belmar: Okay, It was my second shop talk I got last year was my first one. Jeff, this, was this your first [00:12:35] Jeff Roster: No, this is my first one too. And what I think was interesting about the relationship angle, and I've, I've always, you know, preached that from the get-go. Listen, from a tech perspective, it's a relationship business. It's as big as Mayberry. And there's, you know, sheriff Andy, and, and you know, I mean, do not screw around in the industry, it's 5 trillion, but it is, is as big as Mayberry and it's, it's really cool to hear that. I also wonder, and [00:13:00] this is 180 degrees shift for me I've never, ever, never, ever been a fan of having anything in Vegas. I just think it gets, the shows tend to get lost. I think you have the, the bleed off and the old days. [00:13:10] It quite frankly used to be, I thought, fairly inappropriate. B because some of the, you know, the costumes and all that sort of stuff, but I tell you it was genius to have it at Mandalay Bay One. I felt like I was back on a college dorm. Sort of that whole, that whole connection. Yeah, we joked about not being outside. [00:13:26] Well, there was a reason I wasn't outside because everything was, was convenient and like, For instance, Kathy's party Sunday night. You know, I looked at the space before I got in there and thought, oh, man, that it just feels like we're just part of the whole big thing that couldn't have worked out better. [00:13:39] One, it was quiet inside inappropriate for the conversation, but I watched probably 20 people walked by on the way to other things, you know, and so like pop out, pop back in, pop out. And I was at a party the, the Coresight party, and actually they had they had their space, but then there was another party that it was in another space, but the outside was, was, was common. [00:13:59] [00:14:00] And I ended up at somebody else's party and had a great conversation with people that I'd met at another party. And man, you, you're not gonna see that any, at any, you, you, that's the only place probably in the plant. You could have all those different venues, world-class food, world-class space, but then have all that interaction. [00:14:18] So, yeah, I, I just, I man, I, I have shifted 180 degrees about having something in Vegas. [00:14:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And then we, we were talking earlier, so there was also, and I think this, I, I love this relationship theme because there was Sunday afternoon, right? There was the, the Retail ROI get together for, for the March Gladness event, watching some of the March Madness games. And I think Jeff, maybe you were the one who said it, right? [00:14:37] Just sitting there, you could just see people you recognize walking by, because it was on the way to registration for, for shop talk. People would walk by and say, Hey, how you doing? [00:14:47] Jeff Roster: Somebody's gotta own that 2:00 PM space on Sunday, because literally at that location. So for people that weren't there, I think where we were, the bar we were at was probably what, a hundred yards at max from, from [00:15:00] registration, [00:15:00] Ricardo Belmar: from the registration. Right, [00:15:01] Jeff Roster: everyone was walking there. I mean, every startup on the planet, it should just be right there at that bar or the, or the Starbucks on the other side because you're seeing the whole show. [00:15:10] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:15:11] Yeah. [00:15:12] The Experience Is the Relationship [00:15:12] Vicki Cantrell: you know, I'm gonna just wanna one more thing on this aspect of relationship. Ricardo, Ricardo, when we were talking earlier and we talked about that, you know, pre pandemic was experiential you know, that's what retailers were trying to, to deal with, and then pandemic became about convenience and figuring out that, and that it's just based on some of these themes and some of the stuff we did see is how important we're back to the experience and the experience is gonna be different. [00:15:43] You know, when you're talking about, ways of shopping and video and all, all of the different ways. But ,the fact that we think about that, for me, convenience and experience is the same because it's based on that your connection to, between the customer and the [00:16:00] retailer, that it's about the relationship. [00:16:02] Because the experience is the relationship. It's not whether you walk into the store and say, oh, isn't this beautiful? That's not what the experience is. I mean, it better be okay or better be pleasant, but that's not the experience. The experience is the connection of the person that you're, you're being with when you get there. [00:16:23] So retail is really about that. And if you have that relationship, then you're going to think this was convenient cuz you connected. [00:16:34] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. [00:16:35] Ron Thurston: agreed. [00:16:36] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I, I agree. And, and, and you know, the other interesting thing I, I noticed too, just thinking again about these four themes now I, I wasn't at the earlier shop talks before last year, but what I do remember in, in talking with people who had been there and looking at the content coming out of the, the conference, you know, I, I think this really started out as a e-commerce focused kind of really heavily digital channels focused to, to [00:17:00] retail much less emphasis, if any, on what's happening in in stores. And, you know, and Jeff and I talked to the content team while we were there and, and they mentioned that, you know, they had gotten feedback from attendees that said, you know, in this post pandemic world, we, we really need to talk more about stores. [00:17:18] Stores are a real focal point for our business and for our, how we build those relationships with consumers you know, that the content at the event needs to reflect that. And I, I, I think this is one of the things I find most interesting with Shop Talk is how quickly they pivot from topic to topic based on that feedback. [00:17:37] You know, when we, when we sat, when we were chatting at N R F, one of the things we said is, well, we hope, we hear some themes around, , not just how you're enabling store teams, but when you add things to the store, are you just adding or are you taking something away? You know, are you recognizing that every time you add there's potentially a burden on, on the team there? [00:17:56] And a difficulty in, in them executing it because it's yet one more [00:18:00] thing, it's one more thing to ask for. And I don't know that we heard that at NRF in sessions there very much. But I feel like at Shop Talk there was definitely, and, and they said it right in one of the four themes about enabling workers. [00:18:13] That was definitely a sense. I mean, I, I even felt that in sessions that were not about, the store teams, it came up in the conversation with the speakers on stage. It's almo. It was almost like a reflex that everyone just recognizing every retailer that was up there, they could have been talking about optimizing their supply chain. [00:18:31] And somehow then the conversation led to an impact on the store team and how they had to be aware of that and do something about it, not just let things happen. Which was something I hadn't really experienced and seen in this kind of content at other events. [00:18:47] NOT the Year of Shiny Objects [00:18:47] Ron Thurston: Yeah, I mean, I'll, I'll jump in because I started it, but I think the you know, the, my my sense from speaking to so many retailers is there's, there's a sense of clarity [00:19:00] right now about the, which. Where revenue is being generated and, and where their business needs to grow and where they need to make investment. [00:19:10] And I think maybe years past a little bit of like shiny object and what's fun and what's exciting, what keeps us in the press. And this is not a year of the shiny object. This is a year that we need to deliver on the investments that we've made. And that investment for all of them is in people, and stores, and if their e-commerce business is, is not growing at the rates they expected, then the revenue and the profitability comes from the store. [00:19:40] And so I do think maybe it's even, you know, 90 days later, from N R F the retailers I'm speaking to is I'm here to find solutions for workforce management. I'm, I'm here to find things of a better way to, to communicate with my teams, to improve productivity, to think about [00:20:00] how to make returns easier at the store level. [00:20:02] Just all of the things that are actually about delivering results. And you can't deliver the results that any company needs. Without strong teams in place who are well trained and led and motivated. And I, I just hope that, that this is not, or I should say, my sense is not, this was not a, a temporary idea that they have now said 80% of our revenue is coming from the store. [00:20:30] And that's not changing. And we need to fix this. And I hope my sense is right given the, you know, the small set of people I spoke to. But that's my, that's my feeling right now. [00:20:41] Jeff Roster: You know, that's a, that's quite a phrase, Ron. The, not the year of the shiny object. I mean, if you don't put that on Twitter today, I'm, I'm a hundred percent stealing that. Um, [00:20:50] Ron Thurston: Go for it. go for [00:20:51] it Jeff [00:20:52] Jeff Roster: And I think that's such a profound observation because I mean, I go back to the old wars, you know, the [00:21:00] retail Apocalypse Wars and all that sort of stuff for, for whatever reason folks trying to bury the store and, and, and, you know, Buzek and I, and I think, well, I didn't know you at the time yet, Ron, but we were like, how. [00:21:11] Help me understand 90%, at the time it was 90% of the revenues coming from the store. Why would you try to do that? And I, I, I still don't know the answer to that, but I think, you know, maybe it's a covid thing, just a realization how important we are. We are a tribal people. We want to. The best part of human nature is wanting to be in, you know, in fellowship, in connection with people. [00:21:34] And so if retail is a people business, it has to reflect that and, and our technology needs to reflect that. And maybe we're a little more mature than we were in 2020 and, and realize the value of people. [00:21:46] Yay. You know, I'm pro-human. And so that's a, that's a great observation. I think that's a, that's, that's a. [00:21:52] Real, real thing. And I think what's interesting, Ron, when I walked the f the, the, the exhibit hall, which is where I spent all my time, the number of [00:22:00] live streamers, the number of, of folks wanting to do something more in the store, which kind of goes against your idea of like, let's not add to the store, but it's happening. [00:22:08] I mean, TikTok was there in a big way. Fire, uh, I, I, I forget the names, but a bunch of those fight. [00:22:14] Ron Thurston: Fire firework. [00:22:15] Jeff Roster: firework. They're all. There's this, this idea that the store is the platform that we can do more with. And, and I think if we can unleash that creativity that all these, you know, all these folks have, and give them the tools, which they're already there. [00:22:32] Wow. Holy smokes. We're gonna have a whole new engagement model. [00:22:36] Ricardo Belmar: One interesting thing I heard, and I heard this more than once from different speakers and sessions on, on this point, you know take, take the livestream maybe was one example, but I I, I heard people say in a positive way this recognition that if we have more functions and roles needed in the store, there's this recognition that, you know, not every store team employee has to know how to do every single role.[00:23:00] [00:23:00] That there is this idea of specialization. So, so maybe to your point, Jeff, if live streaming is something that a particular retailer's stores need to support, that doesn't mean every employee needs to be able to jump on a live stream. It means that maybe the, you know, three out of 10 or something that are good at it and want to do it. That's now their role, right? They, they, they're given that role and they put some focus on that. Maybe there are three other employees who's, who would rather be fulfilling BOPIS orders right in, in, in the back room. And because they can do that faster than the other employees. And it's okay to have this specialization and this recognition that, whether it's a store manager level or a district manager, somebody's has this awareness and that we're gearing the operation of the store around this idea that we can specialize in different areas and start building career paths for, for, for employees that that's something new that I hadn't heard before. [00:23:51] Ron Thurston: Yeah, [00:23:52] I think what, what happens in that Or, go ahead, Vicky. [00:23:55] Vicki Cantrell: No, no, go. Go ahead. [00:23:57] Ron Thurston: You know, I think that that, I think [00:24:00] what to add on to that, the realization that some of that evolution also doesn't have to happen in the store. So you think about livestream. Several brands have said, oh, great, we're gonna build a showroom in the office and we're gonna livestream from the office with, by someone who's highly skilled at selling live on camera, which is a very unique and important skill. [00:24:23] But at the same time, if I'm gonna livestream from the office, then I need to have live inventory so that when I click into what I'm selling, oh I see it's available at my store. I can also buy online pickup in store, I can reserve. So there the rest. The rest of the chain has to, has to work in order for it. [00:24:42] You can't just throw up livestream and think someone's gonna join your website on Tuesday at 12 o'clock and buy something. You actually have to build the infrastructure behind that, which requires a lot more than signing up for firework. And so I think that there, there's a, there's a thought process that's [00:25:00] deeper now, which is exciting. [00:25:02] That doesn't have to just be like, let's add one more thing to the store. And that I, I'm excited about that. [00:25:08] The True Melding of Digital and Physical Now Begins [00:25:08] Vicki Cantrell: It feels like we're at an inflection point of the, and, you know, we all sense it, we've all sensed it for years. it, and it took a real shot in the arm when, when we were in the pandemic and online, like really spiked. know, because as we all know, people have been ignoring that stat of 80% of the sales come from the stores for years. [00:25:33] As online has grown a little bit. They just, they still don't look at it. Okay. And now we, we have this feeling we can feel the sea change of, not, now it's not stores over, over online. It's not that it feels like a meld, finally feels like the, the coming together, not the either or. And so with that in mind, [00:26:00] I'd like to know from you guys how you see I know it's a arbitrary thing, but what time moves so fast? [00:26:08] What does the, with this in mind, what do the next three years look like in retail? What's going to be important? What will happen as we continue to meld better, smarter in, in better ways? Like the meld really is happening. What's it gonna look like? [00:26:27] Ricardo Belmar: I'll, I'll jump in. I, I, I think you're, you're right that we are, this meld is finally happening in the way that maybe we all started talking about. I'll pick a number, five years ago, right? That, that, that, that now there's sort of a recognition that not only is it happening, but actually needs to happen for, for supporting the business. It needs to happen because I, I go back to one of the things we said in that same timeframe was, you know what, now the consumer is in charge, right? The consumer now has all the power. Remember when that was the new phrase, a few years back. [00:26:56] So, so what, what is that led to now, right? [00:26:58] Yeah. People like, like to [00:27:00] repeat it, but maybe didn't believe it. But I think now there's recognition that. Not only does the consumer still have the power, guess what? They've had it all these past years and you just didn't realize it. So now that you're recognizing it, it's time to do something for that. [00:27:12] And, and the the something that you need to do is this melding because, I think all four of us have said it right, consumers don't care about channels. you know, there was a lot of, of jokes made, I think during shop talk about when they said on stage it was time to kill omnichannel and, and use a different phrase. [00:27:26] But I, I think the jokes aside, maybe the reason why we don't need to use that as a term is because if we're truly gonna look at things from the consumer's perspective, there's no such thing as a channel, [00:27:36] Vicki Cantrell: Right. [00:27:37] Ricardo Belmar: right? The whole I idea of looking at it, measuring, developing, operating in terms of these channels is absolutely meaningless to the consumer. [00:27:46] And what is meaningful to the consumer is, do you have a product I'm looking for, where can I go get it? How can I get it? How can I learn about it? To make sure I'm, I'm making the right choice and can you help me do all of the above? [00:28:00] And sometimes that's on, could be on a live stream you know, could be in a store, might just be the website. [00:28:06] you know, now, now we're, because of the new developments in ai right? We actually have meaningful demos about chatbots being helpful, unlike previous generations that maybe weren't so helpful. but yeah, there's all these different ways to, to do that now. It doesn't matter. I, I think maybe I, I might rephrase it to say it's not that we need to stop thinking about channels. [00:28:23] It's that let's recognize the channels don't matter. What matters is, how are you making those things I just listed available to that customer? you know, I, I like using Jeff, your example. We mentioned about B N H photo and we talked last time at N R F, right? [00:28:37] Jeff Roster: Just thinking [00:28:38] Ricardo Belmar: Because it's like the per, it's the perfect example, right? [00:28:41] You needed to know. About a product and, and, and maybe it wasn't even a product, I guess I shouldn't say a product. You needed to know about a category, right? To help you decide on a product and you leveraged that livestream. It was a one-to-one, but I'd still call it a livestream for that learning experience. [00:28:57] Did it matter to you as a consumer that it was [00:29:00] a livestream versus you having been in New York City and walked into the b and h store? No. Right. And. It didn't matter. You got the answer you wanted. You knew what you wanted to buy in the end. And that's, that was the win. So I think that's what what I see is finally happening and we'll see more of it is the blending is real. and I think the technologies have caught up too. I think maybe one of the reasons, if, if we're honest, right? It's that there were a lot of technology promises in those past years that were 80% there, maybe not a hundred percent there. And retailers, you know, in fairness right, couldn't figure out how do I get that extra 20% to make it right. [00:29:34] I think the technology is catching up to that in many ways to make it more, more doable and easier to do. And, and. The consumer adoption is there. You know, one of the things I, I joked about with some folks at, at Shop Talk is last year's big hype was all metaverse, right? And when you look back and say, well, why didn't that necessarily pick up? [00:29:54] And I'm not gonna say that it's gone, but I am gonna say that it it, the promises that were talked about and hyped up at Shop Talk [00:30:00] last year didn't materialize because what's the thing that was missing? It was the consumer adoption of it. the retailers could do any, everything they wanted on that, but consumers didn't really have a reason to adopt it. [00:30:11] Whereas I, I think now the technologies retailers are looking at don't have that consumer adoption element because it's transparent to the consumer. And I think that's where the focus will go. So if a retailer thinks a, I'm not gonna worry about channels, I just need to present things in front of a customer in some way. [00:30:27] What are all the different ways I can do that? What technologies help me accomplish that? And which ones don't really require the consumer to learn how to use it because they're already using it. It's either, you know, consumers know how to watch a video. You don't have to teach them how to join a live stream, that that's easy. [00:30:41] You're gonna have to teach them how to go to a website. You have to teach them how to go into a store and do things. That's why Metaverse hadn't picked up yet, because consumers have to learn how to do it. And you know, back to Ron, your comment. It's not the year for shiny objects. [00:30:55] So the, the technology, I think now, and I, I'll say for now, and let's make it the next [00:31:00] three years, the technology's gonna help with that seamless nature, which I guess I'm back to one of the four shop talk themes, right? [00:31:05] Seamless stores. but maybe expanding it to just seamless experience that that's where it's finally gonna go. And we won't have to, we're not gonna need to distinguish. Oh, is that an experiential retail scenario for the consumer, or is it about convenience? It's just there, it's just commerce. [00:31:21] Ron Thurston: Yeah, [00:31:22] Jeff Roster: Yeah, [00:31:22] Ron Thurston: mean, I'd love I, [00:31:24] Jeff Roster: Go ahead, Ron. [00:31:25] Ron Thurston: go ahead, Jeff. No, go ahead. [00:31:26] The New Way to Encourage Innovation With Consumer Adoption [00:31:26] Jeff Roster: So Ricardo, I know you're gonna be shocked to hear this, but sometimes vendors make a lot of buzz or noise or, or to go back to my old days hype. The whole metaverse thing is so illustrative because one, I I'm a fan because I've trained in simulators as a aviator for, for 25 years, but that is a massively heavy lift. [00:31:45] And to go and scream about something that is a massively heavy lift we're, we're absolutely gonna see that evolve and it's gonna take kinda like R F I D probably five to ten years. And so, you know what we need to understand, and this is where we as communicators really need to. [00:32:00] Probably should have been in front of that a lot more. [00:32:01] It's like, let's encourage innovation, but understand what it takes to innovate. You can't, I mean, you can't spend 10 trillion overnight. You have to do that in increments and you have to encourage the innovation and not make fun of it when it, you know, something like, like Metaverse doesn't blow up overnight. [00:32:18] There's a lot of processes and the process for innovation has become cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And that's, that's what's also helping. I mean, low-code. I mean it's you know, my podcast partner, Brian can't say the word low-code enough in, in every sentence, it's low-code cuz he's a low-code guy. [00:32:32] But, but he's, he's sold me on that. I mean, when I started at Gardner, I, I mean terabyte of storage was a million dollars. I've got 15 terabytes on my desk. I've got three terabytes in my laptop. That's a picture in 20 years of the massively almost deflationary cycle or cost of, of innovation. [00:32:52] And that's what we have now. Now we have these tools, now we have all this stuff. You think about. You think about what, what a customer service channel is [00:33:00] gonna look like in a year. We're gonna be live streaming we're gonna have ChatGPT I mean, it is orders of magnitude different than what we, what we, what we were, you know, just a simple phone call even five or six years ago. [00:33:11] That's how fast we're innovating. And the key though, that's how cheaply we're able to innovate and to do things. And now the key point, and Ricardo, you're so spot on. You have a customer that now has more power in their hands and we, that's an old story, but they know how to use it. They know how to embrace it. [00:33:29] And I think the other thing that people need to understand, that's one thing Ron, I'm a little concerned about when I hear brands wanna maybe over, over. I don't know, try to manage that live stream a little too much. Look at TikTok. Those are not professional videos. Those are getting millions of views. [00:33:45] Those are kids with a phone in front of them. And so the, that expectation for something overmanaged, I think is gonna, is gonna be a negative more, more so than a positive. And so that's that part of that innovation where the customers way ahead of where we are as brands, as [00:34:00] retailers, and we're just sort of racing and trying to figure out, okay, how, how much professionalism do we put in? [00:34:05] How much do we let people run loose? So exciting. The next three years are just gonna be insane. Um, [00:34:10] Vicki Cantrell: what you just said has one specific word that is the same and has been the same for the last 10 years, will be the same for the next 10 years. The key is that the consumer knows how to adopt adoption. We all know that things that can't be or it's difficult to adopt, never work, whether it's metaverse or whatever, or tools. [00:34:31] Things that are easy to adopt will always work. And the consumer now has a very different set of a very different playing field for their adoption. That is not in our control and but it benefits us tremendously. [00:34:49] The Loyalty Factor [00:34:49] Ron Thurston: Yeah, agreed. I agree with you, Jeff. It's it's that balance of like, what can I do? Like test, learn, try, get out of it quickly, or, you know, [00:35:00] actually, if this is an important part of, of the customer journey, I think that what I would add to your question, Vicky, about the next three to five years is about loyalty, but I look at it in like really two, two very different ways. [00:35:14] I look at it from a, a store, I look at it from a store team if we're gonna talk about stores, we have to talk about team loyalty and people loyalty. And so the biggest pushback from investment in people that I hear from senior executives is, the turnover's too high for me to spend money on these people. [00:35:36] And my pushback is the reason that they're turning is because you're not investing. And if, if we don't, if we don't put more effort into loyalty at the front lines, it's going, we're gonna keep repeating the same mistakes and we're, we're never gonna deliver the results that we need if you can't retain the team. [00:35:56] So I think there's a huge loyalty frontline. And then [00:36:00] there's loyalty customer so much about first. Data, you know, how do we get new customers? How do we retain that customer? How much does it cost to get that customer? And while I think the conversation about having like the full picture of the customer when they walk into a store is a good conversation, I don't see it live in action. [00:36:22] If I'm a, you know, a, a very like loyal e-com for one brand, I walk into a location that they have no idea who I am. [00:36:32] And so I think we, we have to figure out ways to retain loyal customers. That's cha, a channel less loyal customer. Uh, because they're putting a lot of effort in there. Now finding ways. I mean, that's, I was between NRF and, and Shoptalk. [00:36:48] I was at eTail, which, you know, that is very much about marketing and customer and first cus first party data and that we, we have to think about that as a major priority for [00:37:00] the next three years too. And from, from both sides. yeah. [00:37:04] Vicki Cantrell: great point. [00:37:05] Ron Thurston: Yeah. [00:37:06] Vicki Cantrell: And, and loyalty is not about points anymore. That's, that's, that's, that's gonna be like the word innovation really needs to mean something different. So does the word loyalty. It's not about earn points. It's a very different proposition. I think, Ron, you explained it. You explained it well. [00:37:23] Ron Thurston: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, and it's, it's, you know, luxury, luxury brands are going through this. Contemporary brands are going through this, you know, people are then, yeah, Walmart's writing about a luxury customer shop buying groceries at Walmart. Now how do, how do I retain that customer and a Walmart, but I'm also then buying a handbag at Gucci like this. [00:37:45] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. [00:37:45] Ron Thurston: There, there's no one right way to say how a customer's behaving today, yet loyalty to the, to the brands where people have gravitated is how we will sustain great results. [00:37:58] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah.[00:38:00] [00:38:00] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I, I think, you know, hearing you say that I, I, I thought of two other examples like the Sephora at a Kohls. How does Kohls convert that Sephora customer to shop in the Kohls much like, you know, the Amazon returns in the Kohls, giving them, a coupon to buy something in the store over the next few days. [00:38:18] I think that's the same as your example Vicki, it's not of just about points uh, points and discounts don't buy loyalty for a brand, but then compare that to the kind of loyalty a brand like Apple has with their customers. Which I, if there's gonna be, if you were to pick two or three top brands, that probably reflect the highest loyalty, I think that has to be one of the top three right there. And sure you can point to, you know, the decision to open stores as having been a great piece of that, but it's not really just about Apple stores, it's just everything about them that drives the loyalty. And there's an example of a brand that doesn't give points and doesn't give discounts, that has a lot of super loyal customers. [00:38:54] As you know, when we got on here and we all showed off our, our AirPods Max headphones here. [00:39:00] So there's, there's a brand loyalty example that's real. [00:39:03] Ron Thurston: But [00:39:03] they have But they [00:39:04] Vicki Cantrell: of the relationship experience. [00:39:07] Yeah. [00:39:08] Ron Thurston: but they also have frontline team loyalty. This is a, that's a brand that invests heavily in stores and training and development and, and strategy and upskilling them and investing and stretch assignments and going to Cupertino for a year, going to Hong Kong for a year. [00:39:26] Like they will do anything to make sure that their teams are happy. Having worked there, myself and I can speak to it like it, they're the loyalty, generally from Apple employees in stores is really high and you feel that they're proud to work there and they're could not be more excited to sell you 600 dollar headphones. [00:39:47] And you know, we, we all, we all do. We all do it. And it's a really good example, Ricardo. Yeah. [00:39:53] Back to Changing Relationships As The ShopTalk Theme [00:39:53] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Vicky, you started us on the, that changing relationships theme as maybe the [00:40:00] core theme of the four that Shop Talk mentioned. I think Ron, with the raising the point about loyalty, you brought us right back full circle again to the changing relationships and how that, if we were to pick one theme of, of the four that Shop Talk's that I think we're, we're sort of, maybe indirectly agreeing here that the number one theme was these changing relationships and which includes both how you build that brand customer relationship, but also the brand employee relationship, and I think we can add in, you know, brand to brand relationship. It really is all about how those relationships are changing and how they remain together for the success of the business. [00:40:38] Ron Thurston: Yeah. agreed. [00:40:40] Vicki Cantrell: agreed. [00:40:41] Ron Thurston: Yeah. [00:40:41] Ricardo Belmar: So I think maybe that's a good note for us to close on, [00:40:46] Vicki Cantrell: Sounds great. [00:40:47] Ron Thurston: Yes, [00:40:47] Vicki Cantrell: is always so much fun. [00:40:50] It's a great, always a great conversation [00:40:53] Ricardo Belmar: think Jeff, your idea is onto something here that we do these after an event a few days or so after the event, so we've all had time to kind [00:41:00] of think about and, and digest it. [00:41:01] Jeff Roster: yeah, I, I do think, I do think vendors are gonna have a tough decision now. I mean, they're gonna have to consider shop talk a, a, a, a really legitimate show. And especially if they push into the store aspect of it. It's gonna be interesting to see how, how, how you allocate your marketing dollars. But I was impressed. [00:41:17] I was very impressed with the show. [00:41:20] Ron Thurston: me too. Very impressed. Is anyone going to Barcelona? [00:41:23] Vicki Cantrell: No. [00:41:24] Ron Thurston: No. [00:41:24] Ricardo Belmar: unfortunately, [00:41:25] Jeff Roster: great city, but two darn [00:41:27] Ricardo Belmar: if only so, yeah, [00:41:28] Ron Thurston: no recap of Shop Talk Barcelona. [00:41:39] Ricardo Belmar: Yep, Well, [00:41:39] Jeff Roster: Maybe [00:41:40] Ron Thurston: I think [00:41:40] Jeff Roster: cover it. Maybe we'll cover it from afar. we'll just, we'll just jump the, We'll, jump the Twitter hashtag and then give our [00:41:45] Ricardo Belmar: right. right. We'll, we'll look for great photos from people who are fortunate enough to be there. [00:41:52] Jeff Roster: Exactly. [00:41:54] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I, I guess maybe on that sort of disappointing note for the conversation [00:41:57] Ron Thurston: Sorry. [00:41:58] Ricardo Belmar: we'll, we'll wrap it up [00:42:00] there. What do you say Jeff? [00:42:01] Jeff Roster: Sounds good. [00:42:02] Ricardo Belmar: Sound good? All right. Well, Ron, Vicki, a as always a pleasure. Thanks again. We're gonna have to keep, keep doing these cuz this is just too much fun not to. [00:42:10] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah, it's great. I love seeing you guys. Happy Friday. Happy weekend. Happy Easter. Happy Passover. [00:42:16] Ron Thurston: Same. Same to you. [00:42:17] Same to you. Thank you. [00:42:18] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks everybody. Thank you. [00:42:19] Vicki Cantrell: Okay, bye. [00:42:21] Ron Thurston: Bye. [00:42:22] Show Recap [00:42:22] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone and wow, I loved that conversation. I'm so with you guys on focusing on people. Retail is, totally a people business. I might not have been at Shop Talk, but I have to agree with the whole point about changing relationships and focusing on people loyalty both with store teams and customers is really where every retailer and brand needs to go. [00:42:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it, it's interesting how different this discussion went compared to the conversation Jeff and I had with Krystina [00:43:00] Gustafson and Ben Miller in part one of the series. In that discussion, we really dug into, All the main trends at the show, and, and both Krystina and Ben really gave us some amazing details and viewpoints on how those four trends were manifesting in the industry and how people talked about it at the show. [00:43:15] And they were totally right about those trends. And of course, I, I have to put a plug in here for retail media networks and that that's for you, Jeff, if you're out there listening, you know, I couldn't resist to bring that up, just, just so you're aware. But when Ron and Vicki both brought us to that intersection of technology and people, it nicely outlined how it really does come down to people no matter what you do with the technology in retailing. [00:43:36] I have to say, that's what made this one of my favorite conversations on the podcast yet. [00:43:41] Casey Golden: Well, I mean, I really appreciate you guys for, you know, always bringing it back to center, amplifying the importance of relationships. It's really been with a heavy heart over this pandemic, just kind of seeing clientele turn into email marketing and diluting the magic of these relationships and that sales process, [00:44:00] or beyond the sales process, like the brand experience, you know, coming from the luxury side. [00:44:06] It's so much more than a sales associate, and shopping alone just hasn't hit the same note. So I'm just really excited to see so much focus go into the people, the relationships, the technology that needs to be made for people to like scale their work. Workspaces, digitization, not just replacement and, and AI like, [00:44:34] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, [00:44:35] Casey Golden: AI Bard and I are not getting into conversations about shoes, pants, jackets, dress, nada! not invited [00:44:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's not happening. Yeah. I, I, I really think Vicki nailed it in her comment when she said, you know, the relationship is the experience. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about. And you know, as often, I mean, let, let's face it, we talk about technology on this show all the time, but we, we can't lose sight of [00:45:00] why are we talking about technology? [00:45:01] It's to help augment that people relationship, not replace it. And, and that I think is really what we're, this conversation really got to. And, and I'm really excited that that's where it ended up. [00:45:11] Casey Golden: Me too. I'm slightly biased, but thanks. I, I, I really like how you guys brought this together. With that Vicki called the melding of online in stores. Of course, I'm a store girl, right. But I like built some of the first e-commerce stores. And I just love talking about like store teams, how interacting with a stylist or a personal shopper makes a completely different and unique experience from discovering products to just the buying process. [00:45:42] Vicki just nailed it by saying that the experience is the relationship and what that melding, digital and physical is all about. When retails retailers do it right, services [00:45:56] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. [00:45:57] Casey Golden: are significant. [00:45:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. I, I [00:46:00] agree. And I think Jeff added a great point there too, about how the technology has to enable this, not compete with it, not make it more complicated. You know, it's that, it, it's that whole adoption point that we all talked about and why I think we all agree in that, you know, the, the current tech trends like, All, everything about generative AI right now and anything else that took over the conversation at this year's Shop Talk really have an advantage over the metaverse trend from last year's show because it comes down to consumer adoption. [00:46:26] If consumers can benefit from a technology without adopting anything new or any, whether it's a new habit or the ac, technology on, on the consumer side of it, then that's a winner. For retailers, if consumers have to adopt something, it's gonna take a lot longer for, for them to complete that adoption and to make an impact on, on the retailer's business. [00:46:43] It doesn't mean it won't happen. I think to Jeff's point about metaverse, I think we'd all agree it's gonna happen. It will happen. It's just not happening right away. It might not happen in less than a year's time. It's more of a long-term play. But some of these other technologies that we're trending this year, they have an immediate impact. [00:46:58] Casey Golden: Hundred [00:47:00] percent. I mean so much, so many of times technology ends up taking the work out of the business or the process and puts all of the work on the consumer. They have to do the heavy lifting and I think metaverse is definitely suffered from that, you know, the perspective that you just spoke of. [00:47:22] But then again, like. Web three has a better chance of making a difference because it's easier to lift on the consumer side than the Metaverse. The adoption will come from loyalty programs, as an example. Exclusive and unlockable content. Just look at Starbucks New Odyssey program and what you and Jeff talked about with Max from Z Blocks back at N R F. [00:47:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's true. That that's true. I mean, although I have to admit, I, I, I've totally failed in my efforts to unlock the first NFTs in the Starbucks program. I didn't get enough points to get the early drop. [00:47:55] Casey Golden: All right. Well, I, we, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll do a little one-on-one[00:48:00] [00:48:00] Ricardo Belmar: I may need your help on that. [00:48:01] Casey Golden: Be offline and on the blockchain. [00:48:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Oh, okay. I guess you know that maybe with your help, I can do better next time. But you know, I, I guess on that totally disappointing note I think this is, it only means one thing for this episode, right Casey? [00:48:17] Casey Golden: Indeed it's that time to, to wrap up. And I have to say, I agree. It's the best one ever. So we're gonna wrap up this Shop Talk crossover series with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation, it's been good. [00:48:32] Ricardo Belmar: It has. [00:48:33] Show Close [00:48:33] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed this season shows, especially our just completed podcast crossover mini-series, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Plus remember, you can watch us, not just listen on our YouTube [00:49:00] channel and like, and comment there too. Share your thoughts. [00:49:03] If you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a full transcript of this episode, take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. [00:49:14] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season and crossover series, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter and LinkedIn, too, at Retail Razor for the latest updates. And watch for our season finale episode coming soon with a truly special guest host that's gonna turn things around and ask us questions for a change. [00:49:37] But for now, I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:49:39] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:49:42] [00:49:45] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. [00:49:49] Until next time. [00:49:50] This is the Retail Razor Show. [00:50:00] Have you heard plenty of Shoptalk event and trend recaps by now? Did any of those dig into why those trends matter and what they really mean for the retail industry? Sometimes you just need to put four Top Retail Influencers into one recording session and let them talk about what those trends make them feel about the industry to get to the heart of the matter. And maybe ‘heart’ is what it’s truly all about – because retail is a people business.


It’s Part 4 of our #ShoptalkLive podcast cross-over series with This Week in Innovation and special guest host Jeff Roster, but not quite recorded live and in-person at Shoptalk this time! Yes, there’s a story to that and you’ll find out in this episode where Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar are joined by retail legends, Vicki Cantrell, CEO of Vendors in Partnership, LLC, and Ron Thurston, author of Retail Pride, host of the Retail in America podcast and tour, and Co-Founder of OSSY.


In this episode, Jeff, Ricardo, Vicki, and Ron discover the true meaning of Shoptalk this year – people and relationships – because in the end they realize that the experience is the relationship in retail and how this is NOT the year of shiny objects! 


Plus, we’re now standing at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

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Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

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Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey


TRANSCRIPT

S2E12d ShoptalkLive - TRI Friends Chat

[00:00:00] Show Intro 

[00:00:20] Casey Golden: Hello Retail Razor Show listeners and viewers. Welcome to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. I'm your co-host, Casey Golden.

[00:00:33] Ricardo Belmar: And I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. Welcome to part four and the final installment in our Shop Talk Live crossover event with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation podcast.

[00:00:44] Casey Golden: Wow. Are we really at the last one? This has been so much fun, so many incredible conversations and takeaways. Does it really have to end?

[00:00:53] Ricardo Belmar: Well, yeah, it does. It does. But we have saved what I think is one of our best, if not the [00:01:00] best episode of the season for the last one.

[00:01:02] Casey Golden: Okay. Wait a minute, you've, you've called every episode, the best episode of the season as being the one from N R F where you and Jeff sat down with Vicki Cantrell and Ron Thurston at the end of the Super Saturday retail ROI event. You know that 10 minute chat that turned into 50 minutes?

[00:01:21] Ricardo Belmar: Well, okay. Yeah, I, I did say that I, I suppose I, I guess maybe I have said that may, maybe more than once, but funny you should mention that episode because this episode, our final Shop Talk crossover podcast is also a conversation Jeff and I have with Ron and Vicki. , it's, think of it as a repeat or a follow up, if you will, of that NRF discussion.

[00:01:42] And I have to say, it's this sort of conversation that, you know, makes me so excited to be part of this industry. I'm so thankful for relationships like these with Jeff, Ron, Vicki, and so many others including you, Casey. It's just unlike any other industry I know.

[00:01:55] Casey Golden: Aw, you're like a teddy bear. It's so true though. [00:02:00] Nothing lights a fire like passion. And I know now why you've been testing this recording for the last three episodes but at the risk of being a downer here, if I'm not mistaken, you guys had some challenges making this happen.

[00:02:15] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, we did, we did. It turns out we only had one option to record this live and in person at Shop Talk, and that was at the end of the day on, I think it was the second to last day of the show. And it was right when Shop Talk had scheduled a happy hour on the show floor. Rethink Retail was kind enough to agree to let us use their booth space to record.

[00:02:35] So Jeff and I get there to set up our equipment, right, and guess what happens?

[00:02:39] Casey Golden: The equipment broke.

[00:02:41] Ricardo Belmar: Okay, good guess, but no, not quite. just as we were about to plug everything in, suddenly loud music starts blaring over the speakers all over the expo hall. You figure it's happy hour right. So of course Shop Talk decided we all needed some high energy music to go with our free drinks.

[00:02:56] Casey Golden: Oh my God, you're kidding me. What, what'd you [00:03:00] guys end up doing?

[00:03:00] Ricardo Belmar: Well, we, we looked at each other and thought about what any experienced podcaster would do to, to compensate for that. And then instead we immediately decided that it was hopeless and we just needed to cancel the whole thing and reschedule.

[00:03:11] Casey Golden: Grab a beer.

[00:03:13] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. 

[00:03:16] Now, of course, I, I did say this was the only time we could work it out during the show, so we ended up scheduling a recording session remotely for about a week after Shop Talk.

[00:03:24] So technically this episode is not, live and in-person recorded bet it is still recorded, so we're gonna go with that. But it does have the added benefit that, you know, we've got full video for this episode on our YouTube channel. So you actually get to watch us have the discussion, not just listen to it.

[00:03:41] Casey Golden: All right. All right. Well, that's a pretty good trade off. I must say and you know, we just kind of upped the ante here. So sad you guys couldn't make it work in person. Hope there was some good drinks. But I mean, come on, of course you'd expect good music to go with happy hour, [00:04:00] right? I mean,

[00:04:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:04:02] Casey Golden: you kind of expect like show closes, party's on, right.

[00:04:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I guess we should have thought of that. We should have thought of that, I suppose. But you know, like, like I said, we're, we're, had we been experienced podcasters or not the you know, budding experts, we all aspire to be here. We might have planned for that, but I, I think this worked out in the end.

[00:04:22] Either way.

[00:04:23] Casey Golden: Well, let's not waste any more time. Let's get straight to the recording. Not live and in person at Shop Talk, but still a Shop Talk recap with you, Jeff Roster, Vicki Cantrell and Ron Thurston.

[00:04:38] The TRI Friends Chat

[00:04:38] Ricardo Belmar: ​Welcome everybody. I'm Ricardo Belmar, host of the Retail Razor Show, and I'm here with a good friend, Jeff Roster, host of This Week In Innovation. And you guessed it. This is the last episode in our Shop Talk related series. And I, if you're [00:05:00] watching us on video, yes. You may have noticed we are not live at Shop Talk right now.

[00:05:05] We, we much like, one of the episodes, if you caught our crossover at NRF where we had some issues and couldn't quite make it work out. We sort of had a little bit of some coordination challenges this time. So we're catching up with each other after the event, but we're here to talk about our, our thoughts on the shop talk event.

[00:05:24] Jeff, how you doing today?

[00:05:25] Jeff Roster: You know, Ricardo, I'm doing fantastic. I had a good week's sleep and a lot of time to, to think about what we're gonna talk about today. So I, I'm actually kind of thinking this is really a cool vibe. Maybe we should do this on every show, like do the final wrap up, show off-premise, two, three days down, down the road couple, you know, a couple good night's sleep.

[00:05:43] So I, I'm excited to get into this conversation.

[00:05:45] Ricardo Belmar: Sounds good. Well, let me go ahead and introduce our, familiar guests. we have with us today, we've got Vicki Cantrell and Ron Thurston. Vicki, Ron, how are you two doing?

[00:05:55] Vicki Cantrell: Great. Very nice to be uh, on a Friday entering in and, and it [00:06:00] did take a l uh, like it took a while to get over this trip, like physically, and so I'm all back. So happy to be here with you guys.

[00:06:11] Ron Thurston: Yeah. Yeah, me too. Thank you Ricardo and Jeff. It's a, it's a pleasure. I, I felt trapped inside Mandalay Bay with no sun and nothing, and I was happy to come back to the west coast on the tour and be in San Diego because 

[00:06:25] Ricardo Belmar: yeah.

[00:06:25] Ron Thurston: I needed some fresh air

[00:06:27] Ricardo Belmar: It, it kind of, it's kind of funny. I, I noticed on the last day I was there thinking, wait a minute, I, have I seen the outside for the last few days since I've been here? Or have I not even seen daylight?

[00:06:38] Jeff Roster: I actually one, one trip over, cause I stayed at the Luxor I, one trip over, I specifically went outside and went all the way around because I thought, you know, I probably at some point should literally have fresh air. So I 

[00:06:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:06:49] Jeff Roster: force my way outside.

[00:06:51] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right,

[00:06:52] Vicki Cantrell: ahh, Vegas.

[00:06:53] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. 

[00:06:54] Ron Thurston: Vegas. 

[00:06:55] 4 Shoptalk Themes

[00:06:55] Ricardo Belmar: love it. Gotta love it. Well, so, so let, let me start by, before we [00:07:00] jump into our, our conversation here, let, let's kind of start with summarizing four key themes that shop talk themselves, the shop talk content team put out there at the end of the show is what they felt were the four main themes of the show.

[00:07:12] and the first is what they termed as seamless stores, which I like to think of this as both a recognition that stores are a focal point of energy right now in, in retail, and that it is, it's maybe a way to think of this as the, the successor to omnichannel and maybe we put that term to rest. so that's theme one.

[00:07:30] Theme two is about enabling workers and store teams which is a theme I like to see. And. I'm sure we'll get into this, but we, we talked about that at our, at our conversation, N R F and what we had hoped to hear then about how we're better enabling store teams. So that was theme two. 

[00:07:46] Theme three is shopper engagement. And this is sort of a, a, a catchall, I think that covers all the interesting technologies that we're all hearing about and talking about now that's impacting the customer experience in, in any channel, whether it's in stores, digital, [00:08:00] wherever it may be. 

[00:08:01] And then the fourth one which might actually be the most interesting of the four, Shop Talk calls this changing relationships and it, it's a reference to how on, on the one hand, you have retailers becoming more and more like a technology provider in that they're now offering services. To other retailers and other brands, and that could be you know, one of my favorite topics that I like to remind Jeff about every chance I get, and that's retail media networks.

[00:08:28] it may be, yep. It may be things like GAP offering their logistics network as a service to other retailers. and it, but it really, I, I think. I, I find this an interesting one because maybe Shop Talk is onto something there thinking that the business is changing because of how the relationships are changing from the way they have been in, you know, for, for decades now.

[00:08:49] so let's, let's start from there.

[00:08:53] Vicki Cantrell: I um, you know, I love those four themes because they aren't kind of broken out into [00:09:00] technology. And if you remember we talked in January, Ron had such a good point in that freewheeling conversation that we had was about how do we respect the stores given what they're going through and how do we get them to do less and understand what their challenges are and because the customer is back in the stores.

[00:09:22] It's a Relationship Show About People

[00:09:22] Vicki Cantrell: And, and when we think about that uh, it felt there was a lot of content to address those things in while we were at Shop Talk, but I'd like to kind of flip that a little bit and talk about those four themes. And what I felt while I was there, I felt like it was, I have no other way to describe it other than it felt like it was a relationship show.

[00:09:47] Uh, for me, the connections, everybody talked, no matter who you met on the floor, in a booth, at a party, wherever you were, it started with the human connection [00:10:00] and it no matter what and it way more time was spent on the human aspects and the human connection before it actually turned into a potential business connection.

[00:10:14] So it felt very right. It felt very relationship focused. And when you think about that, how it relates to those themes is so true. The relationship with the customer, the relationship and partnerships, it just felt very connected and human. And I love the way they're kind of mapping this out.

[00:10:37] Ron Thurston: I'll, I'll jump in. I, I agree with you, Vicki. I think it's also the space being like smaller than an N R F. I mean, I think Vicky, you and I saw each other like three times a day 

[00:10:47] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah. 

[00:10:48] Ron Thurston: And you know, like walking by, it's a, it's a high five, it's a hug. Oh, have you met this person? Oh my God. Like, let's get a picture.

[00:10:55] Like, so I think that there's, there's power in the scale of, [00:11:00] of the conference at the same time, but as my first experience at Shop Talk, I would say retail is a relationship business and, and because coming from the stores, that's how you build a business. It isn't just about product and, and a beautiful space.

[00:11:18] It is very much about relationships with each other. First, leading a team, it's relationships with the customers. It's with your corporate business partners, it's with your vendors. It's with your mall or your landlords, like, everything we do is about relationships and those relationships have, you know, are so important to me.

[00:11:39] But when you, there was a sense of pride almost in our industry as much as we all have questions and maybe some, um, pressure to deliver. I, I felt a sense of pride about the general retail industry at, at a whole, and that, that felt really good to me. I left [00:12:00] on such a high because of that.

[00:12:02] Vicki Cantrell: I love that. I love that. And, and I didn't realize that was your first

[00:12:09] Ron Thurston: It was my first, 

[00:12:10] Vicki Cantrell: I had no idea. Oh my gosh.

[00:12:14] Ricardo Belmar: How many shop talks have you been to Vicki?

[00:12:15] Vicki Cantrell: uh, I've actually, I would say I missed one. I haven't gone to the ones outside of Las Vegas, but I missed, I was at the first one and last year and this year, so I would say at least three, potentially four.

[00:12:31] Ricardo Belmar: Okay, It was my second shop talk I got last year was my first one. Jeff, this, was this your first 

[00:12:35] Jeff Roster: No, this is my first one too. And what I think was interesting about the relationship angle, and I've, I've always, you know, preached that from the get-go. Listen, from a tech perspective, it's a relationship business. It's as big as Mayberry. And there's, you know, sheriff Andy, and, and you know, I mean, do not screw around in the industry, it's 5 trillion, but it is, is as big as Mayberry and it's, it's really cool to hear that. I also wonder, and [00:13:00] this is 180 degrees shift for me I've never, ever, never, ever been a fan of having anything in Vegas. I just think it gets, the shows tend to get lost. I think you have the, the bleed off and the old days.

[00:13:10] It quite frankly used to be, I thought, fairly inappropriate. B because some of the, you know, the costumes and all that sort of stuff, but I tell you it was genius to have it at Mandalay Bay One. I felt like I was back on a college dorm. Sort of that whole, that whole connection. Yeah, we joked about not being outside.

[00:13:26] Well, there was a reason I wasn't outside because everything was, was convenient and like, For instance, Kathy's party Sunday night. You know, I looked at the space before I got in there and thought, oh, man, that it just feels like we're just part of the whole big thing that couldn't have worked out better.

[00:13:39] One, it was quiet inside inappropriate for the conversation, but I watched probably 20 people walked by on the way to other things, you know, and so like pop out, pop back in, pop out. And I was at a party the, the Coresight party, and actually they had they had their space, but then there was another party that it was in another space, but the outside was, was, was common.

[00:13:59] [00:14:00] And I ended up at somebody else's party and had a great conversation with people that I'd met at another party. And man, you, you're not gonna see that any, at any, you, you, that's the only place probably in the plant. You could have all those different venues, world-class food, world-class space, but then have all that interaction.

[00:14:18] So, yeah, I, I just, I man, I, I have shifted 180 degrees about having something in Vegas. 

[00:14:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And then we, we were talking earlier, so there was also, and I think this, I, I love this relationship theme because there was Sunday afternoon, right? There was the, the Retail ROI get together for, for the March Gladness event, watching some of the March Madness games. And I think Jeff, maybe you were the one who said it, right?

[00:14:37] Just sitting there, you could just see people you recognize walking by, because it was on the way to registration for, for shop talk. People would walk by and say, Hey, how you doing?

[00:14:47] Jeff Roster: Somebody's gotta own that 2:00 PM space on Sunday, because literally at that location. So for people that weren't there, I think where we were, the bar we were at was probably what, a hundred yards at max from, from [00:15:00] registration, 

[00:15:00] Ricardo Belmar: from the registration. Right, 

[00:15:01] Jeff Roster: everyone was walking there. I mean, every startup on the planet, it should just be right there at that bar or the, or the Starbucks on the other side because you're seeing the whole show. 

[00:15:10] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:15:11] Yeah.

[00:15:12] The Experience Is the Relationship

[00:15:12] Vicki Cantrell: you know, I'm gonna just wanna one more thing on this aspect of relationship. Ricardo, Ricardo, when we were talking earlier and we talked about that, you know, pre pandemic was experiential you know, that's what retailers were trying to, to deal with, and then pandemic became about convenience and figuring out that, and that it's just based on some of these themes and some of the stuff we did see is how important we're back to the experience and the experience is gonna be different.

[00:15:43] You know, when you're talking about, ways of shopping and video and all, all of the different ways. But ,the fact that we think about that, for me, convenience and experience is the same because it's based on that your connection to, between the customer and the [00:16:00] retailer, that it's about the relationship.

[00:16:02] Because the experience is the relationship. It's not whether you walk into the store and say, oh, isn't this beautiful? That's not what the experience is. I mean, it better be okay or better be pleasant, but that's not the experience. The experience is the connection of the person that you're, you're being with when you get there.

[00:16:23] So retail is really about that. And if you have that relationship, then you're going to think this was convenient cuz you connected.

[00:16:34] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:35] Ron Thurston: agreed.

[00:16:36] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I, I agree. And, and, and you know, the other interesting thing I, I noticed too, just thinking again about these four themes now I, I wasn't at the earlier shop talks before last year, but what I do remember in, in talking with people who had been there and looking at the content coming out of the, the conference, you know, I, I think this really started out as a e-commerce focused kind of really heavily digital channels focused to, to [00:17:00] retail much less emphasis, if any, on what's happening in in stores. And, you know, and Jeff and I talked to the content team while we were there and, and they mentioned that, you know, they had gotten feedback from attendees that said, you know, in this post pandemic world, we, we really need to talk more about stores.

[00:17:18] Stores are a real focal point for our business and for our, how we build those relationships with consumers you know, that the content at the event needs to reflect that. And I, I, I think this is one of the things I find most interesting with Shop Talk is how quickly they pivot from topic to topic based on that feedback.

[00:17:37] You know, when we, when we sat, when we were chatting at N R F, one of the things we said is, well, we hope, we hear some themes around, , not just how you're enabling store teams, but when you add things to the store, are you just adding or are you taking something away? You know, are you recognizing that every time you add there's potentially a burden on, on the team there?

[00:17:56] And a difficulty in, in them executing it because it's yet one more [00:18:00] thing, it's one more thing to ask for. And I don't know that we heard that at NRF in sessions there very much. But I feel like at Shop Talk there was definitely, and, and they said it right in one of the four themes about enabling workers.

[00:18:13] That was definitely a sense. I mean, I, I even felt that in sessions that were not about, the store teams, it came up in the conversation with the speakers on stage. It's almo. It was almost like a reflex that everyone just recognizing every retailer that was up there, they could have been talking about optimizing their supply chain.

[00:18:31] And somehow then the conversation led to an impact on the store team and how they had to be aware of that and do something about it, not just let things happen. Which was something I hadn't really experienced and seen in this kind of content at other events.

[00:18:47] NOT the Year of Shiny Objects

[00:18:47] Ron Thurston: Yeah, I mean, I'll, I'll jump in because I started it, but I think the you know, the, my my sense from speaking to so many retailers is there's, there's a sense of clarity [00:19:00]right now about the, which. Where revenue is being generated and, and where their business needs to grow and where they need to make investment.

[00:19:10] And I think maybe years past a little bit of like shiny object and what's fun and what's exciting, what keeps us in the press. And this is not a year of the shiny object. This is a year that we need to deliver on the investments that we've made. And that investment for all of them is in people, and stores, and if their e-commerce business is, is not growing at the rates they expected, then the revenue and the profitability comes from the store.

[00:19:40] And so I do think maybe it's even, you know, 90 days later, from N R F the retailers I'm speaking to is I'm here to find solutions for workforce management. I'm, I'm here to find things of a better way to, to communicate with my teams, to improve productivity, to think about [00:20:00] how to make returns easier at the store level.

[00:20:02] Just all of the things that are actually about delivering results. And you can't deliver the results that any company needs. Without strong teams in place who are well trained and led and motivated. And I, I just hope that, that this is not, or I should say, my sense is not, this was not a, a temporary idea that they have now said 80% of our revenue is coming from the store.

[00:20:30] And that's not changing. And we need to fix this. And I hope my sense is right given the, you know, the small set of people I spoke to. But that's my, that's my feeling right now.

[00:20:41] Jeff Roster: You know, that's a, that's quite a phrase, Ron. The, not the year of the shiny object. I mean, if you don't put that on Twitter today, I'm, I'm a hundred percent stealing that. Um, 

[00:20:50] Ron Thurston: Go for it. go for

[00:20:51] it Jeff

[00:20:52] Jeff Roster: And I think that's such a profound observation because I mean, I go back to the old wars, you know, the [00:21:00] retail Apocalypse Wars and all that sort of stuff for, for whatever reason folks trying to bury the store and, and, and, you know, Buzek and I, and I think, well, I didn't know you at the time yet, Ron, but we were like, how.

[00:21:11] Help me understand 90%, at the time it was 90% of the revenues coming from the store. Why would you try to do that? And I, I, I still don't know the answer to that, but I think, you know, maybe it's a covid thing, just a realization how important we are. We are a tribal people. We want to. The best part of human nature is wanting to be in, you know, in fellowship, in connection with people.

[00:21:34] And so if retail is a people business, it has to reflect that and, and our technology needs to reflect that. And maybe we're a little more mature than we were in 2020 and, and realize the value of people. 

[00:21:46] Yay. You know, I'm pro-human. And so that's a, that's a great observation. I think that's a, that's, that's a.

[00:21:52] Real, real thing. And I think what's interesting, Ron, when I walked the f the, the, the exhibit hall, which is where I spent all my time, the number of [00:22:00] live streamers, the number of, of folks wanting to do something more in the store, which kind of goes against your idea of like, let's not add to the store, but it's happening.

[00:22:08] I mean, TikTok was there in a big way. Fire, uh, I, I, I forget the names, but a bunch of those fight.

[00:22:14] Ron Thurston: Fire firework.

[00:22:15] Jeff Roster: firework. They're all. There's this, this idea that the store is the platform that we can do more with. And, and I think if we can unleash that creativity that all these, you know, all these folks have, and give them the tools, which they're already there.

[00:22:32] Wow. Holy smokes. We're gonna have a whole new engagement model.

[00:22:36] Ricardo Belmar: One interesting thing I heard, and I heard this more than once from different speakers and sessions on, on this point, you know take, take the livestream maybe was one example, but I I, I heard people say in a positive way this recognition that if we have more functions and roles needed in the store, there's this recognition that, you know, not every store team employee has to know how to do every single role.[00:23:00]

[00:23:00] That there is this idea of specialization. So, so maybe to your point, Jeff, if live streaming is something that a particular retailer's stores need to support, that doesn't mean every employee needs to be able to jump on a live stream. It means that maybe the, you know, three out of 10 or something that are good at it and want to do it. That's now their role, right? They, they, they're given that role and they put some focus on that. Maybe there are three other employees who's, who would rather be fulfilling BOPIS orders right in, in, in the back room. And because they can do that faster than the other employees. And it's okay to have this specialization and this recognition that, whether it's a store manager level or a district manager, somebody's has this awareness and that we're gearing the operation of the store around this idea that we can specialize in different areas and start building career paths for, for, for employees that that's something new that I hadn't heard before.

[00:23:51] Ron Thurston: Yeah,

[00:23:52] I think what, what happens in that Or, go ahead, Vicky.

[00:23:55] Vicki Cantrell: No, no, go. Go ahead.

[00:23:57] Ron Thurston: You know, I think that that, I think [00:24:00] what to add on to that, the realization that some of that evolution also doesn't have to happen in the store. So you think about livestream. Several brands have said, oh, great, we're gonna build a showroom in the office and we're gonna livestream from the office with, by someone who's highly skilled at selling live on camera, which is a very unique and important skill.

[00:24:23] But at the same time, if I'm gonna livestream from the office, then I need to have live inventory so that when I click into what I'm selling, oh I see it's available at my store. I can also buy online pickup in store, I can reserve. So there the rest. The rest of the chain has to, has to work in order for it.

[00:24:42] You can't just throw up livestream and think someone's gonna join your website on Tuesday at 12 o'clock and buy something. You actually have to build the infrastructure behind that, which requires a lot more than signing up for firework. And so I think that there, there's a, there's a thought process that's [00:25:00] deeper now, which is exciting.

[00:25:02] That doesn't have to just be like, let's add one more thing to the store. And that I, I'm excited about that.

[00:25:08] The True Melding of Digital and Physical Now Begins

[00:25:08] Vicki Cantrell: It feels like we're at an inflection point of the, and, you know, we all sense it, we've all sensed it for years. it, and it took a real shot in the arm when, when we were in the pandemic and online, like really spiked. know, because as we all know, people have been ignoring that stat of 80% of the sales come from the stores for years.

[00:25:33] As online has grown a little bit. They just, they still don't look at it. Okay. And now we, we have this feeling we can feel the sea change of, not, now it's not stores over, over online. It's not that it feels like a meld, finally feels like the, the coming together, not the either or. And so with that in mind, [00:26:00] I'd like to know from you guys how you see I know it's a arbitrary thing, but what time moves so fast?

[00:26:08] What does the, with this in mind, what do the next three years look like in retail? What's going to be important? What will happen as we continue to meld better, smarter in, in better ways? Like the meld really is happening. What's it gonna look like?

[00:26:27] Ricardo Belmar: I'll, I'll jump in. I, I, I think you're, you're right that we are, this meld is finally happening in the way that maybe we all started talking about. I'll pick a number, five years ago, right? That, that, that, that now there's sort of a recognition that not only is it happening, but actually needs to happen for, for supporting the business. It needs to happen because I, I go back to one of the things we said in that same timeframe was, you know what, now the consumer is in charge, right? The consumer now has all the power. Remember when that was the new phrase, a few years back. 

[00:26:56] So, so what, what is that led to now, right?

[00:26:58] Yeah. People like, like to [00:27:00] repeat it, but maybe didn't believe it. But I think now there's recognition that. Not only does the consumer still have the power, guess what? They've had it all these past years and you just didn't realize it. So now that you're recognizing it, it's time to do something for that.

[00:27:12] And, and the the something that you need to do is this melding because, I think all four of us have said it right, consumers don't care about channels. you know, there was a lot of, of jokes made, I think during shop talk about when they said on stage it was time to kill omnichannel and, and use a different phrase.

[00:27:26] But I, I think the jokes aside, maybe the reason why we don't need to use that as a term is because if we're truly gonna look at things from the consumer's perspective, there's no such thing as a channel,

[00:27:36] Vicki Cantrell: Right.

[00:27:37] Ricardo Belmar: right? The whole I idea of looking at it, measuring, developing, operating in terms of these channels is absolutely meaningless to the consumer.

[00:27:46] And what is meaningful to the consumer is, do you have a product I'm looking for, where can I go get it? How can I get it? How can I learn about it? To make sure I'm, I'm making the right choice and can you help me do all of the above? [00:28:00] And sometimes that's on, could be on a live stream you know, could be in a store, might just be the website.

[00:28:06] you know, now, now we're, because of the new developments in ai right? We actually have meaningful demos about chatbots being helpful, unlike previous generations that maybe weren't so helpful. but yeah, there's all these different ways to, to do that now. It doesn't matter. I, I think maybe I, I might rephrase it to say it's not that we need to stop thinking about channels.

[00:28:23] It's that let's recognize the channels don't matter. What matters is, how are you making those things I just listed available to that customer? you know, I, I like using Jeff, your example. We mentioned about B N H photo and we talked last time at N R F, right? 

[00:28:37] Jeff Roster: Just thinking 

[00:28:38] Ricardo Belmar: Because it's like the per, it's the perfect example, right?

[00:28:41] You needed to know. About a product and, and, and maybe it wasn't even a product, I guess I shouldn't say a product. You needed to know about a category, right? To help you decide on a product and you leveraged that livestream. It was a one-to-one, but I'd still call it a livestream for that learning experience.

[00:28:57] Did it matter to you as a consumer that it was [00:29:00] a livestream versus you having been in New York City and walked into the b and h store? No. Right. And. It didn't matter. You got the answer you wanted. You knew what you wanted to buy in the end. And that's, that was the win. So I think that's what what I see is finally happening and we'll see more of it is the blending is real. and I think the technologies have caught up too. I think maybe one of the reasons, if, if we're honest, right? It's that there were a lot of technology promises in those past years that were 80% there, maybe not a hundred percent there. And retailers, you know, in fairness right, couldn't figure out how do I get that extra 20% to make it right.

[00:29:34] I think the technology is catching up to that in many ways to make it more, more doable and easier to do. And, and. The consumer adoption is there. You know, one of the things I, I joked about with some folks at, at Shop Talk is last year's big hype was all metaverse, right? And when you look back and say, well, why didn't that necessarily pick up?

[00:29:54] And I'm not gonna say that it's gone, but I am gonna say that it it, the promises that were talked about and hyped up at Shop Talk [00:30:00] last year didn't materialize because what's the thing that was missing? It was the consumer adoption of it. the retailers could do any, everything they wanted on that, but consumers didn't really have a reason to adopt it.

[00:30:11] Whereas I, I think now the technologies retailers are looking at don't have that consumer adoption element because it's transparent to the consumer. And I think that's where the focus will go. So if a retailer thinks a, I'm not gonna worry about channels, I just need to present things in front of a customer in some way.

[00:30:27] What are all the different ways I can do that? What technologies help me accomplish that? And which ones don't really require the consumer to learn how to use it because they're already using it. It's either, you know, consumers know how to watch a video. You don't have to teach them how to join a live stream, that that's easy.

[00:30:41] You're gonna have to teach them how to go to a website. You have to teach them how to go into a store and do things. That's why Metaverse hadn't picked up yet, because consumers have to learn how to do it. And you know, back to Ron, your comment. It's not the year for shiny objects. 

[00:30:55] So the, the technology, I think now, and I, I'll say for now, and let's make it the next [00:31:00] three years, the technology's gonna help with that seamless nature, which I guess I'm back to one of the four shop talk themes, right?

[00:31:05] Seamless stores. but maybe expanding it to just seamless experience that that's where it's finally gonna go. And we won't have to, we're not gonna need to distinguish. Oh, is that an experiential retail scenario for the consumer, or is it about convenience? It's just there, it's just commerce.

[00:31:21] Ron Thurston: Yeah,

[00:31:22] Jeff Roster: Yeah, 

[00:31:22] Ron Thurston: mean, I'd love I, 

[00:31:24] Jeff Roster: Go ahead, Ron.

[00:31:25] Ron Thurston: go ahead, Jeff. No, go ahead.

[00:31:26] The New Way to Encourage Innovation With Consumer Adoption

[00:31:26] Jeff Roster: So Ricardo, I know you're gonna be shocked to hear this, but sometimes vendors make a lot of buzz or noise or, or to go back to my old days hype. The whole metaverse thing is so illustrative because one, I I'm a fan because I've trained in simulators as a aviator for, for 25 years, but that is a massively heavy lift.

[00:31:45] And to go and scream about something that is a massively heavy lift we're, we're absolutely gonna see that evolve and it's gonna take kinda like R F I D probably five to ten years. And so, you know what we need to understand, and this is where we as communicators really need to. [00:32:00]Probably should have been in front of that a lot more.

[00:32:01] It's like, let's encourage innovation, but understand what it takes to innovate. You can't, I mean, you can't spend 10 trillion overnight. You have to do that in increments and you have to encourage the innovation and not make fun of it when it, you know, something like, like Metaverse doesn't blow up overnight.

[00:32:18] There's a lot of processes and the process for innovation has become cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And that's, that's what's also helping. I mean, low-code. I mean it's you know, my podcast partner, Brian can't say the word low-code enough in, in every sentence, it's low-code cuz he's a low-code guy.

[00:32:32] But, but he's, he's sold me on that. I mean, when I started at Gardner, I, I mean terabyte of storage was a million dollars. I've got 15 terabytes on my desk. I've got three terabytes in my laptop. That's a picture in 20 years of the massively almost deflationary cycle or cost of, of innovation.

[00:32:52] And that's what we have now. Now we have these tools, now we have all this stuff. You think about. You think about what, what a customer service channel is [00:33:00] gonna look like in a year. We're gonna be live streaming we're gonna have ChatGPT I mean, it is orders of magnitude different than what we, what we, what we were, you know, just a simple phone call even five or six years ago.

[00:33:11] That's how fast we're innovating. And the key though, that's how cheaply we're able to innovate and to do things. And now the key point, and Ricardo, you're so spot on. You have a customer that now has more power in their hands and we, that's an old story, but they know how to use it. They know how to embrace it.

[00:33:29] And I think the other thing that people need to understand, that's one thing Ron, I'm a little concerned about when I hear brands wanna maybe over, over. I don't know, try to manage that live stream a little too much. Look at TikTok. Those are not professional videos. Those are getting millions of views.

[00:33:45] Those are kids with a phone in front of them. And so the, that expectation for something overmanaged, I think is gonna, is gonna be a negative more, more so than a positive. And so that's that part of that innovation where the customers way ahead of where we are as brands, as [00:34:00]retailers, and we're just sort of racing and trying to figure out, okay, how, how much professionalism do we put in?

[00:34:05] How much do we let people run loose? So exciting. The next three years are just gonna be insane. Um,

[00:34:10] Vicki Cantrell: what you just said has one specific word that is the same and has been the same for the last 10 years, will be the same for the next 10 years. The key is that the consumer knows how to adopt adoption. We all know that things that can't be or it's difficult to adopt, never work, whether it's metaverse or whatever, or tools.

[00:34:31] Things that are easy to adopt will always work. And the consumer now has a very different set of a very different playing field for their adoption. That is not in our control and but it benefits us tremendously.

[00:34:49] The Loyalty Factor

[00:34:49] Ron Thurston: Yeah, agreed. I agree with you, Jeff. It's it's that balance of like, what can I do? Like test, learn, try, get out of it quickly, or, you know, [00:35:00] actually, if this is an important part of, of the customer journey, I think that what I would add to your question, Vicky, about the next three to five years is about loyalty, but I look at it in like really two, two very different ways.

[00:35:14] I look at it from a, a store, I look at it from a store team if we're gonna talk about stores, we have to talk about team loyalty and people loyalty. And so the biggest pushback from investment in people that I hear from senior executives is, the turnover's too high for me to spend money on these people.

[00:35:36] And my pushback is the reason that they're turning is because you're not investing. And if, if we don't, if we don't put more effort into loyalty at the front lines, it's going, we're gonna keep repeating the same mistakes and we're, we're never gonna deliver the results that we need if you can't retain the team.

[00:35:56] So I think there's a huge loyalty frontline. And then [00:36:00] there's loyalty customer so much about first. Data, you know, how do we get new customers? How do we retain that customer? How much does it cost to get that customer? And while I think the conversation about having like the full picture of the customer when they walk into a store is a good conversation, I don't see it live in action.

[00:36:22] If I'm a, you know, a, a very like loyal e-com for one brand, I walk into a location that they have no idea who I am. 

[00:36:32] And so I think we, we have to figure out ways to retain loyal customers. That's cha, a channel less loyal customer. Uh, because they're putting a lot of effort in there. Now finding ways. I mean, that's, I was between NRF and, and Shoptalk.

[00:36:48] I was at eTail, which, you know, that is very much about marketing and customer and first cus first party data and that we, we have to think about that as a major priority for [00:37:00] the next three years too. And from, from both sides. yeah. 

[00:37:04] Vicki Cantrell: great point.

[00:37:05] Ron Thurston: Yeah. 

[00:37:06] Vicki Cantrell: And, and loyalty is not about points anymore. That's, that's, that's, that's gonna be like the word innovation really needs to mean something different. So does the word loyalty. It's not about earn points. It's a very different proposition. I think, Ron, you explained it. You explained it well.

[00:37:23] Ron Thurston: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, and it's, it's, you know, luxury, luxury brands are going through this. Contemporary brands are going through this, you know, people are then, yeah, Walmart's writing about a luxury customer shop buying groceries at Walmart. Now how do, how do I retain that customer and a Walmart, but I'm also then buying a handbag at Gucci like this.

[00:37:45] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:45] Ron Thurston: There, there's no one right way to say how a customer's behaving today, yet loyalty to the, to the brands where people have gravitated is how we will sustain great results.

[00:37:58] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah.[00:38:00]

[00:38:00] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I, I think, you know, hearing you say that I, I, I thought of two other examples like the Sephora at a Kohls. How does Kohls convert that Sephora customer to shop in the Kohls much like, you know, the Amazon returns in the Kohls, giving them, a coupon to buy something in the store over the next few days.

[00:38:18] I think that's the same as your example Vicki, it's not of just about points uh, points and discounts don't buy loyalty for a brand, but then compare that to the kind of loyalty a brand like Apple has with their customers. Which I, if there's gonna be, if you were to pick two or three top brands, that probably reflect the highest loyalty, I think that has to be one of the top three right there. And sure you can point to, you know, the decision to open stores as having been a great piece of that, but it's not really just about Apple stores, it's just everything about them that drives the loyalty. And there's an example of a brand that doesn't give points and doesn't give discounts, that has a lot of super loyal customers.

[00:38:54] As you know, when we got on here and we all showed off our, our AirPods Max headphones here. [00:39:00] So there's, there's a brand loyalty example that's real.

[00:39:03] Ron Thurston: But

[00:39:03] they have But they 

[00:39:04] Vicki Cantrell: of the relationship experience. 

[00:39:07] Yeah. 

[00:39:08] Ron Thurston: but they also have frontline team loyalty. This is a, that's a brand that invests heavily in stores and training and development and, and strategy and upskilling them and investing and stretch assignments and going to Cupertino for a year, going to Hong Kong for a year.

[00:39:26] Like they will do anything to make sure that their teams are happy. Having worked there, myself and I can speak to it like it, they're the loyalty, generally from Apple employees in stores is really high and you feel that they're proud to work there and they're could not be more excited to sell you 600 dollar headphones.

[00:39:47] And you know, we, we all, we all do. We all do it. And it's a really good example, Ricardo. Yeah.

[00:39:53] Back to Changing Relationships As The ShopTalk Theme

[00:39:53] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Vicky, you started us on the, that changing relationships theme as maybe the [00:40:00] core theme of the four that Shop Talk mentioned. I think Ron, with the raising the point about loyalty, you brought us right back full circle again to the changing relationships and how that, if we were to pick one theme of, of the four that Shop Talk's that I think we're, we're sort of, maybe indirectly agreeing here that the number one theme was these changing relationships and which includes both how you build that brand customer relationship, but also the brand employee relationship, and I think we can add in, you know, brand to brand relationship. It really is all about how those relationships are changing and how they remain together for the success of the business.

[00:40:38] Ron Thurston: Yeah. agreed.

[00:40:40] Vicki Cantrell: agreed. 

[00:40:41] Ron Thurston: Yeah. 

[00:40:41] Ricardo Belmar: So I think maybe that's a good note for us to close on,

[00:40:46] Vicki Cantrell: Sounds great. 

[00:40:47] Ron Thurston: Yes, 

[00:40:47] Vicki Cantrell: is always so much fun. 

[00:40:50] It's a great, always a great conversation 

[00:40:53] Ricardo Belmar: think Jeff, your idea is onto something here that we do these after an event a few days or so after the event, so we've all had time to kind [00:41:00] of think about and, and digest it.

[00:41:01] Jeff Roster: yeah, I, I do think, I do think vendors are gonna have a tough decision now. I mean, they're gonna have to consider shop talk a, a, a, a really legitimate show. And especially if they push into the store aspect of it. It's gonna be interesting to see how, how, how you allocate your marketing dollars. But I was impressed.

[00:41:17] I was very impressed with the show.

[00:41:20] Ron Thurston: me too. Very impressed. Is anyone going to Barcelona?

[00:41:23] Vicki Cantrell: No.

[00:41:24] Ron Thurston: No. 

[00:41:24] Ricardo Belmar: unfortunately, 

[00:41:25] Jeff Roster: great city, but two darn

[00:41:27] Ricardo Belmar: if only so, yeah,

[00:41:28] Ron Thurston: no recap of Shop Talk Barcelona.

[00:41:39] Ricardo Belmar: Yep, Well,

[00:41:39] Jeff Roster: Maybe 

[00:41:40] Ron Thurston: I think 

[00:41:40] Jeff Roster: cover it. Maybe we'll cover it from afar. we'll just, we'll just jump the, We'll, jump the Twitter hashtag and then give our 

[00:41:45] Ricardo Belmar: right. right. We'll, we'll look for great photos from people who are fortunate enough to be there.

[00:41:52] Jeff Roster: Exactly.

[00:41:54] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I, I guess maybe on that sort of disappointing note for the conversation

[00:41:57] Ron Thurston: Sorry. 

[00:41:58] Ricardo Belmar: we'll, we'll wrap it up [00:42:00] there. What do you say Jeff? 

[00:42:01] Jeff Roster: Sounds good.

[00:42:02] Ricardo Belmar: Sound good? All right. Well, Ron, Vicki, a as always a pleasure. Thanks again. We're gonna have to keep, keep doing these cuz this is just too much fun not to.

[00:42:10] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah, it's great. I love seeing you guys. Happy Friday. Happy weekend. Happy Easter. Happy Passover.

[00:42:16] Ron Thurston: Same. Same to you. 

[00:42:17] Same to you. Thank you. 

[00:42:18] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks everybody. Thank you.

[00:42:19] Vicki Cantrell: Okay, bye.

[00:42:21] Ron Thurston: Bye.

[00:42:22] Show Recap

[00:42:22] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone and wow, I loved that conversation. I'm so with you guys on focusing on people. Retail is, totally a people business. I might not have been at Shop Talk, but I have to agree with the whole point about changing relationships and focusing on people loyalty both with store teams and customers is really where every retailer and brand needs to go.

[00:42:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it, it's interesting how different this discussion went compared to the conversation Jeff and I had with Krystina [00:43:00] Gustafson and Ben Miller in part one of the series. In that discussion, we really dug into, All the main trends at the show, and, and both Krystina and Ben really gave us some amazing details and viewpoints on how those four trends were manifesting in the industry and how people talked about it at the show.

[00:43:15] And they were totally right about those trends. And of course, I, I have to put a plug in here for retail media networks and that that's for you, Jeff, if you're out there listening, you know, I couldn't resist to bring that up, just, just so you're aware. But when Ron and Vicki both brought us to that intersection of technology and people, it nicely outlined how it really does come down to people no matter what you do with the technology in retailing.

[00:43:36] I have to say, that's what made this one of my favorite conversations on the podcast yet.

[00:43:41] Casey Golden: Well, I mean, I really appreciate you guys for, you know, always bringing it back to center, amplifying the importance of relationships. It's really been with a heavy heart over this pandemic, just kind of seeing clientele turn into email marketing and diluting the magic of these relationships and that sales process, [00:44:00] or beyond the sales process, like the brand experience, you know, coming from the luxury side.

[00:44:06] It's so much more than a sales associate, and shopping alone just hasn't hit the same note. So I'm just really excited to see so much focus go into the people, the relationships, the technology that needs to be made for people to like scale their work. Workspaces, digitization, not just replacement and, and AI like,

[00:44:34] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah,

[00:44:35] Casey Golden: AI Bard and I are not getting into conversations about shoes, pants, jackets, dress, nada! not invited 

[00:44:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's not happening. Yeah. I, I, I really think Vicki nailed it in her comment when she said, you know, the relationship is the experience. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about. And you know, as often, I mean, let, let's face it, we talk about technology on this show all the time, but we, we can't lose sight of [00:45:00] why are we talking about technology?

[00:45:01] It's to help augment that people relationship, not replace it. And, and that I think is really what we're, this conversation really got to. And, and I'm really excited that that's where it ended up.

[00:45:11] Casey Golden: Me too. I'm slightly biased, but thanks. I, I, I really like how you guys brought this together. With that Vicki called the melding of online in stores. Of course, I'm a store girl, right. But I like built some of the first e-commerce stores. And I just love talking about like store teams, how interacting with a stylist or a personal shopper makes a completely different and unique experience from discovering products to just the buying process.

[00:45:42] Vicki just nailed it by saying that the experience is the relationship and what that melding, digital and physical is all about. When retails retailers do it right, services

[00:45:56] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:57] Casey Golden: are significant.

[00:45:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. I, I [00:46:00] agree. And I think Jeff added a great point there too, about how the technology has to enable this, not compete with it, not make it more complicated. You know, it's that, it, it's that whole adoption point that we all talked about and why I think we all agree in that, you know, the, the current tech trends like, All, everything about generative AI right now and anything else that took over the conversation at this year's Shop Talk really have an advantage over the metaverse trend from last year's show because it comes down to consumer adoption.

[00:46:26] If consumers can benefit from a technology without adopting anything new or any, whether it's a new habit or the ac, technology on, on the consumer side of it, then that's a winner. For retailers, if consumers have to adopt something, it's gonna take a lot longer for, for them to complete that adoption and to make an impact on, on the retailer's business.

[00:46:43] It doesn't mean it won't happen. I think to Jeff's point about metaverse, I think we'd all agree it's gonna happen. It will happen. It's just not happening right away. It might not happen in less than a year's time. It's more of a long-term play. But some of these other technologies that we're trending this year, they have an immediate impact.

[00:46:58] Casey Golden: Hundred [00:47:00] percent. I mean so much, so many of times technology ends up taking the work out of the business or the process and puts all of the work on the consumer. They have to do the heavy lifting and I think metaverse is definitely suffered from that, you know, the perspective that you just spoke of.

[00:47:22] But then again, like. Web three has a better chance of making a difference because it's easier to lift on the consumer side than the Metaverse. The adoption will come from loyalty programs, as an example. Exclusive and unlockable content. Just look at Starbucks New Odyssey program and what you and Jeff talked about with Max from Z Blocks back at N R F.

[00:47:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's true. That that's true. I mean, although I have to admit, I, I, I've totally failed in my efforts to unlock the first NFTs in the Starbucks program. I didn't get enough points to get the early drop.

[00:47:55] Casey Golden: All right. Well, I, we, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll do a little one-on-one[00:48:00]

[00:48:00] Ricardo Belmar: I may need your help on that.

[00:48:01] Casey Golden: Be offline and on the blockchain.

[00:48:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Oh, okay. I guess you know that maybe with your help, I can do better next time. But you know, I, I guess on that totally disappointing note I think this is, it only means one thing for this episode, right Casey?

[00:48:17] Casey Golden: Indeed it's that time to, to wrap up. And I have to say, I agree. It's the best one ever. So we're gonna wrap up this Shop Talk crossover series with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation, it's been good.

[00:48:32] Ricardo Belmar: It has.

[00:48:33] Show Close

[00:48:33] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed this season shows, especially our just completed podcast crossover mini-series, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Plus remember, you can watch us, not just listen on our YouTube [00:49:00] channel and like, and comment there too. Share your thoughts. 

[00:49:03] If you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a full transcript of this episode, take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your co-host, Casey Golden.

[00:49:14] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season and crossover series, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter and LinkedIn, too, at Retail Razor for the latest updates. And watch for our season finale episode coming soon with a truly special guest host that's gonna turn things around and ask us questions for a change.

[00:49:37] But for now, I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:49:39] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:49:42] ​

[00:49:45] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. 

[00:49:49] Until next time. 

[00:49:50] This is the Retail Razor Show. [00:50:00]

]]> <p>Have you heard plenty of Shoptalk event and trend recaps by now? Did any of those dig into why those trends matter and what they <em>really</em> mean for the retail industry? Sometimes you just need to put four Top Retail Influencers into one recording session and let them talk about what those trends make them <em>feel</em> about the industry to get to the heart of the matter. And maybe ‘<em>heart’</em> is what it’s truly all about – because <em>retail is a people business</em>.</p><p><br></p><p>It’s Part 4 of our #ShoptalkLive podcast cross-over series with <a href="https://jeffroster.podbean.com/" rel="nofollow">This Week in Innovation</a> and special guest host <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-bb51b8/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Roster</a>, but not quite recorded live and in-person at Shoptalk this time! Yes, there’s a story to that and you’ll find out in this episode where Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar are joined by retail legends, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickicantrell/" rel="nofollow">Vicki Cantrell</a>, CEO of <a href="https://www.vendorawards.com/" rel="nofollow">Vendors in Partnership, LLC</a>, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rthurston/" rel="nofollow">Ron Thurston</a>, author of <a href="https://www.retailpride.com/media" rel="nofollow">Retail Pride</a>, host of the <a href="https://www.retailpride.com/" rel="nofollow">Retail in America</a> podcast and tour, and Co-Founder of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/ossyagency/" rel="nofollow">OSSY</a>.</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode, Jeff, Ricardo, Vicki, and Ron discover the true meaning of Shoptalk this year – people and relationships – because in the end they realize that the <em>experience</em> <em>is the relationship</em> in retail and how this is NOT the year of shiny objects! </p><p><br></p><p>Plus, we’re now standing at number 19 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, </em>and<em> Overclocked, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>S2E12d ShoptalkLive - TRI Friends Chat</strong></p><h3>[00:00:00] Show Intro </h3><p>[00:00:20] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Hello Retail Razor Show listeners and viewers. Welcome to retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden.</p><p>[00:00:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar. Welcome to part four and the final installment in our Shop Talk Live crossover event with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation podcast.</p><p>[00:00:44] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Wow. Are we really at the last one? This has been so much fun, so many incredible conversations and takeaways. Does it really have to end?</p><p>[00:00:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, yeah, it does. It does. But we have saved what I think is one of our best, if not the [00:01:00] best episode of the season for the last one.</p><p>[00:01:02] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Okay. Wait a minute, you&#39;ve, you&#39;ve called every episode, the best episode of the season as being the one from N R F where you and Jeff sat down with Vicki Cantrell and Ron Thurston at the end of the Super Saturday retail ROI event. You know that 10 minute chat that turned into 50 minutes?</p><p>[00:01:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, okay. Yeah, I, I did say that I, I suppose I, I guess maybe I have said that may, maybe more than once, but funny you should mention that episode because this episode, our final Shop Talk crossover podcast is also a conversation Jeff and I have with Ron and Vicki. , it&#39;s, think of it as a repeat or a follow up, if you will, of that NRF discussion.</p><p>[00:01:42] And I have to say, it&#39;s this sort of conversation that, you know, makes me so excited to be part of this industry. I&#39;m so thankful for relationships like these with Jeff, Ron, Vicki, and so many others including you, Casey. It&#39;s just unlike any other industry I know.</p><p>[00:01:55] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Aw, you&#39;re like a teddy bear. It&#39;s so true though. [00:02:00] Nothing lights a fire like passion. And I know now why you&#39;ve been testing this recording for the last three episodes but at the risk of being a downer here, if I&#39;m not mistaken, you guys had some challenges making this happen.</p><p>[00:02:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, we did, we did. It turns out we only had one option to record this live and in person at Shop Talk, and that was at the end of the day on, I think it was the second to last day of the show. And it was right when Shop Talk had scheduled a happy hour on the show floor. Rethink Retail was kind enough to agree to let us use their booth space to record.</p><p>[00:02:35] So Jeff and I get there to set up our equipment, right, and guess what happens?</p><p>[00:02:39] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> The equipment broke.</p><p>[00:02:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay, good guess, but no, not quite. just as we were about to plug everything in, suddenly loud music starts blaring over the speakers all over the expo hall. You figure it&#39;s happy hour right. So of course Shop Talk decided we all needed some high energy music to go with our free drinks.</p><p>[00:02:56] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Oh my God, you&#39;re kidding me. What, what&#39;d you [00:03:00] guys end up doing?</p><p>[00:03:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, we, we looked at each other and thought about what any experienced podcaster would do to, to compensate for that. And then instead we immediately decided that it was hopeless and we just needed to cancel the whole thing and reschedule.</p><p>[00:03:11] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Grab a beer.</p><p>[00:03:13] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Exactly. </p><p>[00:03:16] Now, of course, I, I did say this was the only time we could work it out during the show, so we ended up scheduling a recording session remotely for about a week after Shop Talk.</p><p>[00:03:24] So technically this episode is not, live and in-person recorded bet it is still recorded, so we&#39;re gonna go with that. But it does have the added benefit that, you know, we&#39;ve got full video for this episode on our YouTube channel. So you actually get to watch us have the discussion, not just listen to it.</p><p>[00:03:41] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> All right. All right. Well, that&#39;s a pretty good trade off. I must say and you know, we just kind of upped the ante here. So sad you guys couldn&#39;t make it work in person. Hope there was some good drinks. But I mean, come on, of course you&#39;d expect good music to go with happy hour, [00:04:00] right? I mean,</p><p>[00:04:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:04:02] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> you kind of expect like show closes, party&#39;s on, right.</p><p>[00:04:07] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I guess we should have thought of that. We should have thought of that, I suppose. But you know, like, like I said, we&#39;re, we&#39;re, had we been experienced podcasters or not the you know, budding experts, we all aspire to be here. We might have planned for that, but I, I think this worked out in the end.</p><p>[00:04:22] Either way.</p><p>[00:04:23] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, let&#39;s not waste any more time. Let&#39;s get straight to the recording. Not live and in person at Shop Talk, but still a Shop Talk recap with you, Jeff Roster, Vicki Cantrell and Ron Thurston.</p><h3>[00:04:38] The TRI Friends Chat</h3><p>[00:04:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> ​Welcome everybody. I&#39;m Ricardo Belmar, host of the Retail Razor Show, and I&#39;m here with a good friend, Jeff Roster, host of This Week In Innovation. And you guessed it. This is the last episode in our Shop Talk related series. And I, if you&#39;re [00:05:00] watching us on video, yes. You may have noticed we are not live at Shop Talk right now.</p><p>[00:05:05] We, we much like, one of the episodes, if you caught our crossover at NRF where we had some issues and couldn&#39;t quite make it work out. We sort of had a little bit of some coordination challenges this time. So we&#39;re catching up with each other after the event, but we&#39;re here to talk about our, our thoughts on the shop talk event.</p><p>[00:05:24] Jeff, how you doing today?</p><p>[00:05:25] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> You know, Ricardo, I&#39;m doing fantastic. I had a good week&#39;s sleep and a lot of time to, to think about what we&#39;re gonna talk about today. So I, I&#39;m actually kind of thinking this is really a cool vibe. Maybe we should do this on every show, like do the final wrap up, show off-premise, two, three days down, down the road couple, you know, a couple good night&#39;s sleep.</p><p>[00:05:43] So I, I&#39;m excited to get into this conversation.</p><p>[00:05:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Sounds good. Well, let me go ahead and introduce our, familiar guests. we have with us today, we&#39;ve got Vicki Cantrell and Ron Thurston. Vicki, Ron, how are you two doing?</p><p>[00:05:55] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Great. Very nice to be uh, on a Friday entering in and, and it [00:06:00] did take a l uh, like it took a while to get over this trip, like physically, and so I&#39;m all back. So happy to be here with you guys.</p><p>[00:06:11] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah. Yeah, me too. Thank you Ricardo and Jeff. It&#39;s a, it&#39;s a pleasure. I, I felt trapped inside Mandalay Bay with no sun and nothing, and I was happy to come back to the west coast on the tour and be in San Diego because </p><p>[00:06:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah.</p><p>[00:06:25] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> I needed some fresh air</p><p>[00:06:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It, it kind of, it&#39;s kind of funny. I, I noticed on the last day I was there thinking, wait a minute, I, have I seen the outside for the last few days since I&#39;ve been here? Or have I not even seen daylight?</p><p>[00:06:38] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I actually one, one trip over, cause I stayed at the Luxor I, one trip over, I specifically went outside and went all the way around because I thought, you know, I probably at some point should literally have fresh air. So I </p><p>[00:06:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. </p><p>[00:06:49] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> force my way outside.</p><p>[00:06:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right, right,</p><p>[00:06:52] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> ahh, Vegas.</p><p>[00:06:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. </p><p>[00:06:54] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Vegas. </p><h3>[00:06:55] 4 Shoptalk Themes</h3><p>[00:06:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> love it. Gotta love it. Well, so, so let, let me start by, before we [00:07:00] jump into our, our conversation here, let, let&#39;s kind of start with summarizing four key themes that shop talk themselves, the shop talk content team put out there at the end of the show is what they felt were the four main themes of the show.</p><p>[00:07:12] and the first is what they termed as seamless stores, which I like to think of this as both a recognition that stores are a focal point of energy right now in, in retail, and that it is, it&#39;s maybe a way to think of this as the, the successor to omnichannel and maybe we put that term to rest. so that&#39;s theme one.</p><p>[00:07:30] Theme two is about enabling workers and store teams which is a theme I like to see. And. I&#39;m sure we&#39;ll get into this, but we, we talked about that at our, at our conversation, N R F and what we had hoped to hear then about how we&#39;re better enabling store teams. So that was theme two. </p><p>[00:07:46] Theme three is shopper engagement. And this is sort of a, a, a catchall, I think that covers all the interesting technologies that we&#39;re all hearing about and talking about now that&#39;s impacting the customer experience in, in any channel, whether it&#39;s in stores, digital, [00:08:00] wherever it may be. </p><p>[00:08:01] And then the fourth one which might actually be the most interesting of the four, Shop Talk calls this changing relationships and it, it&#39;s a reference to how on, on the one hand, you have retailers becoming more and more like a technology provider in that they&#39;re now offering services. To other retailers and other brands, and that could be you know, one of my favorite topics that I like to remind Jeff about every chance I get, and that&#39;s retail media networks.</p><p>[00:08:28] it may be, yep. It may be things like GAP offering their logistics network as a service to other retailers. and it, but it really, I, I think. I, I find this an interesting one because maybe Shop Talk is onto something there thinking that the business is changing because of how the relationships are changing from the way they have been in, you know, for, for decades now.</p><p>[00:08:49] so let&#39;s, let&#39;s start from there.</p><p>[00:08:53] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> I um, you know, I love those four themes because they aren&#39;t kind of broken out into [00:09:00] technology. And if you remember we talked in January, Ron had such a good point in that freewheeling conversation that we had was about how do we respect the stores given what they&#39;re going through and how do we get them to do less and understand what their challenges are and because the customer is back in the stores.</p><h3>[00:09:22] It&#39;s a Relationship Show About People</h3><p>[00:09:22] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> And, and when we think about that uh, it felt there was a lot of content to address those things in while we were at Shop Talk, but I&#39;d like to kind of flip that a little bit and talk about those four themes. And what I felt while I was there, I felt like it was, I have no other way to describe it other than it felt like it was a relationship show.</p><p>[00:09:47] Uh, for me, the connections, everybody talked, no matter who you met on the floor, in a booth, at a party, wherever you were, it started with the human connection [00:10:00] and it no matter what and it way more time was spent on the human aspects and the human connection before it actually turned into a potential business connection.</p><p>[00:10:14] So it felt very right. It felt very relationship focused. And when you think about that, how it relates to those themes is so true. The relationship with the customer, the relationship and partnerships, it just felt very connected and human. And I love the way they&#39;re kind of mapping this out.</p><p>[00:10:37] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll jump in. I, I agree with you, Vicki. I think it&#39;s also the space being like smaller than an N R F. I mean, I think Vicky, you and I saw each other like three times a day </p><p>[00:10:47] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:10:48] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> And you know, like walking by, it&#39;s a, it&#39;s a high five, it&#39;s a hug. Oh, have you met this person? Oh my God. Like, let&#39;s get a picture.</p><p>[00:10:55] Like, so I think that there&#39;s, there&#39;s power in the scale of, [00:11:00] of the conference at the same time, but as my first experience at Shop Talk, I would say retail is a relationship business and, and because coming from the stores, that&#39;s how you build a business. It isn&#39;t just about product and, and a beautiful space.</p><p>[00:11:18] It is very much about relationships with each other. First, leading a team, it&#39;s relationships with the customers. It&#39;s with your corporate business partners, it&#39;s with your vendors. It&#39;s with your mall or your landlords, like, everything we do is about relationships and those relationships have, you know, are so important to me.</p><p>[00:11:39] But when you, there was a sense of pride almost in our industry as much as we all have questions and maybe some, um, pressure to deliver. I, I felt a sense of pride about the general retail industry at, at a whole, and that, that felt really good to me. I left [00:12:00] on such a high because of that.</p><p>[00:12:02] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> I love that. I love that. And, and I didn&#39;t realize that was your first</p><p>[00:12:09] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> It was my first, </p><p>[00:12:10] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> I had no idea. Oh my gosh.</p><p>[00:12:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> How many shop talks have you been to Vicki?</p><p>[00:12:15] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> uh, I&#39;ve actually, I would say I missed one. I haven&#39;t gone to the ones outside of Las Vegas, but I missed, I was at the first one and last year and this year, so I would say at least three, potentially four.</p><p>[00:12:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay, It was my second shop talk I got last year was my first one. Jeff, this, was this your first </p><p>[00:12:35] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> No, this is my first one too. And what I think was interesting about the relationship angle, and I&#39;ve, I&#39;ve always, you know, preached that from the get-go. Listen, from a tech perspective, it&#39;s a relationship business. It&#39;s as big as Mayberry. And there&#39;s, you know, sheriff Andy, and, and you know, I mean, do not screw around in the industry, it&#39;s 5 trillion, but it is, is as big as Mayberry and it&#39;s, it&#39;s really cool to hear that. I also wonder, and [00:13:00] this is 180 degrees shift for me I&#39;ve never, ever, never, ever been a fan of having anything in Vegas. I just think it gets, the shows tend to get lost. I think you have the, the bleed off and the old days.</p><p>[00:13:10] It quite frankly used to be, I thought, fairly inappropriate. B because some of the, you know, the costumes and all that sort of stuff, but I tell you it was genius to have it at Mandalay Bay One. I felt like I was back on a college dorm. Sort of that whole, that whole connection. Yeah, we joked about not being outside.</p><p>[00:13:26] Well, there was a reason I wasn&#39;t outside because everything was, was convenient and like, For instance, Kathy&#39;s party Sunday night. You know, I looked at the space before I got in there and thought, oh, man, that it just feels like we&#39;re just part of the whole big thing that couldn&#39;t have worked out better.</p><p>[00:13:39] One, it was quiet inside inappropriate for the conversation, but I watched probably 20 people walked by on the way to other things, you know, and so like pop out, pop back in, pop out. And I was at a party the, the Coresight party, and actually they had they had their space, but then there was another party that it was in another space, but the outside was, was, was common.</p><p>[00:13:59] [00:14:00] And I ended up at somebody else&#39;s party and had a great conversation with people that I&#39;d met at another party. And man, you, you&#39;re not gonna see that any, at any, you, you, that&#39;s the only place probably in the plant. You could have all those different venues, world-class food, world-class space, but then have all that interaction.</p><p>[00:14:18] So, yeah, I, I just, I man, I, I have shifted 180 degrees about having something in Vegas. </p><p>[00:14:23] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. And then we, we were talking earlier, so there was also, and I think this, I, I love this relationship theme because there was Sunday afternoon, right? There was the, the Retail ROI get together for, for the March Gladness event, watching some of the March Madness games. And I think Jeff, maybe you were the one who said it, right?</p><p>[00:14:37] Just sitting there, you could just see people you recognize walking by, because it was on the way to registration for, for shop talk. People would walk by and say, Hey, how you doing?</p><p>[00:14:47] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Somebody&#39;s gotta own that 2:00 PM space on Sunday, because literally at that location. So for people that weren&#39;t there, I think where we were, the bar we were at was probably what, a hundred yards at max from, from [00:15:00] registration, </p><p>[00:15:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> from the registration. Right, </p><p>[00:15:01] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> everyone was walking there. I mean, every startup on the planet, it should just be right there at that bar or the, or the Starbucks on the other side because you&#39;re seeing the whole show. </p><p>[00:15:10] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:15:11] Yeah.</p><h3>[00:15:12] The Experience Is the Relationship</h3><p>[00:15:12] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> you know, I&#39;m gonna just wanna one more thing on this aspect of relationship. Ricardo, Ricardo, when we were talking earlier and we talked about that, you know, pre pandemic was experiential you know, that&#39;s what retailers were trying to, to deal with, and then pandemic became about convenience and figuring out that, and that it&#39;s just based on some of these themes and some of the stuff we did see is how important we&#39;re back to the experience and the experience is gonna be different.</p><p>[00:15:43] You know, when you&#39;re talking about, ways of shopping and video and all, all of the different ways. But ,the fact that we think about that, for me, convenience and experience is the same because it&#39;s based on that your connection to, between the customer and the [00:16:00] retailer, that it&#39;s about the relationship.</p><p>[00:16:02] Because the experience is the relationship. It&#39;s not whether you walk into the store and say, oh, isn&#39;t this beautiful? That&#39;s not what the experience is. I mean, it better be okay or better be pleasant, but that&#39;s not the experience. The experience is the connection of the person that you&#39;re, you&#39;re being with when you get there.</p><p>[00:16:23] So retail is really about that. And if you have that relationship, then you&#39;re going to think this was convenient cuz you connected.</p><p>[00:16:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:16:35] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> agreed.</p><p>[00:16:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I, I, I agree. And, and, and you know, the other interesting thing I, I noticed too, just thinking again about these four themes now I, I wasn&#39;t at the earlier shop talks before last year, but what I do remember in, in talking with people who had been there and looking at the content coming out of the, the conference, you know, I, I think this really started out as a e-commerce focused kind of really heavily digital channels focused to, to [00:17:00] retail much less emphasis, if any, on what&#39;s happening in in stores. And, you know, and Jeff and I talked to the content team while we were there and, and they mentioned that, you know, they had gotten feedback from attendees that said, you know, in this post pandemic world, we, we really need to talk more about stores.</p><p>[00:17:18] Stores are a real focal point for our business and for our, how we build those relationships with consumers you know, that the content at the event needs to reflect that. And I, I, I think this is one of the things I find most interesting with Shop Talk is how quickly they pivot from topic to topic based on that feedback.</p><p>[00:17:37] You know, when we, when we sat, when we were chatting at N R F, one of the things we said is, well, we hope, we hear some themes around, , not just how you&#39;re enabling store teams, but when you add things to the store, are you just adding or are you taking something away? You know, are you recognizing that every time you add there&#39;s potentially a burden on, on the team there?</p><p>[00:17:56] And a difficulty in, in them executing it because it&#39;s yet one more [00:18:00] thing, it&#39;s one more thing to ask for. And I don&#39;t know that we heard that at NRF in sessions there very much. But I feel like at Shop Talk there was definitely, and, and they said it right in one of the four themes about enabling workers.</p><p>[00:18:13] That was definitely a sense. I mean, I, I even felt that in sessions that were not about, the store teams, it came up in the conversation with the speakers on stage. It&#39;s almo. It was almost like a reflex that everyone just recognizing every retailer that was up there, they could have been talking about optimizing their supply chain.</p><p>[00:18:31] And somehow then the conversation led to an impact on the store team and how they had to be aware of that and do something about it, not just let things happen. Which was something I hadn&#39;t really experienced and seen in this kind of content at other events.</p><h3>[00:18:47] NOT the Year of Shiny Objects</h3><p>[00:18:47] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah, I mean, I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll jump in because I started it, but I think the you know, the, my my sense from speaking to so many retailers is there&#39;s, there&#39;s a sense of clarity [00:19:00]right now about the, which. Where revenue is being generated and, and where their business needs to grow and where they need to make investment.</p><p>[00:19:10] And I think maybe years past a little bit of like shiny object and what&#39;s fun and what&#39;s exciting, what keeps us in the press. And this is not a year of the shiny object. This is a year that we need to deliver on the investments that we&#39;ve made. And that investment for all of them is in people, and stores, and if their e-commerce business is, is not growing at the rates they expected, then the revenue and the profitability comes from the store.</p><p>[00:19:40] And so I do think maybe it&#39;s even, you know, 90 days later, from N R F the retailers I&#39;m speaking to is I&#39;m here to find solutions for workforce management. I&#39;m, I&#39;m here to find things of a better way to, to communicate with my teams, to improve productivity, to think about [00:20:00] how to make returns easier at the store level.</p><p>[00:20:02] Just all of the things that are actually about delivering results. And you can&#39;t deliver the results that any company needs. Without strong teams in place who are well trained and led and motivated. And I, I just hope that, that this is not, or I should say, my sense is not, this was not a, a temporary idea that they have now said 80% of our revenue is coming from the store.</p><p>[00:20:30] And that&#39;s not changing. And we need to fix this. And I hope my sense is right given the, you know, the small set of people I spoke to. But that&#39;s my, that&#39;s my feeling right now.</p><p>[00:20:41] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> You know, that&#39;s a, that&#39;s quite a phrase, Ron. The, not the year of the shiny object. I mean, if you don&#39;t put that on Twitter today, I&#39;m, I&#39;m a hundred percent stealing that. Um, </p><p>[00:20:50] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Go for it. go for</p><p>[00:20:51] it Jeff</p><p>[00:20:52] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> And I think that&#39;s such a profound observation because I mean, I go back to the old wars, you know, the [00:21:00] retail Apocalypse Wars and all that sort of stuff for, for whatever reason folks trying to bury the store and, and, and, you know, Buzek and I, and I think, well, I didn&#39;t know you at the time yet, Ron, but we were like, how.</p><p>[00:21:11] Help me understand 90%, at the time it was 90% of the revenues coming from the store. Why would you try to do that? And I, I, I still don&#39;t know the answer to that, but I think, you know, maybe it&#39;s a covid thing, just a realization how important we are. We are a tribal people. We want to. The best part of human nature is wanting to be in, you know, in fellowship, in connection with people.</p><p>[00:21:34] And so if retail is a people business, it has to reflect that and, and our technology needs to reflect that. And maybe we&#39;re a little more mature than we were in 2020 and, and realize the value of people. </p><p>[00:21:46] Yay. You know, I&#39;m pro-human. And so that&#39;s a, that&#39;s a great observation. I think that&#39;s a, that&#39;s, that&#39;s a.</p><p>[00:21:52] Real, real thing. And I think what&#39;s interesting, Ron, when I walked the f the, the, the exhibit hall, which is where I spent all my time, the number of [00:22:00] live streamers, the number of, of folks wanting to do something more in the store, which kind of goes against your idea of like, let&#39;s not add to the store, but it&#39;s happening.</p><p>[00:22:08] I mean, TikTok was there in a big way. Fire, uh, I, I, I forget the names, but a bunch of those fight.</p><p>[00:22:14] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Fire firework.</p><p>[00:22:15] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> firework. They&#39;re all. There&#39;s this, this idea that the store is the platform that we can do more with. And, and I think if we can unleash that creativity that all these, you know, all these folks have, and give them the tools, which they&#39;re already there.</p><p>[00:22:32] Wow. Holy smokes. We&#39;re gonna have a whole new engagement model.</p><p>[00:22:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> One interesting thing I heard, and I heard this more than once from different speakers and sessions on, on this point, you know take, take the livestream maybe was one example, but I I, I heard people say in a positive way this recognition that if we have more functions and roles needed in the store, there&#39;s this recognition that, you know, not every store team employee has to know how to do every single role.[00:23:00]</p><p>[00:23:00] That there is this idea of specialization. So, so maybe to your point, Jeff, if live streaming is something that a particular retailer&#39;s stores need to support, that doesn&#39;t mean every employee needs to be able to jump on a live stream. It means that maybe the, you know, three out of 10 or something that are good at it and want to do it. That&#39;s now their role, right? They, they, they&#39;re given that role and they put some focus on that. Maybe there are three other employees who&#39;s, who would rather be fulfilling BOPIS orders right in, in, in the back room. And because they can do that faster than the other employees. And it&#39;s okay to have this specialization and this recognition that, whether it&#39;s a store manager level or a district manager, somebody&#39;s has this awareness and that we&#39;re gearing the operation of the store around this idea that we can specialize in different areas and start building career paths for, for, for employees that that&#39;s something new that I hadn&#39;t heard before.</p><p>[00:23:51] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:23:52] I think what, what happens in that Or, go ahead, Vicky.</p><p>[00:23:55] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> No, no, go. Go ahead.</p><p>[00:23:57] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> You know, I think that that, I think [00:24:00] what to add on to that, the realization that some of that evolution also doesn&#39;t have to happen in the store. So you think about livestream. Several brands have said, oh, great, we&#39;re gonna build a showroom in the office and we&#39;re gonna livestream from the office with, by someone who&#39;s highly skilled at selling live on camera, which is a very unique and important skill.</p><p>[00:24:23] But at the same time, if I&#39;m gonna livestream from the office, then I need to have live inventory so that when I click into what I&#39;m selling, oh I see it&#39;s available at my store. I can also buy online pickup in store, I can reserve. So there the rest. The rest of the chain has to, has to work in order for it.</p><p>[00:24:42] You can&#39;t just throw up livestream and think someone&#39;s gonna join your website on Tuesday at 12 o&#39;clock and buy something. You actually have to build the infrastructure behind that, which requires a lot more than signing up for firework. And so I think that there, there&#39;s a, there&#39;s a thought process that&#39;s [00:25:00] deeper now, which is exciting.</p><p>[00:25:02] That doesn&#39;t have to just be like, let&#39;s add one more thing to the store. And that I, I&#39;m excited about that.</p><h3>[00:25:08] The True Melding of Digital and Physical Now Begins</h3><p>[00:25:08] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> It feels like we&#39;re at an inflection point of the, and, you know, we all sense it, we&#39;ve all sensed it for years. it, and it took a real shot in the arm when, when we were in the pandemic and online, like really spiked. know, because as we all know, people have been ignoring that stat of 80% of the sales come from the stores for years.</p><p>[00:25:33] As online has grown a little bit. They just, they still don&#39;t look at it. Okay. And now we, we have this feeling we can feel the sea change of, not, now it&#39;s not stores over, over online. It&#39;s not that it feels like a meld, finally feels like the, the coming together, not the either or. And so with that in mind, [00:26:00] I&#39;d like to know from you guys how you see I know it&#39;s a arbitrary thing, but what time moves so fast?</p><p>[00:26:08] What does the, with this in mind, what do the next three years look like in retail? What&#39;s going to be important? What will happen as we continue to meld better, smarter in, in better ways? Like the meld really is happening. What&#39;s it gonna look like?</p><p>[00:26:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll jump in. I, I, I think you&#39;re, you&#39;re right that we are, this meld is finally happening in the way that maybe we all started talking about. I&#39;ll pick a number, five years ago, right? That, that, that, that now there&#39;s sort of a recognition that not only is it happening, but actually needs to happen for, for supporting the business. It needs to happen because I, I go back to one of the things we said in that same timeframe was, you know what, now the consumer is in charge, right? The consumer now has all the power. Remember when that was the new phrase, a few years back. </p><p>[00:26:56] So, so what, what is that led to now, right?</p><p>[00:26:58] Yeah. People like, like to [00:27:00] repeat it, but maybe didn&#39;t believe it. But I think now there&#39;s recognition that. Not only does the consumer still have the power, guess what? They&#39;ve had it all these past years and you just didn&#39;t realize it. So now that you&#39;re recognizing it, it&#39;s time to do something for that.</p><p>[00:27:12] And, and the the something that you need to do is this melding because, I think all four of us have said it right, consumers don&#39;t care about channels. you know, there was a lot of, of jokes made, I think during shop talk about when they said on stage it was time to kill omnichannel and, and use a different phrase.</p><p>[00:27:26] But I, I think the jokes aside, maybe the reason why we don&#39;t need to use that as a term is because if we&#39;re truly gonna look at things from the consumer&#39;s perspective, there&#39;s no such thing as a channel,</p><p>[00:27:36] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Right.</p><p>[00:27:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right? The whole I idea of looking at it, measuring, developing, operating in terms of these channels is absolutely meaningless to the consumer.</p><p>[00:27:46] And what is meaningful to the consumer is, do you have a product I&#39;m looking for, where can I go get it? How can I get it? How can I learn about it? To make sure I&#39;m, I&#39;m making the right choice and can you help me do all of the above? [00:28:00] And sometimes that&#39;s on, could be on a live stream you know, could be in a store, might just be the website.</p><p>[00:28:06] you know, now, now we&#39;re, because of the new developments in ai right? We actually have meaningful demos about chatbots being helpful, unlike previous generations that maybe weren&#39;t so helpful. but yeah, there&#39;s all these different ways to, to do that now. It doesn&#39;t matter. I, I think maybe I, I might rephrase it to say it&#39;s not that we need to stop thinking about channels.</p><p>[00:28:23] It&#39;s that let&#39;s recognize the channels don&#39;t matter. What matters is, how are you making those things I just listed available to that customer? you know, I, I like using Jeff, your example. We mentioned about B N H photo and we talked last time at N R F, right? </p><p>[00:28:37] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Just thinking </p><p>[00:28:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Because it&#39;s like the per, it&#39;s the perfect example, right?</p><p>[00:28:41] You needed to know. About a product and, and, and maybe it wasn&#39;t even a product, I guess I shouldn&#39;t say a product. You needed to know about a category, right? To help you decide on a product and you leveraged that livestream. It was a one-to-one, but I&#39;d still call it a livestream for that learning experience.</p><p>[00:28:57] Did it matter to you as a consumer that it was [00:29:00] a livestream versus you having been in New York City and walked into the b and h store? No. Right. And. It didn&#39;t matter. You got the answer you wanted. You knew what you wanted to buy in the end. And that&#39;s, that was the win. So I think that&#39;s what what I see is finally happening and we&#39;ll see more of it is the blending is real. and I think the technologies have caught up too. I think maybe one of the reasons, if, if we&#39;re honest, right? It&#39;s that there were a lot of technology promises in those past years that were 80% there, maybe not a hundred percent there. And retailers, you know, in fairness right, couldn&#39;t figure out how do I get that extra 20% to make it right.</p><p>[00:29:34] I think the technology is catching up to that in many ways to make it more, more doable and easier to do. And, and. The consumer adoption is there. You know, one of the things I, I joked about with some folks at, at Shop Talk is last year&#39;s big hype was all metaverse, right? And when you look back and say, well, why didn&#39;t that necessarily pick up?</p><p>[00:29:54] And I&#39;m not gonna say that it&#39;s gone, but I am gonna say that it it, the promises that were talked about and hyped up at Shop Talk [00:30:00] last year didn&#39;t materialize because what&#39;s the thing that was missing? It was the consumer adoption of it. the retailers could do any, everything they wanted on that, but consumers didn&#39;t really have a reason to adopt it.</p><p>[00:30:11] Whereas I, I think now the technologies retailers are looking at don&#39;t have that consumer adoption element because it&#39;s transparent to the consumer. And I think that&#39;s where the focus will go. So if a retailer thinks a, I&#39;m not gonna worry about channels, I just need to present things in front of a customer in some way.</p><p>[00:30:27] What are all the different ways I can do that? What technologies help me accomplish that? And which ones don&#39;t really require the consumer to learn how to use it because they&#39;re already using it. It&#39;s either, you know, consumers know how to watch a video. You don&#39;t have to teach them how to join a live stream, that that&#39;s easy.</p><p>[00:30:41] You&#39;re gonna have to teach them how to go to a website. You have to teach them how to go into a store and do things. That&#39;s why Metaverse hadn&#39;t picked up yet, because consumers have to learn how to do it. And you know, back to Ron, your comment. It&#39;s not the year for shiny objects. </p><p>[00:30:55] So the, the technology, I think now, and I, I&#39;ll say for now, and let&#39;s make it the next [00:31:00] three years, the technology&#39;s gonna help with that seamless nature, which I guess I&#39;m back to one of the four shop talk themes, right?</p><p>[00:31:05] Seamless stores. but maybe expanding it to just seamless experience that that&#39;s where it&#39;s finally gonna go. And we won&#39;t have to, we&#39;re not gonna need to distinguish. Oh, is that an experiential retail scenario for the consumer, or is it about convenience? It&#39;s just there, it&#39;s just commerce.</p><p>[00:31:21] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:31:22] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah, </p><p>[00:31:22] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> mean, I&#39;d love I, </p><p>[00:31:24] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Go ahead, Ron.</p><p>[00:31:25] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> go ahead, Jeff. No, go ahead.</p><h3>[00:31:26] The New Way to Encourage Innovation With Consumer Adoption</h3><p>[00:31:26] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So Ricardo, I know you&#39;re gonna be shocked to hear this, but sometimes vendors make a lot of buzz or noise or, or to go back to my old days hype. The whole metaverse thing is so illustrative because one, I I&#39;m a fan because I&#39;ve trained in simulators as a aviator for, for 25 years, but that is a massively heavy lift.</p><p>[00:31:45] And to go and scream about something that is a massively heavy lift we&#39;re, we&#39;re absolutely gonna see that evolve and it&#39;s gonna take kinda like R F I D probably five to ten years. And so, you know what we need to understand, and this is where we as communicators really need to. [00:32:00]Probably should have been in front of that a lot more.</p><p>[00:32:01] It&#39;s like, let&#39;s encourage innovation, but understand what it takes to innovate. You can&#39;t, I mean, you can&#39;t spend 10 trillion overnight. You have to do that in increments and you have to encourage the innovation and not make fun of it when it, you know, something like, like Metaverse doesn&#39;t blow up overnight.</p><p>[00:32:18] There&#39;s a lot of processes and the process for innovation has become cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And that&#39;s, that&#39;s what&#39;s also helping. I mean, low-code. I mean it&#39;s you know, my podcast partner, Brian can&#39;t say the word low-code enough in, in every sentence, it&#39;s low-code cuz he&#39;s a low-code guy.</p><p>[00:32:32] But, but he&#39;s, he&#39;s sold me on that. I mean, when I started at Gardner, I, I mean terabyte of storage was a million dollars. I&#39;ve got 15 terabytes on my desk. I&#39;ve got three terabytes in my laptop. That&#39;s a picture in 20 years of the massively almost deflationary cycle or cost of, of innovation.</p><p>[00:32:52] And that&#39;s what we have now. Now we have these tools, now we have all this stuff. You think about. You think about what, what a customer service channel is [00:33:00] gonna look like in a year. We&#39;re gonna be live streaming we&#39;re gonna have ChatGPT I mean, it is orders of magnitude different than what we, what we, what we were, you know, just a simple phone call even five or six years ago.</p><p>[00:33:11] That&#39;s how fast we&#39;re innovating. And the key though, that&#39;s how cheaply we&#39;re able to innovate and to do things. And now the key point, and Ricardo, you&#39;re so spot on. You have a customer that now has more power in their hands and we, that&#39;s an old story, but they know how to use it. They know how to embrace it.</p><p>[00:33:29] And I think the other thing that people need to understand, that&#39;s one thing Ron, I&#39;m a little concerned about when I hear brands wanna maybe over, over. I don&#39;t know, try to manage that live stream a little too much. Look at TikTok. Those are not professional videos. Those are getting millions of views.</p><p>[00:33:45] Those are kids with a phone in front of them. And so the, that expectation for something overmanaged, I think is gonna, is gonna be a negative more, more so than a positive. And so that&#39;s that part of that innovation where the customers way ahead of where we are as brands, as [00:34:00]retailers, and we&#39;re just sort of racing and trying to figure out, okay, how, how much professionalism do we put in?</p><p>[00:34:05] How much do we let people run loose? So exciting. The next three years are just gonna be insane. Um,</p><p>[00:34:10] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> what you just said has one specific word that is the same and has been the same for the last 10 years, will be the same for the next 10 years. The key is that the consumer knows how to adopt adoption. We all know that things that can&#39;t be or it&#39;s difficult to adopt, never work, whether it&#39;s metaverse or whatever, or tools.</p><p>[00:34:31] Things that are easy to adopt will always work. And the consumer now has a very different set of a very different playing field for their adoption. That is not in our control and but it benefits us tremendously.</p><h3>[00:34:49] The Loyalty Factor</h3><p>[00:34:49] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah, agreed. I agree with you, Jeff. It&#39;s it&#39;s that balance of like, what can I do? Like test, learn, try, get out of it quickly, or, you know, [00:35:00] actually, if this is an important part of, of the customer journey, I think that what I would add to your question, Vicky, about the next three to five years is about loyalty, but I look at it in like really two, two very different ways.</p><p>[00:35:14] I look at it from a, a store, I look at it from a store team if we&#39;re gonna talk about stores, we have to talk about team loyalty and people loyalty. And so the biggest pushback from investment in people that I hear from senior executives is, the turnover&#39;s too high for me to spend money on these people.</p><p>[00:35:36] And my pushback is the reason that they&#39;re turning is because you&#39;re not investing. And if, if we don&#39;t, if we don&#39;t put more effort into loyalty at the front lines, it&#39;s going, we&#39;re gonna keep repeating the same mistakes and we&#39;re, we&#39;re never gonna deliver the results that we need if you can&#39;t retain the team.</p><p>[00:35:56] So I think there&#39;s a huge loyalty frontline. And then [00:36:00] there&#39;s loyalty customer so much about first. Data, you know, how do we get new customers? How do we retain that customer? How much does it cost to get that customer? And while I think the conversation about having like the full picture of the customer when they walk into a store is a good conversation, I don&#39;t see it live in action.</p><p>[00:36:22] If I&#39;m a, you know, a, a very like loyal e-com for one brand, I walk into a location that they have no idea who I am. </p><p>[00:36:32] And so I think we, we have to figure out ways to retain loyal customers. That&#39;s cha, a channel less loyal customer. Uh, because they&#39;re putting a lot of effort in there. Now finding ways. I mean, that&#39;s, I was between NRF and, and Shoptalk.</p><p>[00:36:48] I was at eTail, which, you know, that is very much about marketing and customer and first cus first party data and that we, we have to think about that as a major priority for [00:37:00] the next three years too. And from, from both sides. yeah. </p><p>[00:37:04] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> great point.</p><p>[00:37:05] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:37:06] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> And, and loyalty is not about points anymore. That&#39;s, that&#39;s, that&#39;s, that&#39;s gonna be like the word innovation really needs to mean something different. So does the word loyalty. It&#39;s not about earn points. It&#39;s a very different proposition. I think, Ron, you explained it. You explained it well.</p><p>[00:37:23] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, and it&#39;s, it&#39;s, you know, luxury, luxury brands are going through this. Contemporary brands are going through this, you know, people are then, yeah, Walmart&#39;s writing about a luxury customer shop buying groceries at Walmart. Now how do, how do I retain that customer and a Walmart, but I&#39;m also then buying a handbag at Gucci like this.</p><p>[00:37:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:37:45] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> There, there&#39;s no one right way to say how a customer&#39;s behaving today, yet loyalty to the, to the brands where people have gravitated is how we will sustain great results.</p><p>[00:37:58] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yeah.[00:38:00]</p><p>[00:38:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I, I, I think, you know, hearing you say that I, I, I thought of two other examples like the Sephora at a Kohls. How does Kohls convert that Sephora customer to shop in the Kohls much like, you know, the Amazon returns in the Kohls, giving them, a coupon to buy something in the store over the next few days.</p><p>[00:38:18] I think that&#39;s the same as your example Vicki, it&#39;s not of just about points uh, points and discounts don&#39;t buy loyalty for a brand, but then compare that to the kind of loyalty a brand like Apple has with their customers. Which I, if there&#39;s gonna be, if you were to pick two or three top brands, that probably reflect the highest loyalty, I think that has to be one of the top three right there. And sure you can point to, you know, the decision to open stores as having been a great piece of that, but it&#39;s not really just about Apple stores, it&#39;s just everything about them that drives the loyalty. And there&#39;s an example of a brand that doesn&#39;t give points and doesn&#39;t give discounts, that has a lot of super loyal customers.</p><p>[00:38:54] As you know, when we got on here and we all showed off our, our AirPods Max headphones here. [00:39:00] So there&#39;s, there&#39;s a brand loyalty example that&#39;s real.</p><p>[00:39:03] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> But</p><p>[00:39:03] they have But they </p><p>[00:39:04] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> of the relationship experience. </p><p>[00:39:07] Yeah. </p><p>[00:39:08] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> but they also have frontline team loyalty. This is a, that&#39;s a brand that invests heavily in stores and training and development and, and strategy and upskilling them and investing and stretch assignments and going to Cupertino for a year, going to Hong Kong for a year.</p><p>[00:39:26] Like they will do anything to make sure that their teams are happy. Having worked there, myself and I can speak to it like it, they&#39;re the loyalty, generally from Apple employees in stores is really high and you feel that they&#39;re proud to work there and they&#39;re could not be more excited to sell you 600 dollar headphones.</p><p>[00:39:47] And you know, we, we all, we all do. We all do it. And it&#39;s a really good example, Ricardo. Yeah.</p><h3>[00:39:53] Back to Changing Relationships As The ShopTalk Theme</h3><p>[00:39:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. Well, Vicky, you started us on the, that changing relationships theme as maybe the [00:40:00] core theme of the four that Shop Talk mentioned. I think Ron, with the raising the point about loyalty, you brought us right back full circle again to the changing relationships and how that, if we were to pick one theme of, of the four that Shop Talk&#39;s that I think we&#39;re, we&#39;re sort of, maybe indirectly agreeing here that the number one theme was these changing relationships and which includes both how you build that brand customer relationship, but also the brand employee relationship, and I think we can add in, you know, brand to brand relationship. It really is all about how those relationships are changing and how they remain together for the success of the business.</p><p>[00:40:38] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah. agreed.</p><p>[00:40:40] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> agreed. </p><p>[00:40:41] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:40:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So I think maybe that&#39;s a good note for us to close on,</p><p>[00:40:46] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Sounds great. </p><p>[00:40:47] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yes, </p><p>[00:40:47] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> is always so much fun. </p><p>[00:40:50] It&#39;s a great, always a great conversation </p><p>[00:40:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> think Jeff, your idea is onto something here that we do these after an event a few days or so after the event, so we&#39;ve all had time to kind [00:41:00] of think about and, and digest it.</p><p>[00:41:01] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> yeah, I, I do think, I do think vendors are gonna have a tough decision now. I mean, they&#39;re gonna have to consider shop talk a, a, a, a really legitimate show. And especially if they push into the store aspect of it. It&#39;s gonna be interesting to see how, how, how you allocate your marketing dollars. But I was impressed.</p><p>[00:41:17] I was very impressed with the show.</p><p>[00:41:20] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> me too. Very impressed. Is anyone going to Barcelona?</p><p>[00:41:23] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> No.</p><p>[00:41:24] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> No. </p><p>[00:41:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> unfortunately, </p><p>[00:41:25] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> great city, but two darn</p><p>[00:41:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> if only so, yeah,</p><p>[00:41:28] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> no recap of Shop Talk Barcelona.</p><p>[00:41:39] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep, Well,</p><p>[00:41:39] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Maybe </p><p>[00:41:40] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> I think </p><p>[00:41:40] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> cover it. Maybe we&#39;ll cover it from afar. we&#39;ll just, we&#39;ll just jump the, We&#39;ll, jump the Twitter hashtag and then give our </p><p>[00:41:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right. right. We&#39;ll, we&#39;ll look for great photos from people who are fortunate enough to be there.</p><p>[00:41:52] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Exactly.</p><p>[00:41:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, I, I guess maybe on that sort of disappointing note for the conversation</p><p>[00:41:57] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Sorry. </p><p>[00:41:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> we&#39;ll, we&#39;ll wrap it up [00:42:00] there. What do you say Jeff? </p><p>[00:42:01] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Sounds good.</p><p>[00:42:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Sound good? All right. Well, Ron, Vicki, a as always a pleasure. Thanks again. We&#39;re gonna have to keep, keep doing these cuz this is just too much fun not to.</p><p>[00:42:10] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yeah, it&#39;s great. I love seeing you guys. Happy Friday. Happy weekend. Happy Easter. Happy Passover.</p><p>[00:42:16] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Same. Same to you. </p><p>[00:42:17] Same to you. Thank you. </p><p>[00:42:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thanks everybody. Thank you.</p><p>[00:42:19] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Okay, bye.</p><p>[00:42:21] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Bye.</p><h3>[00:42:22] Show Recap</h3><p>[00:42:22] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Welcome back everyone and wow, I loved that conversation. I&#39;m so with you guys on focusing on people. Retail is, totally a people business. I might not have been at Shop Talk, but I have to agree with the whole point about changing relationships and focusing on people loyalty both with store teams and customers is really where every retailer and brand needs to go.</p><p>[00:42:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, it, it&#39;s interesting how different this discussion went compared to the conversation Jeff and I had with Krystina [00:43:00] Gustafson and Ben Miller in part one of the series. In that discussion, we really dug into, All the main trends at the show, and, and both Krystina and Ben really gave us some amazing details and viewpoints on how those four trends were manifesting in the industry and how people talked about it at the show.</p><p>[00:43:15] And they were totally right about those trends. And of course, I, I have to put a plug in here for retail media networks and that that&#39;s for you, Jeff, if you&#39;re out there listening, you know, I couldn&#39;t resist to bring that up, just, just so you&#39;re aware. But when Ron and Vicki both brought us to that intersection of technology and people, it nicely outlined how it really does come down to people no matter what you do with the technology in retailing.</p><p>[00:43:36] I have to say, that&#39;s what made this one of my favorite conversations on the podcast yet.</p><p>[00:43:41] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, I mean, I really appreciate you guys for, you know, always bringing it back to center, amplifying the importance of relationships. It&#39;s really been with a heavy heart over this pandemic, just kind of seeing clientele turn into email marketing and diluting the magic of these relationships and that sales process, [00:44:00] or beyond the sales process, like the brand experience, you know, coming from the luxury side.</p><p>[00:44:06] It&#39;s so much more than a sales associate, and shopping alone just hasn&#39;t hit the same note. So I&#39;m just really excited to see so much focus go into the people, the relationships, the technology that needs to be made for people to like scale their work. Workspaces, digitization, not just replacement and, and AI like,</p><p>[00:44:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:44:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> AI Bard and I are not getting into conversations about shoes, pants, jackets, dress, nada! not invited </p><p>[00:44:42] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, that&#39;s not happening. Yeah. I, I, I really think Vicki nailed it in her comment when she said, you know, the relationship is the experience. At the end of the day, that&#39;s what it&#39;s all about. And you know, as often, I mean, let, let&#39;s face it, we talk about technology on this show all the time, but we, we can&#39;t lose sight of [00:45:00] why are we talking about technology?</p><p>[00:45:01] It&#39;s to help augment that people relationship, not replace it. And, and that I think is really what we&#39;re, this conversation really got to. And, and I&#39;m really excited that that&#39;s where it ended up.</p><p>[00:45:11] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Me too. I&#39;m slightly biased, but thanks. I, I, I really like how you guys brought this together. With that Vicki called the melding of online in stores. Of course, I&#39;m a store girl, right. But I like built some of the first e-commerce stores. And I just love talking about like store teams, how interacting with a stylist or a personal shopper makes a completely different and unique experience from discovering products to just the buying process.</p><p>[00:45:42] Vicki just nailed it by saying that the experience is the relationship and what that melding, digital and physical is all about. When retails retailers do it right, services</p><p>[00:45:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:45:57] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> are significant.</p><p>[00:45:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. I, I [00:46:00] agree. And I think Jeff added a great point there too, about how the technology has to enable this, not compete with it, not make it more complicated. You know, it&#39;s that, it, it&#39;s that whole adoption point that we all talked about and why I think we all agree in that, you know, the, the current tech trends like, All, everything about generative AI right now and anything else that took over the conversation at this year&#39;s Shop Talk really have an advantage over the metaverse trend from last year&#39;s show because it comes down to consumer adoption.</p><p>[00:46:26] If consumers can benefit from a technology without adopting anything new or any, whether it&#39;s a new habit or the ac, technology on, on the consumer side of it, then that&#39;s a winner. For retailers, if consumers have to adopt something, it&#39;s gonna take a lot longer for, for them to complete that adoption and to make an impact on, on the retailer&#39;s business.</p><p>[00:46:43] It doesn&#39;t mean it won&#39;t happen. I think to Jeff&#39;s point about metaverse, I think we&#39;d all agree it&#39;s gonna happen. It will happen. It&#39;s just not happening right away. It might not happen in less than a year&#39;s time. It&#39;s more of a long-term play. But some of these other technologies that we&#39;re trending this year, they have an immediate impact.</p><p>[00:46:58] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Hundred [00:47:00] percent. I mean so much, so many of times technology ends up taking the work out of the business or the process and puts all of the work on the consumer. They have to do the heavy lifting and I think metaverse is definitely suffered from that, you know, the perspective that you just spoke of.</p><p>[00:47:22] But then again, like. Web three has a better chance of making a difference because it&#39;s easier to lift on the consumer side than the Metaverse. The adoption will come from loyalty programs, as an example. Exclusive and unlockable content. Just look at Starbucks New Odyssey program and what you and Jeff talked about with Max from Z Blocks back at N R F.</p><p>[00:47:46] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, that&#39;s true. That that&#39;s true. I mean, although I have to admit, I, I, I&#39;ve totally failed in my efforts to unlock the first NFTs in the Starbucks program. I didn&#39;t get enough points to get the early drop.</p><p>[00:47:55] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> All right. Well, I, we, we&#39;ll, we&#39;ll, we&#39;ll, we&#39;ll do a little one-on-one[00:48:00]</p><p>[00:48:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I may need your help on that.</p><p>[00:48:01] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Be offline and on the blockchain.</p><p>[00:48:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Oh, okay. I guess you know that maybe with your help, I can do better next time. But you know, I, I guess on that totally disappointing note I think this is, it only means one thing for this episode, right Casey?</p><p>[00:48:17] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Indeed it&#39;s that time to, to wrap up. And I have to say, I agree. It&#39;s the best one ever. So we&#39;re gonna wrap up this Shop Talk crossover series with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation, it&#39;s been good.</p><p>[00:48:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It has.</p><h3>[00:48:33] Show Close</h3><p>[00:48:33] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> If you enjoyed this season shows, especially our just completed podcast crossover mini-series, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don&#39;t miss a minute. Plus remember, you can watch us, not just listen on our YouTube [00:49:00] channel and like, and comment there too. Share your thoughts. </p><p>[00:49:03] If you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a full transcript of this episode, take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets. I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden.</p><p>[00:49:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> If you&#39;d like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season and crossover series, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter and LinkedIn, too, at Retail Razor for the latest updates. And watch for our season finale episode coming soon with a truly special guest host that&#39;s gonna turn things around and ask us questions for a change.</p><p>[00:49:37] But for now, I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:49:39] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:49:42] ​</p><p>[00:49:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. </p><p>[00:49:49] Until next time. </p><p>[00:49:50] This is the Retail Razor Show. [00:50:00]</p> 981eeb0e-2133-4cb4-a7f9-f8883fb673ed https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 28 Apr 2023 11:05:00 +0000 3000 no full S2E12c #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL – Digital Twins with Site Bionics S2E12c #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL – Digital Twins with Site Bionics 12 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E12c #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL – Digital Twins with Site Bionics How can retailers perform A/B testing of merchandise layouts in their stores without cost and without burdening store teams? By using Digital Twins, that’s how! So how does a retailer build a digital twin of their stores? Meet startup Site Bionics and founder and CEO, Adam Blair. It’s Part 3 of our #ShoptalkLive podcast cross-over series with This Week in Innovation and special guest host Jeff Roster, recorded live and in-person at Shoptalk! In this episode, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar sit down with Site Bionics CEO, Adam Blair, to learn how they are helping retailers solve merchandising and operational challenges via digital twins, dramatically reducing the cost of testing new store layouts. Plus, we learn how Site Bionics can even help validate coverage maps of loss prevention camera systems! Yes, Jeff and Ricardo have uncovered another trend at Shoptalk – using loss prevention camera infrastructure in multiple ways that will positively impact your revenue streams and lower your costs. It’s all in this episode! We’re now standing at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E12c Site Bionics [00:00:00] Show Intro [00:00:20] Casey Golden: Hello Retail Razor Show listeners and viewers, and welcome to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:00:33] Ricardo Belmar: And I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. Welcome to part three in our Shop Top Live crossover event with Jeff Roster, and This Week In Innovation podcast. [00:00:42] Casey Golden: You guys really make me feel like I missed out on some great conversations. I think I'm getting more FOMO than our listeners here. [00:00:51] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:00:52] Casey Golden: You are killing it with these amazing interviews. I have to come and join you guys next time, even though like I have no business [00:01:00] purpose to be there. [00:01:02] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it would be amazing if you could make it, Casey, we definitely missed you on this. It was lots of fun to, to capture these sessions. So on today's show, we are talking about none other than digital twins. One of my favorite probably my, the favorite metaverse topic that isn't necessarily a metaverse topic. [00:01:22] Casey Golden: Right. Well, I'm already hooked, so just tell me more. Spill it. Who did you guys chat with? [00:01:30] Ricardo Belmar: So this time Jeff and I spoke with Adam Blair, c e o, and founder of Startup Site Bionics. And in this discussion we learned just how popular it is to use those loss prevention cameras in your store for so much more than loss prevention. I mean, this was the second startup we talked to that were tapping into those cameras as a resource for analytics. [00:01:50] This time using them to help build a multi-layered digital twin of your store. [00:01:54] Casey Golden: Interesting. And you guys uncovered a trend trend there. Wow. Like [00:02:00] not many people would've said those loss prevention cameras are so popular not too long ago. [00:02:06] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. Right. Exactly. So you, you'll also want to keep track throughout this discussion with Adam of just how many different use cases and questions you can answer about your store environment using this digital twin that you build with, with their solution and, and all the loss prevention cameras plus a few extra little add-ons that that I think are pretty clever that they do. [00:02:25] Casey Golden: Well, let's not spend any more precious time talking about it. Let's get right into the discussion with you, Jeff and Adam Blair, c e o of Site Bionics, recorded live and in person at Shoptalk 2023. [00:02:40] Site Bionics Interview [00:02:40] Ricardo Belmar: hey everyone we are back at Shop Talk 2023, continuing our crossover event with This Week In Innovation. I'm Ricardo Belmar. I'm host of the Retail Razor Show and I am here with none other than the myth, the legend, Mr. Jeff Roster, [00:02:59] Jeff Roster: [00:03:00] how you, how you doing today? I don't know about you, but I am dragging. I'm possibly, I went a little hard on the, on the evening research opportunities last night. [00:03:08] Ricardo Belmar: Just a little, just a Yeah, yeah. [00:03:10] Jeff Roster: little bit hard, but it was [00:03:11] Ricardo Belmar: It's, it was, yeah. It's, it's what are we day three? Are we day three, day [00:03:14] Jeff Roster: five. I tried to, I really was planning on being done by eight, but there was an event at the What Skyfall lounge, which was started at nine 30. [00:03:24] Phenomenal. But boy, that got a little bit late Little [00:03:30] Ricardo Belmar: I hear you. I hear you. One, one more day to go. One more day. One more day to go. All right. All right. So the good news is we've got another great guest with us today. Jeff. We are here with Adam Blair and the CEO of Site Bionics, who's gonna tell us all about the cool things that he's working on over there. [00:03:47] So Adam, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself here and dive in and give us your background and what Site Bionics is all about and what you know, what challenges are you solving for retailers and, and give us the scoop. [00:03:58] Adam Blair: Sounds good. [00:04:00] Thanks for the intro. Yeah. At Site Bionics we're helping retailers make sense of their physical world. [00:04:04] And what that means particularly is we're building digital twins for retail stores. And we, we view that as, just to be clear, cuz we, we you know, one of the things that you get into with digital twins is there's a lot of different uses of it. [00:04:16] The different, it's an kind of an overloaded term. Right, right, right. We view the digital twin as a data, fundamentally a data model of the store. And it's a means of getting, taking the messy, unstructured, unstructured data that you get in a store when you have humans moving around doing what humans do. [00:04:32] And and, and you try to make sense of it all. So yeah, for us, it, it actually getting into a little bit of how we do that, we start a little, we start by getting a, a sense of the site. So we have the means of going around and getting a physical rendering. So, to be clear, it's not sort of a metaverse play in that direct sense, right? [00:04:50] Where we're just, you're not necessarily going into it. But we do have, for what it's worth, we do have a rendering that's like video game quality rendering of the space. But that's a tool it's a [00:05:00] tool that allows us to we, we can start there. We can help retailer to understand how the store is laid out whether or not their merchandising and their layout is matching what they expect from corporate and, and be able to feed that data back. [00:05:11] And that's sort of our layer. Right. Then we have the ability to layer on to use existing cameras in the store as available and be able to add sort of our video analytics piece on top of that where you can track movement through the space. Right. And then we have an iot portion that can go beyond that too, where we can leverage on my, my pack background in, in R F I D particularly and, and other iot technologies and, and be able to. [00:05:36] That and, and, and build really. So it's sort of these layers and we want to bring value to retailer to each of these layers, right? And but it's the full data source. That's really the thing. And, and, and then once you add that, you get that full system you get the learning that goes on top of it. [00:05:51] And then you have the ability to move into higher levels of analytics where you're able to get a model and understand how things are behaving, why they're, why things are happening and, [00:06:00] and then help retailers better understand how to use their space and make the most of it. [00:06:04] Building a Digital Twin [00:06:04] Jeff Roster: So a couple questions right off the bat. How do you get the, the first rendering in, in layer one? [00:06:10] Adam Blair: Yeah, we do that with it's, it's, it is using just a cell phone standard imagery. We have the ability and we, we've actually this is the piece we've built so far. We're, we're obviously very, we're very new startup. [00:06:19] We've only been around for a couple months but this is a piece that we have, we developed the capability to go into a store and develop that rendering in about 15 minutes for like a mall size store. So yes. Yes, [00:06:31] Jeff Roster: So who would actually do that? Would store associate level? I mean, just literally somebody just taking their phone and just videoing the the aisles and [00:06:37] Adam Blair: that's right. [00:06:38] Jeff Roster: Oh, wow. Okay. [00:06:39] Adam Blair: Yeah. It's, it's, we don't want it to be specialized. We don't want to have to send our people in. We want to make that available to, you know, the, the people that are there for, for ease, [00:06:46] Jeff Roster: Then I think in layer two, you said something about tying into existing cameras, is that the LP cameras or [00:06:52] Adam Blair: we have the ability to do that. Yes. Or that, that's what we're working to build, I should say the, the, the DVR that's existing on the camera, right? I mean, we're, we're, we're very [00:07:00] sensitive about privacy. Right? That's a big, big deal for us. We mean that genuinely. So we don't, you know, we don't want to be storing any date, any, any image data. [00:07:09] We wanna leverage the existing systems that, that are there. [00:07:11] And so we would, yeah, we would be able to essentially connect in with the existing security system and, and be able to derive analytics from that. [00:07:20] How Retailers Use Digital Twins [00:07:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm, interesting. So tell us then a little bit about what kind of analytics you would expect a retailer to, to benefit from here, how would they use, so once you have the digital twin of the store, right. How are you expecting a, a retailer to use this? [00:07:33] Adam Blair: Yeah, we're expecting I mean, it's, it's, look, we, we think that this if we can get to the full digital twin or when we get there, I should say that it, it can be used in, in all sorts of aspects of how they run the store. So and how they engage with their customers as well. Right? So it starts with making the most, the, the best use of the space that they have, right? [00:07:50] Understanding how they wanna lay out a store, right? We would expect them to, in, in the long run, to be able to sort of model how they think it should work. Test it out, you might be able to [00:08:00] run AB testing in multiple stores, right. And, and, and really get to the next level of EF efficiency in sort of, in terms of the layout and, and merchandising. [00:08:10] We expect to be able to understand that the full con, the, the full shopper path to purchase. We do believe we have the ability to tie that back to individuals as if they were to opt-in. [00:08:19] They can opt in at any point in their journey, and the entire journey could be connected in. So you could start to actually conceive of a digital twin of the individual as they opt in and, and, and make better use of that. [00:08:30] And then and then, and then operationally in, in terms of operational efficiency, right? Understanding how their staff are moving around, how they're, who they're interacting, when and why. And, and try to improve operations as well. [00:08:41] So it's kind of, it can be kind of all things for all people. Right? I'm, I'm obviously sharing a vision here. [00:08:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:08:47] Okay. Okay. [00:08:48] What a Deployment Looks Like [00:08:48] Jeff Roster: So what would a deployment look like? [00:08:51] Adam Blair: That's a great question. Yeah. So the, the, the, the early deployment is you go in and you scan the store using our app which we, we are in the, we [00:09:00] we plan to productize, right? So you would go in and you would do that, that sort of first deployment, you'd connect into the back the, the security system just a computer in the back office kind of thing. [00:09:09] And and that's, that's actually all you need, right? Because you have the, the imagery and the, the, the data. We have the ability to understand what's a fixture, what's what different product. And infer your merchandising plan and how it, how it's the store is laid out. And, and so that's, that's kind of all that's necessary to g to get going. [00:09:27] We would be, you know, we would expect to be delivering dashboards and things like that. So your, your people in corporate, your merchandisers could actually interact with the store, right? You could actually lay it out in our tool set and drag and drop fixtures around and move them around in that way. [00:09:40] And then, and then push that down to your in-store. [00:09:44] You can get the, the feedback confirmation that the store has been laid out appropriately, and see how the behaviors adapt and how performance the store adapts. [00:09:52] Jeff Roster: So you're getting live feed constantly out of the the LP cameras. right. Any issue with LP? [00:09:59] Adam Blair: With, with [00:10:00] LP directly? It depends. I mean, it's gonna depend, it's gonna depend a lot on, on, on who, right? [00:10:04] Jeff Roster: so easy to work with. I'm sure. [00:10:06] Adam Blair: Very flexible. There is. Look, there's, there's absolutely a, a, a path in there with any, anytime. Look, anytime you put any computer system inside anybody's network, you have to be there's a process you have to go through. With lp it'll be more rigorous for sure. [00:10:20] Like I said, we we're, we're totally open from a privacy perspective having, having the code, getting vetted right is, is totally, you know, among our expectations, right? [00:10:31] Jeff Roster: Well, you know, Ricardo, that's interesting cuz that's the second, second startup we've talked [00:10:34] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. [00:10:35] Jeff Roster: tying in. So there's, [00:10:36] there seems [00:10:36] to be a trend [00:10:37] Ricardo Belmar: trend here in leveraging that LP video [00:10:39] Jeff Roster: 36 hours ago, if you would've said, You're gonna run stuff through the LP camera. I've said you're crazy, but, but I mean, obviously two, you know the last two folks we talked to, so Yeah. [00:10:49] And it does make sense to sweat those assets. So [00:10:51] Ricardo Belmar: right. No, I mean, it, it does because you, you've already got a lot of useful information there. You're already covering exactly what you want to see in the store, so [00:11:00] this is a great way of, of using that information to derive new data insights from it. [00:11:05] Adam Blair: In fact, one of, one of the, one of the potential early, early benefits you can have from this approach is you can actually get an, an immediate assessment of how good are your, is your security camera layout, right? Because we could show you exactly where in that 3D rendering you have coverage and where you do not. Right. [00:11:20] Ricardo Belmar: that's interesting. [00:11:21] Interesting. [00:11:21] That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. [00:11:23] Jeff Roster: Any sense right now what percentage of the store is covered? I would think in theory they would say a hundred percent, but obviously it can't be a hundred [00:11:30] Adam Blair: Yeah. Talk to the employees and see what they say. Right. [00:11:33] where they take those hidden breaks. I, I don't actually have a sense for that. I mean, it, it's it's, and, and, and it's also the sort of thing again, we, we have the ability to go in and say where those holes are, how to fill them. [00:11:44] The Digital Twin Vision [00:11:44] Ricardo Belmar: So do you envision a retailer using this, so, you know, once you have that digital twin, they have the model that they're gonna do a lot of kind of what if and ab scenarios on, product placements on shelves, and rearranging things and doing some modeling with that before they push that down to stores.[00:12:00] [00:12:00] Adam Blair: Absolutely. I mean, I, I think that that's that, that's absolutely one of the expectations. The other way that I actually like to look about, look at it is you know, most retailers when they provide direction down to the stores, they're providing guidance. And there's different, retailers are different in terms of how much local control that they give, but I love the idea of giving a bit more local control. Right. You know, one, one of the retailers we spoke with about this, they had, they said that the reason they don't give more local control is that they found they don't trust the control at the retail at, at the, at the retailer, at the, at the local site. [00:12:28] Right. They, they you know, the, the person that has best of intentions and, and the example that they gave us directly was then you end up with a beer next to the back to school section. Right. [00:12:38] Jeff Roster: It might [00:12:38] work. I don't know. [00:12:39] Ricardo Belmar: I don't, I don't know if that's unintentional, that [00:12:41] Jeff Roster: it would've worked at. [00:12:42] Ricardo Belmar: exclusively as a parent. I don't know if that's unintentional. [00:12:44] Jeff Roster: definitely would've worked at Chico State. Dropping a daughter off at San Diego State, it absolutely would've worked there. [00:12:49] Adam Blair: Maybe a little off brand for the retailer though. [00:12:51] Ricardo Belmar: Maybe just a bit. Yeah, maybe a little. [00:12:53] Adam Blair: But, but, but, but you give that sort of control down and now you actually introduce some randomness into the larger system. And that's actually a good thing in this [00:13:00] case, because as long as you're able to measure and then close that feedback loop, when somebody goes and does something that's silly, you can, you'll see the behavioral changes of that. [00:13:10] When somebody does something that's, that's surprisingly effective, you'll see those re results too and be able to understand why. And so then you can pull that data up to the corporate level and feed it down to all of your stores, and so you can, you know, create more of a, learn a much tighter, more effective learning cycle as a result. [00:13:27] Ricardo Belmar: interesting. So I, I guess I have to ask, how did you come to this idea and what, what motivated you to create this solution. [00:13:35] Adam Blair: Yeah, so it's, it's I guess it, it came through through a, a, a path, a journey, I suppose. It actually started couple startups I've had now this is my third, my third startup. The previous two have been in overhead, R F I D. [00:13:47] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. [00:13:47] Adam Blair: And and, and one in particular, the first one was we were partnered with Intel in, in their responsive retail platform from [00:13:54] Oh, okay. [00:13:54] Years back. [00:13:55] Ricardo Belmar: I remember that. [00:13:55] Adam Blair: Yeah. And so one of the things that we found early on when we did some, some of our [00:14:00] early R F I D deployments, we were getting like 85% of the, the total I inventory that we could actually like read within about an hour of. [00:14:09] we [00:14:09] found if we just left it on running continuously for long periods of time though, and we added just a, a strong probabilistic algorithm on top of it, that we could actually infer the inventory you needed for the purposes of restocking to a 99% plus accuracy by just at any given moment, just running over an extended period of time. [00:14:27] Because you could see the dynamics of the store. You could see how [00:14:31] so I haven't read something for a day. It doesn't, is it more likely that it's outta stock or it's still here and it's just not readable? Or is it, is it gone? And so by applying that sort of that that sort of algorithm and that model on top of the store, we are able to make much better, much more effective use of the really messy data that we had. [00:14:49] Right? So it, it started with that. As I got into talking to people in the computer vision space as well. [00:14:54] They have similar problems, right? Where you have, it's very messy, very uncontrolled data. And so you [00:15:00] start applying these higher level algorithms to it, and you start to get to the better insights, right? [00:15:04] You get, you start to answer the questions, you start to put yourself in a place where you can answer the questions that the retailers actually have, right? And, and to step back a little bit to the inventory question, ? Retailers don't really like, they think they want to know what, what is in their inventory list, right? [00:15:21] But in reality they want to know, should I restock right now? Right? And, and what items should I be restocking when they want to know, can I ship this? Can I have somebody that's looking at this item online right now? Should I send them to the store to pick it up? Right? Those are two very simple, very, very different questions that are, you know, it's, it's somewhat arbitrary to ask them of the same list. Right? And so by building the more comprehensive model, you can get to something that can answer those real questions that are being asked of the store, right? And so that's how we think about it. We think about it as queering the digital twin for whatever information. And the, the digital twin will give you the best answer for that [00:16:00] question, given the full context of the store, right? [00:16:04] If you're down to one umbrella, one umbrella, and you haven't sold them in a week, any, any in a week, right? You might be inclined to say, well, go ahead and send somebody that's 15 minutes away if I told you that it hadn't been raining in a week and it's raining now. Right? That answer's very different, So that's how we're looking at it, is the full context response. [00:16:21] Jeff Roster: So who do you sell into in that regard? Is that, is that BI? Is that what is that? [00:16:26] Adam Blair: Yeah, we think it's it, it, it's, it's most likely the cio ct CTO type level, right? Because we, we think about it in terms of the full data for the, for the, for the store. right? You think, we think about it in terms of you know, the, that the, the data source, because it, it, it is, it's a little bit tricky, right? [00:16:42] Because it is a lot of potential users for any of this data within the, within the retail store, and, and we're thinking about it being the CEO or the CTO being the conduit into the rest of the retailer. [00:16:52] Jeff Roster: Well, they'd be the one that buying it. But I mean, it it, where would I put that in my, in my tech stack? I mean, is that, is that business intelligence, is that I don't know, [00:17:00] video analytics, I guess. I mean that we've had that conversation too, it seems, seems pretty video in a lot of analytics. So are you comfortable with that sort of a classification. [00:17:08] Adam Blair: I mean, I think I'd prefer being more business in business intelligence than, than, I mean, I, I, I don't like it being the source of the data. I like it being the, the context of the data. But I, I, you know I think that's something we're gonna have to work through with the, the different retailers and how they're organizationally structured too. [00:17:23] Right? Because sometimes the, the titles don't completely match the function. [00:17:26] Jeff Roster: That makes sense [00:17:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's, that does happen. That's true. Okay. . Well wow. I mean this is, I'm always fascinated by digital twin technology right now, as I think this is we're still sort of in early days on, on how retailers can leverage this kind of technology. What kind of questions can they answer by using it? [00:17:43] Kind of your, your last example there, Adam, about, you know, how, how you can have just slight variation, right? Very different questions to answer. And by leveraging that digital twin, you can come up with an answer where the absence of that, you know, how, how many different systems do you have? To be able to figure out what the answer is that that's being [00:18:00] facilitated here. [00:18:00] So I think this is really, really a fascinating space to watch. And Jeff, to your point, you know, now this is the second kind of conversation we, we've kind of come across where we're plugging into LP as a data source but using it in a pretty different, more creative way necessarily than, than we might otherwise think of. [00:18:16] Jeff Roster: I w I am writing the email to my, our, our mutual friend Tony, to say, [00:18:21] Ricardo Belmar: say are you thinking about this? [00:18:22] Jeff Roster: just curious what, just so what the LP sense is on that. But [00:18:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. So Adam, if somebody wants to reach out to you and, and find out more about what you're doing in Site Bionic, what's, how should they reach out to you? [00:18:32] Adam Blair: Yeah. Honestly, best way is just reach out directly adam@sitebionics.com. Also on LinkedIn is always a good way to get in touch with me. And happy to have conversations. Right? We're early. The conversations are, are, are the greatest value. The building, the relationships is, is is the most important thing for us right now. [00:18:47] Ricardo Belmar: Great. Fantastic. Well, Adam, thanks so much for joining us and we appreciate you taking the time out to meet with us, and we'll be, we'll be watching out to see how things progress for you. [00:18:56] Adam Blair: Thank you so much for having me. [00:18:57] Jeff Roster: Outstanding. Thanks. Bye. [00:18:59] Ricardo Belmar: [00:19:00] bye everyone. [00:19:00] Show Recap [00:19:00] Casey Golden: Well, welcome back everyone. And wasn't that an interesting take on digital twins? Did you catch the ever important reference to computer vision? [00:19:15] Ricardo Belmar: Yep, I did too. I did too. And this was a short but sweet session that we had with Adam. I mean, they are really leaning into helping retailers answer tough questions about their store, ranging from merchandise layouts to just general operations. I mean, having that digital twin opens a door to so many possibilities and AB tests that you can run without having to spend the time and effort to physically change it in the store and know what kind of results you're going to get. And this is just why I've been a big proponent of digital twins, is that one super important and practical use case for metaverse applications today. [00:19:50] Casey Golden: I agree. I don't think a lot of people know how much we have been doing physical twins in the [00:20:00] industry, like building the whole entire area of your Macy's shop and shop somewhere else to flo, do floor sets and and, and not just one, but you know, 30 retailers where their floors going, how that set's gonna look. [00:20:14] Stack heights. I think that I mean, we'd have whole teams that flew in to go ahead and, and play with that before the merchandise plans went out. Having these spaces from your stores into like throughout the whole entire process. It's just, it's, there's so, there's such a money savings here that if you can turn those cameras from a cost center to generating revenue, [00:20:40] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. [00:20:41] Casey Golden: How awesome is that? [00:20:43] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. [00:20:43] Casey Golden: most times when we think of like a digital twin, everybody thinks that it's avatar clothing, [00:20:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Right, [00:20:48] Casey Golden: right? Which I love. But I think that there's, there's so many different applications that where we spend millions of dollars every season [00:21:00] that could be recaptured and spent elsewhere by using these different types of digital twins in different ways of like visualizing Even just traffic pattern. [00:21:11] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, E. Exactly, exactly. I mean, just think of all the what if scenarios you can do, like you were saying, right? Where before you could have a team of people take days, right. To experiment and try different options, different layouts. And now you just put 'em in that, in the digital twin you can see exactly, you can do a fly through, and and kind of walk through that virtual space, see what it, what it's gonna look like to you and decide maybe that's not the option you want. I mean, it it, and it really does turn that whole cost center of having to absorb the cost of making those changes. Now it's something that helps you get to revenue faster, right? [00:21:41] Because now you, you can implement the changes. You'll know what the outcome is gonna be. You've predicted it. And now when you're asking the store teams to go and do these things, it's not an experiment anymore. Now, you know that you're doing something that's gonna have a positive impact right to your, your revenue stream. So it just makes so much sense. I really believe people should be [00:22:00] adopting this more and more. So I think that Adam is on to a good, a really good solid application here with Site Bionics, and we hope to see more of them in the future. [00:22:08] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, cutting lead time is, is a really big [00:22:12] Ricardo Belmar: Huge. [00:22:13] Casey Golden: So what's coming up next in this series? We've got one more to go, right? [00:22:17] Ricardo Belmar: that's right. We've just got one more in the series and sure enough, this is probably my favorite of the set. You know, at the start of the series I teased that it was a follow up to that popular discussion we recorded at N R F. We did run into a few difficulties, however. [00:22:32] Casey Golden: Difficulties. Okay. I didn't realize there was gonna be a mystery attached. [00:22:37] Ricardo Belmar: Well, remember the TRI chat that Jeff and I had with Vicki Cantrell and Ron Thurston at nrf, the one that was supposed to be a a 10 to 15 minute discussion that turned into an almost an hour. [00:22:48] Well, yep. Well, we all agreed to do that same chat again at Shop Talk. But we did run into some scheduling challenges. [00:22:56] Sure enough, we were all so busy there was only one time slot that we could [00:23:00] manage to, to get together and, and RETHINK Retail was kind enough to let us use their booth space at Shop Talk to do this recording. So we planned it for the end of, I think it was day two at the show. But sure enough, that was also the time that Shop Talk had their happy hours scheduled on the expo floor. [00:23:16] And I mean, literally as soon as Jeff and I got to the Rethink booth and we were about to start setting up the recording equipment, suddenly we. All kinds of loud music starts blasting over the speakers because, you know, it's happy hour time, so it's time to put some music on the, on the show floor. I guess that was part of the entertainment. [00:23:33] So as you might guess, there was just no way we could record any audio under those conditions with all that background music playing. So we ended up deciding, okay, let's regroup. The week after the show, we'd all have some time to digest what we saw. Think about it. And we just do it a normal remote recording. [00:23:50] And so this last episode was not exactly recorded in person, but as a bonus it does mean that there's gonna be full video for everybody to watch this time. [00:23:58] Casey Golden: Well, that's [00:24:00] a fantastic way to close out the series and I'm sure it'll definitely be worth it. Now there's expectations that everybody's done their homework. So, [00:24:09] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, maybe I set that up a little too strongly. I hope, I hope we meet everyone's expectations now that I said that. But, but for now I, I'm just gonna thank Adam Blair for joining Jeff and me for this recording that we just went through at Shop Talk. Thank you, Adam. We will definitely be watching for Site Bionics' progress over the rest of the year. [00:24:27] Casey Golden: and on that note, Ricardo, this can only mean one thing. It's a wrap. [00:24:33] Show Close [00:24:33] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed this season's shows, especially our podcast crossover miniseries, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Plus, remember, you can watch us, not just listen on our YouTube channel and like, and comment there.[00:25:00] [00:25:00] If you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a full transcript of the episode, take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. [00:25:10] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season and the crossover series, follow us on Twitter at Casey C Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter and LinkedIn at Retail Razor for the latest updates. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:25:27] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:25:32] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the retail Razor Show. How can retailers perform A/B testing of merchandise layouts in their stores without cost and without burdening store teams? By using Digital Twins, that’s how! So how does a retailer build a digital twin of their stores? Meet startup Site Bionics and founder and CEO, Adam Blair. It’s Part 3 of our #ShoptalkLive podcast cross-over series with This Week in Innovation and special guest host Jeff Roster, recorded live and in-person at Shoptalk!


In this episode, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar sit down with Site Bionics CEO, Adam Blair, to learn how they are helping retailers solve merchandising and operational challenges via digital twins, dramatically reducing the cost of testing new store layouts. Plus, we learn how Site Bionics can even help validate coverage maps of loss prevention camera systems! Yes, Jeff and Ricardo have uncovered another trend at Shoptalk – using loss prevention camera infrastructure in multiple ways that will positively impact your revenue streams and lower your costs. It’s all in this episode!


We’re now standing at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

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Host → Ricardo Belmar,

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TRANSCRIPT

S2E12c Digital Twins with Site Bionics

[00:00:00] Show Intro 

[00:00:20] Casey Golden: Hello Retail Razor Show listeners and viewers, and welcome to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. I'm your host, Casey Golden.

[00:00:33] Ricardo Belmar: And I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. Welcome to part three in our Shop Top Live crossover event with Jeff Roster, and This Week In Innovation podcast.

[00:00:42] Casey Golden: You guys really make me feel like I missed out on some great conversations. I think I'm getting more FOMO than our listeners here.

[00:00:51] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:00:52] Casey Golden: You are killing it with these amazing interviews. I have to come and join you guys next time, even though like I have no business [00:01:00] purpose to be there.

[00:01:02] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it would be amazing if you could make it, Casey, we definitely missed you on this. It was lots of fun to, to capture these sessions. So on today's show, we are talking about none other than digital twins. One of my favorite probably my, the favorite metaverse topic that isn't necessarily a metaverse topic.

[00:01:22] Casey Golden: Right. Well, I'm already hooked, so just tell me more. Spill it. Who did you guys chat with?

[00:01:30] Ricardo Belmar: So this time Jeff and I spoke with Adam Blair, c e o, and founder of Startup Site Bionics. And in this discussion we learned just how popular it is to use those loss prevention cameras in your store for so much more than loss prevention. I mean, this was the second startup we talked to that were tapping into those cameras as a resource for analytics.

[00:01:50] This time using them to help build a multi-layered digital twin of your store.

[00:01:54] Casey Golden: Interesting. And you guys uncovered a trend trend there. Wow. Like [00:02:00] not many people would've said those loss prevention cameras are so popular not too long ago.

[00:02:06] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. Right. Exactly. So you, you'll also want to keep track throughout this discussion with Adam of just how many different use cases and questions you can answer about your store environment using this digital twin that you build with, with their solution and, and all the loss prevention cameras plus a few extra little add-ons that that I think are pretty clever that they do.

[00:02:25] Casey Golden: Well, let's not spend any more precious time talking about it. Let's get right into the discussion with you, Jeff and Adam Blair, c e o of Site Bionics, recorded live and in person at Shoptalk 2023.

[00:02:40] Site Bionics Interview

[00:02:40] Ricardo Belmar: ​hey everyone we are back at Shop Talk 2023, continuing our crossover event with This Week In Innovation. I'm Ricardo Belmar. I'm host of the Retail Razor Show and I am here with none other than the myth, the legend, Mr. Jeff Roster,

[00:02:59] Jeff Roster: [00:03:00] how you, how you doing today? I don't know about you, but I am dragging. I'm possibly, I went a little hard on the, on the evening research opportunities last night.

[00:03:08] Ricardo Belmar: Just a little, just a Yeah, yeah.

[00:03:10] Jeff Roster: little bit hard, but it was

[00:03:11] Ricardo Belmar: It's, it was, yeah. It's, it's what are we day three? Are we day three, day

[00:03:14] Jeff Roster: five. I tried to, I really was planning on being done by eight, but there was an event at the What Skyfall lounge, which was started at nine 30.

[00:03:24] Phenomenal. But boy, that got a little bit late Little 

[00:03:30] Ricardo Belmar: I hear you. I hear you. One, one more day to go. One more day. One more day to go. All right. All right. So the good news is we've got another great guest with us today. Jeff. We are here with Adam Blair and the CEO of Site Bionics, who's gonna tell us all about the cool things that he's working on over there.

[00:03:47] So Adam, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself here and dive in and give us your background and what Site Bionics is all about and what you know, what challenges are you solving for retailers and, and give us the scoop.

[00:03:58] Adam Blair: Sounds good. [00:04:00] Thanks for the intro. Yeah. At Site Bionics we're helping retailers make sense of their physical world.

[00:04:04] And what that means particularly is we're building digital twins for retail stores. And we, we view that as, just to be clear, cuz we, we you know, one of the things that you get into with digital twins is there's a lot of different uses of it.

[00:04:16] The different, it's an kind of an overloaded term. Right, right, right. We view the digital twin as a data, fundamentally a data model of the store. And it's a means of getting, taking the messy, unstructured, unstructured data that you get in a store when you have humans moving around doing what humans do.

[00:04:32] And and, and you try to make sense of it all. So yeah, for us, it, it actually getting into a little bit of how we do that, we start a little, we start by getting a, a sense of the site. So we have the means of going around and getting a physical rendering. So, to be clear, it's not sort of a metaverse play in that direct sense, right?

[00:04:50] Where we're just, you're not necessarily going into it. But we do have, for what it's worth, we do have a rendering that's like video game quality rendering of the space. But that's a tool it's a [00:05:00] tool that allows us to we, we can start there. We can help retailer to understand how the store is laid out whether or not their merchandising and their layout is matching what they expect from corporate and, and be able to feed that data back.

[00:05:11] And that's sort of our layer. Right. Then we have the ability to layer on to use existing cameras in the store as available and be able to add sort of our video analytics piece on top of that where you can track movement through the space. Right. And then we have an iot portion that can go beyond that too, where we can leverage on my, my pack background in, in R F I D particularly and, and other iot technologies and, and be able to.

[00:05:36] That and, and, and build really. So it's sort of these layers and we want to bring value to retailer to each of these layers, right? And but it's the full data source. That's really the thing. And, and, and then once you add that, you get that full system you get the learning that goes on top of it.

[00:05:51] And then you have the ability to move into higher levels of analytics where you're able to get a model and understand how things are behaving, why they're, why things are happening and, [00:06:00] and then help retailers better understand how to use their space and make the most of it.

[00:06:04] Building a Digital Twin

[00:06:04] Jeff Roster: So a couple questions right off the bat. How do you get the, the first rendering in, in layer one?

[00:06:10] Adam Blair: Yeah, we do that with it's, it's, it is using just a cell phone standard imagery. We have the ability and we, we've actually this is the piece we've built so far. We're, we're obviously very, we're very new startup.

[00:06:19] We've only been around for a couple months but this is a piece that we have, we developed the capability to go into a store and develop that rendering in about 15 minutes for like a mall size store. So yes. Yes,

[00:06:31] Jeff Roster: So who would actually do that? Would store associate level? I mean, just literally somebody just taking their phone and just videoing the the aisles and 

[00:06:37] Adam Blair: that's right. 

[00:06:38] Jeff Roster: Oh, wow. Okay.

[00:06:39] Adam Blair: Yeah. It's, it's, we don't want it to be specialized. We don't want to have to send our people in. We want to make that available to, you know, the, the people that are there for, for ease,

[00:06:46] Jeff Roster: Then I think in layer two, you said something about tying into existing cameras, is that the LP cameras or

[00:06:52] Adam Blair: we have the ability to do that. Yes. Or that, that's what we're working to build, I should say the, the, the DVR that's existing on the camera, right? I mean, we're, we're, we're very [00:07:00] sensitive about privacy. Right? That's a big, big deal for us. We mean that genuinely. So we don't, you know, we don't want to be storing any date, any, any image data.

[00:07:09] We wanna leverage the existing systems that, that are there.

[00:07:11] And so we would, yeah, we would be able to essentially connect in with the existing security system and, and be able to derive analytics from that.

[00:07:20] How Retailers Use Digital Twins

[00:07:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm, interesting. So tell us then a little bit about what kind of analytics you would expect a retailer to, to benefit from here, how would they use, so once you have the digital twin of the store, right. How are you expecting a, a retailer to use this?

[00:07:33] Adam Blair: Yeah, we're expecting I mean, it's, it's, look, we, we think that this if we can get to the full digital twin or when we get there, I should say that it, it can be used in, in all sorts of aspects of how they run the store. So and how they engage with their customers as well. Right? So it starts with making the most, the, the best use of the space that they have, right?

[00:07:50] Understanding how they wanna lay out a store, right? We would expect them to, in, in the long run, to be able to sort of model how they think it should work. Test it out, you might be able to [00:08:00] run AB testing in multiple stores, right. And, and, and really get to the next level of EF efficiency in sort of, in terms of the layout and, and merchandising.

[00:08:10] We expect to be able to understand that the full con, the, the full shopper path to purchase. We do believe we have the ability to tie that back to individuals as if they were to opt-in.

[00:08:19] They can opt in at any point in their journey, and the entire journey could be connected in. So you could start to actually conceive of a digital twin of the individual as they opt in and, and, and make better use of that.

[00:08:30] And then and then, and then operationally in, in terms of operational efficiency, right? Understanding how their staff are moving around, how they're, who they're interacting, when and why. And, and try to improve operations as well.

[00:08:41] So it's kind of, it can be kind of all things for all people. Right? I'm, I'm obviously sharing a vision here.

[00:08:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:08:47] Okay. Okay.

[00:08:48] What a Deployment Looks Like

[00:08:48] Jeff Roster: So what would a deployment look like?

[00:08:51] Adam Blair: That's a great question. Yeah. So the, the, the, the early deployment is you go in and you scan the store using our app which we, we are in the, we [00:09:00] we plan to productize, right? So you would go in and you would do that, that sort of first deployment, you'd connect into the back the, the security system just a computer in the back office kind of thing.

[00:09:09] And and that's, that's actually all you need, right? Because you have the, the imagery and the, the, the data. We have the ability to understand what's a fixture, what's what different product. And infer your merchandising plan and how it, how it's the store is laid out. And, and so that's, that's kind of all that's necessary to g to get going.

[00:09:27] We would be, you know, we would expect to be delivering dashboards and things like that. So your, your people in corporate, your merchandisers could actually interact with the store, right? You could actually lay it out in our tool set and drag and drop fixtures around and move them around in that way.

[00:09:40] And then, and then push that down to your in-store.

[00:09:44] You can get the, the feedback confirmation that the store has been laid out appropriately, and see how the behaviors adapt and how performance the store adapts.

[00:09:52] Jeff Roster: So you're getting live feed constantly out of the the LP cameras. right. Any issue with LP?

[00:09:59] Adam Blair: With, with [00:10:00] LP directly? It depends. I mean, it's gonna depend, it's gonna depend a lot on, on, on who, right?

[00:10:04] Jeff Roster: so easy to work with. I'm sure.

[00:10:06] Adam Blair: Very flexible. There is. Look, there's, there's absolutely a, a, a path in there with any, anytime. Look, anytime you put any computer system inside anybody's network, you have to be there's a process you have to go through. With lp it'll be more rigorous for sure.

[00:10:20] Like I said, we we're, we're totally open from a privacy perspective having, having the code, getting vetted right is, is totally, you know, among our expectations, right?

[00:10:31] Jeff Roster: Well, you know, Ricardo, that's interesting cuz that's the second, second startup we've talked

[00:10:34] Ricardo Belmar: That's right.

[00:10:35] Jeff Roster: tying in. So there's,

[00:10:36] there seems

[00:10:36] to be a trend

[00:10:37] Ricardo Belmar: trend here in leveraging that LP video

[00:10:39] Jeff Roster: 36 hours ago, if you would've said, You're gonna run stuff through the LP camera. I've said you're crazy, but, but I mean, obviously two, you know the last two folks we talked to, so Yeah.

[00:10:49] And it does make sense to sweat those assets. So

[00:10:51] Ricardo Belmar: right. No, I mean, it, it does because you, you've already got a lot of useful information there. You're already covering exactly what you want to see in the store, so [00:11:00] this is a great way of, of using that information to derive new data insights from it. 

[00:11:05] Adam Blair: In fact, one of, one of the, one of the potential early, early benefits you can have from this approach is you can actually get an, an immediate assessment of how good are your, is your security camera layout, right? Because we could show you exactly where in that 3D rendering you have coverage and where you do not. Right. 

[00:11:20] Ricardo Belmar: that's interesting.

[00:11:21] Interesting. 

[00:11:21] That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:23] Jeff Roster: Any sense right now what percentage of the store is covered? I would think in theory they would say a hundred percent, but obviously it can't be a hundred 

[00:11:30] Adam Blair: Yeah. Talk to the employees and see what they say. Right.

[00:11:33] where they take those hidden breaks. I, I don't actually have a sense for that. I mean, it, it's it's, and, and, and it's also the sort of thing again, we, we have the ability to go in and say where those holes are, how to fill them.

[00:11:44] The Digital Twin Vision

[00:11:44] Ricardo Belmar: So do you envision a retailer using this, so, you know, once you have that digital twin, they have the model that they're gonna do a lot of kind of what if and ab scenarios on, product placements on shelves, and rearranging things and doing some modeling with that before they push that down to stores.[00:12:00]

[00:12:00] Adam Blair: Absolutely. I mean, I, I think that that's that, that's absolutely one of the expectations. The other way that I actually like to look about, look at it is you know, most retailers when they provide direction down to the stores, they're providing guidance. And there's different, retailers are different in terms of how much local control that they give, but I love the idea of giving a bit more local control. Right. You know, one, one of the retailers we spoke with about this, they had, they said that the reason they don't give more local control is that they found they don't trust the control at the retail at, at the, at the retailer, at the, at the local site.

[00:12:28] Right. They, they you know, the, the person that has best of intentions and, and the example that they gave us directly was then you end up with a beer next to the back to school section. Right.

[00:12:38] Jeff Roster: It might

[00:12:38] work. I don't know.

[00:12:39] Ricardo Belmar: I don't, I don't know if that's unintentional, that

[00:12:41] Jeff Roster: it would've worked at.

[00:12:42] Ricardo Belmar: exclusively as a parent. I don't know if that's unintentional.

[00:12:44] Jeff Roster: definitely would've worked at Chico State. Dropping a daughter off at San Diego State, it absolutely would've worked there.

[00:12:49] Adam Blair: Maybe a little off brand for the retailer though.

[00:12:51] Ricardo Belmar: Maybe just a bit. Yeah, maybe a little.

[00:12:53] Adam Blair: But, but, but, but you give that sort of control down and now you actually introduce some randomness into the larger system. And that's actually a good thing in this [00:13:00]case, because as long as you're able to measure and then close that feedback loop, when somebody goes and does something that's silly, you can, you'll see the behavioral changes of that.

[00:13:10] When somebody does something that's, that's surprisingly effective, you'll see those re results too and be able to understand why. And so then you can pull that data up to the corporate level and feed it down to all of your stores, and so you can, you know, create more of a, learn a much tighter, more effective learning cycle as a result.

[00:13:27] Ricardo Belmar: interesting. So I, I guess I have to ask, how did you come to this idea and what, what motivated you to create this solution. 

[00:13:35] Adam Blair: Yeah, so it's, it's I guess it, it came through through a, a, a path, a journey, I suppose. It actually started couple startups I've had now this is my third, my third startup. The previous two have been in overhead, R F I D.

[00:13:47] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. 

[00:13:47] Adam Blair: And and, and one in particular, the first one was we were partnered with Intel in, in their responsive retail platform from 

[00:13:54] Oh, okay.

[00:13:54] Years back.

[00:13:55] Ricardo Belmar: I remember that.

[00:13:55] Adam Blair: Yeah. And so one of the things that we found early on when we did some, some of our [00:14:00] early R F I D deployments, we were getting like 85% of the, the total I inventory that we could actually like read within about an hour of.

[00:14:09] we

[00:14:09] found if we just left it on running continuously for long periods of time though, and we added just a, a strong probabilistic algorithm on top of it, that we could actually infer the inventory you needed for the purposes of restocking to a 99% plus accuracy by just at any given moment, just running over an extended period of time.

[00:14:27] Because you could see the dynamics of the store. You could see how

[00:14:31] so I haven't read something for a day. It doesn't, is it more likely that it's outta stock or it's still here and it's just not readable? Or is it, is it gone? And so by applying that sort of that that sort of algorithm and that model on top of the store, we are able to make much better, much more effective use of the really messy data that we had.

[00:14:49] Right? So it, it started with that. As I got into talking to people in the computer vision space as well.

[00:14:54] They have similar problems, right? Where you have, it's very messy, very uncontrolled data. And so you [00:15:00] start applying these higher level algorithms to it, and you start to get to the better insights, right?

[00:15:04] You get, you start to answer the questions, you start to put yourself in a place where you can answer the questions that the retailers actually have, right? And, and to step back a little bit to the inventory question, ? Retailers don't really like, they think they want to know what, what is in their inventory list, right?

[00:15:21] But in reality they want to know, should I restock right now? Right? And, and what items should I be restocking when they want to know, can I ship this? Can I have somebody that's looking at this item online right now? Should I send them to the store to pick it up? Right? Those are two very simple, very, very different questions that are, you know, it's, it's somewhat arbitrary to ask them of the same list. Right? And so by building the more comprehensive model, you can get to something that can answer those real questions that are being asked of the store, right? And so that's how we think about it. We think about it as queering the digital twin for whatever information. And the, the digital twin will give you the best answer for that [00:16:00] question, given the full context of the store, right?

[00:16:04] If you're down to one umbrella, one umbrella, and you haven't sold them in a week, any, any in a week, right? You might be inclined to say, well, go ahead and send somebody that's 15 minutes away if I told you that it hadn't been raining in a week and it's raining now. Right? That answer's very different, So that's how we're looking at it, is the full context response.

[00:16:21] Jeff Roster: So who do you sell into in that regard? Is that, is that BI? Is that what is that?

[00:16:26] Adam Blair: Yeah, we think it's it, it, it's, it's most likely the cio ct CTO type level, right? Because we, we think about it in terms of the full data for the, for the, for the store. right? You think, we think about it in terms of you know, the, that the, the data source, because it, it, it is, it's a little bit tricky, right?

[00:16:42] Because it is a lot of potential users for any of this data within the, within the retail store, and, and we're thinking about it being the CEO or the CTO being the conduit into the rest of the retailer.

[00:16:52] Jeff Roster: Well, they'd be the one that buying it. But I mean, it it, where would I put that in my, in my tech stack? I mean, is that, is that business intelligence, is that I don't know, [00:17:00]video analytics, I guess. I mean that we've had that conversation too, it seems, seems pretty video in a lot of analytics. So are you comfortable with that sort of a classification. 

[00:17:08] Adam Blair: I mean, I think I'd prefer being more business in business intelligence than, than, I mean, I, I, I don't like it being the source of the data. I like it being the, the context of the data. But I, I, you know I think that's something we're gonna have to work through with the, the different retailers and how they're organizationally structured too.

[00:17:23] Right? Because sometimes the, the titles don't completely match the function.

[00:17:26] Jeff Roster: That makes sense

[00:17:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's, that does happen. That's true. Okay. . Well wow. I mean this is, I'm always fascinated by digital twin technology right now, as I think this is we're still sort of in early days on, on how retailers can leverage this kind of technology. What kind of questions can they answer by using it?

[00:17:43] Kind of your, your last example there, Adam, about, you know, how, how you can have just slight variation, right? Very different questions to answer. And by leveraging that digital twin, you can come up with an answer where the absence of that, you know, how, how many different systems do you have? To be able to figure out what the answer is that that's being [00:18:00] facilitated here.

[00:18:00] So I think this is really, really a fascinating space to watch. And Jeff, to your point, you know, now this is the second kind of conversation we, we've kind of come across where we're plugging into LP as a data source but using it in a pretty different, more creative way necessarily than, than we might otherwise think of.

[00:18:16] Jeff Roster: I w I am writing the email to my, our, our mutual friend Tony, to say,

[00:18:21] Ricardo Belmar: say are you thinking about this?

[00:18:22] Jeff Roster: just curious what, just so what the LP sense is on that. But

[00:18:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. So Adam, if somebody wants to reach out to you and, and find out more about what you're doing in Site Bionic, what's, how should they reach out to you?

[00:18:32] Adam Blair: Yeah. Honestly, best way is just reach out directly adam@sitebionics.com. Also on LinkedIn is always a good way to get in touch with me. And happy to have conversations. Right? We're early. The conversations are, are, are the greatest value. The building, the relationships is, is is the most important thing for us right now.

[00:18:47] Ricardo Belmar: Great. Fantastic. Well, Adam, thanks so much for joining us and we appreciate you taking the time out to meet with us, and we'll be, we'll be watching out to see how things progress for you.

[00:18:56] Adam Blair: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:18:57] Jeff Roster: Outstanding. Thanks. Bye.

[00:18:59] Ricardo Belmar: [00:19:00] bye everyone. 

[00:19:00] Show Recap

[00:19:00] Casey Golden: Well, welcome back everyone. And wasn't that an interesting take on digital twins? Did you catch the ever important reference to computer vision? 

[00:19:15] Ricardo Belmar: Yep, I did too. I did too. And this was a short but sweet session that we had with Adam. I mean, they are really leaning into helping retailers answer tough questions about their store, ranging from merchandise layouts to just general operations. I mean, having that digital twin opens a door to so many possibilities and AB tests that you can run without having to spend the time and effort to physically change it in the store and know what kind of results you're going to get. And this is just why I've been a big proponent of digital twins, is that one super important and practical use case for metaverse applications today.

[00:19:50] Casey Golden: I agree. I don't think a lot of people know how much we have been doing physical twins in the [00:20:00] industry, like building the whole entire area of your Macy's shop and shop somewhere else to flo, do floor sets and and, and not just one, but you know, 30 retailers where their floors going, how that set's gonna look.

[00:20:14] Stack heights. I think that I mean, we'd have whole teams that flew in to go ahead and, and play with that before the merchandise plans went out. Having these spaces from your stores into like throughout the whole entire process. It's just, it's, there's so, there's such a money savings here that if you can turn those cameras from a cost center to generating revenue,

[00:20:40] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly.

[00:20:41] Casey Golden: How awesome is that?

[00:20:43] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly.

[00:20:43] Casey Golden: most times when we think of like a digital twin, everybody thinks that it's avatar clothing,

[00:20:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Right,

[00:20:48] Casey Golden: right? Which I love. But I think that there's, there's so many different applications that where we spend millions of dollars every season [00:21:00] that could be recaptured and spent elsewhere by using these different types of digital twins in different ways of like visualizing Even just traffic pattern.

[00:21:11] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, E. Exactly, exactly. I mean, just think of all the what if scenarios you can do, like you were saying, right? Where before you could have a team of people take days, right. To experiment and try different options, different layouts. And now you just put 'em in that, in the digital twin you can see exactly, you can do a fly through, and and kind of walk through that virtual space, see what it, what it's gonna look like to you and decide maybe that's not the option you want. I mean, it it, and it really does turn that whole cost center of having to absorb the cost of making those changes. Now it's something that helps you get to revenue faster, right?

[00:21:41] Because now you, you can implement the changes. You'll know what the outcome is gonna be. You've predicted it. And now when you're asking the store teams to go and do these things, it's not an experiment anymore. Now, you know that you're doing something that's gonna have a positive impact right to your, your revenue stream. So it just makes so much sense. I really believe people should be [00:22:00] adopting this more and more. So I think that Adam is on to a good, a really good solid application here with Site Bionics, and we hope to see more of them in the future.

[00:22:08] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, cutting lead time is, is a really big

[00:22:12] Ricardo Belmar: Huge. 

[00:22:13] Casey Golden: So what's coming up next in this series? We've got one more to go, right?

[00:22:17] Ricardo Belmar: that's right. We've just got one more in the series and sure enough, this is probably my favorite of the set. You know, at the start of the series I teased that it was a follow up to that popular discussion we recorded at N R F. We did run into a few difficulties, however.

[00:22:32] Casey Golden: Difficulties. Okay. I didn't realize there was gonna be a mystery attached.

[00:22:37] Ricardo Belmar: Well, remember the TRI chat that Jeff and I had with Vicki Cantrell and Ron Thurston at nrf, the one that was supposed to be a a 10 to 15 minute discussion that turned into an almost an hour.

[00:22:48] Well, yep. Well, we all agreed to do that same chat again at Shop Talk. But we did run into some scheduling challenges.

[00:22:56] Sure enough, we were all so busy there was only one time slot that we could [00:23:00]manage to, to get together and, and RETHINK Retail was kind enough to let us use their booth space at Shop Talk to do this recording. So we planned it for the end of, I think it was day two at the show. But sure enough, that was also the time that Shop Talk had their happy hours scheduled on the expo floor.

[00:23:16] And I mean, literally as soon as Jeff and I got to the Rethink booth and we were about to start setting up the recording equipment, suddenly we. All kinds of loud music starts blasting over the speakers because, you know, it's happy hour time, so it's time to put some music on the, on the show floor. I guess that was part of the entertainment.

[00:23:33] So as you might guess, there was just no way we could record any audio under those conditions with all that background music playing. So we ended up deciding, okay, let's regroup. The week after the show, we'd all have some time to digest what we saw. Think about it. And we just do it a normal remote recording.

[00:23:50] And so this last episode was not exactly recorded in person, but as a bonus it does mean that there's gonna be full video for everybody to watch this time.

[00:23:58] Casey Golden: Well, that's [00:24:00] a fantastic way to close out the series and I'm sure it'll definitely be worth it. Now there's expectations that everybody's done their homework. So,

[00:24:09] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, maybe I set that up a little too strongly. I hope, I hope we meet everyone's expectations now that I said that. But, but for now I, I'm just gonna thank Adam Blair for joining Jeff and me for this recording that we just went through at Shop Talk. Thank you, Adam. We will definitely be watching for Site Bionics' progress over the rest of the year.

[00:24:27] Casey Golden: and on that note, Ricardo, this can only mean one thing. It's a wrap.

[00:24:33] Show Close

[00:24:33] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed this season's shows, especially our podcast crossover miniseries, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Plus, remember, you can watch us, not just listen on our YouTube channel and like, and comment there.[00:25:00]

[00:25:00] If you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a full transcript of the episode, take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your co-host, Casey Golden.

[00:25:10] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season and the crossover series, follow us on Twitter at Casey C Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter and LinkedIn at Retail Razor for the latest updates. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:25:27] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:25:32] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the retail Razor Show. 

]]> <p>How can retailers perform A/B testing of merchandise layouts in their stores without cost and without burdening store teams? By using Digital Twins, that’s how! So how does a retailer build a digital twin of their stores? Meet startup <a href="https://sitebionics.com/" rel="nofollow">Site Bionics</a> and founder and CEO, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-blair-b456441/" rel="nofollow">Adam Blair</a>. It’s Part 3 of our #ShoptalkLive podcast cross-over series with <a href="https://jeffroster.podbean.com/" rel="nofollow">This Week in Innovation</a> and special guest host <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-bb51b8/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Roster</a>, recorded live and in-person at Shoptalk!</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar sit down with Site Bionics CEO, Adam Blair, to learn how they are helping retailers solve merchandising and operational challenges via digital twins, dramatically reducing the cost of testing new store layouts. Plus, we learn how Site Bionics can even help validate coverage maps of loss prevention camera systems! Yes, Jeff and Ricardo have uncovered another trend at Shoptalk – using loss prevention camera infrastructure in multiple ways that will positively impact your revenue streams and lower your costs. It’s all in this episode!</p><p><br></p><p>We’re now standing at number 19 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, </em>and<em> Overclocked, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>S2E12c Digital Twins with Site Bionics</strong></p><h3>[00:00:00] Show Intro </h3><p><span>[00:00:20]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Hello Retail Razor Show listeners and viewers, and welcome to retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden.</p><p><span>[00:00:33]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar. Welcome to part three in our Shop Top Live crossover event with Jeff Roster, and This Week In Innovation podcast.</p><p><span>[00:00:42]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> You guys really make me feel like I missed out on some great conversations. I think I&#39;m getting more FOMO than our listeners here.</p><p><span>[00:00:51]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p><span>[00:00:52]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> You are killing it with these amazing interviews. I have to come and join you guys next time, even though like I have no business <span>[00:01:00]</span> purpose to be there.</p><p><span>[00:01:02]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. Well, it would be amazing if you could make it, Casey, we definitely missed you on this. It was lots of fun to, to capture these sessions. So on today&#39;s show, we are talking about none other than digital twins. One of my favorite probably my, the favorite metaverse topic that isn&#39;t necessarily a metaverse topic.</p><p><span>[00:01:22]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Right. Well, I&#39;m already hooked, so just tell me more. Spill it. Who did you guys chat with?</p><p><span>[00:01:30]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So this time Jeff and I spoke with Adam Blair, c e o, and founder of Startup Site Bionics. And in this discussion we learned just how popular it is to use those loss prevention cameras in your store for so much more than loss prevention. I mean, this was the second startup we talked to that were tapping into those cameras as a resource for analytics.</p><p><span>[00:01:50]</span> This time using them to help build a multi-layered digital twin of your store.</p><p><span>[00:01:54]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Interesting. And you guys uncovered a trend trend there. Wow. Like <span>[00:02:00]</span> not many people would&#39;ve said those loss prevention cameras are so popular not too long ago.</p><p><span>[00:02:06]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah. Right. Exactly. So you, you&#39;ll also want to keep track throughout this discussion with Adam of just how many different use cases and questions you can answer about your store environment using this digital twin that you build with, with their solution and, and all the loss prevention cameras plus a few extra little add-ons that that I think are pretty clever that they do.</p><p><span>[00:02:25]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, let&#39;s not spend any more precious time talking about it. Let&#39;s get right into the discussion with you, Jeff and Adam Blair, c e o of Site Bionics, recorded live and in person at Shoptalk 2023.</p><h3>[00:02:40] Site Bionics Interview</h3><p><span>[00:02:40]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> ​hey everyone we are back at Shop Talk 2023, continuing our crossover event with This Week In Innovation. I&#39;m Ricardo Belmar. I&#39;m host of the Retail Razor Show and I am here with none other than the myth, the legend, Mr. Jeff Roster,</p><p><span>[00:02:59]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> <span>[00:03:00]</span> how you, how you doing today? I don&#39;t know about you, but I am dragging. I&#39;m possibly, I went a little hard on the, on the evening research opportunities last night.</p><p><span>[00:03:08]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Just a little, just a Yeah, yeah.</p><p><span>[00:03:10]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> little bit hard, but it was</p><p><span>[00:03:11]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It&#39;s, it was, yeah. It&#39;s, it&#39;s what are we day three? Are we day three, day</p><p><span>[00:03:14]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> five. I tried to, I really was planning on being done by eight, but there was an event at the What Skyfall lounge, which was started at nine 30.</p><p><span>[00:03:24]</span> Phenomenal. But boy, that got a little bit late Little </p><p><span>[00:03:30]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I hear you. I hear you. One, one more day to go. One more day. One more day to go. All right. All right. So the good news is we&#39;ve got another great guest with us today. Jeff. We are here with Adam Blair and the CEO of Site Bionics, who&#39;s gonna tell us all about the cool things that he&#39;s working on over there.</p><p><span>[00:03:47]</span> So Adam, I&#39;m gonna let you introduce yourself here and dive in and give us your background and what Site Bionics is all about and what you know, what challenges are you solving for retailers and, and give us the scoop.</p><p><span>[00:03:58]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> Sounds good. <span>[00:04:00]</span> Thanks for the intro. Yeah. At Site Bionics we&#39;re helping retailers make sense of their physical world.</p><p><span>[00:04:04]</span> And what that means particularly is we&#39;re building digital twins for retail stores. And we, we view that as, just to be clear, cuz we, we you know, one of the things that you get into with digital twins is there&#39;s a lot of different uses of it.</p><p><span>[00:04:16]</span> The different, it&#39;s an kind of an overloaded term. Right, right, right. We view the digital twin as a data, fundamentally a data model of the store. And it&#39;s a means of getting, taking the messy, unstructured, unstructured data that you get in a store when you have humans moving around doing what humans do.</p><p><span>[00:04:32]</span> And and, and you try to make sense of it all. So yeah, for us, it, it actually getting into a little bit of how we do that, we start a little, we start by getting a, a sense of the site. So we have the means of going around and getting a physical rendering. So, to be clear, it&#39;s not sort of a metaverse play in that direct sense, right?</p><p><span>[00:04:50]</span> Where we&#39;re just, you&#39;re not necessarily going into it. But we do have, for what it&#39;s worth, we do have a rendering that&#39;s like video game quality rendering of the space. But that&#39;s a tool it&#39;s a <span>[00:05:00]</span> tool that allows us to we, we can start there. We can help retailer to understand how the store is laid out whether or not their merchandising and their layout is matching what they expect from corporate and, and be able to feed that data back.</p><p><span>[00:05:11]</span> And that&#39;s sort of our layer. Right. Then we have the ability to layer on to use existing cameras in the store as available and be able to add sort of our video analytics piece on top of that where you can track movement through the space. Right. And then we have an iot portion that can go beyond that too, where we can leverage on my, my pack background in, in R F I D particularly and, and other iot technologies and, and be able to.</p><p><span>[00:05:36]</span> That and, and, and build really. So it&#39;s sort of these layers and we want to bring value to retailer to each of these layers, right? And but it&#39;s the full data source. That&#39;s really the thing. And, and, and then once you add that, you get that full system you get the learning that goes on top of it.</p><p><span>[00:05:51]</span> And then you have the ability to move into higher levels of analytics where you&#39;re able to get a model and understand how things are behaving, why they&#39;re, why things are happening and, <span>[00:06:00]</span> and then help retailers better understand how to use their space and make the most of it.</p><h3>[00:06:04] Building a Digital Twin</h3><p><span>[00:06:04]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So a couple questions right off the bat. How do you get the, the first rendering in, in layer one?</p><p><span>[00:06:10]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> Yeah, we do that with it&#39;s, it&#39;s, it is using just a cell phone standard imagery. We have the ability and we, we&#39;ve actually this is the piece we&#39;ve built so far. We&#39;re, we&#39;re obviously very, we&#39;re very new startup.</p><p><span>[00:06:19]</span> We&#39;ve only been around for a couple months but this is a piece that we have, we developed the capability to go into a store and develop that rendering in about 15 minutes for like a mall size store. So yes. Yes,</p><p><span>[00:06:31]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So who would actually do that? Would store associate level? I mean, just literally somebody just taking their phone and just videoing the the aisles and </p><p><span>[00:06:37]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> that&#39;s right. </p><p><span>[00:06:38]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Oh, wow. Okay.</p><p><span>[00:06:39]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> Yeah. It&#39;s, it&#39;s, we don&#39;t want it to be specialized. We don&#39;t want to have to send our people in. We want to make that available to, you know, the, the people that are there for, for ease,</p><p><span>[00:06:46]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Then I think in layer two, you said something about tying into existing cameras, is that the LP cameras or</p><p><span>[00:06:52]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> we have the ability to do that. Yes. Or that, that&#39;s what we&#39;re working to build, I should say the, the, the DVR that&#39;s existing on the camera, right? I mean, we&#39;re, we&#39;re, we&#39;re very <span>[00:07:00]</span> sensitive about privacy. Right? That&#39;s a big, big deal for us. We mean that genuinely. So we don&#39;t, you know, we don&#39;t want to be storing any date, any, any image data.</p><p><span>[00:07:09]</span> We wanna leverage the existing systems that, that are there.</p><p><span>[00:07:11]</span> And so we would, yeah, we would be able to essentially connect in with the existing security system and, and be able to derive analytics from that.</p><h3>[00:07:20] How Retailers Use Digital Twins</h3><p><span>[00:07:20]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hmm, interesting. So tell us then a little bit about what kind of analytics you would expect a retailer to, to benefit from here, how would they use, so once you have the digital twin of the store, right. How are you expecting a, a retailer to use this?</p><p><span>[00:07:33]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> Yeah, we&#39;re expecting I mean, it&#39;s, it&#39;s, look, we, we think that this if we can get to the full digital twin or when we get there, I should say that it, it can be used in, in all sorts of aspects of how they run the store. So and how they engage with their customers as well. Right? So it starts with making the most, the, the best use of the space that they have, right?</p><p><span>[00:07:50]</span> Understanding how they wanna lay out a store, right? We would expect them to, in, in the long run, to be able to sort of model how they think it should work. Test it out, you might be able to <span>[00:08:00]</span> run AB testing in multiple stores, right. And, and, and really get to the next level of EF efficiency in sort of, in terms of the layout and, and merchandising.</p><p><span>[00:08:10]</span> We expect to be able to understand that the full con, the, the full shopper path to purchase. We do believe we have the ability to tie that back to individuals as if they were to opt-in.</p><p><span>[00:08:19]</span> They can opt in at any point in their journey, and the entire journey could be connected in. So you could start to actually conceive of a digital twin of the individual as they opt in and, and, and make better use of that.</p><p><span>[00:08:30]</span> And then and then, and then operationally in, in terms of operational efficiency, right? Understanding how their staff are moving around, how they&#39;re, who they&#39;re interacting, when and why. And, and try to improve operations as well.</p><p><span>[00:08:41]</span> So it&#39;s kind of, it can be kind of all things for all people. Right? I&#39;m, I&#39;m obviously sharing a vision here.</p><p><span>[00:08:46]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p><span>[00:08:47]</span> Okay. Okay.</p><h3>[00:08:48] What a Deployment Looks Like</h3><p><span>[00:08:48]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So what would a deployment look like?</p><p><span>[00:08:51]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> That&#39;s a great question. Yeah. So the, the, the, the early deployment is you go in and you scan the store using our app which we, we are in the, we <span>[00:09:00]</span> we plan to productize, right? So you would go in and you would do that, that sort of first deployment, you&#39;d connect into the back the, the security system just a computer in the back office kind of thing.</p><p><span>[00:09:09]</span> And and that&#39;s, that&#39;s actually all you need, right? Because you have the, the imagery and the, the, the data. We have the ability to understand what&#39;s a fixture, what&#39;s what different product. And infer your merchandising plan and how it, how it&#39;s the store is laid out. And, and so that&#39;s, that&#39;s kind of all that&#39;s necessary to g to get going.</p><p><span>[00:09:27]</span> We would be, you know, we would expect to be delivering dashboards and things like that. So your, your people in corporate, your merchandisers could actually interact with the store, right? You could actually lay it out in our tool set and drag and drop fixtures around and move them around in that way.</p><p><span>[00:09:40]</span> And then, and then push that down to your in-store.</p><p><span>[00:09:44]</span> You can get the, the feedback confirmation that the store has been laid out appropriately, and see how the behaviors adapt and how performance the store adapts.</p><p><span>[00:09:52]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So you&#39;re getting live feed constantly out of the the LP cameras. right. Any issue with LP?</p><p><span>[00:09:59]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> With, with <span>[00:10:00]</span> LP directly? It depends. I mean, it&#39;s gonna depend, it&#39;s gonna depend a lot on, on, on who, right?</p><p><span>[00:10:04]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> so easy to work with. I&#39;m sure.</p><p><span>[00:10:06]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> Very flexible. There is. Look, there&#39;s, there&#39;s absolutely a, a, a path in there with any, anytime. Look, anytime you put any computer system inside anybody&#39;s network, you have to be there&#39;s a process you have to go through. With lp it&#39;ll be more rigorous for sure.</p><p><span>[00:10:20]</span> Like I said, we we&#39;re, we&#39;re totally open from a privacy perspective having, having the code, getting vetted right is, is totally, you know, among our expectations, right?</p><p><span>[00:10:31]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Well, you know, Ricardo, that&#39;s interesting cuz that&#39;s the second, second startup we&#39;ve talked</p><p><span>[00:10:34]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right.</p><p><span>[00:10:35]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> tying in. So there&#39;s,</p><p><span>[00:10:36]</span> there seems</p><p><span>[00:10:36]</span> to be a trend</p><p><span>[00:10:37]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> trend here in leveraging that LP video</p><p><span>[00:10:39]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> 36 hours ago, if you would&#39;ve said, You&#39;re gonna run stuff through the LP camera. I&#39;ve said you&#39;re crazy, but, but I mean, obviously two, you know the last two folks we talked to, so Yeah.</p><p><span>[00:10:49]</span> And it does make sense to sweat those assets. So</p><p><span>[00:10:51]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right. No, I mean, it, it does because you, you&#39;ve already got a lot of useful information there. You&#39;re already covering exactly what you want to see in the store, so <span>[00:11:00]</span> this is a great way of, of using that information to derive new data insights from it. </p><p><span>[00:11:05]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> In fact, one of, one of the, one of the potential early, early benefits you can have from this approach is you can actually get an, an immediate assessment of how good are your, is your security camera layout, right? Because we could show you exactly where in that 3D rendering you have coverage and where you do not. Right. </p><p><span>[00:11:20]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> that&#39;s interesting.</p><p><span>[00:11:21]</span> Interesting. </p><p><span>[00:11:21]</span> That&#39;s interesting. Yeah. Yeah.</p><p><span>[00:11:23]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Any sense right now what percentage of the store is covered? I would think in theory they would say a hundred percent, but obviously it can&#39;t be a hundred </p><p><span>[00:11:30]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> Yeah. Talk to the employees and see what they say. Right.</p><p><span>[00:11:33]</span> where they take those hidden breaks. I, I don&#39;t actually have a sense for that. I mean, it, it&#39;s it&#39;s, and, and, and it&#39;s also the sort of thing again, we, we have the ability to go in and say where those holes are, how to fill them.</p><h3>[00:11:44] The Digital Twin Vision</h3><p><span>[00:11:44]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So do you envision a retailer using this, so, you know, once you have that digital twin, they have the model that they&#39;re gonna do a lot of kind of what if and ab scenarios on, product placements on shelves, and rearranging things and doing some modeling with that before they push that down to stores.<span>[00:12:00]</span></p><p><span>[00:12:00]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> Absolutely. I mean, I, I think that that&#39;s that, that&#39;s absolutely one of the expectations. The other way that I actually like to look about, look at it is you know, most retailers when they provide direction down to the stores, they&#39;re providing guidance. And there&#39;s different, retailers are different in terms of how much local control that they give, but I love the idea of giving a bit more local control. Right. You know, one, one of the retailers we spoke with about this, they had, they said that the reason they don&#39;t give more local control is that they found they don&#39;t trust the control at the retail at, at the, at the retailer, at the, at the local site.</p><p><span>[00:12:28]</span> Right. They, they you know, the, the person that has best of intentions and, and the example that they gave us directly was then you end up with a beer next to the back to school section. Right.</p><p><span>[00:12:38]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> It might</p><p><span>[00:12:38]</span> work. I don&#39;t know.</p><p><span>[00:12:39]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I don&#39;t, I don&#39;t know if that&#39;s unintentional, that</p><p><span>[00:12:41]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> it would&#39;ve worked at.</p><p><span>[00:12:42]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> exclusively as a parent. I don&#39;t know if that&#39;s unintentional.</p><p><span>[00:12:44]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> definitely would&#39;ve worked at Chico State. Dropping a daughter off at San Diego State, it absolutely would&#39;ve worked there.</p><p><span>[00:12:49]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> Maybe a little off brand for the retailer though.</p><p><span>[00:12:51]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Maybe just a bit. Yeah, maybe a little.</p><p><span>[00:12:53]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> But, but, but, but you give that sort of control down and now you actually introduce some randomness into the larger system. And that&#39;s actually a good thing in this <span>[00:13:00]</span>case, because as long as you&#39;re able to measure and then close that feedback loop, when somebody goes and does something that&#39;s silly, you can, you&#39;ll see the behavioral changes of that.</p><p><span>[00:13:10]</span> When somebody does something that&#39;s, that&#39;s surprisingly effective, you&#39;ll see those re results too and be able to understand why. And so then you can pull that data up to the corporate level and feed it down to all of your stores, and so you can, you know, create more of a, learn a much tighter, more effective learning cycle as a result.</p><p><span>[00:13:27]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> interesting. So I, I guess I have to ask, how did you come to this idea and what, what motivated you to create this solution. </p><p><span>[00:13:35]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> Yeah, so it&#39;s, it&#39;s I guess it, it came through through a, a, a path, a journey, I suppose. It actually started couple startups I&#39;ve had now this is my third, my third startup. The previous two have been in overhead, R F I D.</p><p><span>[00:13:47]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. </p><p><span>[00:13:47]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> And and, and one in particular, the first one was we were partnered with Intel in, in their responsive retail platform from </p><p><span>[00:13:54]</span> Oh, okay.</p><p><span>[00:13:54]</span> Years back.</p><p><span>[00:13:55]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I remember that.</p><p><span>[00:13:55]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> Yeah. And so one of the things that we found early on when we did some, some of our <span>[00:14:00]</span> early R F I D deployments, we were getting like 85% of the, the total I inventory that we could actually like read within about an hour of.</p><p><span>[00:14:09]</span> we</p><p><span>[00:14:09]</span> found if we just left it on running continuously for long periods of time though, and we added just a, a strong probabilistic algorithm on top of it, that we could actually infer the inventory you needed for the purposes of restocking to a 99% plus accuracy by just at any given moment, just running over an extended period of time.</p><p><span>[00:14:27]</span> Because you could see the dynamics of the store. You could see how</p><p><span>[00:14:31]</span> so I haven&#39;t read something for a day. It doesn&#39;t, is it more likely that it&#39;s outta stock or it&#39;s still here and it&#39;s just not readable? Or is it, is it gone? And so by applying that sort of that that sort of algorithm and that model on top of the store, we are able to make much better, much more effective use of the really messy data that we had.</p><p><span>[00:14:49]</span> Right? So it, it started with that. As I got into talking to people in the computer vision space as well.</p><p><span>[00:14:54]</span> They have similar problems, right? Where you have, it&#39;s very messy, very uncontrolled data. And so you <span>[00:15:00]</span> start applying these higher level algorithms to it, and you start to get to the better insights, right?</p><p><span>[00:15:04]</span> You get, you start to answer the questions, you start to put yourself in a place where you can answer the questions that the retailers actually have, right? And, and to step back a little bit to the inventory question, ? Retailers don&#39;t really like, they think they want to know what, what is in their inventory list, right?</p><p><span>[00:15:21]</span> But in reality they want to know, should I restock right now? Right? And, and what items should I be restocking when they want to know, can I ship this? Can I have somebody that&#39;s looking at this item online right now? Should I send them to the store to pick it up? Right? Those are two very simple, very, very different questions that are, you know, it&#39;s, it&#39;s somewhat arbitrary to ask them of the same list. Right? And so by building the more comprehensive model, you can get to something that can answer those real questions that are being asked of the store, right? And so that&#39;s how we think about it. We think about it as queering the digital twin for whatever information. And the, the digital twin will give you the best answer for that <span>[00:16:00]</span> question, given the full context of the store, right?</p><p><span>[00:16:04]</span> If you&#39;re down to one umbrella, one umbrella, and you haven&#39;t sold them in a week, any, any in a week, right? You might be inclined to say, well, go ahead and send somebody that&#39;s 15 minutes away if I told you that it hadn&#39;t been raining in a week and it&#39;s raining now. Right? That answer&#39;s very different, So that&#39;s how we&#39;re looking at it, is the full context response.</p><p><span>[00:16:21]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So who do you sell into in that regard? Is that, is that BI? Is that what is that?</p><p><span>[00:16:26]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> Yeah, we think it&#39;s it, it, it&#39;s, it&#39;s most likely the cio ct CTO type level, right? Because we, we think about it in terms of the full data for the, for the, for the store. right? You think, we think about it in terms of you know, the, that the, the data source, because it, it, it is, it&#39;s a little bit tricky, right?</p><p><span>[00:16:42]</span> Because it is a lot of potential users for any of this data within the, within the retail store, and, and we&#39;re thinking about it being the CEO or the CTO being the conduit into the rest of the retailer.</p><p><span>[00:16:52]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Well, they&#39;d be the one that buying it. But I mean, it it, where would I put that in my, in my tech stack? I mean, is that, is that business intelligence, is that I don&#39;t know, <span>[00:17:00]</span>video analytics, I guess. I mean that we&#39;ve had that conversation too, it seems, seems pretty video in a lot of analytics. So are you comfortable with that sort of a classification. </p><p><span>[00:17:08]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> I mean, I think I&#39;d prefer being more business in business intelligence than, than, I mean, I, I, I don&#39;t like it being the source of the data. I like it being the, the context of the data. But I, I, you know I think that&#39;s something we&#39;re gonna have to work through with the, the different retailers and how they&#39;re organizationally structured too.</p><p><span>[00:17:23]</span> Right? Because sometimes the, the titles don&#39;t completely match the function.</p><p><span>[00:17:26]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> That makes sense</p><p><span>[00:17:27]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, that&#39;s, that does happen. That&#39;s true. Okay. . Well wow. I mean this is, I&#39;m always fascinated by digital twin technology right now, as I think this is we&#39;re still sort of in early days on, on how retailers can leverage this kind of technology. What kind of questions can they answer by using it?</p><p><span>[00:17:43]</span> Kind of your, your last example there, Adam, about, you know, how, how you can have just slight variation, right? Very different questions to answer. And by leveraging that digital twin, you can come up with an answer where the absence of that, you know, how, how many different systems do you have? To be able to figure out what the answer is that that&#39;s being <span>[00:18:00]</span> facilitated here.</p><p><span>[00:18:00]</span> So I think this is really, really a fascinating space to watch. And Jeff, to your point, you know, now this is the second kind of conversation we, we&#39;ve kind of come across where we&#39;re plugging into LP as a data source but using it in a pretty different, more creative way necessarily than, than we might otherwise think of.</p><p><span>[00:18:16]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I w I am writing the email to my, our, our mutual friend Tony, to say,</p><p><span>[00:18:21]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> say are you thinking about this?</p><p><span>[00:18:22]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> just curious what, just so what the LP sense is on that. But</p><p><span>[00:18:25]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. So Adam, if somebody wants to reach out to you and, and find out more about what you&#39;re doing in Site Bionic, what&#39;s, how should they reach out to you?</p><p><span>[00:18:32]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> Yeah. Honestly, best way is just reach out directly adam@sitebionics.com. Also on LinkedIn is always a good way to get in touch with me. And happy to have conversations. Right? We&#39;re early. The conversations are, are, are the greatest value. The building, the relationships is, is is the most important thing for us right now.</p><p><span>[00:18:47]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Great. Fantastic. Well, Adam, thanks so much for joining us and we appreciate you taking the time out to meet with us, and we&#39;ll be, we&#39;ll be watching out to see how things progress for you.</p><p><span>[00:18:56]</span> <strong>Adam Blair:</strong> Thank you so much for having me.</p><p><span>[00:18:57]</span> <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Outstanding. Thanks. Bye.</p><p><span>[00:18:59]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> <span>[00:19:00]</span> bye everyone. </p><h3>[00:19:00] Show Recap</h3><p><span>[00:19:00]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, welcome back everyone. And wasn&#39;t that an interesting take on digital twins? Did you catch the ever important reference to computer vision? </p><p><span>[00:19:15]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep, I did too. I did too. And this was a short but sweet session that we had with Adam. I mean, they are really leaning into helping retailers answer tough questions about their store, ranging from merchandise layouts to just general operations. I mean, having that digital twin opens a door to so many possibilities and AB tests that you can run without having to spend the time and effort to physically change it in the store and know what kind of results you&#39;re going to get. And this is just why I&#39;ve been a big proponent of digital twins, is that one super important and practical use case for metaverse applications today.</p><p><span>[00:19:50]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I agree. I don&#39;t think a lot of people know how much we have been doing physical twins in the <span>[00:20:00]</span> industry, like building the whole entire area of your Macy&#39;s shop and shop somewhere else to flo, do floor sets and and, and not just one, but you know, 30 retailers where their floors going, how that set&#39;s gonna look.</p><p><span>[00:20:14]</span> Stack heights. I think that I mean, we&#39;d have whole teams that flew in to go ahead and, and play with that before the merchandise plans went out. Having these spaces from your stores into like throughout the whole entire process. It&#39;s just, it&#39;s, there&#39;s so, there&#39;s such a money savings here that if you can turn those cameras from a cost center to generating revenue,</p><p><span>[00:20:40]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Exactly.</p><p><span>[00:20:41]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> How awesome is that?</p><p><span>[00:20:43]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Exactly.</p><p><span>[00:20:43]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> most times when we think of like a digital twin, everybody thinks that it&#39;s avatar clothing,</p><p><span>[00:20:48]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Right,</p><p><span>[00:20:48]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> right? Which I love. But I think that there&#39;s, there&#39;s so many different applications that where we spend millions of dollars every season <span>[00:21:00]</span> that could be recaptured and spent elsewhere by using these different types of digital twins in different ways of like visualizing Even just traffic pattern.</p><p><span>[00:21:11]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, E. Exactly, exactly. I mean, just think of all the what if scenarios you can do, like you were saying, right? Where before you could have a team of people take days, right. To experiment and try different options, different layouts. And now you just put &#39;em in that, in the digital twin you can see exactly, you can do a fly through, and and kind of walk through that virtual space, see what it, what it&#39;s gonna look like to you and decide maybe that&#39;s not the option you want. I mean, it it, and it really does turn that whole cost center of having to absorb the cost of making those changes. Now it&#39;s something that helps you get to revenue faster, right?</p><p><span>[00:21:41]</span> Because now you, you can implement the changes. You&#39;ll know what the outcome is gonna be. You&#39;ve predicted it. And now when you&#39;re asking the store teams to go and do these things, it&#39;s not an experiment anymore. Now, you know that you&#39;re doing something that&#39;s gonna have a positive impact right to your, your revenue stream. So it just makes so much sense. I really believe people should be <span>[00:22:00]</span> adopting this more and more. So I think that Adam is on to a good, a really good solid application here with Site Bionics, and we hope to see more of them in the future.</p><p><span>[00:22:08]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I mean, cutting lead time is, is a really big</p><p><span>[00:22:12]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Huge. </p><p><span>[00:22:13]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So what&#39;s coming up next in this series? We&#39;ve got one more to go, right?</p><p><span>[00:22:17]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> that&#39;s right. We&#39;ve just got one more in the series and sure enough, this is probably my favorite of the set. You know, at the start of the series I teased that it was a follow up to that popular discussion we recorded at N R F. We did run into a few difficulties, however.</p><p><span>[00:22:32]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Difficulties. Okay. I didn&#39;t realize there was gonna be a mystery attached.</p><p><span>[00:22:37]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, remember the TRI chat that Jeff and I had with Vicki Cantrell and Ron Thurston at nrf, the one that was supposed to be a a 10 to 15 minute discussion that turned into an almost an hour.</p><p><span>[00:22:48]</span> Well, yep. Well, we all agreed to do that same chat again at Shop Talk. But we did run into some scheduling challenges.</p><p><span>[00:22:56]</span> Sure enough, we were all so busy there was only one time slot that we could <span>[00:23:00]</span>manage to, to get together and, and RETHINK Retail was kind enough to let us use their booth space at Shop Talk to do this recording. So we planned it for the end of, I think it was day two at the show. But sure enough, that was also the time that Shop Talk had their happy hours scheduled on the expo floor.</p><p><span>[00:23:16]</span> And I mean, literally as soon as Jeff and I got to the Rethink booth and we were about to start setting up the recording equipment, suddenly we. All kinds of loud music starts blasting over the speakers because, you know, it&#39;s happy hour time, so it&#39;s time to put some music on the, on the show floor. I guess that was part of the entertainment.</p><p><span>[00:23:33]</span> So as you might guess, there was just no way we could record any audio under those conditions with all that background music playing. So we ended up deciding, okay, let&#39;s regroup. The week after the show, we&#39;d all have some time to digest what we saw. Think about it. And we just do it a normal remote recording.</p><p><span>[00:23:50]</span> And so this last episode was not exactly recorded in person, but as a bonus it does mean that there&#39;s gonna be full video for everybody to watch this time.</p><p><span>[00:23:58]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, that&#39;s <span>[00:24:00]</span> a fantastic way to close out the series and I&#39;m sure it&#39;ll definitely be worth it. Now there&#39;s expectations that everybody&#39;s done their homework. So,</p><p><span>[00:24:09]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, maybe I set that up a little too strongly. I hope, I hope we meet everyone&#39;s expectations now that I said that. But, but for now I, I&#39;m just gonna thank Adam Blair for joining Jeff and me for this recording that we just went through at Shop Talk. Thank you, Adam. We will definitely be watching for Site Bionics&#39; progress over the rest of the year.</p><p><span>[00:24:27]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> and on that note, Ricardo, this can only mean one thing. It&#39;s a wrap.</p><h3>[00:24:33] Show Close</h3><p><span>[00:24:33]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> If you enjoyed this season&#39;s shows, especially our podcast crossover miniseries, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don&#39;t miss a minute. Plus, remember, you can watch us, not just listen on our YouTube channel and like, and comment there.<span>[00:25:00]</span></p><p><span>[00:25:00]</span> If you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a full transcript of the episode, take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets. I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden.</p><p><span>[00:25:10]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> If you&#39;d like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season and the crossover series, follow us on Twitter at Casey C Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter and LinkedIn at Retail Razor for the latest updates. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p><span>[00:25:27]</span> <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p><span>[00:25:32]</span> <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the retail Razor Show. </p> 076985f2-a235-40ee-b09f-4fa7b25b9cda https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 21 Apr 2023 11:05:00 +0000 1548 no full S2E12b #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL - In-Store Analytics with ShopperAI S2E12b #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL - In-Store Analytics with ShopperAI 12 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E12b #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL - In-Store Analytics with ShopperAI How well do you know your in-store shopper versus your online shopper? If you’re like most retailers, you probably believe you know more about those online shoppers. But what if you had a full set of analytics on your in-store shoppers? What if you knew how shoppers react to a product they pick up off the shelf? Why they put it back instead of purchasing it? Meet ShopperAI, a startup that’s trying to change that perception by leveraging the existing video footage you have from loss prevention cameras to understand shopper intent and sentiment. It’s the second in our podcast cross-over event with This Week in Innovation and special guest host Jeff Roster! Recorded live and in-person during Shoptalk 2023, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar sit down with ShopperAI’s CEO, Lanor Daniel, and VP of Strategic Growth, Ari Pereira, to learn just how significant the insights are that retailers can learn about their in-store customers using their existing LP camera infrastructure. And if you’re a startup, you’ll also learn some important tips about how to present your solution to retailers by showing compassion first and foremost! We’re standing at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E12b In-Store Analytics with ShopperAI [00:00:00] Show Intro [00:00:20] Casey Golden: Hello Retail Razor Show listeners and viewers, and welcome to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:00:34] Ricardo Belmar: And I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. Welcome to another episode in our Shop Talk live crossover event with Jeff Foster and This Week In Innovation podcast. [00:00:43] Casey Golden: These crossover podcast series are really so much fun and I have to start going to Shop Talk on a regular basis. I do. [00:00:53] Ricardo Belmar: Well, it would be amazing for her to join us next time. Casey, we missed here on this series for sure. So on today's show, [00:01:00] we are talking about the consumer struggle factor when choosing a product on the shelf. How to convert in-store data you didn't realize you had into meaningful customer insights. And the best contribution to your data analytics, loss prevention can make. [00:01:15] First I've got a startup life Question for you, Casey. [00:01:20] Casey Golden: Oh, bring it. Typically My answer is yes. More caffeine, please. [00:01:25] Ricardo Belmar: Of course, of course it is. So, so here's the question. So how important is compassion when working with retailers? [00:01:33] Casey Golden: Oh, that's good. There needs to be a lot of room for compassion. Operators have heavy workloads and technology has a tendency to add more work, not less. I feel that outsiders always need to go in humble and serve pretty much the opposite of our day-to-day with investors and startup culture. Really focusing on like the what if, how would, how important is just go in knowing and acknowledging that [00:02:00] you know nothing. [00:02:00] They know everything. [00:02:02] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. You're, you're, you're really there to help make them better, right. Not tell 'em what to do, but you're acknowledging that it's not that they're doing anything wrong, it's that there's always room to do better [00:02:13] Casey Golden: Because they're doing something so amazing. You wanted to bring this solution to them first. [00:02:19] Ricardo Belmar: it. There you go. There you go. That's right. It's, it's an honor to bring it to them because they're the best. [00:02:25] Casey Golden: They are, and that's why we decided to build these companies for like the best. Right. [00:02:30] Ricardo Belmar: right, that's right. That, that is so, so the right attitude and, and wait till you see where that comes into play in this discussion. So as you might have guessed in this show, we are interviewing a startup, Shopper AI. An Israeli startup specializing in a unique form of video analytics with the goal of giving you in-store data analytics that's as good as what you get on your e-commerce site. [00:02:52] So their, their c e o explains it makes the analogy that, you know, they, they are trying to be the Google Analytics for your store, [00:02:59] Casey Golden: [00:03:00] Fascinating. Now I see where the loss prevention angle comes from [00:03:03] Ricardo Belmar: right? [00:03:04] Casey Golden: all the security cameras providing that video footage for analytics. Right? [00:03:08] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Exactly. [00:03:10] Casey Golden: Well, now I can't wait to see where this struggle factor you mentioned comes to play and how compassion works into all of this. [00:03:18] Ricardo Belmar: Well, it will definitely be illuminating for sure. No doubt about it. It's all part of our Shop Talk Live crossover event with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation. We recorded live and in person at Shop Talk, of course in Las Vegas last month. And Jeff really demonstrates how the struggle factor plays into making choices as a consumer. [00:03:38] So there's a good story about that that he uses to kind of illustrate that in the discussion. Plus we end with a really great discussion on how hard it is for startups to pitch to a retailer without coming across, perhaps a little bit too arrogant in trying to solve problems for the retailer. Which I think you just nailed it there, Casey, in your description of how to approach that, [00:04:00] that pitch session with the retailer. [00:04:01] We'll, we'll see how that goes. [00:04:04] Casey Golden: All right. In that case, let's get right into the interview with Shopper AI's, CEO, Lanor Daniel and their VP of Strategic Growth, Ari Pereira with you and Jeff. [00:04:16] ShopperAI Interview [00:04:16] Ricardo Belmar: Hey Everyone, welcome to another podcast crossover. This time coming to you live and in person from Shop Talk 2023. I'm Ricardo Belmar and I'm here with good friend Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation. How you doing, Jeff? [00:04:36] Jeff Roster: You know, I'm I'm actually a little slow today. I might have gotten just a slight hard on day one of Shop Talk lots of evening research opportunities that I was [00:04:44] Ricardo Belmar: re research opportunities. Is that what we're calling it now? [00:04:47] Jeff Roster: that what we're calling it. Okay, [00:04:48] Ricardo Belmar: We'll go with that. [00:04:49] Jeff Roster: Really good research to be honest with you. But definitely you know, first day tons of energy It's just a great, it's really a, I'm really impressed with this venue because I had three events and they were all within, I dunno, you could throw a rock and [00:05:00] hit the main part of the exhibit and so, which meant people were walking by. So you not only had your event, but you also had all that traffic coming by [00:05:07] Ricardo Belmar: all the passers by, yeah. [00:05:08] Jeff Roster: was Just a fantastic day day one I thought. [00:05:11] Ricardo Belmar: I agree. Day one was pretty, pretty interesting compared to, this is my second Shop Talk. Compared to last year, I think it was busier, a little more action. [00:05:19] I think people were enjoying themselves, a little bit more on day one than maybe last year, where last year this was probably for most people their first time out in an in-person event. So I think we're all getting a little bit more used to that. So this is a continuation, I guess I'll call it, of our crossover from NRF, where we had a number of super interesting interviews with really interesting retail tech companies. [00:05:41] And in that theme, we've got a fascinating discussion today for listeners. We have with us the team from Shopper AI that we're really excited to chat with. So I'm gonna ask Lenore and Ari to please introduce yourselves. [00:05:54] Lanor Daniel: Hi everyone, my name is Lanor Daniel. I'm the CEO and co-founder of ShopperAI. [00:05:58] Ari Pereira: Hello everyone. [00:06:00] I'm Ari Pereira I'm the VP of Insights and Strategic Growth for Shopper AI. Thank you for having us in the podcast. [00:06:06] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, it's great to have you here. So why don't we start by having you tell us a little bit about what's the challenge that Shopper AI addresses for retailers and how you're solving that. [00:06:14] Origins of ShopperAI [00:06:14] Lanor Daniel: Yeah. So basically we started four years ago in Israel. Me and my co-founder Sivan came from marketing online, digital marketing landscape. And we got partner with the retailer and we asked the question, how can we analyze data from your store? [00:06:30] And he was like, what data? And we were like, you know, in e-comm you have Google Analytics in order for you to be better, to optimize, to convert more. Conversion. What's conversion? And then we understand that there is a big gap between what's going on in the online landscape and what's going on in the stores. [00:06:48] And it got us so fascinating because, you know, ecomm just keeps growing and growing and we like to purchase online. It's easy. You feel like the website knows you, everything is so [00:07:00] focused and accurate. And when you go to a store, all the mess, all the noise, all the things going around and you feel like, I don't wanna go to a store, I want to buy online. [00:07:09] And basically this thing that we see in the past four and five years, e-com is growing fast and it's easy to understand. There is a lot of data you can be better, and the website really actually knows you and what's happening in offline stores that you come as a shopper. Shoppers, they're paying so much money for marketing, they're paying so much money for personnel, logistics promotions, and they don't know what happening with the user's journey. They don't have any data of users. I'm saying users because it's anonymously, so they don't know what's going on in the store in front of the shelves. Where are the problems? And this is where Shopper AI come to the picture. So this is what we've done in the past four years, building technology that allows us to grab this data from an offline store. [00:07:57] Jeff Roster: So let's talk about what it takes to get that [00:08:00] data. [00:08:00] Converting In-store Data to Insights [00:08:00] Lanor Daniel: Okay so basIcally. When we started to work with retailers in Israel, we didn't really understand how deep the gap is. So what we found out that in order for us to collaborate with retailers when they have all these things going on, like all the logistics and personnel, what I just mentioned, you need to be very easy, seamless integration. [00:08:21] And for that, we only had the security camera, so we need to crack the, the idea how we can get the data from a security camera that is already there. So we've been through four years of developments with engineer professors and like the best of the best. And we build an algorithm, a software that once we have a connection to the IP of the security camera, automatically takes the video. [00:08:45] We can show it as well, simple video from the store and turn everything that we just see right now to data. [00:08:54] and from a data to a dashboard. So if we take the equivalent on Google Analytics, Google Analytics, [00:09:00] analyze each and every movement in the website, what you're looking for, user's behavior, and put it in a dashboard. [00:09:06] So same thing over here. This is our website, the shelf. Each and every category is different. And what we see, it's all the movements and everything that they're doing. It's listed. We're saying you need to monitor your touches from the shelf, just like you monitor your clicks. Then we have conversion funnels, interaction. [00:09:24] We have a toucher, we have market shares. This is what everybody knows. So we have a toucher and we created a new language and things that if you come from E-com world make sense, but here for, for the industry, it's a bit new. So this is the process. We get connection to an IP of the security camera, the video, we turn it into data, and this data set turns into a dashboard. [00:09:49] Ricardo Belmar: So you've taken e everything that we're used to seeing in e-commerce metrics around, you know, if I the equivalent of looking at a product page, then by taking the video feed you're mapping that to, is this [00:10:00] person looking at a particular product on the shelf? If they're picking it up? If they're taking it, then you know they've added it to a basket like they would in an e-commerce site. [00:10:07] Lanor Daniel: they Correct. [00:10:08] Ricardo Belmar: So you can imagining, you can measure how long is someone standing in front of a product to see how effective the shelf placement is. [00:10:13] Lanor Daniel: Correct. And add another more thing for that. What you cannot see in online website. , it's a struggle rank. So we have ranking that you can use. So you mentioned time. So for example, things that we are looking for a specific product, a shampoo or a snack, or even in a, you know, in a Foot Locker store, you are looking for a shoe and then you're in front of the shelf, you're looking and I, something happened there that you're starting to struggle. [00:10:40] You know, this place like nevermind. I'll do it later. [00:10:43] Ricardo Belmar: Okay [00:10:43] Lanor Daniel: You know this feeling. So we have a struggle rank. You cannot have a struggle rank online. [00:10:48] Ricardo Belmar: Right. So you, you, so you have a measure of what that customer's sentiment was when they were standing in front of the shelf looking at products. So you have a little, you're adding some insights into their decision making process while they're shopping.[00:11:00] [00:11:00] Lanor Daniel: so it's accurate. [00:11:01] We are discovering the decision making tree. So each and every movement becomes suddenly a full map of what's happening. This is our dashboard by the. We can show it as well. So this is the decision tree looks like an octopus, but every moment since the moment that the shopper arrived, bef in front of the shelf, then we start the measuring. [00:11:24] So we have people who stopped, who are interested. You have people who interacted with a category and you have people who touched a certain product, look at it, put it back, and then either abandon the entire category. And this is for a retailer, a very bad thing because it lost the opportunity to sell the product. [00:11:41] And what we saw that happen during the research time that we've conducted in Israel, if you took a certain product, you looked at it, you put it back, you probably bought it somewhere else. We saw based on the research that 85% of those shopper go home. Maybe they stop in a convenience store and bought that product that they [00:12:00] were looking, but put it back. [00:12:01] So this is our lost potential. [00:12:02] The Consumer Struggle Factor [00:12:02] Jeff Roster: So how do you deal with, let's say if you followed me in my grocery shopping about four months ago, I really cleaned up what I was eating. So I'm paying very close attention to high fructose corn syrup. I'm paying very close attention to carbs, all, all that stuff. So I, I will pick up a product, look at it, and, and the struggle aspect. [00:12:20] It was interesting. I've never heard that term before, but I'm looking at it going, Ooh, too many carbs. Put it back. That was, I mean, that was just me analyzing the product and putting it back. There's, there's no chance, well, hopefully there's no chance I'm buying that because I've already made that calculation. [00:12:32] I don't want that. How, how are you classifying that kind of an engagement and how frequent is that? Is is hopefully more people are, are paying attention to what, what we're consuming. [00:12:40] Lanor Daniel: So this is a good example. We are not doing personalization measurements yet. We're looking for the big numbers. So basically I give the equivalent of Google Analytics. So what's happening in the store, every shopper that entered the category is measured. So every shopper, if we see this kind of a [00:13:00] behavior for 70% of the shoppers looking, turn it back and put it back. [00:13:04] We can say there is something in the product, in the ingredients that there is a problem with that. [00:13:08] Jeff Roster: Interesting. [00:13:08] Ricardo Belmar: Interesting. Very interesting [00:13:10] Jeff Roster: is crazy. [00:13:13] So if I'm, if I'm producing a product that let's say, maybe isn't the, the most healthy or not even close to being healthy and, and your data comes back and says, Hey, you have this, huge percentage of people that are looking at your product and putting it back. [00:13:27] Wow, I've never heard that before [00:13:29] Lanor Daniel: Yeah. and it's based on real life data. And I'll take it to a different category. You spoke about healthy food, but you know, take shampoo category. So one of our clients in Israel, it's a big shampoo distributor, and he was like, I don't know why my shampoo is not selling. I think it's the price. And so we are not thinking, we are watching data and analyzing and what we saw, it was amazing. [00:13:53] Like, we had this questionnaire that we were doing with it onboarding, and we asked could it be a problem with the product [00:14:00] itself? And they were like, no, it's the number one product. We did test, we did like a focus group. In the focus group, we ask everybody, which is, which is the best smell, and they choose that smell. [00:14:11] And this said, this is the best smell. So there is no way there is a product ah, problem. So we open the camera. And in Israel there is a thing that we're doing once we touch the shampoo, if it's a new shampoo, we, we like to open and smell it. [00:14:23] Jeff Roster: Oh, Jesus [00:14:25] Lanor Daniel: Is that, is that common [00:14:27] Ricardo Belmar: of course. Yeah. That's common. Yeah. Oh, I've, I've seen that. Yeah. Yeah. That's [00:14:31] Lanor Daniel: It's common. [00:14:32] Yeah. So it's not just Israel is, [00:14:34] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. [00:14:35] Lanor Daniel: So what we saw, 75% of people, like the shoppers came to the shelf. They were looking at the new product, touching, taking the product. So that means it's not a price issue. I took it already, it's in my hand. And then they open, smell it, and they were like, Ugh, put it back [00:14:52] Ricardo Belmar: because you could see it on the video. [00:14:53] Lanor Daniel: listen, it's crazy. [00:14:55] Ricardo Belmar: You see on the video that they didn't like like [00:14:56] Lanor Daniel: it's crazy. And then you show those numbers, like it's [00:15:00] hundreds of thousands of people every day. You know, in a, in a big chain. And they were like, there's no way. And I was saying like, listen, if you ask somebody a question, ask me if you look good today, I'll say, yes, , maybe I don't [00:15:12] You know what I mean? Maybe it's [00:15:14] Jeff Roster: Wait a minute. You said we look good today. [00:15:18] Lanor Daniel: So I'm [00:15:18] Ricardo Belmar: yourself. Jeff [00:15:21] Lanor Daniel: like in a focus group, people are saying like the rational thing and, and it doesn't mean that they will be motivated to purchase that product. And once you identify the problem, we're talking like in a category. [00:15:33] Identify the problem, the, the vendor itself or the retailer itself can understand, okay, so I don't need to do like a big sale or a big promotion because even [00:15:41] Ricardo Belmar: it's not price [00:15:42] Lanor Daniel: exactly [00:15:43] Ricardo Belmar: it's not price [00:15:43] Lanor Daniel: to identify the problem [00:15:45] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So, so this is, so we, you and I have talked about this, Jeff, when ever, we see some of these interesting survey, consumer surveys, that show up in the industry and our, our friend at George Mason University that's doing a very different kind of consumer in insight survey where, and, and I think your [00:16:00] example reflects that, Lenore, very closely because you have consumers in a focus group, if they know they're in the focus group and they know there, there are lots of people in the group, they may be psychologically less inclined to want to go against the group because you don't want to feel like you're the one that did that said what? [00:16:15] You're the, you're the one that's different, but you're right. When standing in front of the products at the store, in front of the shelf and you actually look at it and smell it and you're, you think, oh, this isn't what I like at all, and you make a completely different decision. [00:16:28] Next Generation Shopper Research [00:16:28] Ari Pereira: That's why we are the next generation of shopper research because we can really look of what is happening in front of the shelf, and we are translating that into different insights in terms of the shopper journey, the shopper behavior, and everything that is happening in store. That's where most of the retail stores are blind today. [00:16:48] Lanor Daniel: And take it one step ahead, because we're talking on in store, but let's talk about chains. In, in America, the scale is much bigger than in Israel. This is why we waited so much up until the [00:17:00] technology and the structure of the, you know, the architecture of the software will be scalable enough. So we spoke about one store, but if you're a chain like Nike or Walmart, and I give you your entire map, and we are connecting in all of the stores, suddenly you can see that. [00:17:16] You get alerts, not just about the shopper struggle ranks, you get alerts from the entire chain. So for example, in Denver, Denver, Colorado, what we see now, it's like we have less conversion. We have a problem with specific female that don't buy it. And as a manager or CEO or or VP marketing, you can see it pushed to you, as alert, what is the problem in the chain? And then you can take drill down to see the video that we saw before, specific category, what's the problem? So it's not just one store, it's scalable. We can see it [00:17:51] Ricardo Belmar: scales the whole chain. [00:17:52] Lanor Daniel: Exactly. And then the metrics is different. And we can do static statistics for the entire chain, which brings us to a different [00:18:00] universe. [00:18:00] And that was the idea, like making an unscalable world scalable, [00:18:05] Ricardo Belmar: so, so really you're combining the performance metrics that you would expect on your e-commerce site, but you're delivering that in store. And then on top of that, you're delivering all of these actual shopper insights and on shopper sentiment on their behaviors while they're engaged in that shopping. [00:18:22] Lanor Daniel: Exactly. [00:18:22] Ricardo Belmar: All in one dashboard, [00:18:23] Ari Pereira: yes, and when you think about harmony, right, You have all the metrics in E-com and most of the industries, they have some difficulty to make the data make sense because they are looking at something in the brick and mortar space. They are looking something different in e-com. And when you have similar KPIs, you can start to bridge the data and you can start to have a holistic view, which today you might be different because you're looking two different ways, but now you can have a holistic view of the data. Both places. [00:18:56] Lanor Daniel: Full pictures [00:18:57] Jeff Roster: So in your [00:19:00] deployments in Israel, I'm guessing you probably have more security cameras, although I think probably in America we might be catching up. How do you have to add anything additional to get the da? Anything from a hardware perspective or you are literally just using the footprint that's already existing. [00:19:15] Lanor Daniel: the beginning, we're starting only with what's existing and it gives you so much. [00:19:19] Jeff Roster: Wow. [00:19:19] Lanor Daniel: so much because you don't have anything like this. It's ongoing all day. Think that you're doing all the statistics of each and every shopper that answers the shop. So in the beginning, maybe there will be some you know blind spots. [00:19:33] Like we don't see everything, but we see most of it. So we can recognize most of the problems. And after a certain time, if the retailer wants to upgrade, we can put like our own cameras. In Israel, we add some cameras, but most of the chains that we're working with, we don't need [00:19:49] Ricardo Belmar: you don't need to add anything. [00:19:50] Jeff Roster: And what, what's your thinking as far as US retail? Do they have enough security cameras? It's the same deal that you're gonna get more than enough to, to get going. [00:19:58] Lanor Daniel: So it's, it's interesting [00:20:00] this question. So the, our first time we touched base with America was at the nrf. We didn't really know what to expect. Mm-hmm. , We have Ari in our team and she's very experienced. , but all of us came from Israel. So what we found out in the nrf actually one of the meetings that we've conducted there so the VP marketing told me, she was like, we have like $30,000 worth of security cameras in our store and we're not doing anything with it. [00:20:29] And basically now you're saying that we can earn money from that. [00:20:32] Jeff Roster: well, let me make sure I understand. They're using those cameras for security purposes. They're just not using them. So a hundred years ago when I was back in retail we were not. I can say it cuz the company's outta business. Now, Mervins, we were not allowed as managers to use LP cameras for observing employees. [00:20:50] Just from a performance perspective. That was absolutely verboten. LP didn't, wouldn't allow us to even do that because we're all like, can I just look instead of walking all over this distribution center, can I just sit here?[00:21:00] So I don't know. Yeah. So I don't know. Is that still the, the is, does that still something you're gonna have to battle with lp? [00:21:07] That, hey, we actually wanna use your cameras for other reasons I could get where they don't want you to be moving their cameras, but is that an issue or is that, have we already moved past that? [00:21:15] Lanor Daniel: is that so today they are looking at employees, they're looking for performance. Those are some of the problems and issues that we heard from the industry while we were at nrf. And also for security matters. There is a big thief thing right now, right?, [00:21:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:21:31] Jeff Roster: yes there is [00:21:32] Ricardo Belmar: I you're a little familiar with [00:21:33] with that, [00:21:33] Jeff Roster: Jeff. [00:21:33] Yes. I'm, I live in California, so yes, very familiar with that. [00:21:37] Lanor Daniel: Yeah.. [00:21:37] Jeff Roster: It's not even an lp, it's more a more a political thing of, of we're no longer prosecuting crimes and, you know, less than 900 bucks, so you can literally steal $800 worth of [00:21:46] Lanor Daniel: more, yeah, so we heard that a lot from, from a lot of retailers. Like they're, they're, they're believing that they had, there is a very high percentage today of. Thief that is going on in the store and they can't really see everything even with their [00:22:00] security cameras. So today they're using that for security and so for performance as well, trying to it's not an issue. [00:22:07] And basically our software is fully anonymously. If you saw the movie, everything, it's blur. I'm not looking to understand who is the person personally, I'm looking to understand the problem with the touches, with the body movements. That's what we're looking for. So, with with that being said, there is no problem [00:22:24] Jeff Roster: Wow. Very cool. [00:22:25] Ricardo Belmar: I guess at the end of the day too, compared to when you're thinking Jeff, now these are all IP based cameras. So everything is a video stream being stored in a server somewhere that even LP is using to go back to bring back footage. So now you're just taking a, you can take advantage of that same IP stream for a completely different purpose and, and let marketing have some advantages. [00:22:45] Store operations have advantage or you're extending the usefulness of the equipment that's already there [00:22:50] Jeff Roster: Yeah, boy. [00:22:51] Lanor Daniel: Exactly. [00:22:52] Jeff Roster: just adding another budget to, to bind that, that infrastructure. So that's, that's fantastic. [00:22:57] Ricardo Belmar: bringing a lot more value that way. Wow, [00:22:58] Lanor Daniel: Yeah. And it's, [00:23:00] this is the exact point. So it's already there. They're not making money out of it. I'm not really sure how many thief they're catching from it. So then we come and then we bring them. Look, you get information, you get Ability. By the way, all this data that we are collecting, we're doing AB test. [00:23:20] So you know, in online we're saying like there is the, the certain color that you're choosing for the button, which color convert more. It's very easy to chain change online, off line. [00:23:30] Ricardo Belmar: You can see that now, right? to actually show [00:23:32] Lanor Daniel: So we are changing like things, we're moving things and you see that conversion metrics go up or. and we want to really be better for the shoppers. And we're looking for, this is why I show the map. Like each and every area in New York, there are different needs that in Texas [00:23:46] Ricardo Belmar: mm-hmm [00:23:46] Lanor Daniel: makes sense, right? [00:23:48] So why does, why doesn't it look different? [00:23:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Why not adapt it? Yeah. [00:23:52] Lanor Daniel: And you speak about health, if we see in a certain city in Israel that there is more people who are looking for the ingredients and looking to [00:24:00] buy healthier food. [00:24:00] So why don't you as a retailer, put more shelves for healthy people? Like there is a lot of products put. Make it more accurate to the people around. And then if you see that there is a store which has all the, I dunno, best, healthiest food, you would like to go to check it out. Because right now you're keeping your diet, you're keeping your health, so the store will be better for you. [00:24:24] Up until today there were, you know, all the managers were, were gathering data by, by doing this market research once a year. And here you can see how shoppers change and their needs and to be connected to their needs daily. [00:24:39] Jeff Roster: Gosh, that's, [00:24:40] Ricardo Belmar: so you got some, [00:24:41] Jeff Roster: I'm stunned [00:24:41] Ricardo Belmar: advantages. You you're validating some planograms. You've got benefits for the category managers. [00:24:47] Lots of different roles that can [00:24:48] Lanor Daniel: can you imagine E-com word without Google Analytics? Let's say now we wanna sell this product or this computer, and we are a team and I will tell you guys, listen, I'm doing e-comm, I'm specialized with, you know, users [00:25:00] analytics. You will bring me the product, I'm gonna build the website and do the sales. [00:25:05] So we did this business partnership and now I open a website. And then what I, I tell you guys, after one week we sold 1000 computers. Is that good? Sounds good. Right? And the next week we sold 2000 computers. But then I would expect you to ask me from how many people who interacted, right? Like what is the [00:25:22] Ricardo Belmar: many people that didn't [00:25:23] Lanor Daniel: Like this is the first question, right? And they don't have this answer, like the basic answer, like conversion funnel. and then you have it all the time. And if you see that in the first week we had, I dunno, like 100,000 people in the website and the next week I had 500,000 people on the website and it go just with from 1000 to 2000. [00:25:41] Like, [00:25:42] Jeff Roster: You know, the question I'd love to have answered is how many people do that struggle engagement with a product? Meaning, cuz if. You know, looking at my behavior in the last three, three months, every single thing I buy at a grocery store, I'm, I'm looking at the ingredients, every single thing [00:26:00] and, you know, I'm, now, I'm gonna be making that, I'll be thinking of you folks. [00:26:03] I'll be making that face, [00:26:04] Lanor Daniel: ah, [00:26:04] Jeff Roster: and put something back [00:26:05] Lanor Daniel: if [00:26:05] it's you do it. It's, it's like not rational movement [00:26:08] Jeff Roster: what I want to know, would it be really fascinating to know, is how many pe, how many, let's say a hundred people looked at a product, how many looked. And, and put it in their shopping cart or, or put it back because that might also be a really interesting indicator, Hey, wait a minute. [00:26:23] A lot of people are looked at your product, but boy, they look at those carbs, they look at those calories, or they look at that and put it back. That would be really cool too. That might be the, that might be the biggest opportunity to maybe bring some, some more enlightenment to [00:26:35] Ricardo Belmar: what [00:26:36] I mean, think what I'm hearing is you can be even more granular than that, because if I pick up the product off the shelf, the way you are measuring this, if I turn it around to look at the ingredients, so the ingredients are always on the back. [00:26:45] Yep. Right. You'll. Your data will show that. Well, the reason the person put it back is because they turned it around so you can, you can make a logical assumption. If they turned it around, they'll check the ingredient list and that's why they put it back. Yeah. If they picked it up, looked at the packaging and put it [00:27:00] back, then you might say to the retailer, well, there's something wrong with their packaging, and they should go back to the brand and talk about redoing the packaging. [00:27:05] Lanor Daniel: Exactly. But we're looking to see not just, you remember it's big [00:27:09] Ricardo Belmar: but yes. Yeah. How so? It's right across all your stores, across all the customers that went by. If you know 50% of them picked it up and put it back, did [00:27:16] Lanor Daniel: suddenly, you know that 50% put it back. You [00:27:19] Ricardo Belmar: which you didn't know before. [00:27:21] Ari Pereira: but the mo most important thing, then we can see what was the other product they touched next. Was it healthier? Which one did they buy in the end? Did they buy a healthier product [00:27:30] Jeff Roster: Boy, [00:27:30] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, [00:27:30] Jeff Roster: imagine [00:27:31] what our friend at George Mason University [00:27:32] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, would do with that data . That's. [00:27:35] Jeff Roster: I mean, [00:27:36] just [00:27:36] Ricardo Belmar: would have a field day looking at [00:27:37] Jeff Roster: Oh my gosh. Wow. Phenomenal. [00:27:40] Ricardo Belmar: Wow. [00:27:41] Activating Insights from Data [00:27:41] Lanor Daniel: so this is exactly it. Just today, to explain it a little further, so the numbers that everybody knows, it's. The numbers that it's in the cashier, right? How many, what is the market share? What is the market share they're looking to to raise that all the time. But this number, like they already interacted, they touched it and [00:28:00] put it back. [00:28:00] So there are some categories that reach to 70% abandoned rate, 70%. And what you see, this is very interesting, that from those 70%, like you can see more than 60%, most of the time the same problem. [00:28:16] Ricardo Belmar: Interesting [00:28:17] Lanor Daniel: So if you change a small thing, you can convert those 60% because they already show the interest. It's not just stopping. [00:28:24] It's not just looking. They, you touched it already. Think about this moment you touch, you look at it. All you need to do is right? [00:28:30] Ricardo Belmar: Which is in some ways more than what you would know on the e-com side, because all you know on the e-com side is that you went to the product page, but you don't know anything about other than how long you had that page open, which doesn't necessarily tell you anything about intent. [00:28:43] But here you actually know and you can know that they make a face at it, right? So you have all these other factors that you're measuring. [00:28:48] Lanor Daniel: time. What is the average time in a specific category? In snacks category, it's lower than other categories, cuz snacks, it's like more impulse, like cashier area, you know, [00:29:00] always the cashier area. [00:29:00] We say to put impulse product. Who said who said that? Why? You know what we're doing today, we're we're next. When we are next to the cashier, we're playing with our phone. . [00:29:11] Ricardo Belmar: Everyone's [00:29:11] Lanor Daniel: So there is no focus to the outside and this is the most expensive area today in the store, but you're like this, or maybe with your child or maybe with your fr like everything [00:29:21] Ricardo Belmar: is because that was a theory that a grosser decided 80 years ago made sense do. [00:29:25] Lanor Daniel: Exactly. And you know the theory that you said that it should be an eye level to sell more. who said that? is it really true? [00:29:33] Ricardo Belmar: is it still true. Yeah, [00:29:34] Lanor Daniel: exactly. And once you discovered this, you understand the problem. We saw it in one product. [00:29:40] It was mento, you know, [00:29:42] the, so Mentos want to, to understand what is their problem, and the VP marketing was like, listen, Lenore, my problem is that I'm not on the eye level. And I'm like, okay, let's check. And what we saw that in the cashier area, if you managed to put away your phone, , what got you attracted [00:30:00] to the shelf was the Mentos color. [00:30:01] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. Interesting. like, yeah. Right, [00:30:05] Lanor Daniel: So we saw shoppers. Once they le left the phone looking at the color, the color, attract them to come, they came the touch. That was their first touch. Come touch the Mentos, look at it, put it back, and took the [00:30:18] competitive. And the competitive back then when we started was 47% market share and Mentos was 29. [00:30:25] And what we told Mentos, it's a simple thing, listen. People are looking for you, you're the anchor. They're not purchasing you. So they never saw this kind of data. You need to move around from the competition. Once they move around away from the competition in a different shelf, [00:30:42] they got like 200 uplift% [00:30:46] Ricardo Belmar: Christmas [00:30:47] Lanor Daniel: And today, after a year, Mintos is almost 49% market [00:30:52] share. and the competitive is 27. But listen, it's a small insight. So we're not saying push it to people that don't [00:31:00] want, if a person, a shopper interacted, something got interested, so [00:31:04] Ricardo Belmar: was just grabbing more conversion from people who were already showed some intent in your [00:31:08] Lanor Daniel: promise. [00:31:09] Exactly. Crazy, right? [00:31:10] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:31:12] Jeff Roster: Yeah, [00:31:13] no, I I mean, [00:31:14] Lanor Daniel: I overwhelmed you guys. I'm sorry. [00:31:17] Jeff Roster: Yeah, that's, well, that's what we get paid to do. We get paid to be overwhelmed? Actually, no. I mean, I just, I just, I just love this idea in that I don't have to put in new infrastructure. Because I've seen it all. I mean, I've seen the concept of flying a drone down an aisle, which is insanity. [00:31:31] Robots stuff on rails. I mean, I've seen it all. And you know, it's me, myself as an analyst. It's not my job to say, oh, that's good or that, well, it is a little bit, but it's more, you know, what retailers are gonna embrace. And the problem I always have with startups that are some of the smartest people in the WO room, but they'll come in and say, Hey, I can do this. [00:31:49] And, and then I have, I'm the guy that has to say, do you understand there's 5,000 stores? So [00:31:55] Ricardo Belmar: It's what you're doing times [00:31:56] Jeff Roster: times 5,000 and you see the air just go outta [00:32:00] people. . And [00:32:01] Lanor Daniel: I have scars from what you're [00:32:03] Ricardo Belmar: you're [00:32:05] Lanor Daniel: We learned it. We learned it. [00:32:06] Startup Lessons [00:32:06] Jeff Roster: Well, welcome to America cuz that is, that is not unheard of to have 5,000. Most of the people you'd be talking to are gonna have a thousand stores. [00:32:13] Lanor Daniel: Yeah, so this is why we were waiting guys. We were waiting to the moment that will be scalable enough interesting that we have the best features that we can because once you go on scale, there are features that are left behind, unfortunately. But this is what we were trying to build and when we saw that it's working and we can bring it here and still be in the professional level that we wanted to be, then we came and, and, and you just mentioned something, but I think I can say a little bit more about it. [00:32:42] today, we come with compassion when we see retailers. I didn't understand how hard it is to run a chain It's like a war zone, right? Really? It, it's like each day you go to, I was a captain in the idf. Mm-hmm. in a 200. Mm-hmm. And you know, like [00:33:00] operational. So I know what it is. Like your phone is always your, all the day like, , you know, try to fix problems and make sure that everything is working. [00:33:06] This is like for, you know, a manager in a, in a retail store, big managers, and then we come and say, Hey, we come to save the world. Exactly. And, and, and so today we come with compassion. We're saying we want to take the burden, you know, with you guys, and we understand how it's working. We understand your problems, we understand the pressure, and we want to take some, mm-hmm , let us help you. [00:33:27] And this is the idea. [00:33:29] Jeff Roster: Yeah. [00:33:29] let me give you some feedback on that. Typically what I hear startups do is come in and start off by insulting the retailer saying, oh, you really don't know what you're doing. I'm 26 years old and I'm, you know, I'm an engineer out of Stanford, and here I'm here to fix you. And I'm, I've sat with 15, 60 year old CIOs. Mad as be Jabbers cuz listen, you have no idea what it's like to work 24 7, 365 when every single person in the store has a phone, is just waiting for [00:34:00] something bad to happen so they can video it and then, and hopefully go viral. And it's like the biggest mistake. And I see it again and again and again when startups will come in and say, Hey, you know, you don't, and it's, it's, I don't think they believe it. [00:34:11] I think it's a throwaway line. [00:34:15] I just, you could not be more insulting, not, not you, but that person could not be more insulting if they tried. And it's a very bad strategy to start a pitch by insulting the person that you're asking to buy the technology. So that's i I com. You know, I congratulate you on being being really, really savvy about, about how words impact people, and [00:34:34] Lanor Daniel: No, because we understand that. We really understand that. We see it. We are working with retailers. We come from the, from the store, we say the field, but we come from the store. We understand, like it took us some time. [00:34:44] We didn't start it like this in the beginning. This is why I say I'm scarred about it because listen, when you come from a different, like technology wise, to this industry and you were like, what's going on here? Why are they working like this? Why not like this? You come with a lot of, you know, I don't know, I don't [00:35:00] wanna say like arrogance. [00:35:01] Mm-hmm. , but like, you don't really understand. [00:35:04] Ricardo Belmar: understand. [00:35:04] Lanor Daniel: You're Right. [00:35:05] Jeff Roster: No, it, it is arrogance. It's a hundred percent arrogance. Yeah. People that don't, don't listen to, you know, [00:35:10] Lanor Daniel: we cannot understand [00:35:12] Jeff Roster: Yeah. Just, just, I mean, first of all, there's an old, there's an old cowboy expression that says, before you tear down an old fence, know why it was there. [00:35:19] Lanor Daniel: Correct. [00:35:20] Jeff Roster: Somebody put that fence there. [00:35:21] Why? [00:35:23] Lanor Daniel: Wow. That's really good. Yeah. [00:35:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. You have to understand their why. [00:35:27] Jeff Roster: Yeah, [00:35:27] Ricardo Belmar: exactly. [00:35:27] Lanor Daniel: Exactly. So it took some times, and after we understand and learned, one of our investors is a retailer. So we got like, you know, one-on-one school. [00:35:36] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. . There you go. [00:35:37] Lanor Daniel: So we got, I wanna say like the slap from here and the slap from there And then today we understand that and we come with this. Why I say compassion because we need to help. We don't need to put some more pressure. You know, I said with, I remember that was the first time I met an American retailer, a CEO has 1,200 stores and I was like pitching and you know, like, ah, it's my baby. [00:35:58] And, and he was like, [00:36:00] listen young dear, from Israel. With a very heavy Texan accent. I remember that. And he was like, I don't have time or effort for your mumbo jumbo technology, but if you can show me 5% growth, I will put T-shirt with your name on it on every employee in my store, [00:36:19] Jeff Roster: Done. [00:36:19] Lanor Daniel: So [00:36:20] Ricardo Belmar: that line before. I [00:36:21] Jeff Roster: I think. [00:36:22] Lanor Daniel: you know what I mean? So I understand like, yeah, it's the [00:36:26] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. [00:36:26] Jeff Roster: some pretty good coaching you got got [00:36:28] Ricardo Belmar: in that one for sure. That [00:36:29] That was, that was pretty strong [00:36:30] Lanor Daniel: Come with compassion. Understand if you really want to work in this space, [00:36:35] be the retailer. Like walk the walk, talk the walk. Understand how you can really help and not just come and say how sophisticated you are. Yeah, yeah. Who cares? It should work. [00:36:45] I need help right now. I'm fighting right now. Like, so this is the idea and this is the school that we've got and this is why we come. Very, yeah. We have a team with very experienced people. We have history in Israel for the past four years, [00:37:00] and we're looking for our partners here. [00:37:01] Ricardo Belmar: Well, excellent. I like hearing that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. [00:37:04] Lanor Daniel: It's different, right? it's [00:37:06] different. [00:37:06] Jeff Roster: I'll give you that. I mean, listen, I've heard hundreds of pitches and I'm, I, I typically wait for that, that arrogance to start. Right. And when it, when the feedback, when they ask for feedback. If I heard, I mean, I've heard it hundreds of times. I, I mean, I hit so hard. Cause it's so, and the, and the thing [00:37:21] Lanor Daniel: where are they now? [00:37:23] Jeff Roster: Well, I mean, some have done well, some haven't because they learn, you know? But the point is, why, why? I mean, why? I mean, I guess that's the whole point of what I do in my podcast is I try to bring startup stories of like, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. I mean, it's more don't do than do. But that's, but I mean, I, gosh, I've just sat in that seat so many times. [00:37:44] NRF Tech, I can remember very vividly, a couple of our friends and I were watching that presentation and the guy just started off and it just, it was a throwaway line. And, and I won't say who, but they wasn't even mine. But they just grimmaced. It's like I'm, I'll never do That's so insulting. [00:37:59] So anyway, [00:38:00] right. Yeah. Very good. [00:38:01] Ricardo Belmar: it's a lesson that has, well, has to be learned sometimes. Yeah. Well, Lanor, Ari, I want thank you so much for joining us. This has been a fascinating discussion. I think we've learned a lot here about how to approach retailers in one part of the discussion, but I'm really, truly fascinated by the approach you've taken with this technology and how you're delivering that to retailers. [00:38:21] So thank you again for joining us. [00:38:23] Lanor Daniel: Thank you so much for having us. [00:38:24] Ari Pereira: Thank you for having us. [00:38:26] Jeff Roster: Our Pleasure. [00:38:26] Show Recap [00:38:26] Casey Golden: What a great discussion. I love the closing bit about compassion and how Jeff explained what every startup should know to not come across as arrogant in making your pitch. But then again, maybe he hasn't heard my perfect pitch. There's no arrogance there and I'm always full of compassion. I've been on that side. [00:38:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yes indeed. Yes indeed. So true. So what, what did you think of their approach to analytics? [00:38:58] Casey Golden: It is fascinating not [00:39:00] just because they're leveraging existing video cameras. I mean, I think we've all seen other video analytics solutions before. But shopper AI is really attacking the insights in a different way, focusing on the big numbers as Lenore put it, showing you across your whole fleet of stores what consumers are doing, how they're reacting to products. [00:39:21] I can just see so many AB testing opportunities you could do to learn more about your stores better, and to feed that data and insights back into the brands you work. I'm already seeing another B2B services tie in, just like we keep talking about. [00:39:39] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I totally agree, and I hope Leor and Ari find ways to lean into that line of thought, what the B2B offering that retailers can deliver to their brands by using this solution. It's a super interesting approach. I hope listeners and viewers agree. [00:39:52] Casey Golden: So who's coming up next in this series? Got any hints for us? [00:39:57] Ricardo Belmar: Well, you know me when it comes to hints for these. [00:40:00] So all I'll say is we've got one more startup that Jeff and I met with, and then we close it out with another of my favorite chats with some retail friends. So listeners and viewers will have to stick around to see who it is. But now I do want to thank both Lenore and Ari for joining Jeff and me for this discussion. [00:40:16] Thank you both so much for joining. [00:40:19] Casey Golden: So with that, Ricardo, it's time for us to wrap this second episode of Our Shop Talk Live mini-series Crossover with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation, it's a wrap and a mouthful. [00:40:35] Show Close [00:40:35] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed our shows this season, especially our podcast crossover events, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Plus, you can watch us, not just listen on our YouTube channel and [00:41:00] like, and comment about this season there, too. [00:41:02] And if you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a transcript of each episode, take a look at our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. [00:41:14] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season and the crossover series, follow us on Twitter at Casey C Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter and LinkedIn at Retail Razor for the latest updates. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:41:31] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:41:35] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the retail Razor Show. How well do you know your in-store shopper versus your online shopper? If you’re like most retailers, you probably believe you know more about those online shoppers. But what if you had a full set of analytics on your in-store shoppers? What if you knew how shoppers react to a product they pick up off the shelf? Why they put it back instead of purchasing it? Meet ShopperAI, a startup that’s trying to change that perception by leveraging the existing video footage you have from loss prevention cameras to understand shopper intent and sentiment.


It’s the second in our podcast cross-over event with This Week in Innovation and special guest host Jeff Roster! Recorded live and in-person during Shoptalk 2023, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar sit down with ShopperAI’s CEO, Lanor Daniel, and VP of Strategic Growth, Ari Pereira, to learn just how significant the insights are that retailers can learn about their in-store customers using their existing LP camera infrastructure. And if you’re a startup, you’ll also learn some important tips about how to present your solution to retailers by showing compassion first and foremost!


We’re standing at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

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Host → Ricardo Belmar,

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TRANSCRIPT

S2E12b In-Store Analytics with ShopperAI

[00:00:00] Show Intro 

[00:00:20] Casey Golden: Hello Retail Razor Show listeners and viewers, and welcome to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. I'm your host, Casey Golden.

[00:00:34] Ricardo Belmar: And I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. Welcome to another episode in our Shop Talk live crossover event with Jeff Foster and This Week In Innovation podcast.

[00:00:43] Casey Golden: These crossover podcast series are really so much fun and I have to start going to Shop Talk on a regular basis. I do.

[00:00:53] Ricardo Belmar: Well, it would be amazing for her to join us next time. Casey, we missed here on this series for sure. So on today's show, [00:01:00] we are talking about the consumer struggle factor when choosing a product on the shelf. How to convert in-store data you didn't realize you had into meaningful customer insights. And the best contribution to your data analytics, loss prevention can make.

[00:01:15] First I've got a startup life Question for you, Casey.

[00:01:20] Casey Golden: Oh, bring it. Typically My answer is yes. More caffeine, please.

[00:01:25] Ricardo Belmar: Of course, of course it is. So, so here's the question. So how important is compassion when working with retailers?

[00:01:33] Casey Golden: Oh, that's good. There needs to be a lot of room for compassion. Operators have heavy workloads and technology has a tendency to add more work, not less. I feel that outsiders always need to go in humble and serve pretty much the opposite of our day-to-day with investors and startup culture. Really focusing on like the what if, how would, how important is just go in knowing and acknowledging that [00:02:00] you know nothing.

[00:02:00] They know everything.

[00:02:02] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. You're, you're, you're really there to help make them better, right. Not tell 'em what to do, but you're acknowledging that it's not that they're doing anything wrong, it's that there's always room to do better

[00:02:13] Casey Golden: Because they're doing something so amazing. You wanted to bring this solution to them first.

[00:02:19] Ricardo Belmar: it. There you go. There you go. That's right. It's, it's an honor to bring it to them because they're the best.

[00:02:25] Casey Golden: They are, and that's why we decided to build these companies for like the best. Right.

[00:02:30] Ricardo Belmar: right, that's right. That, that is so, so the right attitude and, and wait till you see where that comes into play in this discussion. So as you might have guessed in this show, we are interviewing a startup, Shopper AI. An Israeli startup specializing in a unique form of video analytics with the goal of giving you in-store data analytics that's as good as what you get on your e-commerce site.

[00:02:52] So their, their c e o explains it makes the analogy that, you know, they, they are trying to be the Google Analytics for your store,

[00:02:59] Casey Golden: [00:03:00] Fascinating. Now I see where the loss prevention angle comes from

[00:03:03] Ricardo Belmar: right?

[00:03:04] Casey Golden: all the security cameras providing that video footage for analytics. Right?

[00:03:08] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Exactly.

[00:03:10] Casey Golden: Well, now I can't wait to see where this struggle factor you mentioned comes to play and how compassion works into all of this.

[00:03:18] Ricardo Belmar: Well, it will definitely be illuminating for sure. No doubt about it. It's all part of our Shop Talk Live crossover event with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation. We recorded live and in person at Shop Talk, of course in Las Vegas last month. And Jeff really demonstrates how the struggle factor plays into making choices as a consumer.

[00:03:38] So there's a good story about that that he uses to kind of illustrate that in the discussion. Plus we end with a really great discussion on how hard it is for startups to pitch to a retailer without coming across, perhaps a little bit too arrogant in trying to solve problems for the retailer. Which I think you just nailed it there, Casey, in your description of how to approach that, [00:04:00] that pitch session with the retailer.

[00:04:01] We'll, we'll see how that goes.

[00:04:04] Casey Golden: All right. In that case, let's get right into the interview with Shopper AI's, CEO, Lanor Daniel and their VP of Strategic Growth, Ari Pereira with you and Jeff.

[00:04:16] ShopperAI Interview

[00:04:16] Ricardo Belmar: ​Hey Everyone, welcome to another podcast crossover. This time coming to you live and in person from Shop Talk 2023. I'm Ricardo Belmar and I'm here with good friend Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation. How you doing, Jeff?

[00:04:36] Jeff Roster: You know, I'm I'm actually a little slow today. I might have gotten just a slight hard on day one of Shop Talk lots of evening research opportunities that I was

[00:04:44] Ricardo Belmar: re research opportunities. Is that what we're calling it now? 

[00:04:47] Jeff Roster: that what we're calling it. Okay,

[00:04:48] Ricardo Belmar: We'll go with that. 

[00:04:49] Jeff Roster: Really good research to be honest with you. But definitely you know, first day tons of energy It's just a great, it's really a, I'm really impressed with this venue because I had three events and they were all within, I dunno, you could throw a rock and [00:05:00] hit the main part of the exhibit and so, which meant people were walking by. So you not only had your event, but you also had all that traffic coming by 

[00:05:07] Ricardo Belmar: all the passers by, yeah.

[00:05:08] Jeff Roster: was Just a fantastic day day one I thought.

[00:05:11] Ricardo Belmar: I agree. Day one was pretty, pretty interesting compared to, this is my second Shop Talk. Compared to last year, I think it was busier, a little more action.

[00:05:19] I think people were enjoying themselves, a little bit more on day one than maybe last year, where last year this was probably for most people their first time out in an in-person event. So I think we're all getting a little bit more used to that. So this is a continuation, I guess I'll call it, of our crossover from NRF, where we had a number of super interesting interviews with really interesting retail tech companies.

[00:05:41] And in that theme, we've got a fascinating discussion today for listeners. We have with us the team from Shopper AI that we're really excited to chat with. So I'm gonna ask Lenore and Ari to please introduce yourselves.

[00:05:54] Lanor Daniel: Hi everyone, my name is Lanor Daniel. I'm the CEO and co-founder of ShopperAI.

[00:05:58] Ari Pereira: Hello everyone. [00:06:00] I'm Ari Pereira I'm the VP of Insights and Strategic Growth for Shopper AI. Thank you for having us in the podcast.

[00:06:06] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, it's great to have you here. So why don't we start by having you tell us a little bit about what's the challenge that Shopper AI addresses for retailers and how you're solving that.

[00:06:14] Origins of ShopperAI

[00:06:14] Lanor Daniel: Yeah. So basically we started four years ago in Israel. Me and my co-founder Sivan came from marketing online, digital marketing landscape. And we got partner with the retailer and we asked the question, how can we analyze data from your store?

[00:06:30] And he was like, what data? And we were like, you know, in e-comm you have Google Analytics in order for you to be better, to optimize, to convert more. Conversion. What's conversion? And then we understand that there is a big gap between what's going on in the online landscape and what's going on in the stores.

[00:06:48] And it got us so fascinating because, you know, ecomm just keeps growing and growing and we like to purchase online. It's easy. You feel like the website knows you, everything is so [00:07:00] focused and accurate. And when you go to a store, all the mess, all the noise, all the things going around and you feel like, I don't wanna go to a store, I want to buy online.

[00:07:09] And basically this thing that we see in the past four and five years, e-com is growing fast and it's easy to understand. There is a lot of data you can be better, and the website really actually knows you and what's happening in offline stores that you come as a shopper. Shoppers, they're paying so much money for marketing, they're paying so much money for personnel, logistics promotions, and they don't know what happening with the user's journey. They don't have any data of users. I'm saying users because it's anonymously, so they don't know what's going on in the store in front of the shelves. Where are the problems? And this is where Shopper AI come to the picture. So this is what we've done in the past four years, building technology that allows us to grab this data from an offline store.

[00:07:57] Jeff Roster: So let's talk about what it takes to get that [00:08:00] data.

[00:08:00] Converting In-store Data to Insights

[00:08:00] Lanor Daniel: Okay so basIcally. When we started to work with retailers in Israel, we didn't really understand how deep the gap is. So what we found out that in order for us to collaborate with retailers when they have all these things going on, like all the logistics and personnel, what I just mentioned, you need to be very easy, seamless integration.

[00:08:21] And for that, we only had the security camera, so we need to crack the, the idea how we can get the data from a security camera that is already there. So we've been through four years of developments with engineer professors and like the best of the best. And we build an algorithm, a software that once we have a connection to the IP of the security camera, automatically takes the video.

[00:08:45] We can show it as well, simple video from the store and turn everything that we just see right now to data.

[00:08:54] and from a data to a dashboard. So if we take the equivalent on Google Analytics, Google Analytics, [00:09:00] analyze each and every movement in the website, what you're looking for, user's behavior, and put it in a dashboard.

[00:09:06] So same thing over here. This is our website, the shelf. Each and every category is different. And what we see, it's all the movements and everything that they're doing. It's listed. We're saying you need to monitor your touches from the shelf, just like you monitor your clicks. Then we have conversion funnels, interaction.

[00:09:24] We have a toucher, we have market shares. This is what everybody knows. So we have a toucher and we created a new language and things that if you come from E-com world make sense, but here for, for the industry, it's a bit new. So this is the process. We get connection to an IP of the security camera, the video, we turn it into data, and this data set turns into a dashboard.

[00:09:49] Ricardo Belmar: So you've taken e everything that we're used to seeing in e-commerce metrics around, you know, if I the equivalent of looking at a product page, then by taking the video feed you're mapping that to, is this [00:10:00] person looking at a particular product on the shelf? If they're picking it up? If they're taking it, then you know they've added it to a basket like they would in an e-commerce site.

[00:10:07] Lanor Daniel: they Correct.

[00:10:08] Ricardo Belmar: So you can imagining, you can measure how long is someone standing in front of a product to see how effective the shelf placement is.

[00:10:13] Lanor Daniel: Correct. And add another more thing for that. What you cannot see in online website. , it's a struggle rank. So we have ranking that you can use. So you mentioned time. So for example, things that we are looking for a specific product, a shampoo or a snack, or even in a, you know, in a Foot Locker store, you are looking for a shoe and then you're in front of the shelf, you're looking and I, something happened there that you're starting to struggle.

[00:10:40] You know, this place like nevermind. I'll do it later.

[00:10:43] Ricardo Belmar: Okay

[00:10:43] Lanor Daniel: You know this feeling. So we have a struggle rank. You cannot have a struggle rank online.

[00:10:48] Ricardo Belmar: Right. So you, you, so you have a measure of what that customer's sentiment was when they were standing in front of the shelf looking at products. So you have a little, you're adding some insights into their decision making process while they're shopping.[00:11:00]

[00:11:00] Lanor Daniel: so it's accurate.

[00:11:01] We are discovering the decision making tree. So each and every movement becomes suddenly a full map of what's happening. This is our dashboard by the. We can show it as well. So this is the decision tree looks like an octopus, but every moment since the moment that the shopper arrived, bef in front of the shelf, then we start the measuring.

[00:11:24] So we have people who stopped, who are interested. You have people who interacted with a category and you have people who touched a certain product, look at it, put it back, and then either abandon the entire category. And this is for a retailer, a very bad thing because it lost the opportunity to sell the product.

[00:11:41] And what we saw that happen during the research time that we've conducted in Israel, if you took a certain product, you looked at it, you put it back, you probably bought it somewhere else. We saw based on the research that 85% of those shopper go home. Maybe they stop in a convenience store and bought that product that they [00:12:00] were looking, but put it back.

[00:12:01] So this is our lost potential.

[00:12:02] The Consumer Struggle Factor

[00:12:02] Jeff Roster: So how do you deal with, let's say if you followed me in my grocery shopping about four months ago, I really cleaned up what I was eating. So I'm paying very close attention to high fructose corn syrup. I'm paying very close attention to carbs, all, all that stuff. So I, I will pick up a product, look at it, and, and the struggle aspect.

[00:12:20] It was interesting. I've never heard that term before, but I'm looking at it going, Ooh, too many carbs. Put it back. That was, I mean, that was just me analyzing the product and putting it back. There's, there's no chance, well, hopefully there's no chance I'm buying that because I've already made that calculation.

[00:12:32] I don't want that. How, how are you classifying that kind of an engagement and how frequent is that? Is is hopefully more people are, are paying attention to what, what we're consuming.

[00:12:40] Lanor Daniel: So this is a good example. We are not doing personalization measurements yet. We're looking for the big numbers. So basically I give the equivalent of Google Analytics. So what's happening in the store, every shopper that entered the category is measured. So every shopper, if we see this kind of a [00:13:00] behavior for 70% of the shoppers looking, turn it back and put it back.

[00:13:04] We can say there is something in the product, in the ingredients that there is a problem with that.

[00:13:08] Jeff Roster: Interesting. 

[00:13:08] Ricardo Belmar: Interesting. Very interesting 

[00:13:10] Jeff Roster: is crazy.

[00:13:13] So if I'm, if I'm producing a product that let's say, maybe isn't the, the most healthy or not even close to being healthy and, and your data comes back and says, Hey, you have this, huge percentage of people that are looking at your product and putting it back.

[00:13:27] Wow, I've never heard that before 

[00:13:29] Lanor Daniel: Yeah. and it's based on real life data. And I'll take it to a different category. You spoke about healthy food, but you know, take shampoo category. So one of our clients in Israel, it's a big shampoo distributor, and he was like, I don't know why my shampoo is not selling. I think it's the price. And so we are not thinking, we are watching data and analyzing and what we saw, it was amazing. 

[00:13:53] Like, we had this questionnaire that we were doing with it onboarding, and we asked could it be a problem with the product [00:14:00] itself? And they were like, no, it's the number one product. We did test, we did like a focus group. In the focus group, we ask everybody, which is, which is the best smell, and they choose that smell.

[00:14:11] And this said, this is the best smell. So there is no way there is a product ah, problem. So we open the camera. And in Israel there is a thing that we're doing once we touch the shampoo, if it's a new shampoo, we, we like to open and smell it.

[00:14:23] Jeff Roster: Oh, Jesus

[00:14:25] Lanor Daniel: Is that, is that common

[00:14:27] Ricardo Belmar: of course. Yeah. That's common. Yeah. Oh, I've, I've seen that. Yeah. Yeah. That's 

[00:14:31] Lanor Daniel: It's common.

[00:14:32] Yeah. So it's not just Israel is, 

[00:14:34] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. 

[00:14:35] Lanor Daniel: So what we saw, 75% of people, like the shoppers came to the shelf. They were looking at the new product, touching, taking the product. So that means it's not a price issue. I took it already, it's in my hand. And then they open, smell it, and they were like, Ugh, put it back

[00:14:52] Ricardo Belmar: because you could see it on the video.

[00:14:53] Lanor Daniel: listen, it's crazy. 

[00:14:55] Ricardo Belmar: You see on the video that they didn't like like 

[00:14:56] Lanor Daniel: it's crazy. And then you show those numbers, like it's [00:15:00] hundreds of thousands of people every day. You know, in a, in a big chain. And they were like, there's no way. And I was saying like, listen, if you ask somebody a question, ask me if you look good today, I'll say, yes, , maybe I don't

[00:15:12] You know what I mean? Maybe it's 

[00:15:14] Jeff Roster: Wait a minute. You said we look good today.

[00:15:18] Lanor Daniel: So I'm

[00:15:18] Ricardo Belmar: yourself. Jeff

[00:15:21] Lanor Daniel: like in a focus group, people are saying like the rational thing and, and it doesn't mean that they will be motivated to purchase that product. And once you identify the problem, we're talking like in a category.

[00:15:33] Identify the problem, the, the vendor itself or the retailer itself can understand, okay, so I don't need to do like a big sale or a big promotion because even

[00:15:41] Ricardo Belmar: it's not price 

[00:15:42] Lanor Daniel: exactly 

[00:15:43] Ricardo Belmar: it's not price 

[00:15:43] Lanor Daniel: to identify the problem

[00:15:45] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So, so this is, so we, you and I have talked about this, Jeff, when ever, we see some of these interesting survey, consumer surveys, that show up in the industry and our, our friend at George Mason University that's doing a very different kind of consumer in insight survey where, and, and I think your [00:16:00] example reflects that, Lenore, very closely because you have consumers in a focus group, if they know they're in the focus group and they know there, there are lots of people in the group, they may be psychologically less inclined to want to go against the group because you don't want to feel like you're the one that did that said what?

[00:16:15] You're the, you're the one that's different, but you're right. When standing in front of the products at the store, in front of the shelf and you actually look at it and smell it and you're, you think, oh, this isn't what I like at all, and you make a completely different decision.

[00:16:28] Next Generation Shopper Research

[00:16:28] Ari Pereira: That's why we are the next generation of shopper research because we can really look of what is happening in front of the shelf, and we are translating that into different insights in terms of the shopper journey, the shopper behavior, and everything that is happening in store. That's where most of the retail stores are blind today.

[00:16:48] Lanor Daniel: And take it one step ahead, because we're talking on in store, but let's talk about chains. In, in America, the scale is much bigger than in Israel. This is why we waited so much up until the [00:17:00] technology and the structure of the, you know, the architecture of the software will be scalable enough. So we spoke about one store, but if you're a chain like Nike or Walmart, and I give you your entire map, and we are connecting in all of the stores, suddenly you can see that.

[00:17:16] You get alerts, not just about the shopper struggle ranks, you get alerts from the entire chain. So for example, in Denver, Denver, Colorado, what we see now, it's like we have less conversion. We have a problem with specific female that don't buy it. And as a manager or CEO or or VP marketing, you can see it pushed to you, as alert, what is the problem in the chain? And then you can take drill down to see the video that we saw before, specific category, what's the problem? So it's not just one store, it's scalable. We can see it 

[00:17:51] Ricardo Belmar: scales the whole chain. 

[00:17:52] Lanor Daniel: Exactly. And then the metrics is different. And we can do static statistics for the entire chain, which brings us to a different [00:18:00] universe.

[00:18:00] And that was the idea, like making an unscalable world scalable,

[00:18:05] Ricardo Belmar: so, so really you're combining the performance metrics that you would expect on your e-commerce site, but you're delivering that in store. And then on top of that, you're delivering all of these actual shopper insights and on shopper sentiment on their behaviors while they're engaged in that shopping.

[00:18:22] Lanor Daniel: Exactly. 

[00:18:22] Ricardo Belmar: All in one dashboard, 

[00:18:23] Ari Pereira: yes, and when you think about harmony, right, You have all the metrics in E-com and most of the industries, they have some difficulty to make the data make sense because they are looking at something in the brick and mortar space. They are looking something different in e-com. And when you have similar KPIs, you can start to bridge the data and you can start to have a holistic view, which today you might be different because you're looking two different ways, but now you can have a holistic view of the data. Both places.

[00:18:56] Lanor Daniel: Full pictures

[00:18:57] Jeff Roster: So in your [00:19:00] deployments in Israel, I'm guessing you probably have more security cameras, although I think probably in America we might be catching up. How do you have to add anything additional to get the da? Anything from a hardware perspective or you are literally just using the footprint that's already existing.

[00:19:15] Lanor Daniel: the beginning, we're starting only with what's existing and it gives you so much. 

[00:19:19] Jeff Roster: Wow. 

[00:19:19] Lanor Daniel: so much because you don't have anything like this. It's ongoing all day. Think that you're doing all the statistics of each and every shopper that answers the shop. So in the beginning, maybe there will be some you know blind spots.

[00:19:33] Like we don't see everything, but we see most of it. So we can recognize most of the problems. And after a certain time, if the retailer wants to upgrade, we can put like our own cameras. In Israel, we add some cameras, but most of the chains that we're working with, we don't need

[00:19:49] Ricardo Belmar: you don't need to add anything. 

[00:19:50] Jeff Roster: And what, what's your thinking as far as US retail? Do they have enough security cameras? It's the same deal that you're gonna get more than enough to, to get going.

[00:19:58] Lanor Daniel: So it's, it's interesting [00:20:00] this question. So the, our first time we touched base with America was at the nrf. We didn't really know what to expect. Mm-hmm. , We have Ari in our team and she's very experienced. , but all of us came from Israel. So what we found out in the nrf actually one of the meetings that we've conducted there so the VP marketing told me, she was like, we have like $30,000 worth of security cameras in our store and we're not doing anything with it.

[00:20:29] And basically now you're saying that we can earn money from that.

[00:20:32] Jeff Roster: well, let me make sure I understand. They're using those cameras for security purposes. They're just not using them. So a hundred years ago when I was back in retail we were not. I can say it cuz the company's outta business. Now, Mervins, we were not allowed as managers to use LP cameras for observing employees.

[00:20:50] Just from a performance perspective. That was absolutely verboten. LP didn't, wouldn't allow us to even do that because we're all like, can I just look instead of walking all over this distribution center, can I just sit here?[00:21:00] So I don't know. Yeah. So I don't know. Is that still the, the is, does that still something you're gonna have to battle with lp?

[00:21:07] That, hey, we actually wanna use your cameras for other reasons I could get where they don't want you to be moving their cameras, but is that an issue or is that, have we already moved past that?

[00:21:15] Lanor Daniel: is that so today they are looking at employees, they're looking for performance. Those are some of the problems and issues that we heard from the industry while we were at nrf. And also for security matters. There is a big thief thing right now, right?, 

[00:21:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:21:31] Jeff Roster: yes there is

[00:21:32] Ricardo Belmar: I you're a little familiar with 

[00:21:33] with that, 

[00:21:33] Jeff Roster: Jeff. 

[00:21:33] Yes. I'm, I live in California, so yes, very familiar with that. 

[00:21:37] Lanor Daniel: Yeah.. 

[00:21:37] Jeff Roster: It's not even an lp, it's more a more a political thing of, of we're no longer prosecuting crimes and, you know, less than 900 bucks, so you can literally steal $800 worth of 

[00:21:46] Lanor Daniel: more, yeah, so we heard that a lot from, from a lot of retailers. Like they're, they're, they're believing that they had, there is a very high percentage today of. Thief that is going on in the store and they can't really see everything even with their [00:22:00] security cameras. So today they're using that for security and so for performance as well, trying to it's not an issue.

[00:22:07] And basically our software is fully anonymously. If you saw the movie, everything, it's blur. I'm not looking to understand who is the person personally, I'm looking to understand the problem with the touches, with the body movements. That's what we're looking for. So, with with that being said, there is no problem

[00:22:24] Jeff Roster: Wow. Very cool.

[00:22:25] Ricardo Belmar: I guess at the end of the day too, compared to when you're thinking Jeff, now these are all IP based cameras. So everything is a video stream being stored in a server somewhere that even LP is using to go back to bring back footage. So now you're just taking a, you can take advantage of that same IP stream for a completely different purpose and, and let marketing have some advantages.

[00:22:45] Store operations have advantage or you're extending the usefulness of the equipment that's already there 

[00:22:50] Jeff Roster: Yeah, boy. 

[00:22:51] Lanor Daniel: Exactly. 

[00:22:52] Jeff Roster: just adding another budget to, to bind that, that infrastructure. So that's, that's fantastic.

[00:22:57] Ricardo Belmar: bringing a lot more value that way. Wow,

[00:22:58] Lanor Daniel: Yeah. And it's, [00:23:00] this is the exact point. So it's already there. They're not making money out of it. I'm not really sure how many thief they're catching from it. So then we come and then we bring them. Look, you get information, you get Ability. By the way, all this data that we are collecting, we're doing AB test.

[00:23:20] So you know, in online we're saying like there is the, the certain color that you're choosing for the button, which color convert more. It's very easy to chain change online, off line. 

[00:23:30] Ricardo Belmar: You can see that now, right? to actually show

[00:23:32] Lanor Daniel: So we are changing like things, we're moving things and you see that conversion metrics go up or. and we want to really be better for the shoppers. And we're looking for, this is why I show the map. Like each and every area in New York, there are different needs that in Texas 

[00:23:46] Ricardo Belmar: mm-hmm 

[00:23:46] Lanor Daniel: makes sense, right? 

[00:23:48] So why does, why doesn't it look different? 

[00:23:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Why not adapt it? Yeah.

[00:23:52] Lanor Daniel: And you speak about health, if we see in a certain city in Israel that there is more people who are looking for the ingredients and looking to [00:24:00] buy healthier food.

[00:24:00] So why don't you as a retailer, put more shelves for healthy people? Like there is a lot of products put. Make it more accurate to the people around. And then if you see that there is a store which has all the, I dunno, best, healthiest food, you would like to go to check it out. Because right now you're keeping your diet, you're keeping your health, so the store will be better for you.

[00:24:24] Up until today there were, you know, all the managers were, were gathering data by, by doing this market research once a year. And here you can see how shoppers change and their needs and to be connected to their needs daily.

[00:24:39] Jeff Roster: Gosh, that's,

[00:24:40] Ricardo Belmar: so you got some,

[00:24:41] Jeff Roster: I'm stunned

[00:24:41] Ricardo Belmar: advantages. You you're validating some planograms. You've got benefits for the category managers. 

[00:24:47] Lots of different roles that can

[00:24:48] Lanor Daniel: can you imagine E-com word without Google Analytics? Let's say now we wanna sell this product or this computer, and we are a team and I will tell you guys, listen, I'm doing e-comm, I'm specialized with, you know, users [00:25:00] analytics. You will bring me the product, I'm gonna build the website and do the sales.

[00:25:05] So we did this business partnership and now I open a website. And then what I, I tell you guys, after one week we sold 1000 computers. Is that good? Sounds good. Right? And the next week we sold 2000 computers. But then I would expect you to ask me from how many people who interacted, right? Like what is the 

[00:25:22] Ricardo Belmar: many people that didn't

[00:25:23] Lanor Daniel: Like this is the first question, right? And they don't have this answer, like the basic answer, like conversion funnel. and then you have it all the time. And if you see that in the first week we had, I dunno, like 100,000 people in the website and the next week I had 500,000 people on the website and it go just with from 1000 to 2000.

[00:25:41] Like,

[00:25:42] Jeff Roster: You know, the question I'd love to have answered is how many people do that struggle engagement with a product? Meaning, cuz if. You know, looking at my behavior in the last three, three months, every single thing I buy at a grocery store, I'm, I'm looking at the ingredients, every single thing [00:26:00] and, you know, I'm, now, I'm gonna be making that, I'll be thinking of you folks.

[00:26:03] I'll be making that face, 

[00:26:04] Lanor Daniel: ah, 

[00:26:04] Jeff Roster: and put something back 

[00:26:05] Lanor Daniel: if

[00:26:05] it's you do it. It's, it's like not rational movement

[00:26:08] Jeff Roster: what I want to know, would it be really fascinating to know, is how many pe, how many, let's say a hundred people looked at a product, how many looked. And, and put it in their shopping cart or, or put it back because that might also be a really interesting indicator, Hey, wait a minute.

[00:26:23] A lot of people are looked at your product, but boy, they look at those carbs, they look at those calories, or they look at that and put it back. That would be really cool too. That might be the, that might be the biggest opportunity to maybe bring some, some more enlightenment to 

[00:26:35] Ricardo Belmar: what

[00:26:36] I mean, think what I'm hearing is you can be even more granular than that, because if I pick up the product off the shelf, the way you are measuring this, if I turn it around to look at the ingredients, so the ingredients are always on the back.

[00:26:45] Yep. Right. You'll. Your data will show that. Well, the reason the person put it back is because they turned it around so you can, you can make a logical assumption. If they turned it around, they'll check the ingredient list and that's why they put it back. Yeah. If they picked it up, looked at the packaging and put it [00:27:00] back, then you might say to the retailer, well, there's something wrong with their packaging, and they should go back to the brand and talk about redoing the packaging.

[00:27:05] Lanor Daniel: Exactly. But we're looking to see not just, you remember it's big

[00:27:09] Ricardo Belmar: but yes. Yeah. How so? It's right across all your stores, across all the customers that went by. If you know 50% of them picked it up and put it back, did

[00:27:16] Lanor Daniel: suddenly, you know that 50% put it back. You 

[00:27:19] Ricardo Belmar: which you didn't know before.

[00:27:21] Ari Pereira: but the mo most important thing, then we can see what was the other product they touched next. Was it healthier? Which one did they buy in the end? Did they buy a healthier product 

[00:27:30] Jeff Roster: Boy, 

[00:27:30] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, 

[00:27:30] Jeff Roster: imagine 

[00:27:31] what our friend at George Mason University 

[00:27:32] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, would do with that data . That's.

[00:27:35] Jeff Roster: I mean, 

[00:27:36] just 

[00:27:36] Ricardo Belmar: would have a field day looking at 

[00:27:37] Jeff Roster: Oh my gosh. Wow. Phenomenal.

[00:27:40] Ricardo Belmar: Wow.

[00:27:41] Activating Insights from Data

[00:27:41] Lanor Daniel: so this is exactly it. Just today, to explain it a little further, so the numbers that everybody knows, it's. The numbers that it's in the cashier, right? How many, what is the market share? What is the market share they're looking to to raise that all the time. But this number, like they already interacted, they touched it and [00:28:00] put it back.

[00:28:00] So there are some categories that reach to 70% abandoned rate, 70%. And what you see, this is very interesting, that from those 70%, like you can see more than 60%, most of the time the same problem.

[00:28:16] Ricardo Belmar: Interesting 

[00:28:17] Lanor Daniel: So if you change a small thing, you can convert those 60% because they already show the interest. It's not just stopping.

[00:28:24] It's not just looking. They, you touched it already. Think about this moment you touch, you look at it. All you need to do is right? 

[00:28:30] Ricardo Belmar: Which is in some ways more than what you would know on the e-com side, because all you know on the e-com side is that you went to the product page, but you don't know anything about other than how long you had that page open, which doesn't necessarily tell you anything about intent.

[00:28:43] But here you actually know and you can know that they make a face at it, right? So you have all these other factors that you're measuring.

[00:28:48] Lanor Daniel: time. What is the average time in a specific category? In snacks category, it's lower than other categories, cuz snacks, it's like more impulse, like cashier area, you know, [00:29:00] always the cashier area.

[00:29:00] We say to put impulse product. Who said who said that? Why? You know what we're doing today, we're we're next. When we are next to the cashier, we're playing with our phone. . 

[00:29:11] Ricardo Belmar: Everyone's

[00:29:11] Lanor Daniel: So there is no focus to the outside and this is the most expensive area today in the store, but you're like this, or maybe with your child or maybe with your fr like everything 

[00:29:21] Ricardo Belmar: is because that was a theory that a grosser decided 80 years ago made sense do. 

[00:29:25] Lanor Daniel: Exactly. And you know the theory that you said that it should be an eye level to sell more. who said that? is it really true? 

[00:29:33] Ricardo Belmar: is it still true. Yeah, 

[00:29:34] Lanor Daniel: exactly. And once you discovered this, you understand the problem. We saw it in one product.

[00:29:40] It was mento, you know,

[00:29:42] the, so Mentos want to, to understand what is their problem, and the VP marketing was like, listen, Lenore, my problem is that I'm not on the eye level. And I'm like, okay, let's check. And what we saw that in the cashier area, if you managed to put away your phone, , what got you attracted [00:30:00] to the shelf was the Mentos color.

[00:30:01] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. Interesting. like, yeah. Right, 

[00:30:05] Lanor Daniel: So we saw shoppers. Once they le left the phone looking at the color, the color, attract them to come, they came the touch. That was their first touch. Come touch the Mentos, look at it, put it back, and took the 

[00:30:18] competitive. And the competitive back then when we started was 47% market share and Mentos was 29.

[00:30:25] And what we told Mentos, it's a simple thing, listen. People are looking for you, you're the anchor. They're not purchasing you. So they never saw this kind of data. You need to move around from the competition. Once they move around away from the competition in a different shelf,

[00:30:42] they got like 200 uplift% 

[00:30:46] Ricardo Belmar: Christmas 

[00:30:47] Lanor Daniel: And today, after a year, Mintos is almost 49% market 

[00:30:52] share. and the competitive is 27. But listen, it's a small insight. So we're not saying push it to people that don't [00:31:00] want, if a person, a shopper interacted, something got interested, so 

[00:31:04] Ricardo Belmar: was just grabbing more conversion from people who were already showed some intent in your 

[00:31:08] Lanor Daniel: promise.

[00:31:09] Exactly. Crazy, right?

[00:31:10] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:31:12] Jeff Roster: Yeah,

[00:31:13] no, I I mean,

[00:31:14] Lanor Daniel: I overwhelmed you guys. I'm sorry.

[00:31:17] Jeff Roster: Yeah, that's, well, that's what we get paid to do. We get paid to be overwhelmed? Actually, no. I mean, I just, I just, I just love this idea in that I don't have to put in new infrastructure. Because I've seen it all. I mean, I've seen the concept of flying a drone down an aisle, which is insanity.

[00:31:31] Robots stuff on rails. I mean, I've seen it all. And you know, it's me, myself as an analyst. It's not my job to say, oh, that's good or that, well, it is a little bit, but it's more, you know, what retailers are gonna embrace. And the problem I always have with startups that are some of the smartest people in the WO room, but they'll come in and say, Hey, I can do this.

[00:31:49] And, and then I have, I'm the guy that has to say, do you understand there's 5,000 stores? So 

[00:31:55] Ricardo Belmar: It's what you're doing times

[00:31:56] Jeff Roster: times 5,000 and you see the air just go outta [00:32:00] people. . And

[00:32:01] Lanor Daniel: I have scars from what you're 

[00:32:03] Ricardo Belmar: you're 

[00:32:05] Lanor Daniel: We learned it. We learned it.

[00:32:06] Startup Lessons

[00:32:06] Jeff Roster: Well, welcome to America cuz that is, that is not unheard of to have 5,000. Most of the people you'd be talking to are gonna have a thousand stores.

[00:32:13] Lanor Daniel: Yeah, so this is why we were waiting guys. We were waiting to the moment that will be scalable enough interesting that we have the best features that we can because once you go on scale, there are features that are left behind, unfortunately. But this is what we were trying to build and when we saw that it's working and we can bring it here and still be in the professional level that we wanted to be, then we came and, and, and you just mentioned something, but I think I can say a little bit more about it.

[00:32:42] today, we come with compassion when we see retailers. I didn't understand how hard it is to run a chain It's like a war zone, right? Really? It, it's like each day you go to, I was a captain in the idf. Mm-hmm. in a 200. Mm-hmm. And you know, like [00:33:00] operational. So I know what it is. Like your phone is always your, all the day like, , you know, try to fix problems and make sure that everything is working.

[00:33:06] This is like for, you know, a manager in a, in a retail store, big managers, and then we come and say, Hey, we come to save the world. Exactly. And, and, and so today we come with compassion. We're saying we want to take the burden, you know, with you guys, and we understand how it's working. We understand your problems, we understand the pressure, and we want to take some, mm-hmm , let us help you.

[00:33:27] And this is the idea.

[00:33:29] Jeff Roster: Yeah.

[00:33:29] let me give you some feedback on that. Typically what I hear startups do is come in and start off by insulting the retailer saying, oh, you really don't know what you're doing. I'm 26 years old and I'm, you know, I'm an engineer out of Stanford, and here I'm here to fix you. And I'm, I've sat with 15, 60 year old CIOs. Mad as be Jabbers cuz listen, you have no idea what it's like to work 24 7, 365 when every single person in the store has a phone, is just waiting for [00:34:00] something bad to happen so they can video it and then, and hopefully go viral. And it's like the biggest mistake. And I see it again and again and again when startups will come in and say, Hey, you know, you don't, and it's, it's, I don't think they believe it.

[00:34:11] I think it's a throwaway line.

[00:34:15] I just, you could not be more insulting, not, not you, but that person could not be more insulting if they tried. And it's a very bad strategy to start a pitch by insulting the person that you're asking to buy the technology. So that's i I com. You know, I congratulate you on being being really, really savvy about, about how words impact people, and

[00:34:34] Lanor Daniel: No, because we understand that. We really understand that. We see it. We are working with retailers. We come from the, from the store, we say the field, but we come from the store. We understand, like it took us some time.

[00:34:44] We didn't start it like this in the beginning. This is why I say I'm scarred about it because listen, when you come from a different, like technology wise, to this industry and you were like, what's going on here? Why are they working like this? Why not like this? You come with a lot of, you know, I don't know, I don't [00:35:00] wanna say like arrogance.

[00:35:01] Mm-hmm. , but like, you don't really understand. 

[00:35:04] Ricardo Belmar: understand. 

[00:35:04] Lanor Daniel: You're Right.

[00:35:05] Jeff Roster: No, it, it is arrogance. It's a hundred percent arrogance. Yeah. People that don't, don't listen to, you know,

[00:35:10] Lanor Daniel: we cannot understand 

[00:35:12] Jeff Roster: Yeah. Just, just, I mean, first of all, there's an old, there's an old cowboy expression that says, before you tear down an old fence, know why it was there.

[00:35:19] Lanor Daniel: Correct.

[00:35:20] Jeff Roster: Somebody put that fence there.

[00:35:21] Why?

[00:35:23] Lanor Daniel: Wow. That's really good. Yeah.

[00:35:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. You have to understand their why. 

[00:35:27] Jeff Roster: Yeah, 

[00:35:27] Ricardo Belmar: exactly. 

[00:35:27] Lanor Daniel: Exactly. So it took some times, and after we understand and learned, one of our investors is a retailer. So we got like, you know, one-on-one school.

[00:35:36] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. . There you go.

[00:35:37] Lanor Daniel: So we got, I wanna say like the slap from here and the slap from there And then today we understand that and we come with this. Why I say compassion because we need to help. We don't need to put some more pressure. You know, I said with, I remember that was the first time I met an American retailer, a CEO has 1,200 stores and I was like pitching and you know, like, ah, it's my baby.

[00:35:58] And, and he was like, [00:36:00] listen young dear, from Israel. With a very heavy Texan accent. I remember that. And he was like, I don't have time or effort for your mumbo jumbo technology, but if you can show me 5% growth, I will put T-shirt with your name on it on every employee in my store,

[00:36:19] Jeff Roster: Done.

[00:36:19] Lanor Daniel: So

[00:36:20] Ricardo Belmar: that line before. I

[00:36:21] Jeff Roster: I think.

[00:36:22] Lanor Daniel: you know what I mean? So I understand like, yeah, it's the 

[00:36:26] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:26] Jeff Roster: some pretty good coaching you got got

[00:36:28] Ricardo Belmar: in that one for sure. That 

[00:36:29] That was, that was pretty strong

[00:36:30] Lanor Daniel: Come with compassion. Understand if you really want to work in this space,

[00:36:35] be the retailer. Like walk the walk, talk the walk. Understand how you can really help and not just come and say how sophisticated you are. Yeah, yeah. Who cares? It should work.

[00:36:45] I need help right now. I'm fighting right now. Like, so this is the idea and this is the school that we've got and this is why we come. Very, yeah. We have a team with very experienced people. We have history in Israel for the past four years, [00:37:00] and we're looking for our partners here.

[00:37:01] Ricardo Belmar: Well, excellent. I like hearing that. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

[00:37:04] Lanor Daniel: It's different, right? it's

[00:37:06] different. 

[00:37:06] Jeff Roster: I'll give you that. I mean, listen, I've heard hundreds of pitches and I'm, I, I typically wait for that, that arrogance to start. Right. And when it, when the feedback, when they ask for feedback. If I heard, I mean, I've heard it hundreds of times. I, I mean, I hit so hard. Cause it's so, and the, and the thing

[00:37:21] Lanor Daniel: where are they now?

[00:37:23] Jeff Roster: Well, I mean, some have done well, some haven't because they learn, you know? But the point is, why, why? I mean, why? I mean, I guess that's the whole point of what I do in my podcast is I try to bring startup stories of like, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. I mean, it's more don't do than do. But that's, but I mean, I, gosh, I've just sat in that seat so many times.

[00:37:44] NRF Tech, I can remember very vividly, a couple of our friends and I were watching that presentation and the guy just started off and it just, it was a throwaway line. And, and I won't say who, but they wasn't even mine. But they just grimmaced. It's like I'm, I'll never do That's so insulting.

[00:37:59] So anyway, [00:38:00] right. Yeah. Very good.

[00:38:01] Ricardo Belmar: it's a lesson that has, well, has to be learned sometimes. Yeah. Well, Lanor, Ari, I want thank you so much for joining us. This has been a fascinating discussion. I think we've learned a lot here about how to approach retailers in one part of the discussion, but I'm really, truly fascinated by the approach you've taken with this technology and how you're delivering that to retailers.

[00:38:21] So thank you again for joining us.

[00:38:23] Lanor Daniel: Thank you so much for having us.

[00:38:24] Ari Pereira: Thank you for having us.

[00:38:26] Jeff Roster: Our Pleasure.

[00:38:26] Show Recap

[00:38:26] Casey Golden: What a great discussion. I love the closing bit about compassion and how Jeff explained what every startup should know to not come across as arrogant in making your pitch. But then again, maybe he hasn't heard my perfect pitch. There's no arrogance there and I'm always full of compassion. I've been on that side.

[00:38:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yes indeed. Yes indeed. So true. So what, what did you think of their approach to analytics?

[00:38:58] Casey Golden: It is fascinating not [00:39:00] just because they're leveraging existing video cameras. I mean, I think we've all seen other video analytics solutions before. But shopper AI is really attacking the insights in a different way, focusing on the big numbers as Lenore put it, showing you across your whole fleet of stores what consumers are doing, how they're reacting to products.

[00:39:21] I can just see so many AB testing opportunities you could do to learn more about your stores better, and to feed that data and insights back into the brands you work. I'm already seeing another B2B services tie in, just like we keep talking about.

[00:39:39] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I totally agree, and I hope Leor and Ari find ways to lean into that line of thought, what the B2B offering that retailers can deliver to their brands by using this solution. It's a super interesting approach. I hope listeners and viewers agree.

[00:39:52] Casey Golden: So who's coming up next in this series? Got any hints for us?

[00:39:57] Ricardo Belmar: Well, you know me when it comes to hints for these. [00:40:00] So all I'll say is we've got one more startup that Jeff and I met with, and then we close it out with another of my favorite chats with some retail friends. So listeners and viewers will have to stick around to see who it is. But now I do want to thank both Lenore and Ari for joining Jeff and me for this discussion.

[00:40:16] Thank you both so much for joining.

[00:40:19] Casey Golden: So with that, Ricardo, it's time for us to wrap this second episode of Our Shop Talk Live mini-series Crossover with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation, it's a wrap and a mouthful. 

[00:40:35] Show Close

[00:40:35] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed our shows this season, especially our podcast crossover events, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Plus, you can watch us, not just listen on our YouTube channel and [00:41:00] like, and comment about this season there, too.

[00:41:02] And if you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a transcript of each episode, take a look at our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your co-host, Casey Golden.

[00:41:14] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season and the crossover series, follow us on Twitter at Casey C Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter and LinkedIn at Retail Razor for the latest updates. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:41:31] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.​

[00:41:35] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the retail Razor Show. 

]]> <p>How well do you know your in-store shopper versus your online shopper? If you’re like most retailers, you probably believe you know more about those online shoppers. But what if you had a full set of analytics on your in-store shoppers? What if you knew how shoppers react to a product they pick up off the shelf? Why they put it back instead of purchasing it? Meet <a href="https://shopperai.ai/" rel="nofollow">ShopperAI</a>, a startup that’s trying to change that perception by leveraging the existing video footage you have from loss prevention cameras to understand shopper intent and sentiment.</p><p><br></p><p>It’s the second in our podcast cross-over event with <a href="https://jeffroster.podbean.com/" rel="nofollow">This Week in Innovation</a> and special guest host <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-bb51b8/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Roster</a>! <em>Recorded live and in-person during Shoptalk 2023</em>, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar sit down with ShopperAI’s CEO, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lanor-daniel/" rel="nofollow">Lanor Daniel</a>, and VP of Strategic Growth, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ari-pereira-us/" rel="nofollow">Ari Pereira</a>, to learn just how significant the insights are that retailers can learn about their in-store customers using their existing LP camera infrastructure. And if you’re a startup, you’ll also learn some important tips about how to present your solution to retailers by showing compassion first and foremost!</p><p><br></p><p>We’re standing at number 19 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list – if you enjoy our show please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, </em>and<em> Overclocked, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>S2E12b In-Store Analytics with ShopperAI</strong></p><h3>[00:00:00] Show Intro </h3><p>[00:00:20] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Hello Retail Razor Show listeners and viewers, and welcome to retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden.</p><p>[00:00:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar. Welcome to another episode in our Shop Talk live crossover event with Jeff Foster and This Week In Innovation podcast.</p><p>[00:00:43] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> These crossover podcast series are really so much fun and I have to start going to Shop Talk on a regular basis. I do.</p><p>[00:00:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, it would be amazing for her to join us next time. Casey, we missed here on this series for sure. So on today&#39;s show, [00:01:00] we are talking about the consumer struggle factor when choosing a product on the shelf. How to convert in-store data you didn&#39;t realize you had into meaningful customer insights. And the best contribution to your data analytics, loss prevention can make.</p><p>[00:01:15] First I&#39;ve got a startup life Question for you, Casey.</p><p>[00:01:20] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Oh, bring it. Typically My answer is yes. More caffeine, please.</p><p>[00:01:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Of course, of course it is. So, so here&#39;s the question. So how important is compassion when working with retailers?</p><p>[00:01:33] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Oh, that&#39;s good. There needs to be a lot of room for compassion. Operators have heavy workloads and technology has a tendency to add more work, not less. I feel that outsiders always need to go in humble and serve pretty much the opposite of our day-to-day with investors and startup culture. Really focusing on like the what if, how would, how important is just go in knowing and acknowledging that [00:02:00] you know nothing.</p><p>[00:02:00] They know everything.</p><p>[00:02:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. You&#39;re, you&#39;re, you&#39;re really there to help make them better, right. Not tell &#39;em what to do, but you&#39;re acknowledging that it&#39;s not that they&#39;re doing anything wrong, it&#39;s that there&#39;s always room to do better</p><p>[00:02:13] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Because they&#39;re doing something so amazing. You wanted to bring this solution to them first.</p><p>[00:02:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it. There you go. There you go. That&#39;s right. It&#39;s, it&#39;s an honor to bring it to them because they&#39;re the best.</p><p>[00:02:25] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> They are, and that&#39;s why we decided to build these companies for like the best. Right.</p><p>[00:02:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right, that&#39;s right. That, that is so, so the right attitude and, and wait till you see where that comes into play in this discussion. So as you might have guessed in this show, we are interviewing a startup, Shopper AI. An Israeli startup specializing in a unique form of video analytics with the goal of giving you in-store data analytics that&#39;s as good as what you get on your e-commerce site.</p><p>[00:02:52] So their, their c e o explains it makes the analogy that, you know, they, they are trying to be the Google Analytics for your store,</p><p>[00:02:59] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> [00:03:00] Fascinating. Now I see where the loss prevention angle comes from</p><p>[00:03:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right?</p><p>[00:03:04] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> all the security cameras providing that video footage for analytics. Right?</p><p>[00:03:08] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. Exactly.</p><p>[00:03:10] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, now I can&#39;t wait to see where this struggle factor you mentioned comes to play and how compassion works into all of this.</p><p>[00:03:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, it will definitely be illuminating for sure. No doubt about it. It&#39;s all part of our Shop Talk Live crossover event with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation. We recorded live and in person at Shop Talk, of course in Las Vegas last month. And Jeff really demonstrates how the struggle factor plays into making choices as a consumer.</p><p>[00:03:38] So there&#39;s a good story about that that he uses to kind of illustrate that in the discussion. Plus we end with a really great discussion on how hard it is for startups to pitch to a retailer without coming across, perhaps a little bit too arrogant in trying to solve problems for the retailer. Which I think you just nailed it there, Casey, in your description of how to approach that, [00:04:00] that pitch session with the retailer.</p><p>[00:04:01] We&#39;ll, we&#39;ll see how that goes.</p><p>[00:04:04] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> All right. In that case, let&#39;s get right into the interview with Shopper AI&#39;s, CEO, Lanor Daniel and their VP of Strategic Growth, Ari Pereira with you and Jeff.</p><h3>[00:04:16] ShopperAI Interview</h3><p>[00:04:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> ​Hey Everyone, welcome to another podcast crossover. This time coming to you live and in person from Shop Talk 2023. I&#39;m Ricardo Belmar and I&#39;m here with good friend Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation. How you doing, Jeff?</p><p>[00:04:36] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> You know, I&#39;m I&#39;m actually a little slow today. I might have gotten just a slight hard on day one of Shop Talk lots of evening research opportunities that I was</p><p>[00:04:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> re research opportunities. Is that what we&#39;re calling it now? </p><p>[00:04:47] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> that what we&#39;re calling it. Okay,</p><p>[00:04:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> We&#39;ll go with that. </p><p>[00:04:49] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Really good research to be honest with you. But definitely you know, first day tons of energy It&#39;s just a great, it&#39;s really a, I&#39;m really impressed with this venue because I had three events and they were all within, I dunno, you could throw a rock and [00:05:00] hit the main part of the exhibit and so, which meant people were walking by. So you not only had your event, but you also had all that traffic coming by </p><p>[00:05:07] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> all the passers by, yeah.</p><p>[00:05:08] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> was Just a fantastic day day one I thought.</p><p>[00:05:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I agree. Day one was pretty, pretty interesting compared to, this is my second Shop Talk. Compared to last year, I think it was busier, a little more action.</p><p>[00:05:19] I think people were enjoying themselves, a little bit more on day one than maybe last year, where last year this was probably for most people their first time out in an in-person event. So I think we&#39;re all getting a little bit more used to that. So this is a continuation, I guess I&#39;ll call it, of our crossover from NRF, where we had a number of super interesting interviews with really interesting retail tech companies.</p><p>[00:05:41] And in that theme, we&#39;ve got a fascinating discussion today for listeners. We have with us the team from Shopper AI that we&#39;re really excited to chat with. So I&#39;m gonna ask Lenore and Ari to please introduce yourselves.</p><p>[00:05:54] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Hi everyone, my name is Lanor Daniel. I&#39;m the CEO and co-founder of ShopperAI.</p><p>[00:05:58] <strong>Ari Pereira:</strong> Hello everyone. [00:06:00] I&#39;m Ari Pereira I&#39;m the VP of Insights and Strategic Growth for Shopper AI. Thank you for having us in the podcast.</p><p>[00:06:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh, it&#39;s great to have you here. So why don&#39;t we start by having you tell us a little bit about what&#39;s the challenge that Shopper AI addresses for retailers and how you&#39;re solving that.</p><h3>[00:06:14] Origins of ShopperAI</h3><p>[00:06:14] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Yeah. So basically we started four years ago in Israel. Me and my co-founder Sivan came from marketing online, digital marketing landscape. And we got partner with the retailer and we asked the question, how can we analyze data from your store?</p><p>[00:06:30] And he was like, what data? And we were like, you know, in e-comm you have Google Analytics in order for you to be better, to optimize, to convert more. Conversion. What&#39;s conversion? And then we understand that there is a big gap between what&#39;s going on in the online landscape and what&#39;s going on in the stores.</p><p>[00:06:48] And it got us so fascinating because, you know, ecomm just keeps growing and growing and we like to purchase online. It&#39;s easy. You feel like the website knows you, everything is so [00:07:00] focused and accurate. And when you go to a store, all the mess, all the noise, all the things going around and you feel like, I don&#39;t wanna go to a store, I want to buy online.</p><p>[00:07:09] And basically this thing that we see in the past four and five years, e-com is growing fast and it&#39;s easy to understand. There is a lot of data you can be better, and the website really actually knows you and what&#39;s happening in offline stores that you come as a shopper. Shoppers, they&#39;re paying so much money for marketing, they&#39;re paying so much money for personnel, logistics promotions, and they don&#39;t know what happening with the user&#39;s journey. They don&#39;t have any data of users. I&#39;m saying users because it&#39;s anonymously, so they don&#39;t know what&#39;s going on in the store in front of the shelves. Where are the problems? And this is where Shopper AI come to the picture. So this is what we&#39;ve done in the past four years, building technology that allows us to grab this data from an offline store.</p><p>[00:07:57] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So let&#39;s talk about what it takes to get that [00:08:00] data.</p><h3>[00:08:00] Converting In-store Data to Insights</h3><p>[00:08:00] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Okay so basIcally. When we started to work with retailers in Israel, we didn&#39;t really understand how deep the gap is. So what we found out that in order for us to collaborate with retailers when they have all these things going on, like all the logistics and personnel, what I just mentioned, you need to be very easy, seamless integration.</p><p>[00:08:21] And for that, we only had the security camera, so we need to crack the, the idea how we can get the data from a security camera that is already there. So we&#39;ve been through four years of developments with engineer professors and like the best of the best. And we build an algorithm, a software that once we have a connection to the IP of the security camera, automatically takes the video.</p><p>[00:08:45] We can show it as well, simple video from the store and turn everything that we just see right now to data.</p><p>[00:08:54] and from a data to a dashboard. So if we take the equivalent on Google Analytics, Google Analytics, [00:09:00] analyze each and every movement in the website, what you&#39;re looking for, user&#39;s behavior, and put it in a dashboard.</p><p>[00:09:06] So same thing over here. This is our website, the shelf. Each and every category is different. And what we see, it&#39;s all the movements and everything that they&#39;re doing. It&#39;s listed. We&#39;re saying you need to monitor your touches from the shelf, just like you monitor your clicks. Then we have conversion funnels, interaction.</p><p>[00:09:24] We have a toucher, we have market shares. This is what everybody knows. So we have a toucher and we created a new language and things that if you come from E-com world make sense, but here for, for the industry, it&#39;s a bit new. So this is the process. We get connection to an IP of the security camera, the video, we turn it into data, and this data set turns into a dashboard.</p><p>[00:09:49] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So you&#39;ve taken e everything that we&#39;re used to seeing in e-commerce metrics around, you know, if I the equivalent of looking at a product page, then by taking the video feed you&#39;re mapping that to, is this [00:10:00] person looking at a particular product on the shelf? If they&#39;re picking it up? If they&#39;re taking it, then you know they&#39;ve added it to a basket like they would in an e-commerce site.</p><p>[00:10:07] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> they Correct.</p><p>[00:10:08] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So you can imagining, you can measure how long is someone standing in front of a product to see how effective the shelf placement is.</p><p>[00:10:13] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Correct. And add another more thing for that. What you cannot see in online website. , it&#39;s a struggle rank. So we have ranking that you can use. So you mentioned time. So for example, things that we are looking for a specific product, a shampoo or a snack, or even in a, you know, in a Foot Locker store, you are looking for a shoe and then you&#39;re in front of the shelf, you&#39;re looking and I, something happened there that you&#39;re starting to struggle.</p><p>[00:10:40] You know, this place like nevermind. I&#39;ll do it later.</p><p>[00:10:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay</p><p>[00:10:43] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> You know this feeling. So we have a struggle rank. You cannot have a struggle rank online.</p><p>[00:10:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. So you, you, so you have a measure of what that customer&#39;s sentiment was when they were standing in front of the shelf looking at products. So you have a little, you&#39;re adding some insights into their decision making process while they&#39;re shopping.[00:11:00]</p><p>[00:11:00] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> so it&#39;s accurate.</p><p>[00:11:01] We are discovering the decision making tree. So each and every movement becomes suddenly a full map of what&#39;s happening. This is our dashboard by the. We can show it as well. So this is the decision tree looks like an octopus, but every moment since the moment that the shopper arrived, bef in front of the shelf, then we start the measuring.</p><p>[00:11:24] So we have people who stopped, who are interested. You have people who interacted with a category and you have people who touched a certain product, look at it, put it back, and then either abandon the entire category. And this is for a retailer, a very bad thing because it lost the opportunity to sell the product.</p><p>[00:11:41] And what we saw that happen during the research time that we&#39;ve conducted in Israel, if you took a certain product, you looked at it, you put it back, you probably bought it somewhere else. We saw based on the research that 85% of those shopper go home. Maybe they stop in a convenience store and bought that product that they [00:12:00] were looking, but put it back.</p><p>[00:12:01] So this is our lost potential.</p><h3>[00:12:02] The Consumer Struggle Factor</h3><p>[00:12:02] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So how do you deal with, let&#39;s say if you followed me in my grocery shopping about four months ago, I really cleaned up what I was eating. So I&#39;m paying very close attention to high fructose corn syrup. I&#39;m paying very close attention to carbs, all, all that stuff. So I, I will pick up a product, look at it, and, and the struggle aspect.</p><p>[00:12:20] It was interesting. I&#39;ve never heard that term before, but I&#39;m looking at it going, Ooh, too many carbs. Put it back. That was, I mean, that was just me analyzing the product and putting it back. There&#39;s, there&#39;s no chance, well, hopefully there&#39;s no chance I&#39;m buying that because I&#39;ve already made that calculation.</p><p>[00:12:32] I don&#39;t want that. How, how are you classifying that kind of an engagement and how frequent is that? Is is hopefully more people are, are paying attention to what, what we&#39;re consuming.</p><p>[00:12:40] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> So this is a good example. We are not doing personalization measurements yet. We&#39;re looking for the big numbers. So basically I give the equivalent of Google Analytics. So what&#39;s happening in the store, every shopper that entered the category is measured. So every shopper, if we see this kind of a [00:13:00] behavior for 70% of the shoppers looking, turn it back and put it back.</p><p>[00:13:04] We can say there is something in the product, in the ingredients that there is a problem with that.</p><p>[00:13:08] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Interesting. </p><p>[00:13:08] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Interesting. Very interesting </p><p>[00:13:10] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> is crazy.</p><p>[00:13:13] So if I&#39;m, if I&#39;m producing a product that let&#39;s say, maybe isn&#39;t the, the most healthy or not even close to being healthy and, and your data comes back and says, Hey, you have this, huge percentage of people that are looking at your product and putting it back.</p><p>[00:13:27] Wow, I&#39;ve never heard that before </p><p>[00:13:29] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Yeah. and it&#39;s based on real life data. And I&#39;ll take it to a different category. You spoke about healthy food, but you know, take shampoo category. So one of our clients in Israel, it&#39;s a big shampoo distributor, and he was like, I don&#39;t know why my shampoo is not selling. I think it&#39;s the price. And so we are not thinking, we are watching data and analyzing and what we saw, it was amazing. </p><p>[00:13:53] Like, we had this questionnaire that we were doing with it onboarding, and we asked could it be a problem with the product [00:14:00] itself? And they were like, no, it&#39;s the number one product. We did test, we did like a focus group. In the focus group, we ask everybody, which is, which is the best smell, and they choose that smell.</p><p>[00:14:11] And this said, this is the best smell. So there is no way there is a product ah, problem. So we open the camera. And in Israel there is a thing that we&#39;re doing once we touch the shampoo, if it&#39;s a new shampoo, we, we like to open and smell it.</p><p>[00:14:23] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Oh, Jesus</p><p>[00:14:25] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Is that, is that common</p><p>[00:14:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> of course. Yeah. That&#39;s common. Yeah. Oh, I&#39;ve, I&#39;ve seen that. Yeah. Yeah. That&#39;s </p><p>[00:14:31] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> It&#39;s common.</p><p>[00:14:32] Yeah. So it&#39;s not just Israel is, </p><p>[00:14:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah. </p><p>[00:14:35] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> So what we saw, 75% of people, like the shoppers came to the shelf. They were looking at the new product, touching, taking the product. So that means it&#39;s not a price issue. I took it already, it&#39;s in my hand. And then they open, smell it, and they were like, Ugh, put it back</p><p>[00:14:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> because you could see it on the video.</p><p>[00:14:53] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> listen, it&#39;s crazy. </p><p>[00:14:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You see on the video that they didn&#39;t like like </p><p>[00:14:56] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> it&#39;s crazy. And then you show those numbers, like it&#39;s [00:15:00] hundreds of thousands of people every day. You know, in a, in a big chain. And they were like, there&#39;s no way. And I was saying like, listen, if you ask somebody a question, ask me if you look good today, I&#39;ll say, yes, , maybe I don&#39;t</p><p>[00:15:12] You know what I mean? Maybe it&#39;s </p><p>[00:15:14] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Wait a minute. You said we look good today.</p><p>[00:15:18] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> So I&#39;m</p><p>[00:15:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yourself. Jeff</p><p>[00:15:21] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> like in a focus group, people are saying like the rational thing and, and it doesn&#39;t mean that they will be motivated to purchase that product. And once you identify the problem, we&#39;re talking like in a category.</p><p>[00:15:33] Identify the problem, the, the vendor itself or the retailer itself can understand, okay, so I don&#39;t need to do like a big sale or a big promotion because even</p><p>[00:15:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it&#39;s not price </p><p>[00:15:42] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> exactly </p><p>[00:15:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it&#39;s not price </p><p>[00:15:43] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> to identify the problem</p><p>[00:15:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. So, so this is, so we, you and I have talked about this, Jeff, when ever, we see some of these interesting survey, consumer surveys, that show up in the industry and our, our friend at George Mason University that&#39;s doing a very different kind of consumer in insight survey where, and, and I think your [00:16:00] example reflects that, Lenore, very closely because you have consumers in a focus group, if they know they&#39;re in the focus group and they know there, there are lots of people in the group, they may be psychologically less inclined to want to go against the group because you don&#39;t want to feel like you&#39;re the one that did that said what?</p><p>[00:16:15] You&#39;re the, you&#39;re the one that&#39;s different, but you&#39;re right. When standing in front of the products at the store, in front of the shelf and you actually look at it and smell it and you&#39;re, you think, oh, this isn&#39;t what I like at all, and you make a completely different decision.</p><h3>[00:16:28] Next Generation Shopper Research</h3><p>[00:16:28] <strong>Ari Pereira:</strong> That&#39;s why we are the next generation of shopper research because we can really look of what is happening in front of the shelf, and we are translating that into different insights in terms of the shopper journey, the shopper behavior, and everything that is happening in store. That&#39;s where most of the retail stores are blind today.</p><p>[00:16:48] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> And take it one step ahead, because we&#39;re talking on in store, but let&#39;s talk about chains. In, in America, the scale is much bigger than in Israel. This is why we waited so much up until the [00:17:00] technology and the structure of the, you know, the architecture of the software will be scalable enough. So we spoke about one store, but if you&#39;re a chain like Nike or Walmart, and I give you your entire map, and we are connecting in all of the stores, suddenly you can see that.</p><p>[00:17:16] You get alerts, not just about the shopper struggle ranks, you get alerts from the entire chain. So for example, in Denver, Denver, Colorado, what we see now, it&#39;s like we have less conversion. We have a problem with specific female that don&#39;t buy it. And as a manager or CEO or or VP marketing, you can see it pushed to you, as alert, what is the problem in the chain? And then you can take drill down to see the video that we saw before, specific category, what&#39;s the problem? So it&#39;s not just one store, it&#39;s scalable. We can see it </p><p>[00:17:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> scales the whole chain. </p><p>[00:17:52] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Exactly. And then the metrics is different. And we can do static statistics for the entire chain, which brings us to a different [00:18:00] universe.</p><p>[00:18:00] And that was the idea, like making an unscalable world scalable,</p><p>[00:18:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> so, so really you&#39;re combining the performance metrics that you would expect on your e-commerce site, but you&#39;re delivering that in store. And then on top of that, you&#39;re delivering all of these actual shopper insights and on shopper sentiment on their behaviors while they&#39;re engaged in that shopping.</p><p>[00:18:22] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Exactly. </p><p>[00:18:22] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All in one dashboard, </p><p>[00:18:23] <strong>Ari Pereira:</strong> yes, and when you think about harmony, right, You have all the metrics in E-com and most of the industries, they have some difficulty to make the data make sense because they are looking at something in the brick and mortar space. They are looking something different in e-com. And when you have similar KPIs, you can start to bridge the data and you can start to have a holistic view, which today you might be different because you&#39;re looking two different ways, but now you can have a holistic view of the data. Both places.</p><p>[00:18:56] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Full pictures</p><p>[00:18:57] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So in your [00:19:00] deployments in Israel, I&#39;m guessing you probably have more security cameras, although I think probably in America we might be catching up. How do you have to add anything additional to get the da? Anything from a hardware perspective or you are literally just using the footprint that&#39;s already existing.</p><p>[00:19:15] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> the beginning, we&#39;re starting only with what&#39;s existing and it gives you so much. </p><p>[00:19:19] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Wow. </p><p>[00:19:19] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> so much because you don&#39;t have anything like this. It&#39;s ongoing all day. Think that you&#39;re doing all the statistics of each and every shopper that answers the shop. So in the beginning, maybe there will be some you know blind spots.</p><p>[00:19:33] Like we don&#39;t see everything, but we see most of it. So we can recognize most of the problems. And after a certain time, if the retailer wants to upgrade, we can put like our own cameras. In Israel, we add some cameras, but most of the chains that we&#39;re working with, we don&#39;t need</p><p>[00:19:49] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> you don&#39;t need to add anything. </p><p>[00:19:50] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> And what, what&#39;s your thinking as far as US retail? Do they have enough security cameras? It&#39;s the same deal that you&#39;re gonna get more than enough to, to get going.</p><p>[00:19:58] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> So it&#39;s, it&#39;s interesting [00:20:00] this question. So the, our first time we touched base with America was at the nrf. We didn&#39;t really know what to expect. Mm-hmm. , We have Ari in our team and she&#39;s very experienced. , but all of us came from Israel. So what we found out in the nrf actually one of the meetings that we&#39;ve conducted there so the VP marketing told me, she was like, we have like $30,000 worth of security cameras in our store and we&#39;re not doing anything with it.</p><p>[00:20:29] And basically now you&#39;re saying that we can earn money from that.</p><p>[00:20:32] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> well, let me make sure I understand. They&#39;re using those cameras for security purposes. They&#39;re just not using them. So a hundred years ago when I was back in retail we were not. I can say it cuz the company&#39;s outta business. Now, Mervins, we were not allowed as managers to use LP cameras for observing employees.</p><p>[00:20:50] Just from a performance perspective. That was absolutely verboten. LP didn&#39;t, wouldn&#39;t allow us to even do that because we&#39;re all like, can I just look instead of walking all over this distribution center, can I just sit here?[00:21:00] So I don&#39;t know. Yeah. So I don&#39;t know. Is that still the, the is, does that still something you&#39;re gonna have to battle with lp?</p><p>[00:21:07] That, hey, we actually wanna use your cameras for other reasons I could get where they don&#39;t want you to be moving their cameras, but is that an issue or is that, have we already moved past that?</p><p>[00:21:15] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> is that so today they are looking at employees, they&#39;re looking for performance. Those are some of the problems and issues that we heard from the industry while we were at nrf. And also for security matters. There is a big thief thing right now, right?, </p><p>[00:21:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:21:31] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> yes there is</p><p>[00:21:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I you&#39;re a little familiar with </p><p>[00:21:33] with that, </p><p>[00:21:33] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Jeff. </p><p>[00:21:33] Yes. I&#39;m, I live in California, so yes, very familiar with that. </p><p>[00:21:37] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Yeah.. </p><p>[00:21:37] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> It&#39;s not even an lp, it&#39;s more a more a political thing of, of we&#39;re no longer prosecuting crimes and, you know, less than 900 bucks, so you can literally steal $800 worth of </p><p>[00:21:46] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> more, yeah, so we heard that a lot from, from a lot of retailers. Like they&#39;re, they&#39;re, they&#39;re believing that they had, there is a very high percentage today of. Thief that is going on in the store and they can&#39;t really see everything even with their [00:22:00] security cameras. So today they&#39;re using that for security and so for performance as well, trying to it&#39;s not an issue.</p><p>[00:22:07] And basically our software is fully anonymously. If you saw the movie, everything, it&#39;s blur. I&#39;m not looking to understand who is the person personally, I&#39;m looking to understand the problem with the touches, with the body movements. That&#39;s what we&#39;re looking for. So, with with that being said, there is no problem</p><p>[00:22:24] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Wow. Very cool.</p><p>[00:22:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I guess at the end of the day too, compared to when you&#39;re thinking Jeff, now these are all IP based cameras. So everything is a video stream being stored in a server somewhere that even LP is using to go back to bring back footage. So now you&#39;re just taking a, you can take advantage of that same IP stream for a completely different purpose and, and let marketing have some advantages.</p><p>[00:22:45] Store operations have advantage or you&#39;re extending the usefulness of the equipment that&#39;s already there </p><p>[00:22:50] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah, boy. </p><p>[00:22:51] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Exactly. </p><p>[00:22:52] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> just adding another budget to, to bind that, that infrastructure. So that&#39;s, that&#39;s fantastic.</p><p>[00:22:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> bringing a lot more value that way. Wow,</p><p>[00:22:58] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Yeah. And it&#39;s, [00:23:00] this is the exact point. So it&#39;s already there. They&#39;re not making money out of it. I&#39;m not really sure how many thief they&#39;re catching from it. So then we come and then we bring them. Look, you get information, you get Ability. By the way, all this data that we are collecting, we&#39;re doing AB test.</p><p>[00:23:20] So you know, in online we&#39;re saying like there is the, the certain color that you&#39;re choosing for the button, which color convert more. It&#39;s very easy to chain change online, off line. </p><p>[00:23:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You can see that now, right? to actually show</p><p>[00:23:32] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> So we are changing like things, we&#39;re moving things and you see that conversion metrics go up or. and we want to really be better for the shoppers. And we&#39;re looking for, this is why I show the map. Like each and every area in New York, there are different needs that in Texas </p><p>[00:23:46] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> mm-hmm </p><p>[00:23:46] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> makes sense, right? </p><p>[00:23:48] So why does, why doesn&#39;t it look different? </p><p>[00:23:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Why not adapt it? Yeah.</p><p>[00:23:52] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> And you speak about health, if we see in a certain city in Israel that there is more people who are looking for the ingredients and looking to [00:24:00] buy healthier food.</p><p>[00:24:00] So why don&#39;t you as a retailer, put more shelves for healthy people? Like there is a lot of products put. Make it more accurate to the people around. And then if you see that there is a store which has all the, I dunno, best, healthiest food, you would like to go to check it out. Because right now you&#39;re keeping your diet, you&#39;re keeping your health, so the store will be better for you.</p><p>[00:24:24] Up until today there were, you know, all the managers were, were gathering data by, by doing this market research once a year. And here you can see how shoppers change and their needs and to be connected to their needs daily.</p><p>[00:24:39] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Gosh, that&#39;s,</p><p>[00:24:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> so you got some,</p><p>[00:24:41] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I&#39;m stunned</p><p>[00:24:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> advantages. You you&#39;re validating some planograms. You&#39;ve got benefits for the category managers. </p><p>[00:24:47] Lots of different roles that can</p><p>[00:24:48] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> can you imagine E-com word without Google Analytics? Let&#39;s say now we wanna sell this product or this computer, and we are a team and I will tell you guys, listen, I&#39;m doing e-comm, I&#39;m specialized with, you know, users [00:25:00] analytics. You will bring me the product, I&#39;m gonna build the website and do the sales.</p><p>[00:25:05] So we did this business partnership and now I open a website. And then what I, I tell you guys, after one week we sold 1000 computers. Is that good? Sounds good. Right? And the next week we sold 2000 computers. But then I would expect you to ask me from how many people who interacted, right? Like what is the </p><p>[00:25:22] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> many people that didn&#39;t</p><p>[00:25:23] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Like this is the first question, right? And they don&#39;t have this answer, like the basic answer, like conversion funnel. and then you have it all the time. And if you see that in the first week we had, I dunno, like 100,000 people in the website and the next week I had 500,000 people on the website and it go just with from 1000 to 2000.</p><p>[00:25:41] Like,</p><p>[00:25:42] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> You know, the question I&#39;d love to have answered is how many people do that struggle engagement with a product? Meaning, cuz if. You know, looking at my behavior in the last three, three months, every single thing I buy at a grocery store, I&#39;m, I&#39;m looking at the ingredients, every single thing [00:26:00] and, you know, I&#39;m, now, I&#39;m gonna be making that, I&#39;ll be thinking of you folks.</p><p>[00:26:03] I&#39;ll be making that face, </p><p>[00:26:04] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> ah, </p><p>[00:26:04] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> and put something back </p><p>[00:26:05] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> if</p><p>[00:26:05] it&#39;s you do it. It&#39;s, it&#39;s like not rational movement</p><p>[00:26:08] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> what I want to know, would it be really fascinating to know, is how many pe, how many, let&#39;s say a hundred people looked at a product, how many looked. And, and put it in their shopping cart or, or put it back because that might also be a really interesting indicator, Hey, wait a minute.</p><p>[00:26:23] A lot of people are looked at your product, but boy, they look at those carbs, they look at those calories, or they look at that and put it back. That would be really cool too. That might be the, that might be the biggest opportunity to maybe bring some, some more enlightenment to </p><p>[00:26:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> what</p><p>[00:26:36] I mean, think what I&#39;m hearing is you can be even more granular than that, because if I pick up the product off the shelf, the way you are measuring this, if I turn it around to look at the ingredients, so the ingredients are always on the back.</p><p>[00:26:45] Yep. Right. You&#39;ll. Your data will show that. Well, the reason the person put it back is because they turned it around so you can, you can make a logical assumption. If they turned it around, they&#39;ll check the ingredient list and that&#39;s why they put it back. Yeah. If they picked it up, looked at the packaging and put it [00:27:00] back, then you might say to the retailer, well, there&#39;s something wrong with their packaging, and they should go back to the brand and talk about redoing the packaging.</p><p>[00:27:05] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Exactly. But we&#39;re looking to see not just, you remember it&#39;s big</p><p>[00:27:09] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> but yes. Yeah. How so? It&#39;s right across all your stores, across all the customers that went by. If you know 50% of them picked it up and put it back, did</p><p>[00:27:16] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> suddenly, you know that 50% put it back. You </p><p>[00:27:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> which you didn&#39;t know before.</p><p>[00:27:21] <strong>Ari Pereira:</strong> but the mo most important thing, then we can see what was the other product they touched next. Was it healthier? Which one did they buy in the end? Did they buy a healthier product </p><p>[00:27:30] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Boy, </p><p>[00:27:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh, </p><p>[00:27:30] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> imagine </p><p>[00:27:31] what our friend at George Mason University </p><p>[00:27:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh, would do with that data . That&#39;s.</p><p>[00:27:35] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I mean, </p><p>[00:27:36] just </p><p>[00:27:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> would have a field day looking at </p><p>[00:27:37] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Oh my gosh. Wow. Phenomenal.</p><p>[00:27:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Wow.</p><h3>[00:27:41] Activating Insights from Data</h3><p>[00:27:41] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> so this is exactly it. Just today, to explain it a little further, so the numbers that everybody knows, it&#39;s. The numbers that it&#39;s in the cashier, right? How many, what is the market share? What is the market share they&#39;re looking to to raise that all the time. But this number, like they already interacted, they touched it and [00:28:00] put it back.</p><p>[00:28:00] So there are some categories that reach to 70% abandoned rate, 70%. And what you see, this is very interesting, that from those 70%, like you can see more than 60%, most of the time the same problem.</p><p>[00:28:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Interesting </p><p>[00:28:17] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> So if you change a small thing, you can convert those 60% because they already show the interest. It&#39;s not just stopping.</p><p>[00:28:24] It&#39;s not just looking. They, you touched it already. Think about this moment you touch, you look at it. All you need to do is right? </p><p>[00:28:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Which is in some ways more than what you would know on the e-com side, because all you know on the e-com side is that you went to the product page, but you don&#39;t know anything about other than how long you had that page open, which doesn&#39;t necessarily tell you anything about intent.</p><p>[00:28:43] But here you actually know and you can know that they make a face at it, right? So you have all these other factors that you&#39;re measuring.</p><p>[00:28:48] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> time. What is the average time in a specific category? In snacks category, it&#39;s lower than other categories, cuz snacks, it&#39;s like more impulse, like cashier area, you know, [00:29:00] always the cashier area.</p><p>[00:29:00] We say to put impulse product. Who said who said that? Why? You know what we&#39;re doing today, we&#39;re we&#39;re next. When we are next to the cashier, we&#39;re playing with our phone. . </p><p>[00:29:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Everyone&#39;s</p><p>[00:29:11] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> So there is no focus to the outside and this is the most expensive area today in the store, but you&#39;re like this, or maybe with your child or maybe with your fr like everything </p><p>[00:29:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> is because that was a theory that a grosser decided 80 years ago made sense do. </p><p>[00:29:25] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Exactly. And you know the theory that you said that it should be an eye level to sell more. who said that? is it really true? </p><p>[00:29:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> is it still true. Yeah, </p><p>[00:29:34] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> exactly. And once you discovered this, you understand the problem. We saw it in one product.</p><p>[00:29:40] It was mento, you know,</p><p>[00:29:42] the, so Mentos want to, to understand what is their problem, and the VP marketing was like, listen, Lenore, my problem is that I&#39;m not on the eye level. And I&#39;m like, okay, let&#39;s check. And what we saw that in the cashier area, if you managed to put away your phone, , what got you attracted [00:30:00] to the shelf was the Mentos color.</p><p>[00:30:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Mm-hmm. Interesting. like, yeah. Right, </p><p>[00:30:05] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> So we saw shoppers. Once they le left the phone looking at the color, the color, attract them to come, they came the touch. That was their first touch. Come touch the Mentos, look at it, put it back, and took the </p><p>[00:30:18] competitive. And the competitive back then when we started was 47% market share and Mentos was 29.</p><p>[00:30:25] And what we told Mentos, it&#39;s a simple thing, listen. People are looking for you, you&#39;re the anchor. They&#39;re not purchasing you. So they never saw this kind of data. You need to move around from the competition. Once they move around away from the competition in a different shelf,</p><p>[00:30:42] they got like 200 uplift% </p><p>[00:30:46] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Christmas </p><p>[00:30:47] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> And today, after a year, Mintos is almost 49% market </p><p>[00:30:52] share. and the competitive is 27. But listen, it&#39;s a small insight. So we&#39;re not saying push it to people that don&#39;t [00:31:00] want, if a person, a shopper interacted, something got interested, so </p><p>[00:31:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> was just grabbing more conversion from people who were already showed some intent in your </p><p>[00:31:08] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> promise.</p><p>[00:31:09] Exactly. Crazy, right?</p><p>[00:31:10] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:31:12] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:31:13] no, I I mean,</p><p>[00:31:14] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> I overwhelmed you guys. I&#39;m sorry.</p><p>[00:31:17] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah, that&#39;s, well, that&#39;s what we get paid to do. We get paid to be overwhelmed? Actually, no. I mean, I just, I just, I just love this idea in that I don&#39;t have to put in new infrastructure. Because I&#39;ve seen it all. I mean, I&#39;ve seen the concept of flying a drone down an aisle, which is insanity.</p><p>[00:31:31] Robots stuff on rails. I mean, I&#39;ve seen it all. And you know, it&#39;s me, myself as an analyst. It&#39;s not my job to say, oh, that&#39;s good or that, well, it is a little bit, but it&#39;s more, you know, what retailers are gonna embrace. And the problem I always have with startups that are some of the smartest people in the WO room, but they&#39;ll come in and say, Hey, I can do this.</p><p>[00:31:49] And, and then I have, I&#39;m the guy that has to say, do you understand there&#39;s 5,000 stores? So </p><p>[00:31:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It&#39;s what you&#39;re doing times</p><p>[00:31:56] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> times 5,000 and you see the air just go outta [00:32:00] people. . And</p><p>[00:32:01] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> I have scars from what you&#39;re </p><p>[00:32:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> you&#39;re </p><p>[00:32:05] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> We learned it. We learned it.</p><h3>[00:32:06] Startup Lessons</h3><p>[00:32:06] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Well, welcome to America cuz that is, that is not unheard of to have 5,000. Most of the people you&#39;d be talking to are gonna have a thousand stores.</p><p>[00:32:13] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Yeah, so this is why we were waiting guys. We were waiting to the moment that will be scalable enough interesting that we have the best features that we can because once you go on scale, there are features that are left behind, unfortunately. But this is what we were trying to build and when we saw that it&#39;s working and we can bring it here and still be in the professional level that we wanted to be, then we came and, and, and you just mentioned something, but I think I can say a little bit more about it.</p><p>[00:32:42] today, we come with compassion when we see retailers. I didn&#39;t understand how hard it is to run a chain It&#39;s like a war zone, right? Really? It, it&#39;s like each day you go to, I was a captain in the idf. Mm-hmm. in a 200. Mm-hmm. And you know, like [00:33:00] operational. So I know what it is. Like your phone is always your, all the day like, , you know, try to fix problems and make sure that everything is working.</p><p>[00:33:06] This is like for, you know, a manager in a, in a retail store, big managers, and then we come and say, Hey, we come to save the world. Exactly. And, and, and so today we come with compassion. We&#39;re saying we want to take the burden, you know, with you guys, and we understand how it&#39;s working. We understand your problems, we understand the pressure, and we want to take some, mm-hmm , let us help you.</p><p>[00:33:27] And this is the idea.</p><p>[00:33:29] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:33:29] let me give you some feedback on that. Typically what I hear startups do is come in and start off by insulting the retailer saying, oh, you really don&#39;t know what you&#39;re doing. I&#39;m 26 years old and I&#39;m, you know, I&#39;m an engineer out of Stanford, and here I&#39;m here to fix you. And I&#39;m, I&#39;ve sat with 15, 60 year old CIOs. Mad as be Jabbers cuz listen, you have no idea what it&#39;s like to work 24 7, 365 when every single person in the store has a phone, is just waiting for [00:34:00] something bad to happen so they can video it and then, and hopefully go viral. And it&#39;s like the biggest mistake. And I see it again and again and again when startups will come in and say, Hey, you know, you don&#39;t, and it&#39;s, it&#39;s, I don&#39;t think they believe it.</p><p>[00:34:11] I think it&#39;s a throwaway line.</p><p>[00:34:15] I just, you could not be more insulting, not, not you, but that person could not be more insulting if they tried. And it&#39;s a very bad strategy to start a pitch by insulting the person that you&#39;re asking to buy the technology. So that&#39;s i I com. You know, I congratulate you on being being really, really savvy about, about how words impact people, and</p><p>[00:34:34] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> No, because we understand that. We really understand that. We see it. We are working with retailers. We come from the, from the store, we say the field, but we come from the store. We understand, like it took us some time.</p><p>[00:34:44] We didn&#39;t start it like this in the beginning. This is why I say I&#39;m scarred about it because listen, when you come from a different, like technology wise, to this industry and you were like, what&#39;s going on here? Why are they working like this? Why not like this? You come with a lot of, you know, I don&#39;t know, I don&#39;t [00:35:00] wanna say like arrogance.</p><p>[00:35:01] Mm-hmm. , but like, you don&#39;t really understand. </p><p>[00:35:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> understand. </p><p>[00:35:04] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> You&#39;re Right.</p><p>[00:35:05] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> No, it, it is arrogance. It&#39;s a hundred percent arrogance. Yeah. People that don&#39;t, don&#39;t listen to, you know,</p><p>[00:35:10] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> we cannot understand </p><p>[00:35:12] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah. Just, just, I mean, first of all, there&#39;s an old, there&#39;s an old cowboy expression that says, before you tear down an old fence, know why it was there.</p><p>[00:35:19] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Correct.</p><p>[00:35:20] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Somebody put that fence there.</p><p>[00:35:21] Why?</p><p>[00:35:23] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Wow. That&#39;s really good. Yeah.</p><p>[00:35:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. You have to understand their why. </p><p>[00:35:27] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah, </p><p>[00:35:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> exactly. </p><p>[00:35:27] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Exactly. So it took some times, and after we understand and learned, one of our investors is a retailer. So we got like, you know, one-on-one school.</p><p>[00:35:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Mm-hmm. . There you go.</p><p>[00:35:37] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> So we got, I wanna say like the slap from here and the slap from there And then today we understand that and we come with this. Why I say compassion because we need to help. We don&#39;t need to put some more pressure. You know, I said with, I remember that was the first time I met an American retailer, a CEO has 1,200 stores and I was like pitching and you know, like, ah, it&#39;s my baby.</p><p>[00:35:58] And, and he was like, [00:36:00] listen young dear, from Israel. With a very heavy Texan accent. I remember that. And he was like, I don&#39;t have time or effort for your mumbo jumbo technology, but if you can show me 5% growth, I will put T-shirt with your name on it on every employee in my store,</p><p>[00:36:19] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Done.</p><p>[00:36:19] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> So</p><p>[00:36:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> that line before. I</p><p>[00:36:21] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I think.</p><p>[00:36:22] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> you know what I mean? So I understand like, yeah, it&#39;s the </p><p>[00:36:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:36:26] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> some pretty good coaching you got got</p><p>[00:36:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> in that one for sure. That </p><p>[00:36:29] That was, that was pretty strong</p><p>[00:36:30] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Come with compassion. Understand if you really want to work in this space,</p><p>[00:36:35] be the retailer. Like walk the walk, talk the walk. Understand how you can really help and not just come and say how sophisticated you are. Yeah, yeah. Who cares? It should work.</p><p>[00:36:45] I need help right now. I&#39;m fighting right now. Like, so this is the idea and this is the school that we&#39;ve got and this is why we come. Very, yeah. We have a team with very experienced people. We have history in Israel for the past four years, [00:37:00] and we&#39;re looking for our partners here.</p><p>[00:37:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, excellent. I like hearing that. Yeah. Right. Yeah.</p><p>[00:37:04] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> It&#39;s different, right? it&#39;s</p><p>[00:37:06] different. </p><p>[00:37:06] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I&#39;ll give you that. I mean, listen, I&#39;ve heard hundreds of pitches and I&#39;m, I, I typically wait for that, that arrogance to start. Right. And when it, when the feedback, when they ask for feedback. If I heard, I mean, I&#39;ve heard it hundreds of times. I, I mean, I hit so hard. Cause it&#39;s so, and the, and the thing</p><p>[00:37:21] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> where are they now?</p><p>[00:37:23] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Well, I mean, some have done well, some haven&#39;t because they learn, you know? But the point is, why, why? I mean, why? I mean, I guess that&#39;s the whole point of what I do in my podcast is I try to bring startup stories of like, don&#39;t do this, don&#39;t do this, don&#39;t do this. I mean, it&#39;s more don&#39;t do than do. But that&#39;s, but I mean, I, gosh, I&#39;ve just sat in that seat so many times.</p><p>[00:37:44] NRF Tech, I can remember very vividly, a couple of our friends and I were watching that presentation and the guy just started off and it just, it was a throwaway line. And, and I won&#39;t say who, but they wasn&#39;t even mine. But they just grimmaced. It&#39;s like I&#39;m, I&#39;ll never do That&#39;s so insulting.</p><p>[00:37:59] So anyway, [00:38:00] right. Yeah. Very good.</p><p>[00:38:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it&#39;s a lesson that has, well, has to be learned sometimes. Yeah. Well, Lanor, Ari, I want thank you so much for joining us. This has been a fascinating discussion. I think we&#39;ve learned a lot here about how to approach retailers in one part of the discussion, but I&#39;m really, truly fascinated by the approach you&#39;ve taken with this technology and how you&#39;re delivering that to retailers.</p><p>[00:38:21] So thank you again for joining us.</p><p>[00:38:23] <strong>Lanor Daniel:</strong> Thank you so much for having us.</p><p>[00:38:24] <strong>Ari Pereira:</strong> Thank you for having us.</p><p>[00:38:26] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Our Pleasure.</p><h3>[00:38:26] Show Recap</h3><p>[00:38:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> What a great discussion. I love the closing bit about compassion and how Jeff explained what every startup should know to not come across as arrogant in making your pitch. But then again, maybe he hasn&#39;t heard my perfect pitch. There&#39;s no arrogance there and I&#39;m always full of compassion. I&#39;ve been on that side.</p><p>[00:38:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yes indeed. Yes indeed. So true. So what, what did you think of their approach to analytics?</p><p>[00:38:58] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It is fascinating not [00:39:00] just because they&#39;re leveraging existing video cameras. I mean, I think we&#39;ve all seen other video analytics solutions before. But shopper AI is really attacking the insights in a different way, focusing on the big numbers as Lenore put it, showing you across your whole fleet of stores what consumers are doing, how they&#39;re reacting to products.</p><p>[00:39:21] I can just see so many AB testing opportunities you could do to learn more about your stores better, and to feed that data and insights back into the brands you work. I&#39;m already seeing another B2B services tie in, just like we keep talking about.</p><p>[00:39:39] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I totally agree, and I hope Leor and Ari find ways to lean into that line of thought, what the B2B offering that retailers can deliver to their brands by using this solution. It&#39;s a super interesting approach. I hope listeners and viewers agree.</p><p>[00:39:52] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So who&#39;s coming up next in this series? Got any hints for us?</p><p>[00:39:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, you know me when it comes to hints for these. [00:40:00] So all I&#39;ll say is we&#39;ve got one more startup that Jeff and I met with, and then we close it out with another of my favorite chats with some retail friends. So listeners and viewers will have to stick around to see who it is. But now I do want to thank both Lenore and Ari for joining Jeff and me for this discussion.</p><p>[00:40:16] Thank you both so much for joining.</p><p>[00:40:19] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So with that, Ricardo, it&#39;s time for us to wrap this second episode of Our Shop Talk Live mini-series Crossover with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation, it&#39;s a wrap and a mouthful. </p><h3>[00:40:35] Show Close</h3><p>[00:40:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> If you enjoyed our shows this season, especially our podcast crossover events, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don&#39;t miss a minute. Plus, you can watch us, not just listen on our YouTube channel and [00:41:00] like, and comment about this season there, too.</p><p>[00:41:02] And if you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a transcript of each episode, take a look at our show notes for handy links and more deets. I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden.</p><p>[00:41:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season and the crossover series, follow us on Twitter at Casey C Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter and LinkedIn at Retail Razor for the latest updates. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:41:31] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.​</p><p>[00:41:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the retail Razor Show. </p> 8f96af64-038f-4741-968c-c9748aa3a2b7 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Tue, 18 Apr 2023 11:05:00 +0000 2512 no full S2E12a #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL - Krystina Gustafson & Ben Miller S2E12a #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL - Krystina Gustafson & Ben Miller 12 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E12a #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL - Krystina Gustafson & Ben Miller Did you miss Shoptalk 2023 this year? Or were you there and feel like you didn’t catch enough of the content and top trends? We’ve got you covered with another podcast cross-over event with This Week in Innovation and special guest host Jeff Roster! Kicking off this multi-part series, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar sit down with Shoptalk’s content team of Krystina Gustafson and Ben Miller live and in-person on the final day of the event. Together they review the top 4 trends and what they mean for retailers, brands, and the retail tech community. The team goes deep to break down the hype vs reality of Generative AI and discuss how retailers are changing and evolving their relationships with consumers, employees, and suppliers. Plus, hear about the latest trends in shopper engagement! This episode’s guests: Krystina Gustafson, SVP Content, Shoptalk and Groceryshop Ben Miller, Director of original content, Shoptalk and Groceryshop We’re at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E12a #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL - Krystina Gustafson & Ben Miller [00:00:00] Show Intro [00:00:20] Casey Golden: Hello Retail Razor Show listeners and viewers, and welcome to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologist, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:00:33] Ricardo Belmar: And I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. And boy do we have a special treat for you this episode! Today we are talking about the changing relationships between retailers and brands, the evolution of shopper engagement. How omnichannel is morphing into seamless stores, and we see how it's possible to transform over 320,000 meeting requests into over 50,000 actual meetings in a span of three days. [00:00:57] But first, let's talk about our newest [00:01:00] crossover event, and this episode's special guests. [00:01:03] Casey Golden: That's right after our wildly successful crossover event with This Week In Innovation podcast for our N R F Live miniseries. Joined by one of our favorite guest hosts, Jeff Roster. We've done it again for our Shop Talk coverage. [00:01:20] Ricardo Belmar: Yes, indeed. By popular demand, and by popular demand, I mean, we really liked the idea, so we thought, let's do it again. Jeff Roster and I teamed up at Shop Talk for a few special interviews to bring you a Shop Talk live mini-series. [00:01:33] Casey Golden: Well, I'm sad I once again had to miss this one, but I know you guys have pulled together a killer miniseries not to be missed. Who are the episodes special guests? [00:01:45] Ricardo Belmar: I am glad you asked Casey. What better way to kick off this mini-series and with a deep dive discussion on all the hot topics at Shop Talk than sitting down with the Source, Shop talk's, amazing content team led by Krystina Gustafson, SVP of Content, [00:02:00] and Ben Miller, director of original content. [00:02:02] Casey Golden: Christina and Ben are incredible. Uh, you and Jeff really got to dig in to all the hot topics and wasn't this right after they had delivered their retail zeitgeist presentation on , the main stage, right? [00:02:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. We, we recorded this the very next morning after that session where Krystina and Joe Laszlo had run through what Shop Talk was seeing as the major retail trends for the year. Plus , Ben and Krystina gave us some insights into what they found most notable from all the sessions at the show. [00:02:33] And did I mention those 50,000 meetings they orchestrated? I mean, just, wow. Wait until you hear all the stats about what was surely the, the biggest shop talk ever. [00:02:42] Casey Golden: Well, let's get to it then and jump right into you and Jeff's conversation with Krystina Gustafson and Ben Miller from Shop Talk, recorded live and in person at the show. [00:02:54] [00:02:59] The Shoptalk Review [00:02:59] Ricardo Belmar: Hello everyone [00:03:00] and welcome to our special Retail Razor crossover event with This Week In Innovation. I'm Ricardo Belmar, live and in person here at Shop Talk 2023, and I am here with the myth, the legend, Mr. Jeff Roster from This Week In Innovation. How you doing, Jeff? [00:03:15] Jeff Roster: Really good. Ricardo. I, you know, I, I'm so proud of both of us. We're, we're here last day, literally working the show to the last minute, and that's how we roll. That's how we [00:03:24] Ricardo Belmar: what we do. That's right. And for this special edition episode of our live series here at Shop Talk, we have the incredible pleasure of having two folks from the Shop talk team to talk to us about the event. [00:03:36] We're here with Krystina Gustafson and Ben Miller. Krystina. Ben, how are you doing today? [00:03:40] Krystina Gustafson: Doing awesome. [00:03:41] Ben Miller: Yeah, very good. Thank you. Thanks for having us. [00:03:43] Ricardo Belmar: Fantastic. Fantastic. So let's jump in. And I think, you know, one of the, the probably most in, well maybe not most interesting, but something I'm sure everyone wants to know is just give us a little bit of data around just how big a shop talk was this, this year? [00:03:56] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah, happy to start. 10,000 plus attendees, our [00:04:00] largest crowd so far. I would say though, what I take away even more than the size is just the quality of the a attendee. So it really sort of felt like this was. The big year. I know last year was technically retail's big reunion, but with the loss of corporate travel bands people just really being back down to business, the caliber of attendee, the amount of retailers and brands we had attending the show at a very senior level was, was one of the big takeaways to me beyond just kind of the scale of the event. [00:04:25] I know we'll probably talk about meet up a little bit later, but we also were able to facilitate 50,000 meetings over the course of two days which was incredibly impressive. Other things to note about scale 275 speakers 70 hours. 50 hours of content, 80 sessions seven content theaters. So I would say those are kind of the high level numbers. But Ben, you might have some, some additional stats to toss out there. [00:04:48] Ben Miller: kind of, yeah, I think when we talk about the Meetup 50,000 sounds an incredible number [00:04:53] Ricardo Belmar: right? [00:04:53] Yeah, it does. [00:04:54] Ben Miller: We had 323,000 requests to[00:05:00] so the appetite the appetite for, everybody to want to get together, to have some meetings, to meet people, to build their business. And you could feel that energy when you walked around. [00:05:10] And that energy, you know, it's, day four with lagging a little bit, but that energy that that energy is palpable. And that's, and that's been, yeah, that's been a key part of the show this year. [00:05:21] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow. That's un 323,000 requests . Wow. What I, I, you know, one of the things we were talking about before, you know, what we think is sort of unique about the Shop Talk experience you have you know, for example, like how, how, how many vendors were here, whether exhibiting or, or attendees. [00:05:39] I think that's always a key part of bringing all parts of the industry together. That Shop Talk is so, so special for [00:05:45] Ben Miller: key. No, we, we re really agree our. I think you've heard Sophie, our president talk before that we don't really think about a buy side and a sell side. We don't try and compartmentalize. We have a community and our vendors, the technology companies, whether they are [00:06:00] really small startups for whom a Series A feels a distant proposition still right through to Google Face meta. [00:06:07] You know, some of the biggest organizations and biggest corporations in the country and in the world are here. We have about 700. Technology companies and technology vendors, and many of them are on our show floor exhibiting showing their wear, hosting their their, their clients, and also being involved in the meetings and they're a really important part of our community. [00:06:26] Ricardo Belmar: And then tell us a little bit about you know, the, the startup community and the relationship with, with the shop talk there. [00:06:32] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah, it's I think, been a part of our community that's been really special from day one. You know, we were really the first show that was putting Katrina Lake on, on the main stage when she had founded Stitch Fix. You know, the guys at Dollar Shave Club. So I'd say it's always been a core part of who we are. [00:06:45] But we have recognized that it's Such a differentiator for us that we wanna pour more investment into it. And so we've actually been building out our team internally to make sure that we're really cultivating that community, bringing people on board who are specific to, you know, bringing the big VCs to, to the show because, hey, when you [00:07:00] get the big VCs here, you're also gonna be be building a, a big start of community. [00:07:03] And I had jotted down the number, which of course is escaping me now, but yes, 475 founders who were at Shop Talk this year. I like to think that number's actually probably a little lower. When you think about the fact that some founders have potentially sold their businesses, gone onto corporate ventures, it's probably over 500 in, in some capacity. [00:07:19] People who are current founders or have founded businesses before. But we just truly think that's what gives the show so much life. Just the energy that you have from those entrepreneurs who are coming here to learn share what they're finding. They tend to be also some of the more open folks , when they're talking about the challenges that they're facing, which is [00:07:34] Jeff Roster: Yeah. Not tend to be a hundred percent. What? That's, that's why it's so fun to, to, to talk to the startup community cuz they there is no filter. [00:07:41] And there was no AR person to, to say, don't say that. So, no, it's, I mean, the difference is an analyst working, you know, with, with the largest companies in my old days of Gartner to work covering the startup committee. [00:07:52] I mean, it's night and day. It's so refreshing. [00:07:55] Krystina Gustafson: were you I don't know if you were in the keynote with Imran Khan from Veri Shop, but he, he was unfiltered while he [00:08:00] was up there on stage, which, I mean, we've been getting such good feedback on that interview, so yeah, I hear you. [00:08:04] Ben Miller: getting, I think we are incredibly proud about the keynote lineup this. year. And we, we, we've, it's an incredible process to work with all of our keynotes to, to be prepared. But one of the things that we have spoken about is how they can be open. Cuz nobody wants to come to an event and just see someone reading the press release. [00:08:19] And some of, the, some the great conversations that we've had on the main stage this year and some of the openness of the speakers has been quite a revelation and yeah, I think it's probably the best keynote group that we put together. [00:08:30] Krystina Gustafson: I agree. And I have to say, just being in the, I spent a lot of my time in the, the depths of the green room at the show, and I have to tell you the authenticity of those leaders. And I know that sounds really cheesy, and I'm not typically the type of prince Ben knows. I'm not the soft emotive type. [00:08:44] But I mean, it was palpable. Every single one of them was incredibly kind, incredibly grateful to be here. Willing to be open, recognizing that our audience really wanted to learn. And so I didn't even feel to the same degree as impacious that we had to push. Obviously we're always pushing people to say interesting things, but they [00:09:00] were eager to do it which was really unique and special. [00:09:02] Ricardo Belmar: tell us a bit more about some of the feedback you've had, both, both in the keynotes and then even in some of the other track sessions that I know there have been some really interesting speakers there. I know I was in some where you could just feel, you know, and some of the speakers are, or just, I, I would almost have to describe as entertaining and some of the things they said in, in the way that, that the crowd really reacted to them. [00:09:20] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah. [00:09:20] I think some of the interesting formats that we rolled out have been a lot of fun. So one session that got a ton of great feedback was our rapid fire session. We did two of them. One was with investors, which again, kind of getting back to your point about people that can be unfiltered, a lot of laughter coming outta that one. [00:09:34] I think one of the, one of the questions at the end was you know, what's your most unpopular opinion today? And just really kinda, you know, use poking and prodding [00:09:42] them. So that one was a lot of fun. [00:09:44] Jeff Roster: I'm stealing that one. I'm gonna, that, that's gonna be my, [00:09:46] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, that's right. Right. Yeah. [00:09:47] Krystina Gustafson: Exactly. [00:09:48] We gamify it. There's a really loud, obnoxious buzzer when people run out of time. [00:09:51] They have their four minutes. So, so that was a hit. And then we also did one on tech investing, which was really fun. It had CB Insights, Ulta Beauty and Patagonia on [00:10:00] it. And I think what was really interesting about that one was you had sort of Ulta that has this huge budget. They're always trying new things. [00:10:05] They're always testing, and, learning. And then you have Patagonia, which is a little bit more conservative, maybe doesn't have that big budget to blow. So just kind of hearing Prama, who's the Chief digital officer at Ulta talking about, oh yes, we're trying this. Yes, we're doing AR. Oh, this is fantastic. And Patagonia just being kinda like, no hard pass on Metaverse hard pass on this. [00:10:19] You know, it really represents the dynamics that our audience has, you know? [00:10:23] Ricardo Belmar: different. Yeah. Yeah. [00:10:24] Ben Miller: And, and I think that authenticity has been something that's, that's thread throughout and we, we've programmed sessions that were, were about purpose and we wanted to talk about purpose and want to talk about sustainability. [00:10:34] But actually what we've found is great. We've got the specific sessions, but the general principle of authentic leadership has, has woven through so many of the conversations. Whether that's, you know, leaders openly facing in some of the challenges that they've had or talk about their views on social issues. [00:10:48] There's been some really dynamic conversations and that's been exciting to be part of. [00:10:54] Krystina Gustafson: I think to your question too about feedback though I haven't had anyone complain to me yet. [00:10:57] so that to me is, [00:10:59] Ricardo Belmar: That's something, [00:10:59] Krystina Gustafson: [00:11:00] that's a big barometer of, of people being happy. So I think just generally kind of going back to where we started the conversation, everyone's gritting, ear to ear having a fantastic time, and that's not really something that's measurable. [00:11:10] We'll get sort of the more measurable data after the show, but. , but it's, I mean, so far I think the buzz has been really great. I do really look forward to getting that feedback though. One of the things that I had mentioned for anyone who was in the opening remarks session, when we talked about how we were doing more on seamless stores this year, that was feedback that we got from both Shop Talk and the most recent grocery shop was that people wanted to see us lean more into physical stores. [00:11:30] And so, We did that we made sure that it was covered on our keynote stage with Footlocker, with Brilliant Earth. It was something that we dialed up in our track sessions as well. So it's great to hear kind of the initial buzz and excitement. But we also try to take that constructive feedback post show when we're getting more concrete data, survey results, and then action that for, the next show [00:11:48] Seamless Stores & the "Death of Omnichannel" [00:11:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So tell, tell us a little bit more on that topic of Seamless stores, because I, I did, I, cause I noticed that difference as well, right? From back, from both, from last Shop Talk and, and progressing through grocery shop to hear that there was [00:12:00] more emphasis on what's happening in physical stores and how that ties back into the rest of of the retail organization. [00:12:06] So how, tell us more about that. [00:12:07] Ben Miller: I woke up this morning to a notification on my phone flicking through half jet lag still, and there's this great message that somebody had posted on my LinkedIn saying, thank you, shop Talk 2023 for finally killing omnichannel. [00:12:24] And [00:12:24] I think, [00:12:25] Ricardo Belmar: saw that post [00:12:26] Ben Miller: do you know what, we've now reached that point where we talk about seamless stores, we talk about unified commerce, the general principle of how do we help customers wherever they are, whenever they want to interact with the brand, to be able to, discover, to be able to explore, [00:12:44] to be able to excited it or to be able to buy and whether that's on a social media channel, whether that's on the retailer's own asset, whether that's having a fantastic experience when they walk through a store. [00:12:55] That's shopping. And I think the number of times I've heard that, you know, [00:13:00] there's been very few conversations about channel management, cuz I think we've finally realized that channels are just this artificial construct and actually [00:13:05] what it is he's getting, he's getting product to people and exciting. about product. And that's been one of the big things for me for, for the whole show. When we, we, we spent a lot of time talking about it in advance. We've been looking at how do you remove friction from the shopping experience, and places where a bit of friction's good, but also where you want to take out friction. [00:13:23] And that's been a really important thought. How do you link some of these things together about the online experience and the offline experience What are the building blocks? What, what's the tech stack to enable that? But as a, as a concept, just getting product to people when they want, it has been, I think it's been the biggest thing for me, [00:13:40] Krystina Gustafson: One of the, one of the cheesy jokes I didn't get into the zeitgeist was it reminds me of the Nintendo Switch, you know, where you're playing on your handheld and then you plug it into the TV and your game is picked up. You know exactly where you were in, in the game progress, you don't have to finish a level. [00:13:53] That's how I, that's how my brain thinks about what unified retail should be going forward. I didn't have room for it though. We were already five minutes over. But, but in all [00:14:00] seriousness you know, the example that I did share, which was probably more valuable to the audience, was Brilliant Earth, right? [00:14:04] You know, go online. You do an online consultation, you get to the store, Hey, here's five rings that we picked out for you based off of what you told us online. Like I think that's kind of how we're thinking about unified these days. It's less about shopping where you want, when you want, and making that a continuous experience. [00:14:18] Because we were talking, we didn't wanna undermine in in our zeitgeist presentation that frictionless isn't hard and it isn't important. But I think where we landed is more companies have solved for that already, right? The amount of companies that have curbside, that have redesigned their store formats. [00:14:31] I think that's kind of more progressed, if you will. And I think Unified is really still in its early stages seeing what companies like Brilliant Earth are doing. The other speaker who we confirmed was the chief digital Officer from Panera. And they recently signed that deal with Amazon One for the biometric scanning in their stores linking to loyalty programs. [00:14:47] So that's another great example. And it's a completely different category than fine jewelry, which is what Brilliant Earth is doing. But I feel like those are two early examples of where we see this trend heading. [00:14:57] [00:14:57] "Follow the Money" ... but, Omnichannel? [00:14:57] Ben Miller: And I was in a different room when the Panera presentation was [00:15:00] on, so I missed it. But the social comments and the social feedback on that yeah, we did some work. One of the things that, it goes right back to when Shop Talk was founded by, led by Anil and, and the team was to sit down and look at where does the VC And if you follow the money, then you start to pick up the trends. And we spend a, we spend quite a bit of time looking at this whole idea of, okay, if Shop Talk wants to talk about physical stores, well what's relevant, what's new? What's the future in that? So, you with our friends, at CB Insights, we went into the data and there's a phenomenal amount of funding's continuing to go into removing friction. [00:15:38] Whether that's checkout free, for example, they say whole seamless of connecting that shopping journey. It's, there's funding there, but it's, it's still lower, but we really see that increasing and there some, some of the stats about the levels of is huge. So we believe that's only gonna get more and that's only gonna snowball. [00:15:55] So understanding that further, pulling out great examples. We talked on the main stage [00:16:00] about Zara and some of the work that they're doing in their flagship stores. Yeah. Zara is is certainly the biggest apparel retailer in Europe, if not, yeah, the parent company, Inditex, the biggest in the world [00:16:11] They're still only doing it in, in a couple of trial stores. So the potential is, is absolutely huge and, and we wanna celebrate trials like that. [00:16:19] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah, no, that, that, that makes sense. [00:16:20] Jeff Roster: Yeah, that's music in my ears. I mean, I've been fighting omnichannel forever. [00:16:25] No, no offense, but when, when your competitor coins the term, no, Gardner, Allen should ever use that term. What's funny, the funniest thing I ever had is somebody, one time, you know, no offense to the, the vendors in the room, but a vendor one time ask me, Hey, do you have omnichannel IT spend? [00:16:39] And I said, well, I do, but you'll have to define what you mean. And the conversation went dead. He had no idea what he he was [00:16:44] Krystina Gustafson: I absolutely love that. My favorite, thing is when people apply to speak at Shop Talk and we're like, what do you wanna speak about? And they're like, oh, omnichannel, or, oh, I wanna talk about e-com. And I'm just like, gimme more, gimme more [00:16:53] Supporting Store Teams [00:16:53] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. Right. Could you be a little more vague? [00:16:56] Yeah. Yeah. So, so one thing I [00:17:00] noticed in particular this time, which I haven't seen at other shows as much attention. And I think maybe it's part, it sort of comes out I think, a little bit out of the seamless stores. But I think Krystina, you or Joe mentioned it in this, session that there's this renewed, focus on how we're enabling store teams, whether it's directly with technology or just with different, by changing the processes, but just how they're able to work and how even if you didn't have a session that was stated on the agenda, that's what it was about. I heard that come up from so many presenters and speakers that part of what they were doing was tying back into how they're supporting those store teams to make their job better. And I, I think I lost track, but maybe three or four times, I heard one of the speakers mention how they see that as something that is enabling a better career path for these retail workers. And I thought that was super interesting to me because I haven't seen that at other shows or in other events. [00:17:53] Ben Miller: I mean, let me give a big picture of you and I'll pass over to Krystina for a bit more detail. [00:17:58] I would say take one step back from [00:18:00] that. And, and the first step back from that is, is the investment environment that we find ourselves in right now. [00:18:05] And the decisions and the hard decisions that people have to make. [00:18:10] So if we are going through continued elevated levels of e-commerce sales, we're going through a store Renaissance, something as we referred to it, and we need to try and deliver to customers, you know, commerce everywhere where, that's great, but all of those parts require investment. [00:18:25] So how do you do it in an investment environment which is, which is tighter and it, this has felt a really optimistic few days, but we are really cognizant of the environment that we're in. The number of speakers that I've heard to say in an environment. The two things that they focus on right now are people and talent, and also the store infrastructure. [00:18:44] If you take that together and you think, okay, well where's the investment in people? In stores? [00:18:49] Then you start to realize that actually you've got a really cost effective way to be able to drive, drive digital transformation and to drive significant improvement. So we, we deliberately programmed some areas where we wanted to talk about some of the [00:19:00] detail about that, but actually is a theme. [00:19:02] Completely agree. Ricardo. It's cropped up in so many different [00:19:05] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah. I would build on that. I think it's not only the store associates, right? I think people overall ended up being a much bigger theme than we had intended it to be. You know, to Ben's point, we did have a couple of sessions that were very specific to store employees, whether it was from the retailer brand side, whether it was from the tech side. [00:19:21] We had a couple sessions, maybe one or two on culture and leadership. But that theme came up I feel, even more than usual. And I think it's this whole idea of empathy. Kind of going back to your point too, and, and how you leverage your workers. Leverage is probably a, a crass word, but. [00:19:35] Empower your [00:19:36] Jeff Roster: There you [00:19:37] Krystina Gustafson: use Empower. What Use Empower. It was really interesting because I, I feel like the dialogue around store associates for so long has been about productivity. And of course we were hearing quite a bit of that. The lens of safety seemed to be a new conversation, right? As much as we hear about automation and the, is that, oh, the robots aren't gonna take your jobs now, it was sort of, you know, listening into Amazon, okay, well we're actually using automation to make the warehouse [00:20:00] workers safer and to make sure that we have, you know, safety protocols in place. And that was kind of a new spin on that theme that I hadn't previously heard and, and wasn't necessarily expecting coming into the show. [00:20:08] Ben Miller: I'm trying to find a stat and I'm [00:20:12] we go. I got it. There's a great, there's a great session from Katie Reeves from, who's the managing director of Cos [00:20:20] of the h and m group manager of Cos in North America, and she's talked about the investment that they are making their smart store [00:20:27] portfolio. [00:20:28] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. I, I remember that session. [00:20:29] Yeah. But [00:20:30] Ben Miller: one of the key components of the smart store was enabling their teams in the store and they talked about the app that they. And, and they'd use the app for process improvement, bring all the information into the right place to help them operationally as well as help serve customers better. [00:20:46] And she shared that in the pilot stores where they have got the app running, their staff retention of install teams has increased by And if you think about the labor market we are in, [00:20:58] Ricardo Belmar: wow. [00:21:00] [00:21:00] Ben Miller: Joe shared on the main stage, the the quit rate is over 40% higher for retail than it is for as a whole. [00:21:07] Yeah. It's harder to find people, people more expensive. If you're able to make that sort of change, enable that by technology. That's incredible. [00:21:13] Not only that, she shared that because the process improvements their store staff are having an extra two and a half hours a week to be able to serve their customers better. [00:21:25] And that's, that's transformational for a [00:21:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. That, that's a massive difference. That's a massive improvement. [00:21:30] Yeah. [00:21:30] Krystina Gustafson: You know, one thing that comes to mind as you're saying that, and it sort of circles back to what we were talking about before I was in the session with Chobani, and they were actually taking this from more of a perspective. And you know, she was saying, we get asked the question all the time, how do you measure. The impact on sales. How do you measure the impact on the business? And she was actually making the point actually, we see the most measurable statistics in our employee acquisition and retention because there are so many people that want to be a part of a company that is mission driven. So I think it's always such a [00:22:00] good point. [00:22:00] Technology is really enabling workers. It's, you know, boosting retention. It's helping that labor shortage, but also a really strong purpose and something that has nothing to do with technology could also be really powerful. [00:22:10] Ricardo Belmar: strong purpose. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. [00:22:12] Jeff Roster: I mean, how novel people wanna be part of something big. I'm shocking [00:22:15] Ricardo Belmar: Shocking, right. [00:22:16] Krystina Gustafson: We lose sight of it though, don't we? [00:22:18] Jeff Roster: Well, we do. And you know, and that was such a strong point. And, and, and I was sitting here thinking as you're talking you know, of course our, our good friend Ron Thurston is this, is this like his legacy because. Five years ago, four years ago, we weren't really talking about this stuff. [00:22:32] And then Ron pops on and does that amazing podcast and that amazing journey and now all of a sudden it's, it's like we all are, are able to say what, what's common sense? It's, it's a people business. You better put your people in front of your people business. [00:22:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I, I even think, you know, the, the biggest change I've noticed to your point, if you go back five years, no one used the phrases enabling store teams. No one talked about empowering them with the right technology. What everyone said is, well, we have to get them the right training. [00:23:00] It was all about, training was always the key word, and it was investment in training as if, you know, the only thing you needed to do was to impart a set of skills to just work the store. [00:23:09] And now that's completely transformed that it is. I, I think, you know, you have the right words, Krystina, right, it's about enabling, empowering those teams with the right elements, whether it's process, technology or the. People skills itself, whatever it is. And I can't remember which session it was, but the one that's also stood out to me, someone was talking about how they recognize that when they look across all of the store associates, they have, people have different skills and the different talents, and some are better than others at certain roles in the store. And that it doesn't make sense to assume that every store employee should be able to do every single job in the store. And especially if you start layering in things now, like live streaming, for example. [00:23:47] And this was one that I keyed in on because and you may remember this, this trip because some time ago on, on the podcast we talked. This idea. And I had, and, and some other conversation I had with with Retail Wire. I think we talked about this idea that, the retailers [00:24:00] have this inherent talent in some of their employees. [00:24:02] Because let's face it, if you go by the, just by age demographics alone, odds are in most retailers, you have employees in stores who may have their own YouTube channel already. Independent of that job function. And they're good at this and they like doing it. So it makes sense for a retailer to kind of take advantage of that in, in a sense, right? [00:24:19] And encourage those skills. But at the same time, that that same person who might like to live stream, they might not be a good stylist. For example, if it's an apparel store and there might be another employee that loves to do styling with customers and is so much better at it than others. So give them that kind of growth path using those skills. [00:24:37] Ben Miller: using, and this speaks to something at the sort, the very heart of shop content, which is how is technology enabling a lot of this transformation? And if you talk about, you know, enabling and empowering frontline workers, you've got a hundred percent, there is this sort of talent. [00:24:51] How do you unlock this talent? And things like livestream shoppable video, creating new way for frontline workers to be able to unlock that talent that [00:25:00] they've had in that store. And they've probably been helping a small number of customers with, but now you can do it on a bigger scale. The second in training, [00:25:07] it's really hard, to take a whole day out or to take a frontline worker away from their store to help them with some of the at times softer to be able to do that. [00:25:18] We've got some amazing trials and Kroger on the front foot about doing some incredible work to help empower with app enable. Short, quick, accessible training to help be able to improve and to deliver a better experience for their guests. And then finally, there's that element you talked about, about playing to STRs. There is this group of workers in the in flexible environments economy and tech is enabling retailers to access that pool. But actually more broadly, is enable. Existing workers to have that flexibility to choose which all they want to work in, or tasks that they wanna pick up, working at times their families. [00:25:59] So tech is [00:26:00] enabling all these things to take that workforce, drive the attention, drive the engagement, and ultimately serve their customers better. [00:26:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:26:07] Krystina Gustafson: I'm laughing because , it's a little bit of a tangent, but as you're talking about this and, and we're just kind of on this theme about empowering your workers and thinking about building technology for the people who are running the organization. I think about maybe another industry, maybe the airline industry [00:26:23] Ricardo Belmar: mm-hmm. [00:26:23] Krystina Gustafson: didn't focus on this and Yeah. [00:26:24] Somewhat imploded. And so i, I, I laugh because, We always tell people, if you tell me you're a data-driven, consumer-centric company, get off the stage. [00:26:33] Cuz everyone else, like every single company who's on our stages. If you're, if you're not, get outta here. [00:26:37] But I do think sometimes by saying that, and it's obviously the right approach we ignore what needs to happen for the employees to make this whole business run. [00:26:46] And we've very clearly what can happen when that gets ignored. So I think, even just kind of looking to lessons from other industries. Made us realize just kind of how important is overall as well. [00:26:57] All about the Data & Data Insights [00:26:57] Ben Miller: Ricardo, there's a question that I, I wanted to ask you. [00:27:00] What one of the conversations, cause we're starting to touch about data Mm-hmm. and you, you've got such incredible knowledge in this space. We, we've picked conversation almost. [00:27:09] The number of speakers that almost thrown their hands in the and said, you know what? [00:27:13] Data, trying to understand the customer across all touchpoints. You just can't do First party, hear a party. [00:27:19] I, I can't get an omnichannel, a true of my customer everywhere, and that's fine. I'm just gonna have to serve them where you can. [00:27:27] Ricardo Belmar: Uhhuh [00:27:28] Ben Miller: Is that a view you recognize? [00:27:30] Ricardo Belmar: I, I I think kind of maybe the, the, I would kind of break that down to say that I, every retailer I talk to Will, will say, you know, at the end of the day, we are overwhelmed with data. [00:27:39] There's no lack of data . It's, it's really a matter of a, what can I do with that? How can I actually analyze it in a way that tells me the story about my customer and who they are, what, what their preferences are, what, how they want to engage with us. That's what every retailer wants to know. And I think the challenge really is I forget what the statistic is, but the [00:28:00] amount of data that retail generates every day is just overwhelming. I think it's something on the order of it's more data than the internet generated five years ago or something. Un unbelievable like that. And so the question every retailer has to ask is, so what am I gonna do with this now? [00:28:14] Right? What are the tools I have to use? And even if you have the tools, it's not enough, right? Because it, even that needs to be looked at by people to interpret what do I do now that I have this knowledge? If I convert that data into something useful and knowledgeable, that gives me a, a possible actions to take. [00:28:29] Someone has to take those actions, someone has to make the decision, which is the best action, and then it becomes back to a, a people problem. And I know. . I think even today, but in past years, I've, I've seen retailers will say, you know, now we think we know how to select the right tools to help us with the analysis, but now my challenge is this is so new, we don't have anyone on staff that knows how to deal with this. [00:28:49] And if I try to go out and hire those people, everyone wants to hire those people. So it's incredibly competitive and I feel like I don't even know if we can afford those people on to be part of our, [00:29:00] our organization because it's so competitive. [00:29:02] Ben Miller: We're back to people in [00:29:03] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly right. Exactly. It always seems to come back to that. [00:29:06] You know, I guess what I'll maybe turn around because sort of the one thing we haven't talked about that has come up all over the, the place is, everyone's favorite new, hyped up technology , is generative ai, ? It's like last year's metaverse. And, and one of the promises, I guess I'll use that strong word about this, is that it is supposed to help with this problem and give you better tools and better decision making capability with all that data that you have. [00:29:29] What About Generative AI? [00:29:29] Ricardo Belmar: I, I'm, I'm wondering, I mean, what, what are your, for both of you, what are your thoughts? Cuz obviously everyone must be coming up to you and saying, oh, what, where, where is the session that we're gonna talk about generative ai [00:29:38] Krystina Gustafson: Every, yeah. [00:29:39] You know was actually surprised people were more measured than I expected them to be. I thought it was gonna be like Metaverse last year where it was like, the session is not about metaverse and it's still snuck in. I, I feel like generative AI was a little bit more measured. [00:29:50] Look, I think our big thesis on it is, again, still very early. What feels different to us though is that this feels immediately applicable and it feels like something [00:30:00] that you invest in and see real business results on. Right? So, so many opportunities I think. [00:30:06] Gosh, he wasn't. Sean Downey from Google was just kind of talking about the various use cases for it, whether it's advertising, whether it's, you know, looking at supply chain data, whether it's creatives, whether it's customer service. [00:30:14] We had a slide that was kind of making fun of in a, in a good way. The CB insights market map that they built with just all the, and it was just scrolling, right? [00:30:21] I mean, it's not even retail. Right. It's every single industry, the use cases. Endless, which I think is a really exciting opportunity. [00:30:28] I think we would both agree that a lot of work still needs to be done to make sure this is ethical, to make sure it's accurate. We're very early stages, but I think it just feels more real than the metaverse [00:30:38] Jeff Roster: well, the, the thing that's real about it is we all, we all are, are playing on it in our own search engine. I [00:30:44] Ricardo Belmar: right. Yeah. [00:30:45] Jeff Roster: I wanted to ask you know, the Microsoft guys we talked to yesterday, just what. How many more hits on Bing has gotten in the last [00:30:52] Ben Miller: own [00:30:52] Jeff Roster: I mean, [00:30:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it [00:30:53] Jeff Roster: that's all I've used. Yeah. [00:30:54] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it [00:30:55] Jeff Roster: And, and so we're so it's [00:30:56] Ricardo Belmar: extra users [00:30:57] Jeff Roster: Exactly. Exactly. It just, it has to be [00:31:00] so, so literally. There's no technology that, that every single person is using that it has this immediate impact in the business. I mean, we all didn't pick up point of sale devices or all, didn't pick up whatever, but this one thing hit, but we, I mean, we were tracking it from an, from a startup perspective. [00:31:17] I mean, the amount of, of spending AI even 2, 3, 4 years ago, it's, it's, it's orders of magnitude compared to everything else. Yeah. And then it just exploded. [00:31:25] And then it got a little controversial, so then people even used it more and everyone's trying to trick it and all this stuff, [00:31:30] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. It kinda [00:31:30] Krystina Gustafson: but I think you, you hit on something really important there, right? One of the biggest problems with the metaverse conversation, and we were very clear about this last year as well, the learning curve. [00:31:39] To even understand what it is to understand what blockchain is. [00:31:42] is virtual gaming actually, the metaverse, what ,is it goggles? [00:31:46] ChatGPT, my parents can go, go. on the website, tape it. It is So easily accessible and it's so Easily understandable. And I think that's why you've seen just meteor meteoric rise in interest compared to the metaverse. [00:31:57] Ben Miller: And the other thing is if you break it down, [00:32:00] There is three potential areas that generative AI can help with, which are fundamental retail challenges. [00:32:08] Number one, can I make repetitive tasks more efficient [00:32:11] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. [00:32:11] Ben Miller: Mm-hmm. , and scale retail is the efficiency of process. [00:32:16] that's what it is. it's, about [00:32:17] Ricardo Belmar: scale, right? It's about [00:32:18] Ben Miller: Great. This is something that can help it. So of course retail's gonna lean in. The second is can it help drive commerce everywhere? You know, we started a conversation with seamless stores, The amount of copy and creative that it be required to be wherever your customers want to be is mind boggling. Generative AI might be able to help. And thirdly, that the holy grail of mass retail, physical, of personalization, we've talked about it every time. And the reason we talk about it every single conference is cause we haven't cracked it [00:32:45] Ricardo Belmar: confidence, right? That's right. [00:32:46] Ben Miller: generative AI has the potential to be able to help in in stalled areas. So there's three absolutely cool retail, pr drivers that we can see. cases for. So no wonder people are very excited on the plus side. [00:32:57] We were, we were in the staff room just before we came [00:33:00] down, and I, we brought up chat, G b T, and I asked you chat, G b T what were the key themes from Shop Talk 2023. And of course he told me that unfortunately it's historic and can't can't Do that. So Krystina pointed out that maybe our jobs were secure for another year yet. So [00:33:13] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. [00:33:14] Ben Miller: we'll take, we'll take, we'll take that. [00:33:16] Ricardo Belmar: that's right. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I think you're, you're, you're spot on on that. I mean, I, I, I like to I sort of, I steal a, a quote from one of my colleagues at Microsoft who like tells everyone in every meeting, you know, if I haven't had five retailers I talked to today about generative, generative ai, it's only because the fourth retailer didn't get off the phone with me till the end of the day and I couldn't get to the fifth call [00:33:37] Krystina Gustafson: I like that. [00:33:38] That's a good one! [00:33:39] Ricardo Belmar: And, and it's, and it so true. [00:33:40] And, and I think, you're right about the, different categories. I mean, one of our. Favorite customers that we, we talk about is CarMax, where they've taken this technology and, you know, one of, they found that one of the pain points in their customer journey is people go to their website and they wanna research the cars they have in inventory. [00:33:57] And one of the tools, of course, is to look at reviews and [00:34:00] comments from people who've bought past cars. Well there are thousands of reviews! So you go on there and if you wanna look at a car, what's your, your choice is to read a thousand reviews before you decide what you want to go look at. Or maybe you just give up or you find some other tool to help you do that research. [00:34:14] So they've actually leveraged these tools now to do all of that summarization for you. So you can go to their website now and you give it the parameters that interest you about a car. Their new AI tool just comes back to you with immediately the summarization across all those thousands of reviews. [00:34:29] Here are the key points that you're interested in. Here's how it compares in these cars that you chose to look at. [00:34:33] Krystina Gustafson: I need this so bad. The joke, the joke. in Our household is whenever we travel, I don't read anything. I literally, I just see, I see a pretty picture and I'm like, book. And it kills my husband. He is like the one that's reading [00:34:44] Ricardo Belmar: He wants to research everything, right? [00:34:46] Krystina Gustafson: my god. Every single thing. Well, I think the bars in the wrong place in this hotel or the room is only this many. Yeah, he's, he's, on, he's on it. And I am not So this, this, will help me be a better [00:34:55] Ricardo Belmar: you go, [00:34:56] Krystina Gustafson: partner [00:34:57] Retail Media Networks [00:34:57] Ricardo Belmar: There you go. So I guess let me shift [00:35:00] then to the kind of the last one trending thing I wanted to ask you about because it's, it's one that, it's probably one of my favorites. So, over the past year, and Jeff likes to poke fun of me for this quite a bit. [00:35:10] You know, I, I've been really big on retail media networks and knew I was going this way. And part of the reason why I've been beating the retail media network's drum for so long cuz I, I started talking about it back in, what did I talk October, 2021, [00:35:23] Jeff Roster: it seemed like two decades [00:35:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. . Yeah. Yeah. [00:35:25] But it, it's evolved and and I think, again, I think you, you guys mentioned this in this session, that really, what has it evolved to? It's become more about retailers looking more like a technology company and offering technology solutions and services to other retailers. . And I think that to me is a, is just really interesting into how their own, their whole core business is evolving. [00:35:45] Krystina Gustafson: I think that Ben will jump out of his skin if he doesn't get to answer [00:35:48] Ricardo Belmar: I know. Well, and I, and Ben's laugh and Ben's laughing, so anyone not who's not can't see this. I mean, Ben's laughing because he and I have had this conversation exactly before . [00:35:56] Krystina Gustafson: I don't, think, I don't think an hour goes by without ben talking [00:36:00] about in a, in a Very positive way. [00:36:02] Ricardo Belmar: We're, we're of like, minds . [00:36:03] we're of like minds. [00:36:04] Ben Miller: I, I, I, You did a very good job leaving that to the last question, because otherwise we'd have lost a whole of the podcast. [00:36:10] Ricardo Belmar: else if we had started with that. Yes. , [00:36:12] Ben Miller: this is, it's what the, why is it so important and why do I get so interested about it? Because there's two levels. One, I think at the, our friend Andrew lipman Insider says it so well. this is the third wave of digital. [00:36:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. I absolutely, yeah, totally agree. [00:36:26] Ben Miller: You see the numbers, okay, the numbers, let's be honest, the numbers are hugely hugely skewed by investment in search returns on Amazon, so yes, we recognize the prize, but you've gotta recognize that's skew in it. But when you strip that back, there is a marketing a digital marketing channel where, which has the opportunity to directly attribute sales to investment and whether retail media is more efficient than other digital marketing channels or at, or it's just that you can actually prove it, then actually that point is really valuable. [00:36:59] [00:37:00] it's a, it's a phenomenal trend. It's a, it's a huge wave and what's been really exciting in this particular event, and yeah, we, we, we'll continue the conversation in a, a European Barcelona as well, I is to stand back and say, okay, we all know what retail media is now. We don't need to do that. a lot of us are doing it, really, how do we get efficient? [00:37:19] Okay, do we, and do I need 600, retail media networks in my portfolio? [00:37:23] Where, where do I spend the money? What's exciting about it is he's coming back to, and I think this is a point that we made Joe made during the zeitgeist, is it's about the basics of great advertising. So let's talk again about creative, let's talk about engagement, let's talk about generating fun, and this is another channel to enable us, us to do that. [00:37:41] So that that, that's really exciting. The second element of it, which is why it's so important, is that element about changing relationships. [00:37:49] This idea that a retailer is as, as well as a buyer, is now a seller to their vendors. And it's not, that's not just limited to retail media that, that think you have these, we call it [00:38:00] collaborative commerce networks, which is the sharing of logistics, for example. and when you're adding marketplaces and you see how the Their customers and we feel the retailers are changing and how do you do all of that and drive the margin that's there to be taken at the same time as keeping that laser focus? Cause we know that as soon as a retailer loses their laser focus on the customer, then that's a challenge for them. How do you balance those two together? And that's, that's still a working progress. [00:38:30] And that's one of the fun conversations that we've been having and seeing where, seeing what next and seeing how retailers map that you've got. Yeah. If you are a serious retailer or a significant scale, you've got to be in the retail media game. [00:38:40] You cannot leave that margin on the table. But how do you do it in a way that keeps focused on the customer and you're targeted now calling that out in their earnings reports to say to the center of their thinking. And that customer-centric approach to alternative revenue streams is gonna be a really interesting trend to [00:38:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I agree. [00:38:57] Jeff Roster: yeah, I gotta tell you, Ricardo, so, so I was [00:39:00] kidding you about, you know, that. I spent probably three and a half hours yesterday about four different vendors. And I think I now begin, am only beginning to understand literally how much money we're talking about in re in, in retail media. And it is it's never been, I mean, it really was never a focus at the, at the other show in in the cold part of the country in January and it's ever present here. Yeah. And you can't, as an analyst, it covers the entire landscape. You can't get away with it. But the people that actually built some of this stuff I talked to. Right. And it's, and you know, it got the history and it's like, oh my gosh, we're not talking about something that's been around a hundred years. [00:39:38] We're talking about something, it's really exploding the last three years. [00:39:40] Ben Miller: yes, [00:39:41] Jeff Roster: And, and it's like, that's what he's been talking [00:39:45] Krystina Gustafson: Ricardo, I'd be curious your thoughts. One debate that we've kind of been having, and we haven't come up with an answer to it yet, is just kind of the dynamics of how this plays out in industries outside of grocery because. . That's of course been the industry that's adopted it the fastest, but yeah, the incestuousness of, [00:40:00] of that industry compared to department stores. Apparel. Yeah. Places where companies have the opportunity to be more D to C. [00:40:05] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:40:06] Krystina Gustafson: Part of me wonders if it's as scalable there where the retailers don't have as much, let's go back to the word leverage as they do in the grocery industry. Like, have you thought about that at all? [00:40:16] Ricardo Belmar: I have because you're right. I mean, there is a very unique kind of trade relationship in grocery between grocers and the CPG companies that, that have all, you know, all those products. That's a different dynamic. . Then you look at a department store, which is maybe the easiest, I guess, example to kind of look at here, where there's so many third party apparel products, right? [00:40:34] Yes. There's private labels in, in your department store. Generally people are shopping there because of all the, the name brands that are available. So what's the say equivalent opportunity? I, I've actually been saying, department stores to me feels like probably the number one most untapped opportunity for this, because I think department stores, we all say the same things, right? [00:40:53] They've sort of lost their luster a little bit, right. Just are shopping less at department stores, but what could department [00:41:00] stores do to make this more interesting? You know, I would say one of those is they have to increase the, just the overall experience in the store. And if you think of visual impression as a consumer walking into a department store versus, any an apparel store where you just see apparel hung on rack. [00:41:15] In a department store. I think the merchandising opportunities are much bigger. And if you think about the in-store advertising they can do with digital screens, not the sort where, you know, oh look, there's a screen hanging on the wall showing a video clip about this designer and their products running. [00:41:30] Not that right, because anyone can do that. And, and that's probably my, my number one least favorite example that anyone can do. And, and I've, I've been working with digital signage. Since more than 10 years, and, and Jeff is laughing because one of the comments I keep making about retail media is from the early days back in the, you know, maybe early 2010s when I was marketing digital signage solutions, we talked to retailers about creating this kind of media network. [00:41:57] It for their brand in their stores. And [00:42:00] not one retailer ever executed it well. The only, they all never got as far as, let's hang a screen here, let's hang a screen there and then ask brands to give us content. And I suppose part of the, the conclusion we had is that you can't ask IT to run that operation. [00:42:13] It really needs to be run by marketing, but. If you think about what you can do with screen technology now that you couldn't do then, you're not limited by the form factor of a traditional TV monitor type screen. You can have the screen shaped any way you want and you can have any sort of visual layout for it. [00:42:29] And if you do that, then I think that opens up new advertising opportunities for those brands that the department store can work with, that feels more, you know, lifestyle oriented. It feels more aspirational for the apparel merchandise that's there, that they can build off of and entice customers that when you walk by it, you feel like, oh yeah, if I was wearing that jacket, I, I could be doing what this person's doing on, on that video. [00:42:51] I'd be out on the mountain, you know, doing, doing this. And I think it, it just creates a different feel that even if you went to that brand store, you know, they may or may not be [00:43:00] doing that, but uh, it's different and it's a different experience. So that's why I think that's an untapped opportunity for department stores, and I think that's where that needs to go. [00:43:09] And that's why I think, adding the in-store component to retail media is so important right now. I think that's why, that's where the, the real story is gonna start to surface in, in this whole concept. [00:43:18] Krystina Gustafson: It's almost like a And I, I, that was really helpful. Thank you for sharing that. But it, it, it sounds to me so different than the conversations that we hear about retail media today. Right. I. Know some friends who work for some large CPG companies, and it's more of a conversation of, you have to do this, but what you're describing is like a desire to differentiate your brand. [00:43:35] It, it, it feels like a, a shift in, in, in the why. [00:43:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:43:38] Jeff Roster: Don't you also think though, that with grocery groceries had slotting fees for forever mm-hmm. , and it just sort of seems like that's a logical extension of the, those co-marketing allows going back and forth where, actually, I don't even know this, but I don't think department stores really have slotting fees because the, the product is constantly changing. [00:43:54] So you have other, you have other something, but I, I mean, but [00:43:57] Ricardo Belmar: way. I mean, you, you have you know, a designer [00:44:00] like a Ralph Lauren may have an arrangement. The departments are based on how much space they get on the floor. and is allocated for them as a brand. And then that dictates, you know, what merchandise do they make available to that department store versus a competitive department store that might give them more space and they make different merchandise available to them. [00:44:15] It's kind of negotiated that way. Not quite the same as the slotting fees that CPG is doing. Grocery. [00:44:20] Jeff Roster: and I think the other thing that's the big drivers, the fact, I mean, just who was on the, who was on the the exhibit floor TikTok, and what were they doing? There was at least three or four live streamers. So the idea that we're all creating, we're all creating content and want to create content. , I mean, and that now we're finally getting to the point where retailers are comfortable maybe not having everything be so hyper produced. [00:44:40] You know, I think the, the best example I have is I just love B n h photo. And if, if you don't know what that is, it's, it's a, it's the best photo shop in, in the world and super high-end skill photographers that, that are selling camera equipment. And my first experience with, I dunno if it's live streaming, it's one-to-one. [00:44:56] Working with them. I mean, for a camera shop, the, the video quality was [00:45:00] not very high. I mean, it was a little shocking, but it didn't matter because the expertise and the engagement for me sitting in Silicon Valley to, to Midtown Manhattan and that experience was amazing. And if retailers just embrace that and let their associates create or do whatever they want and, and, and produce all this content to fill up all the screens, you're gonna see it's gonna be great. [00:45:21] What I don't wanna see is it becomes so. So over, over marketed and just take the soul out of it because retail should be passion. I mean, I think, I think my dad back in the seventies, you know, in his, his butcher shop, I mean, it was all about passion. It was about this and that, and engaging up and down and da, da, da, da. [00:45:40] And, and I think in some ways as we expanded retail, we've lost that a little bit of passion. And maybe this is an opportunity, maybe it's a nice thing, you know, post covid. [00:45:50] We've now re-embraced and learned and knew what we missed. And man, let's just have this retail renaissance and let's get back to the business of having, having fun and having [00:46:00] people engage in this process that we call retail. [00:46:02] And then you, and then, you know, all those years you pitched me, you know, with those whole digital signages, now all of a sudden everything's coming together. The infrastructure, the screens, the cheap, you know, the the screens, the abil, the, the equipment we have to, to create all this content. And we have now, we've taught almost everyone, you know, if you have something to say, turn on your, your, your phone and, and shoot something out. [00:46:25] Well, when retailers unleashed that, holy smokes [00:46:28] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And, and now we have all these tools. Kinda coming back to the whole immersive commerce idea. You know, I, I just gave an example of using, fancy screen design, but it could be much more tactile and immersive with all these sensor technologies available. [00:46:40] I could pick up a product in a store and that triggers something on, on some sort of visual environment nearby that to give me a different bit of content about it because I interacted with the merchandise and that we couldn't do that before. Right. So, so that's another new, new approach that couldn't, I think, and again, it's, it's in-store media and I think that's why that's gonna be such a, an [00:46:58] Jeff Roster: yeah, that's, it's just gonna be such an [00:47:00] insane category. I mean, I almost want to go back to my forecasting days and just start trying to build a model out of that, cuz it is gonna be a massive number. A massive number. [00:47:09] The Evolution of Shop Talk [00:47:09] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I guess maybe the last thing to kind of wrap us up here we, we talked a little bit before about just how the, how Shop talk is changing itself and you guys announced a new Fall Shop Talk for next year. [00:47:19] So I mean, anything you can share with us about how Shop Talk itself is evolving. [00:47:23] Krystina Gustafson: Well, we are taking on new challenges listening to customer feedback and just really kind of growing the brand in new and exciting ways. I'll let Ben kind of tell you a little bit about Europe, cuz that's in six weeks time, which is hard to wrap your head around. But that's that's gonna be really fun. [00:47:38] And Barcelona, we've got 175 speakers. I'm stealing all your thunder. But, but a fantastic lineup. That's gonna be in Barcelona and then I think. You know, Ben kind of said it earlier with just the number of meeting requests that we saw in our platform. We recognize that doing this once a year just isn't quite fulfilling the appetite that people have. [00:47:55] And so I think you'll see us lean a lot more heavily into the networking component. I think we have a [00:48:00] real differentiator there with the Meetup platform. You know, it's not something that other events in the retail industry have, and so it's a real competitive edge. The fact that it's powered by technology, you know, even if someone tried to do it there's just feasibly no way to do it manually. And so I think you're gonna see us lean really heavily into that. And I think, you know, to your point about getting back to business, we love content. We're the content team. We're always gonna talk about how fantastic the content is. [00:48:22] But the p the reason people are here is to be part of our community, right? And so the more that we can do to enable that is I think really kind of the direction that us going in the future. And, and that's kind of the impetus behind the, the new events that [00:48:33] Ben Miller: So it, it is not at all daunting that we are doing it all again and just slightly, [00:48:38] Krystina Gustafson: We've tried to black this out. We're like, let's talk about this after [00:48:42] Ben Miller: but you know, look, it's less less than six weeks now, 9 to 11th of May in Barcelona a fabulous, progressive and dynamic city, which is just where we want to be for our brand. [00:48:52] And the challenge of how do you drive retail innovation through digital [00:49:00] transformation in a tough operating environment is as pertinent in Europe as it is in the US. What you've then got a layer on top of that is 30 plus different countries, e-commerce in different states of development, very local retailers. [00:49:15] So, we think the opportunity for Shop Talk in even greater than it is here. And the reason for that is you've got in their own domestic who are trying to crack the same problems as somebody maybe only 200 kilometers away, but they don't have a relationship with, but they don't compete. [00:49:29] So the opportunity for collaboration, for cooperation, for learning Immense. So we are really excited about what we are building in, in Europe what we're gonna build in Barcelona. And yeah, the show will open at 11:00 AM on the ninth. [00:49:44] Krystina Gustafson: on May. [00:49:45] keep saying, are you guys ready? We're like, well, it's It's coming. So [00:49:49] Ben Miller: we've got, we've got incredible lineup. We, the, the European retail and brand community have lent into the event stronger than they ever have done. [00:49:56] This is only our second year in Europe, but we've got an incredible lineup. [00:50:00] And it will be both from a speaker, but especially from a, a delegate perspective. [00:50:03] The most senior Event that we've ever put and we are seeing [00:50:07] people think, you know what, this is a great way to get our teams together, to bring our individuals from across Europe into a place to, to learn and be inspired. And, and we can be more excited to facilitate that. And can't wait to again, to the Spanish sun because I dunno where you, I dunno where you guys move. [00:50:22] The heat of bar of Las Vegas, but this has not been what I was expecting. [00:50:26] when I escaped the London winter. So hopefully the [00:50:29] Jeff Roster: listen, I'm from California. I'm just glad the, the water's not coming down and it's been a long time since the California and said No more water Stop for a while. [00:50:38] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. Yep. Well, I, I guess listening to you a Ben, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of gonna gonna say we're, we're back to the people element A again, from what you were saying. So it sounds like super exciting for what's to come and, and shop talk Europe. [00:50:49] Fantastic. Well, Krystina, Ben, I wanna thank you so much for sitting down and spending all this time with us. It's been a fantastic conversation. I, I think we've all learned a lot and congratulations on a really [00:51:00] great event again, once again this year. I think content was fabulous of course and just the, the energy and like we've been saying now multiple times, that it really brought all the people together, and I think that's probably the most important part of it. [00:51:12] Ben Miller: Okay. We really appreciate it and thank you for having us, [00:51:15] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks again. Well, Jeff, I think that wraps us up. [00:51:18] Jeff Roster: think we're done. Another good show. [00:51:19] Ricardo Belmar: Another good show. [00:51:20] Show Recap [00:51:20] Casey Golden: Wow, that was such a great discussion you guys had with Christina and Ben, and you covered so much ground. And no surprise you had to cover generative AI and retail media networks in there too. [00:51:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's true. There's no escaping the impact of generative AI right now, and yes, it did kind of feel like last year's metaverse. I mean, it was everywhere at the show in the sessions and everything, but I think there's an important difference that we kind of touched on that metaverse at last year's shop talk was all about experiments, right? [00:51:59] [00:52:00] Trying to see what consumers would like. How would you transform that into commerce? But with generative ai, the use cases are already out there. They're being implemented with real world results as we heard in in some of the sessions at Shop Talk. Plus, this doesn't really require consumer adoption like the Metaverse does. [00:52:18] It's more about operations and efficiency so far, and that does include consumer benefits that just don't require the consumer to adopt anything yet. [00:52:26] Casey Golden: Yeah, what about the retail media piece? I caught the shout out to Andrew Lipsman, our, our favorite retail media analyst. [00:52:33] Ricardo Belmar: Well, probably another obvious one, right? I did find it telling that shop Talk picked up on what we've been saying here before, that retail media is just the start of a B2B path for retailers to sell services to other retailers and brands as a high margin way to improve profitability. [00:52:51] Casey Golden: We definitely will need to revisit these two topics more in our next season. [00:52:55] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. [00:52:56] Casey Golden: So what's coming next with, , you and Jeff? [00:52:59] Ricardo Belmar: Well, we've [00:53:00] got a few super interesting startups that we talked with, and we'll cap off the series with another great discussion coming with a couple of fan favorite guests. Now, I'll just give one hint. It's a follow up to one of our N R F Live conversations. [00:53:13] Casey Golden: All right. Well, I think I know who that is. I mean, obviously I know since I know what's on the show, but do our listeners. [00:53:22] Ricardo Belmar: We'll just have to wait and see on that one. but now I do want to thank both Krystina and Ben for joining Jeff and me for this discussion. I know it was quite a feat for them to make the time for this on the last day of the show, just a couple of hours before they went on stage to give their official wrap up presentation. [00:53:39] So thank you both so much for joining us. [00:53:42] Casey Golden: So with that, Ricardo, it's time for us to wrap up this first episode in Our Shop Talk Live mini-series crossover with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation. It's a wrap. [00:54:00] Show Close [00:54:00] Casey Golden: if you enjoyed our shows this season, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Plus, you can watch us, not just listen, on our YouTube channel and like and comment on this season there too. [00:54:19] And of course, if you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a full transcript of each episode. Take a look at the show notes and handy links for more deets. I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. [00:54:30] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season, follow us on Twitter at Casey C Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter and LinkedIn at Retail Razor for the latest updates. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar, [00:54:45] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:54:47] [00:54:50] Ricardo Belmar: and remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. [00:55:00] Did you miss Shoptalk 2023 this year? Or were you there and feel like you didn’t catch enough of the content and top trends? We’ve got you covered with another podcast cross-over event with This Week in Innovation and special guest host Jeff Roster! Kicking off this multi-part series, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar sit down with Shoptalk’s content team of Krystina Gustafson and Ben Miller live and in-person on the final day of the event. Together they review the top 4 trends and what they mean for retailers, brands, and the retail tech community. The team goes deep to break down the hype vs reality of Generative AI and discuss how retailers are changing and evolving their relationships with consumers, employees, and suppliers. Plus, hear about the latest trends in shopper engagement!


This episode’s guests:

Krystina Gustafson, SVP Content, Shoptalk and Groceryshop

Ben Miller, Director of original content, Shoptalk and Groceryshop


We’re at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

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Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

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Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

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Co-host → Casey Golden,

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Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey


TRANSCRIPT

S2E12a #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL - Krystina Gustafson & Ben Miller

[00:00:00] ​

[00:00:00] Show Intro 

[00:00:20] Casey Golden: Hello Retail Razor Show listeners and viewers, and welcome to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologist, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. I'm your host, Casey Golden.

[00:00:33] Ricardo Belmar: And I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. And boy do we have a special treat for you this episode! Today we are talking about the changing relationships between retailers and brands, the evolution of shopper engagement. How omnichannel is morphing into seamless stores, and we see how it's possible to transform over 320,000 meeting requests into over 50,000 actual meetings in a span of three days.

[00:00:57] But first, let's talk about our newest [00:01:00] crossover event, and this episode's special guests.

[00:01:03] Casey Golden: That's right after our wildly successful crossover event with This Week In Innovation podcast for our N R F Live miniseries. Joined by one of our favorite guest hosts, Jeff Roster. We've done it again for our Shop Talk coverage.

[00:01:20] Ricardo Belmar: Yes, indeed. By popular demand, and by popular demand, I mean, we really liked the idea, so we thought, let's do it again. Jeff Roster and I teamed up at Shop Talk for a few special interviews to bring you a Shop Talk live mini-series.

[00:01:33] Casey Golden: Well, I'm sad I once again had to miss this one, but I know you guys have pulled together a killer miniseries not to be missed. Who are the episodes special guests?

[00:01:45] Ricardo Belmar: I am glad you asked Casey. What better way to kick off this mini-series and with a deep dive discussion on all the hot topics at Shop Talk than sitting down with the Source, Shop talk's, amazing content team led by Krystina Gustafson, SVP of Content, [00:02:00] and Ben Miller, director of original content.

[00:02:02] Casey Golden: Christina and Ben are incredible. Uh, you and Jeff really got to dig in to all the hot topics and wasn't this right after they had delivered their retail zeitgeist presentation on , the main stage, right?

[00:02:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. We, we recorded this the very next morning after that session where Krystina and Joe Laszlo had run through what Shop Talk was seeing as the major retail trends for the year. Plus , Ben and Krystina gave us some insights into what they found most notable from all the sessions at the show.

[00:02:33] And did I mention those 50,000 meetings they orchestrated? I mean, just, wow. Wait until you hear all the stats about what was surely the, the biggest shop talk ever.

[00:02:42] Casey Golden: Well, let's get to it then and jump right into you and Jeff's conversation with Krystina Gustafson and Ben Miller from Shop Talk, recorded live and in person at the show. 

[00:02:54] ​

[00:02:59] The Shoptalk Review 

[00:02:59] Ricardo Belmar: Hello everyone [00:03:00] and welcome to our special Retail Razor crossover event with This Week In Innovation. I'm Ricardo Belmar, live and in person here at Shop Talk 2023, and I am here with the myth, the legend, Mr. Jeff Roster from This Week In Innovation. How you doing, Jeff?

[00:03:15] Jeff Roster: Really good. Ricardo. I, you know, I, I'm so proud of both of us. We're, we're here last day, literally working the show to the last minute, and that's how we roll. That's how we

[00:03:24] Ricardo Belmar: what we do. That's right. And for this special edition episode of our live series here at Shop Talk, we have the incredible pleasure of having two folks from the Shop talk team to talk to us about the event.

[00:03:36] We're here with Krystina Gustafson and Ben Miller. Krystina. Ben, how are you doing today?

[00:03:40] Krystina Gustafson: Doing awesome.

[00:03:41] Ben Miller: Yeah, very good. Thank you. Thanks for having us. 

[00:03:43] Ricardo Belmar: Fantastic. Fantastic. So let's jump in. And I think, you know, one of the, the probably most in, well maybe not most interesting, but something I'm sure everyone wants to know is just give us a little bit of data around just how big a shop talk was this, this year?

[00:03:56] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah, happy to start. 10,000 plus attendees, our [00:04:00] largest crowd so far. I would say though, what I take away even more than the size is just the quality of the a attendee. So it really sort of felt like this was. The big year. I know last year was technically retail's big reunion, but with the loss of corporate travel bands people just really being back down to business, the caliber of attendee, the amount of retailers and brands we had attending the show at a very senior level was, was one of the big takeaways to me beyond just kind of the scale of the event.

[00:04:25] I know we'll probably talk about meet up a little bit later, but we also were able to facilitate 50,000 meetings over the course of two days which was incredibly impressive. Other things to note about scale 275 speakers 70 hours. 50 hours of content, 80 sessions seven content theaters. So I would say those are kind of the high level numbers. But Ben, you might have some, some additional stats to toss out there.

[00:04:48] Ben Miller: kind of, yeah, I think when we talk about the Meetup 50,000 sounds an incredible number

[00:04:53] Ricardo Belmar: right?

[00:04:53] Yeah, it does.

[00:04:54] Ben Miller: We had 323,000 requests to[00:05:00] so the appetite the appetite for, everybody to want to get together, to have some meetings, to meet people, to build their business. And you could feel that energy when you walked around.

[00:05:10] And that energy, you know, it's, day four with lagging a little bit, but that energy that that energy is palpable. And that's, and that's been, yeah, that's been a key part of the show this year. 

[00:05:21] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow. That's un 323,000 requests . Wow. What I, I, you know, one of the things we were talking about before, you know, what we think is sort of unique about the Shop Talk experience you have you know, for example, like how, how, how many vendors were here, whether exhibiting or, or attendees.

[00:05:39] I think that's always a key part of bringing all parts of the industry together. That Shop Talk is so, so special for 

[00:05:45] Ben Miller: key. No, we, we re really agree our. I think you've heard Sophie, our president talk before that we don't really think about a buy side and a sell side. We don't try and compartmentalize. We have a community and our vendors, the technology companies, whether they are [00:06:00] really small startups for whom a Series A feels a distant proposition still right through to Google Face meta.

[00:06:07] You know, some of the biggest organizations and biggest corporations in the country and in the world are here. We have about 700. Technology companies and technology vendors, and many of them are on our show floor exhibiting showing their wear, hosting their their, their clients, and also being involved in the meetings and they're a really important part of our community.

[00:06:26] Ricardo Belmar: And then tell us a little bit about you know, the, the startup community and the relationship with, with the shop talk there.

[00:06:32] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah, it's I think, been a part of our community that's been really special from day one. You know, we were really the first show that was putting Katrina Lake on, on the main stage when she had founded Stitch Fix. You know, the guys at Dollar Shave Club. So I'd say it's always been a core part of who we are.

[00:06:45] But we have recognized that it's Such a differentiator for us that we wanna pour more investment into it. And so we've actually been building out our team internally to make sure that we're really cultivating that community, bringing people on board who are specific to, you know, bringing the big VCs to, to the show because, hey, when you [00:07:00] get the big VCs here, you're also gonna be be building a, a big start of community.

[00:07:03] And I had jotted down the number, which of course is escaping me now, but yes, 475 founders who were at Shop Talk this year. I like to think that number's actually probably a little lower. When you think about the fact that some founders have potentially sold their businesses, gone onto corporate ventures, it's probably over 500 in, in some capacity.

[00:07:19] People who are current founders or have founded businesses before. But we just truly think that's what gives the show so much life. Just the energy that you have from those entrepreneurs who are coming here to learn share what they're finding. They tend to be also some of the more open folks , when they're talking about the challenges that they're facing, which is

[00:07:34] Jeff Roster: Yeah. Not tend to be a hundred percent. What? That's, that's why it's so fun to, to, to talk to the startup community cuz they there is no filter.

[00:07:41] And there was no AR person to, to say, don't say that. So, no, it's, I mean, the difference is an analyst working, you know, with, with the largest companies in my old days of Gartner to work covering the startup committee.

[00:07:52] I mean, it's night and day. It's so refreshing.

[00:07:55] Krystina Gustafson: were you I don't know if you were in the keynote with Imran Khan from Veri Shop, but he, he was unfiltered while he [00:08:00] was up there on stage, which, I mean, we've been getting such good feedback on that interview, so yeah, I hear you. 

[00:08:04] Ben Miller: getting, I think we are incredibly proud about the keynote lineup this. year. And we, we, we've, it's an incredible process to work with all of our keynotes to, to be prepared. But one of the things that we have spoken about is how they can be open. Cuz nobody wants to come to an event and just see someone reading the press release.

[00:08:19] And some of, the, some the great conversations that we've had on the main stage this year and some of the openness of the speakers has been quite a revelation and yeah, I think it's probably the best keynote group that we put together.

[00:08:30] Krystina Gustafson: I agree. And I have to say, just being in the, I spent a lot of my time in the, the depths of the green room at the show, and I have to tell you the authenticity of those leaders. And I know that sounds really cheesy, and I'm not typically the type of prince Ben knows. I'm not the soft emotive type.

[00:08:44] But I mean, it was palpable. Every single one of them was incredibly kind, incredibly grateful to be here. Willing to be open, recognizing that our audience really wanted to learn. And so I didn't even feel to the same degree as impacious that we had to push. Obviously we're always pushing people to say interesting things, but they [00:09:00] were eager to do it which was really unique and special.

[00:09:02] Ricardo Belmar: tell us a bit more about some of the feedback you've had, both, both in the keynotes and then even in some of the other track sessions that I know there have been some really interesting speakers there. I know I was in some where you could just feel, you know, and some of the speakers are, or just, I, I would almost have to describe as entertaining and some of the things they said in, in the way that, that the crowd really reacted to them.

[00:09:20] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah.

[00:09:20] I think some of the interesting formats that we rolled out have been a lot of fun. So one session that got a ton of great feedback was our rapid fire session. We did two of them. One was with investors, which again, kind of getting back to your point about people that can be unfiltered, a lot of laughter coming outta that one.

[00:09:34] I think one of the, one of the questions at the end was you know, what's your most unpopular opinion today? And just really kinda, you know, use poking and prodding

[00:09:42] them. So that one was a lot of fun. 

[00:09:44] Jeff Roster: I'm stealing that one. I'm gonna, that, that's gonna be my,

[00:09:46] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, that's right. Right. Yeah.

[00:09:47] Krystina Gustafson: Exactly.

[00:09:48] We gamify it. There's a really loud, obnoxious buzzer when people run out of time.

[00:09:51] They have their four minutes. So, so that was a hit. And then we also did one on tech investing, which was really fun. It had CB Insights, Ulta Beauty and Patagonia on [00:10:00] it. And I think what was really interesting about that one was you had sort of Ulta that has this huge budget. They're always trying new things.

[00:10:05] They're always testing, and, learning. And then you have Patagonia, which is a little bit more conservative, maybe doesn't have that big budget to blow. So just kind of hearing Prama, who's the Chief digital officer at Ulta talking about, oh yes, we're trying this. Yes, we're doing AR. Oh, this is fantastic. And Patagonia just being kinda like, no hard pass on Metaverse hard pass on this.

[00:10:19] You know, it really represents the dynamics that our audience has, you know? 

[00:10:23] Ricardo Belmar: different. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:24] Ben Miller: And, and I think that authenticity has been something that's, that's thread throughout and we, we've programmed sessions that were, were about purpose and we wanted to talk about purpose and want to talk about sustainability.

[00:10:34] But actually what we've found is great. We've got the specific sessions, but the general principle of authentic leadership has, has woven through so many of the conversations. Whether that's, you know, leaders openly facing in some of the challenges that they've had or talk about their views on social issues.

[00:10:48] There's been some really dynamic conversations and that's been exciting to be part of. 

[00:10:54] Krystina Gustafson: I think to your question too about feedback though I haven't had anyone complain to me yet.

[00:10:57] so that to me is, 

[00:10:59] Ricardo Belmar: That's something, 

[00:10:59] Krystina Gustafson: [00:11:00] that's a big barometer of, of people being happy. So I think just generally kind of going back to where we started the conversation, everyone's gritting, ear to ear having a fantastic time, and that's not really something that's measurable.

[00:11:10] We'll get sort of the more measurable data after the show, but. , but it's, I mean, so far I think the buzz has been really great. I do really look forward to getting that feedback though. One of the things that I had mentioned for anyone who was in the opening remarks session, when we talked about how we were doing more on seamless stores this year, that was feedback that we got from both Shop Talk and the most recent grocery shop was that people wanted to see us lean more into physical stores.

[00:11:30] And so, We did that we made sure that it was covered on our keynote stage with Footlocker, with Brilliant Earth. It was something that we dialed up in our track sessions as well. So it's great to hear kind of the initial buzz and excitement. But we also try to take that constructive feedback post show when we're getting more concrete data, survey results, and then action that for, the next show 

[00:11:48] Seamless Stores & the "Death of Omnichannel"

[00:11:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So tell, tell us a little bit more on that topic of Seamless stores, because I, I did, I, cause I noticed that difference as well, right? From back, from both, from last Shop Talk and, and progressing through grocery shop to hear that there was [00:12:00] more emphasis on what's happening in physical stores and how that ties back into the rest of of the retail organization.

[00:12:06] So how, tell us more about that.

[00:12:07] Ben Miller: I woke up this morning to a notification on my phone flicking through half jet lag still, and there's this great message that somebody had posted on my LinkedIn saying, thank you, shop Talk 2023 for finally killing omnichannel.

[00:12:24] And

[00:12:24] I think, 

[00:12:25] Ricardo Belmar: saw that post

[00:12:26] Ben Miller: do you know what, we've now reached that point where we talk about seamless stores, we talk about unified commerce, the general principle of how do we help customers wherever they are, whenever they want to interact with the brand, to be able to, discover, to be able to explore,

[00:12:44] to be able to excited it or to be able to buy and whether that's on a social media channel, whether that's on the retailer's own asset, whether that's having a fantastic experience when they walk through a store.

[00:12:55] That's shopping. And I think the number of times I've heard that, you know, [00:13:00]there's been very few conversations about channel management, cuz I think we've finally realized that channels are just this artificial construct and actually

[00:13:05] what it is he's getting, he's getting product to people and exciting. about product. And that's been one of the big things for me for, for the whole show. When we, we, we spent a lot of time talking about it in advance. We've been looking at how do you remove friction from the shopping experience, and places where a bit of friction's good, but also where you want to take out friction.

[00:13:23] And that's been a really important thought. How do you link some of these things together about the online experience and the offline experience What are the building blocks? What, what's the tech stack to enable that? But as a, as a concept, just getting product to people when they want, it has been, I think it's been the biggest thing for me, 

[00:13:40] Krystina Gustafson: One of the, one of the cheesy jokes I didn't get into the zeitgeist was it reminds me of the Nintendo Switch, you know, where you're playing on your handheld and then you plug it into the TV and your game is picked up. You know exactly where you were in, in the game progress, you don't have to finish a level.

[00:13:53] That's how I, that's how my brain thinks about what unified retail should be going forward. I didn't have room for it though. We were already five minutes over. But, but in all [00:14:00]seriousness you know, the example that I did share, which was probably more valuable to the audience, was Brilliant Earth, right?

[00:14:04] You know, go online. You do an online consultation, you get to the store, Hey, here's five rings that we picked out for you based off of what you told us online. Like I think that's kind of how we're thinking about unified these days. It's less about shopping where you want, when you want, and making that a continuous experience.

[00:14:18] Because we were talking, we didn't wanna undermine in in our zeitgeist presentation that frictionless isn't hard and it isn't important. But I think where we landed is more companies have solved for that already, right? The amount of companies that have curbside, that have redesigned their store formats.

[00:14:31] I think that's kind of more progressed, if you will. And I think Unified is really still in its early stages seeing what companies like Brilliant Earth are doing. The other speaker who we confirmed was the chief digital Officer from Panera. And they recently signed that deal with Amazon One for the biometric scanning in their stores linking to loyalty programs.

[00:14:47] So that's another great example. And it's a completely different category than fine jewelry, which is what Brilliant Earth is doing. But I feel like those are two early examples of where we see this trend heading. 

[00:14:57]

[00:14:57] "Follow the Money" ... but, Omnichannel?

[00:14:57] Ben Miller: And I was in a different room when the Panera presentation was [00:15:00]on, so I missed it. But the social comments and the social feedback on that yeah, we did some work. One of the things that, it goes right back to when Shop Talk was founded by, led by Anil and, and the team was to sit down and look at where does the VC And if you follow the money, then you start to pick up the trends. And we spend a, we spend quite a bit of time looking at this whole idea of, okay, if Shop Talk wants to talk about physical stores, well what's relevant, what's new? What's the future in that? So, you with our friends, at CB Insights, we went into the data and there's a phenomenal amount of funding's continuing to go into removing friction.

[00:15:38] Whether that's checkout free, for example, they say whole seamless of connecting that shopping journey. It's, there's funding there, but it's, it's still lower, but we really see that increasing and there some, some of the stats about the levels of is huge. So we believe that's only gonna get more and that's only gonna snowball.

[00:15:55] So understanding that further, pulling out great examples. We talked on the main stage [00:16:00] about Zara and some of the work that they're doing in their flagship stores. Yeah. Zara is is certainly the biggest apparel retailer in Europe, if not, yeah, the parent company, Inditex, the biggest in the world

[00:16:11] They're still only doing it in, in a couple of trial stores. So the potential is, is absolutely huge and, and we wanna celebrate trials like that.

[00:16:19] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah, no, that, that, that makes sense.

[00:16:20] Jeff Roster: Yeah, that's music in my ears. I mean, I've been fighting omnichannel forever. 

[00:16:25] No, no offense, but when, when your competitor coins the term, no, Gardner, Allen should ever use that term. What's funny, the funniest thing I ever had is somebody, one time, you know, no offense to the, the vendors in the room, but a vendor one time ask me, Hey, do you have omnichannel IT spend?

[00:16:39] And I said, well, I do, but you'll have to define what you mean. And the conversation went dead. He had no idea what he he was 

[00:16:44] Krystina Gustafson: I absolutely love that. My favorite, thing is when people apply to speak at Shop Talk and we're like, what do you wanna speak about? And they're like, oh, omnichannel, or, oh, I wanna talk about e-com. And I'm just like, gimme more, gimme more 

[00:16:53] Supporting Store Teams

[00:16:53] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. Right. Could you be a little more vague?

[00:16:56] Yeah. Yeah. So, so one thing I [00:17:00] noticed in particular this time, which I haven't seen at other shows as much attention. And I think maybe it's part, it sort of comes out I think, a little bit out of the seamless stores. But I think Krystina, you or Joe mentioned it in this, session that there's this renewed, focus on how we're enabling store teams, whether it's directly with technology or just with different, by changing the processes, but just how they're able to work and how even if you didn't have a session that was stated on the agenda, that's what it was about. I heard that come up from so many presenters and speakers that part of what they were doing was tying back into how they're supporting those store teams to make their job better. And I, I think I lost track, but maybe three or four times, I heard one of the speakers mention how they see that as something that is enabling a better career path for these retail workers. And I thought that was super interesting to me because I haven't seen that at other shows or in other events.

[00:17:53] Ben Miller: I mean, let me give a big picture of you and I'll pass over to Krystina for a bit more detail.

[00:17:58] I would say take one step back from [00:18:00] that. And, and the first step back from that is, is the investment environment that we find ourselves in right now.

[00:18:05] And the decisions and the hard decisions that people have to make.

[00:18:10] So if we are going through continued elevated levels of e-commerce sales, we're going through a store Renaissance, something as we referred to it, and we need to try and deliver to customers, you know, commerce everywhere where, that's great, but all of those parts require investment.

[00:18:25] So how do you do it in an investment environment which is, which is tighter and it, this has felt a really optimistic few days, but we are really cognizant of the environment that we're in. The number of speakers that I've heard to say in an environment. The two things that they focus on right now are people and talent, and also the store infrastructure.

[00:18:44] If you take that together and you think, okay, well where's the investment in people? In stores?

[00:18:49] Then you start to realize that actually you've got a really cost effective way to be able to drive, drive digital transformation and to drive significant improvement. So we, we deliberately programmed some areas where we wanted to talk about some of the [00:19:00] detail about that, but actually is a theme.

[00:19:02] Completely agree. Ricardo. It's cropped up in so many different 

[00:19:05] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah. I would build on that. I think it's not only the store associates, right? I think people overall ended up being a much bigger theme than we had intended it to be. You know, to Ben's point, we did have a couple of sessions that were very specific to store employees, whether it was from the retailer brand side, whether it was from the tech side.

[00:19:21] We had a couple sessions, maybe one or two on culture and leadership. But that theme came up I feel, even more than usual. And I think it's this whole idea of empathy. Kind of going back to your point too, and, and how you leverage your workers. Leverage is probably a, a crass word, but. 

[00:19:35] Empower your

[00:19:36] Jeff Roster: There you 

[00:19:37] Krystina Gustafson: use Empower. What Use Empower. It was really interesting because I, I feel like the dialogue around store associates for so long has been about productivity. And of course we were hearing quite a bit of that. The lens of safety seemed to be a new conversation, right? As much as we hear about automation and the, is that, oh, the robots aren't gonna take your jobs now, it was sort of, you know, listening into Amazon, okay, well we're actually using automation to make the warehouse [00:20:00] workers safer and to make sure that we have, you know, safety protocols in place. And that was kind of a new spin on that theme that I hadn't previously heard and, and wasn't necessarily expecting coming into the show.

[00:20:08] Ben Miller: I'm trying to find a stat and I'm 

[00:20:12] we go. I got it. There's a great, there's a great session from Katie Reeves from, who's the managing director of Cos

[00:20:20] of the h and m group manager of Cos in North America, and she's talked about the investment that they are making their smart store

[00:20:27] portfolio. 

[00:20:28] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. I, I remember that session. 

[00:20:29] Yeah. But

[00:20:30] Ben Miller: one of the key components of the smart store was enabling their teams in the store and they talked about the app that they. And, and they'd use the app for process improvement, bring all the information into the right place to help them operationally as well as help serve customers better.

[00:20:46] And she shared that in the pilot stores where they have got the app running, their staff retention of install teams has increased by And if you think about the labor market we are in,

[00:20:58] Ricardo Belmar: wow. [00:21:00]

[00:21:00] Ben Miller: Joe shared on the main stage, the the quit rate is over 40% higher for retail than it is for as a whole.

[00:21:07] Yeah. It's harder to find people, people more expensive. If you're able to make that sort of change, enable that by technology. That's incredible.

[00:21:13] Not only that, she shared that because the process improvements their store staff are having an extra two and a half hours a week to be able to serve their customers better.

[00:21:25] And that's, that's transformational for a

[00:21:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. That, that's a massive difference. That's a massive improvement.

[00:21:30] Yeah.

[00:21:30] Krystina Gustafson: You know, one thing that comes to mind as you're saying that, and it sort of circles back to what we were talking about before I was in the session with Chobani, and they were actually taking this from more of a perspective. And you know, she was saying, we get asked the question all the time, how do you measure. The impact on sales. How do you measure the impact on the business? And she was actually making the point actually, we see the most measurable statistics in our employee acquisition and retention because there are so many people that want to be a part of a company that is mission driven. So I think it's always such a [00:22:00] good point.

[00:22:00] Technology is really enabling workers. It's, you know, boosting retention. It's helping that labor shortage, but also a really strong purpose and something that has nothing to do with technology could also be really powerful.

[00:22:10] Ricardo Belmar: strong purpose. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:22:12] Jeff Roster: I mean, how novel people wanna be part of something big. I'm shocking

[00:22:15] Ricardo Belmar: Shocking, right.

[00:22:16] Krystina Gustafson: We lose sight of it though, don't we?

[00:22:18] Jeff Roster: Well, we do. And you know, and that was such a strong point. And, and, and I was sitting here thinking as you're talking you know, of course our, our good friend Ron Thurston is this, is this like his legacy because. Five years ago, four years ago, we weren't really talking about this stuff.

[00:22:32] And then Ron pops on and does that amazing podcast and that amazing journey and now all of a sudden it's, it's like we all are, are able to say what, what's common sense? It's, it's a people business. You better put your people in front of your people business.

[00:22:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I, I even think, you know, the, the biggest change I've noticed to your point, if you go back five years, no one used the phrases enabling store teams. No one talked about empowering them with the right technology. What everyone said is, well, we have to get them the right training. [00:23:00] It was all about, training was always the key word, and it was investment in training as if, you know, the only thing you needed to do was to impart a set of skills to just work the store.

[00:23:09] And now that's completely transformed that it is. I, I think, you know, you have the right words, Krystina, right, it's about enabling, empowering those teams with the right elements, whether it's process, technology or the. People skills itself, whatever it is. And I can't remember which session it was, but the one that's also stood out to me, someone was talking about how they recognize that when they look across all of the store associates, they have, people have different skills and the different talents, and some are better than others at certain roles in the store. And that it doesn't make sense to assume that every store employee should be able to do every single job in the store. And especially if you start layering in things now, like live streaming, for example.

[00:23:47] And this was one that I keyed in on because and you may remember this, this trip because some time ago on, on the podcast we talked. This idea. And I had, and, and some other conversation I had with with Retail Wire. I think we talked about this idea that, the retailers [00:24:00] have this inherent talent in some of their employees.

[00:24:02] Because let's face it, if you go by the, just by age demographics alone, odds are in most retailers, you have employees in stores who may have their own YouTube channel already. Independent of that job function. And they're good at this and they like doing it. So it makes sense for a retailer to kind of take advantage of that in, in a sense, right?

[00:24:19] And encourage those skills. But at the same time, that that same person who might like to live stream, they might not be a good stylist. For example, if it's an apparel store and there might be another employee that loves to do styling with customers and is so much better at it than others. So give them that kind of growth path using those skills.

[00:24:37] Ben Miller: using, and this speaks to something at the sort, the very heart of shop content, which is how is technology enabling a lot of this transformation? And if you talk about, you know, enabling and empowering frontline workers, you've got a hundred percent, there is this sort of talent.

[00:24:51] How do you unlock this talent? And things like livestream shoppable video, creating new way for frontline workers to be able to unlock that talent that [00:25:00] they've had in that store. And they've probably been helping a small number of customers with, but now you can do it on a bigger scale. The second in training,

[00:25:07] it's really hard, to take a whole day out or to take a frontline worker away from their store to help them with some of the at times softer to be able to do that.

[00:25:18] We've got some amazing trials and Kroger on the front foot about doing some incredible work to help empower with app enable. Short, quick, accessible training to help be able to improve and to deliver a better experience for their guests. And then finally, there's that element you talked about, about playing to STRs. There is this group of workers in the in flexible environments economy and tech is enabling retailers to access that pool. But actually more broadly, is enable. Existing workers to have that flexibility to choose which all they want to work in, or tasks that they wanna pick up, working at times their families.

[00:25:59] So tech is [00:26:00] enabling all these things to take that workforce, drive the attention, drive the engagement, and ultimately serve their customers better.

[00:26:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:26:07] Krystina Gustafson: I'm laughing because , it's a little bit of a tangent, but as you're talking about this and, and we're just kind of on this theme about empowering your workers and thinking about building technology for the people who are running the organization. I think about maybe another industry, maybe the airline industry

[00:26:23] Ricardo Belmar: mm-hmm.

[00:26:23] Krystina Gustafson: didn't focus on this and Yeah.

[00:26:24] Somewhat imploded. And so i, I, I laugh because, We always tell people, if you tell me you're a data-driven, consumer-centric company, get off the stage.

[00:26:33] Cuz everyone else, like every single company who's on our stages. If you're, if you're not, get outta here.

[00:26:37] But I do think sometimes by saying that, and it's obviously the right approach we ignore what needs to happen for the employees to make this whole business run.

[00:26:46] And we've very clearly what can happen when that gets ignored. So I think, even just kind of looking to lessons from other industries. Made us realize just kind of how important is overall as well.

[00:26:57] All about the Data & Data Insights

[00:26:57] Ben Miller: Ricardo, there's a question that I, I wanted to ask you. [00:27:00] What one of the conversations, cause we're starting to touch about data Mm-hmm. and you, you've got such incredible knowledge in this space. We, we've picked conversation almost.

[00:27:09] The number of speakers that almost thrown their hands in the and said, you know what?

[00:27:13] Data, trying to understand the customer across all touchpoints. You just can't do First party, hear a party.

[00:27:19] I, I can't get an omnichannel, a true of my customer everywhere, and that's fine. I'm just gonna have to serve them where you can.

[00:27:27] Ricardo Belmar: Uhhuh

[00:27:28] Ben Miller: Is that a view you recognize?

[00:27:30] Ricardo Belmar: I, I I think kind of maybe the, the, I would kind of break that down to say that I, every retailer I talk to Will, will say, you know, at the end of the day, we are overwhelmed with data.

[00:27:39] There's no lack of data . It's, it's really a matter of a, what can I do with that? How can I actually analyze it in a way that tells me the story about my customer and who they are, what, what their preferences are, what, how they want to engage with us. That's what every retailer wants to know. And I think the challenge really is I forget what the statistic is, but the [00:28:00] amount of data that retail generates every day is just overwhelming. I think it's something on the order of it's more data than the internet generated five years ago or something. Un unbelievable like that. And so the question every retailer has to ask is, so what am I gonna do with this now?

[00:28:14] Right? What are the tools I have to use? And even if you have the tools, it's not enough, right? Because it, even that needs to be looked at by people to interpret what do I do now that I have this knowledge? If I convert that data into something useful and knowledgeable, that gives me a, a possible actions to take.

[00:28:29] Someone has to take those actions, someone has to make the decision, which is the best action, and then it becomes back to a, a people problem. And I know. . I think even today, but in past years, I've, I've seen retailers will say, you know, now we think we know how to select the right tools to help us with the analysis, but now my challenge is this is so new, we don't have anyone on staff that knows how to deal with this.

[00:28:49] And if I try to go out and hire those people, everyone wants to hire those people. So it's incredibly competitive and I feel like I don't even know if we can afford those people on to be part of our, [00:29:00] our organization because it's so competitive.

[00:29:02] Ben Miller: We're back to people in

[00:29:03] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly right. Exactly. It always seems to come back to that.

[00:29:06] You know, I guess what I'll maybe turn around because sort of the one thing we haven't talked about that has come up all over the, the place is, everyone's favorite new, hyped up technology , is generative ai, ? It's like last year's metaverse. And, and one of the promises, I guess I'll use that strong word about this, is that it is supposed to help with this problem and give you better tools and better decision making capability with all that data that you have.

[00:29:29] What About Generative AI?

[00:29:29] Ricardo Belmar: I, I'm, I'm wondering, I mean, what, what are your, for both of you, what are your thoughts? Cuz obviously everyone must be coming up to you and saying, oh, what, where, where is the session that we're gonna talk about generative ai 

[00:29:38] Krystina Gustafson: Every, yeah.

[00:29:39] You know was actually surprised people were more measured than I expected them to be. I thought it was gonna be like Metaverse last year where it was like, the session is not about metaverse and it's still snuck in. I, I feel like generative AI was a little bit more measured.

[00:29:50] Look, I think our big thesis on it is, again, still very early. What feels different to us though is that this feels immediately applicable and it feels like something [00:30:00] that you invest in and see real business results on. Right? So, so many opportunities I think.

[00:30:06] Gosh, he wasn't. Sean Downey from Google was just kind of talking about the various use cases for it, whether it's advertising, whether it's, you know, looking at supply chain data, whether it's creatives, whether it's customer service.

[00:30:14] We had a slide that was kind of making fun of in a, in a good way. The CB insights market map that they built with just all the, and it was just scrolling, right?

[00:30:21] I mean, it's not even retail. Right. It's every single industry, the use cases. Endless, which I think is a really exciting opportunity.

[00:30:28] I think we would both agree that a lot of work still needs to be done to make sure this is ethical, to make sure it's accurate. We're very early stages, but I think it just feels more real than the metaverse

[00:30:38] Jeff Roster: well, the, the thing that's real about it is we all, we all are, are playing on it in our own search engine. I

[00:30:44] Ricardo Belmar: right. Yeah.

[00:30:45] Jeff Roster: I wanted to ask you know, the Microsoft guys we talked to yesterday, just what. How many more hits on Bing has gotten in the last

[00:30:52] Ben Miller: own

[00:30:52] Jeff Roster: I mean,

[00:30:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it

[00:30:53] Jeff Roster: that's all I've used. Yeah.

[00:30:54] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it

[00:30:55] Jeff Roster: And, and so we're so it's

[00:30:56] Ricardo Belmar: extra users

[00:30:57] Jeff Roster: Exactly. Exactly. It just, it has to be [00:31:00] so, so literally. There's no technology that, that every single person is using that it has this immediate impact in the business. I mean, we all didn't pick up point of sale devices or all, didn't pick up whatever, but this one thing hit, but we, I mean, we were tracking it from an, from a startup perspective.

[00:31:17] I mean, the amount of, of spending AI even 2, 3, 4 years ago, it's, it's, it's orders of magnitude compared to everything else. Yeah. And then it just exploded.

[00:31:25] And then it got a little controversial, so then people even used it more and everyone's trying to trick it and all this stuff,

[00:31:30] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. It kinda 

[00:31:30] Krystina Gustafson: but I think you, you hit on something really important there, right? One of the biggest problems with the metaverse conversation, and we were very clear about this last year as well, the learning curve.

[00:31:39] To even understand what it is to understand what blockchain is.

[00:31:42] is virtual gaming actually, the metaverse, what ,is it goggles?

[00:31:46] ChatGPT, my parents can go, go. on the website, tape it. It is So easily accessible and it's so Easily understandable. And I think that's why you've seen just meteor meteoric rise in interest compared to the metaverse.

[00:31:57] Ben Miller: And the other thing is if you break it down, [00:32:00] There is three potential areas that generative AI can help with, which are fundamental retail challenges.

[00:32:08] Number one, can I make repetitive tasks more efficient

[00:32:11] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:11] Ben Miller: Mm-hmm. , and scale retail is the efficiency of process.

[00:32:16] that's what it is. it's, about 

[00:32:17] Ricardo Belmar: scale, right? It's about 

[00:32:18] Ben Miller: Great. This is something that can help it. So of course retail's gonna lean in. The second is can it help drive commerce everywhere? You know, we started a conversation with seamless stores, The amount of copy and creative that it be required to be wherever your customers want to be is mind boggling. Generative AI might be able to help. And thirdly, that the holy grail of mass retail, physical, of personalization, we've talked about it every time. And the reason we talk about it every single conference is cause we haven't cracked it

[00:32:45] Ricardo Belmar: confidence, right? That's right.

[00:32:46] Ben Miller: generative AI has the potential to be able to help in in stalled areas. So there's three absolutely cool retail, pr drivers that we can see. cases for. So no wonder people are very excited on the plus side.

[00:32:57] We were, we were in the staff room just before we came [00:33:00] down, and I, we brought up chat, G b T, and I asked you chat, G b T what were the key themes from Shop Talk 2023. And of course he told me that unfortunately it's historic and can't can't Do that. So Krystina pointed out that maybe our jobs were secure for another year yet. So 

[00:33:13] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. 

[00:33:14] Ben Miller: we'll take, we'll take, we'll take that. 

[00:33:16] Ricardo Belmar: that's right. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I think you're, you're, you're spot on on that. I mean, I, I, I like to I sort of, I steal a, a quote from one of my colleagues at Microsoft who like tells everyone in every meeting, you know, if I haven't had five retailers I talked to today about generative, generative ai, it's only because the fourth retailer didn't get off the phone with me till the end of the day and I couldn't get to the fifth call

[00:33:37] Krystina Gustafson: I like that.

[00:33:38] That's a good one! 

[00:33:39] Ricardo Belmar: And, and it's, and it so true.

[00:33:40] And, and I think, you're right about the, different categories. I mean, one of our. Favorite customers that we, we talk about is CarMax, where they've taken this technology and, you know, one of, they found that one of the pain points in their customer journey is people go to their website and they wanna research the cars they have in inventory.

[00:33:57] And one of the tools, of course, is to look at reviews and [00:34:00] comments from people who've bought past cars. Well there are thousands of reviews! So you go on there and if you wanna look at a car, what's your, your choice is to read a thousand reviews before you decide what you want to go look at. Or maybe you just give up or you find some other tool to help you do that research.

[00:34:14] So they've actually leveraged these tools now to do all of that summarization for you. So you can go to their website now and you give it the parameters that interest you about a car. Their new AI tool just comes back to you with immediately the summarization across all those thousands of reviews.

[00:34:29] Here are the key points that you're interested in. Here's how it compares in these cars that you chose to look at.

[00:34:33] Krystina Gustafson: I need this so bad. The joke, the joke. in Our household is whenever we travel, I don't read anything. I literally, I just see, I see a pretty picture and I'm like, book. And it kills my husband. He is like the one that's reading

[00:34:44] Ricardo Belmar: He wants to research everything, right?

[00:34:46] Krystina Gustafson: my god. Every single thing. Well, I think the bars in the wrong place in this hotel or the room is only this many. Yeah, he's, he's, on, he's on it. And I am not So this, this, will help me be a better 

[00:34:55] Ricardo Belmar: you go,

[00:34:56] Krystina Gustafson: partner

[00:34:57] Retail Media Networks

[00:34:57] Ricardo Belmar: There you go. So I guess let me shift [00:35:00] then to the kind of the last one trending thing I wanted to ask you about because it's, it's one that, it's probably one of my favorites. So, over the past year, and Jeff likes to poke fun of me for this quite a bit.

[00:35:10] You know, I, I've been really big on retail media networks and knew I was going this way. And part of the reason why I've been beating the retail media network's drum for so long cuz I, I started talking about it back in, what did I talk October, 2021,

[00:35:23] Jeff Roster: it seemed like two decades

[00:35:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. . Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:25] But it, it's evolved and and I think, again, I think you, you guys mentioned this in this session, that really, what has it evolved to? It's become more about retailers looking more like a technology company and offering technology solutions and services to other retailers. . And I think that to me is a, is just really interesting into how their own, their whole core business is evolving.

[00:35:45] Krystina Gustafson: I think that Ben will jump out of his skin if he doesn't get to answer

[00:35:48] Ricardo Belmar: I know. Well, and I, and Ben's laugh and Ben's laughing, so anyone not who's not can't see this. I mean, Ben's laughing because he and I have had this conversation exactly before . 

[00:35:56] Krystina Gustafson: I don't, think, I don't think an hour goes by without ben talking [00:36:00] about in a, in a Very positive way. 

[00:36:02] Ricardo Belmar: We're, we're of like, minds . 

[00:36:03] we're of like minds.

[00:36:04] Ben Miller: I, I, I, You did a very good job leaving that to the last question, because otherwise we'd have lost a whole of the podcast. 

[00:36:10] Ricardo Belmar: else if we had started with that. Yes. , 

[00:36:12] Ben Miller: this is, it's what the, why is it so important and why do I get so interested about it? Because there's two levels. One, I think at the, our friend Andrew lipman Insider says it so well. this is the third wave of digital. 

[00:36:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. I absolutely, yeah, totally agree.

[00:36:26] Ben Miller: You see the numbers, okay, the numbers, let's be honest, the numbers are hugely hugely skewed by investment in search returns on Amazon, so yes, we recognize the prize, but you've gotta recognize that's skew in it. But when you strip that back, there is a marketing a digital marketing channel where, which has the opportunity to directly attribute sales to investment and whether retail media is more efficient than other digital marketing channels or at, or it's just that you can actually prove it, then actually that point is really valuable.

[00:36:59] [00:37:00] it's a, it's a phenomenal trend. It's a, it's a huge wave and what's been really exciting in this particular event, and yeah, we, we, we'll continue the conversation in a, a European Barcelona as well, I is to stand back and say, okay, we all know what retail media is now. We don't need to do that. a lot of us are doing it, really, how do we get efficient?

[00:37:19] Okay, do we, and do I need 600, retail media networks in my portfolio?

[00:37:23] Where, where do I spend the money? What's exciting about it is he's coming back to, and I think this is a point that we made Joe made during the zeitgeist, is it's about the basics of great advertising. So let's talk again about creative, let's talk about engagement, let's talk about generating fun, and this is another channel to enable us, us to do that.

[00:37:41] So that that, that's really exciting. The second element of it, which is why it's so important, is that element about changing relationships.

[00:37:49] This idea that a retailer is as, as well as a buyer, is now a seller to their vendors. And it's not, that's not just limited to retail media that, that think you have these, we call it [00:38:00]collaborative commerce networks, which is the sharing of logistics, for example. and when you're adding marketplaces and you see how the Their customers and we feel the retailers are changing and how do you do all of that and drive the margin that's there to be taken at the same time as keeping that laser focus? Cause we know that as soon as a retailer loses their laser focus on the customer, then that's a challenge for them. How do you balance those two together? And that's, that's still a working progress.

[00:38:30] And that's one of the fun conversations that we've been having and seeing where, seeing what next and seeing how retailers map that you've got. Yeah. If you are a serious retailer or a significant scale, you've got to be in the retail media game.

[00:38:40] You cannot leave that margin on the table. But how do you do it in a way that keeps focused on the customer and you're targeted now calling that out in their earnings reports to say to the center of their thinking. And that customer-centric approach to alternative revenue streams is gonna be a really interesting trend to 

[00:38:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I agree.

[00:38:57] Jeff Roster: yeah, I gotta tell you, Ricardo, so, so I was [00:39:00] kidding you about, you know, that. I spent probably three and a half hours yesterday about four different vendors. And I think I now begin, am only beginning to understand literally how much money we're talking about in re in, in retail media. And it is it's never been, I mean, it really was never a focus at the, at the other show in in the cold part of the country in January and it's ever present here. Yeah. And you can't, as an analyst, it covers the entire landscape. You can't get away with it. But the people that actually built some of this stuff I talked to. Right. And it's, and you know, it got the history and it's like, oh my gosh, we're not talking about something that's been around a hundred years.

[00:39:38] We're talking about something, it's really exploding the last three years.

[00:39:40] Ben Miller: yes, 

[00:39:41] Jeff Roster: And, and it's like, that's what he's been talking 

[00:39:45] Krystina Gustafson: Ricardo, I'd be curious your thoughts. One debate that we've kind of been having, and we haven't come up with an answer to it yet, is just kind of the dynamics of how this plays out in industries outside of grocery because. . That's of course been the industry that's adopted it the fastest, but yeah, the incestuousness of, [00:40:00] of that industry compared to department stores. Apparel. Yeah. Places where companies have the opportunity to be more D to C.

[00:40:05] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:40:06] Krystina Gustafson: Part of me wonders if it's as scalable there where the retailers don't have as much, let's go back to the word leverage as they do in the grocery industry. Like, have you thought about that at all? 

[00:40:16] Ricardo Belmar: I have because you're right. I mean, there is a very unique kind of trade relationship in grocery between grocers and the CPG companies that, that have all, you know, all those products. That's a different dynamic. . Then you look at a department store, which is maybe the easiest, I guess, example to kind of look at here, where there's so many third party apparel products, right?

[00:40:34] Yes. There's private labels in, in your department store. Generally people are shopping there because of all the, the name brands that are available. So what's the say equivalent opportunity? I, I've actually been saying, department stores to me feels like probably the number one most untapped opportunity for this, because I think department stores, we all say the same things, right?

[00:40:53] They've sort of lost their luster a little bit, right. Just are shopping less at department stores, but what could department [00:41:00] stores do to make this more interesting? You know, I would say one of those is they have to increase the, just the overall experience in the store. And if you think of visual impression as a consumer walking into a department store versus, any an apparel store where you just see apparel hung on rack.

[00:41:15] In a department store. I think the merchandising opportunities are much bigger. And if you think about the in-store advertising they can do with digital screens, not the sort where, you know, oh look, there's a screen hanging on the wall showing a video clip about this designer and their products running.

[00:41:30] Not that right, because anyone can do that. And, and that's probably my, my number one least favorite example that anyone can do. And, and I've, I've been working with digital signage. Since more than 10 years, and, and Jeff is laughing because one of the comments I keep making about retail media is from the early days back in the, you know, maybe early 2010s when I was marketing digital signage solutions, we talked to retailers about creating this kind of media network.

[00:41:57] It for their brand in their stores. And [00:42:00] not one retailer ever executed it well. The only, they all never got as far as, let's hang a screen here, let's hang a screen there and then ask brands to give us content. And I suppose part of the, the conclusion we had is that you can't ask IT to run that operation.

[00:42:13] It really needs to be run by marketing, but. If you think about what you can do with screen technology now that you couldn't do then, you're not limited by the form factor of a traditional TV monitor type screen. You can have the screen shaped any way you want and you can have any sort of visual layout for it.

[00:42:29] And if you do that, then I think that opens up new advertising opportunities for those brands that the department store can work with, that feels more, you know, lifestyle oriented. It feels more aspirational for the apparel merchandise that's there, that they can build off of and entice customers that when you walk by it, you feel like, oh yeah, if I was wearing that jacket, I, I could be doing what this person's doing on, on that video.

[00:42:51] I'd be out on the mountain, you know, doing, doing this. And I think it, it just creates a different feel that even if you went to that brand store, you know, they may or may not be [00:43:00]doing that, but uh, it's different and it's a different experience. So that's why I think that's an untapped opportunity for department stores, and I think that's where that needs to go.

[00:43:09] And that's why I think, adding the in-store component to retail media is so important right now. I think that's why, that's where the, the real story is gonna start to surface in, in this whole concept. 

[00:43:18] Krystina Gustafson: It's almost like a And I, I, that was really helpful. Thank you for sharing that. But it, it, it sounds to me so different than the conversations that we hear about retail media today. Right. I. Know some friends who work for some large CPG companies, and it's more of a conversation of, you have to do this, but what you're describing is like a desire to differentiate your brand.

[00:43:35] It, it, it feels like a, a shift in, in, in the why.

[00:43:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:43:38] Jeff Roster: Don't you also think though, that with grocery groceries had slotting fees for forever mm-hmm. , and it just sort of seems like that's a logical extension of the, those co-marketing allows going back and forth where, actually, I don't even know this, but I don't think department stores really have slotting fees because the, the product is constantly changing.

[00:43:54] So you have other, you have other something, but I, I mean, but

[00:43:57] Ricardo Belmar: way. I mean, you, you have you know, a designer [00:44:00] like a Ralph Lauren may have an arrangement. The departments are based on how much space they get on the floor. and is allocated for them as a brand. And then that dictates, you know, what merchandise do they make available to that department store versus a competitive department store that might give them more space and they make different merchandise available to them.

[00:44:15] It's kind of negotiated that way. Not quite the same as the slotting fees that CPG is doing. Grocery.

[00:44:20] Jeff Roster: and I think the other thing that's the big drivers, the fact, I mean, just who was on the, who was on the the exhibit floor TikTok, and what were they doing? There was at least three or four live streamers. So the idea that we're all creating, we're all creating content and want to create content. , I mean, and that now we're finally getting to the point where retailers are comfortable maybe not having everything be so hyper produced.

[00:44:40] You know, I think the, the best example I have is I just love B n h photo. And if, if you don't know what that is, it's, it's a, it's the best photo shop in, in the world and super high-end skill photographers that, that are selling camera equipment. And my first experience with, I dunno if it's live streaming, it's one-to-one.

[00:44:56] Working with them. I mean, for a camera shop, the, the video quality was [00:45:00] not very high. I mean, it was a little shocking, but it didn't matter because the expertise and the engagement for me sitting in Silicon Valley to, to Midtown Manhattan and that experience was amazing. And if retailers just embrace that and let their associates create or do whatever they want and, and, and produce all this content to fill up all the screens, you're gonna see it's gonna be great.

[00:45:21] What I don't wanna see is it becomes so. So over, over marketed and just take the soul out of it because retail should be passion. I mean, I think, I think my dad back in the seventies, you know, in his, his butcher shop, I mean, it was all about passion. It was about this and that, and engaging up and down and da, da, da, da.

[00:45:40] And, and I think in some ways as we expanded retail, we've lost that a little bit of passion. And maybe this is an opportunity, maybe it's a nice thing, you know, post covid.

[00:45:50] We've now re-embraced and learned and knew what we missed. And man, let's just have this retail renaissance and let's get back to the business of having, having fun and having [00:46:00]people engage in this process that we call retail.

[00:46:02] And then you, and then, you know, all those years you pitched me, you know, with those whole digital signages, now all of a sudden everything's coming together. The infrastructure, the screens, the cheap, you know, the the screens, the abil, the, the equipment we have to, to create all this content. And we have now, we've taught almost everyone, you know, if you have something to say, turn on your, your, your phone and, and shoot something out.

[00:46:25] Well, when retailers unleashed that, holy smokes

[00:46:28] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And, and now we have all these tools. Kinda coming back to the whole immersive commerce idea. You know, I, I just gave an example of using, fancy screen design, but it could be much more tactile and immersive with all these sensor technologies available.

[00:46:40] I could pick up a product in a store and that triggers something on, on some sort of visual environment nearby that to give me a different bit of content about it because I interacted with the merchandise and that we couldn't do that before. Right. So, so that's another new, new approach that couldn't, I think, and again, it's, it's in-store media and I think that's why that's gonna be such a, an

[00:46:58] Jeff Roster: yeah, that's, it's just gonna be such an [00:47:00] insane category. I mean, I almost want to go back to my forecasting days and just start trying to build a model out of that, cuz it is gonna be a massive number. A massive number.

[00:47:09] The Evolution of Shop Talk

[00:47:09] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I guess maybe the last thing to kind of wrap us up here we, we talked a little bit before about just how the, how Shop talk is changing itself and you guys announced a new Fall Shop Talk for next year.

[00:47:19] So I mean, anything you can share with us about how Shop Talk itself is evolving.

[00:47:23] Krystina Gustafson: Well, we are taking on new challenges listening to customer feedback and just really kind of growing the brand in new and exciting ways. I'll let Ben kind of tell you a little bit about Europe, cuz that's in six weeks time, which is hard to wrap your head around. But that's that's gonna be really fun.

[00:47:38] And Barcelona, we've got 175 speakers. I'm stealing all your thunder. But, but a fantastic lineup. That's gonna be in Barcelona and then I think. You know, Ben kind of said it earlier with just the number of meeting requests that we saw in our platform. We recognize that doing this once a year just isn't quite fulfilling the appetite that people have.

[00:47:55] And so I think you'll see us lean a lot more heavily into the networking component. I think we have a [00:48:00] real differentiator there with the Meetup platform. You know, it's not something that other events in the retail industry have, and so it's a real competitive edge. The fact that it's powered by technology, you know, even if someone tried to do it there's just feasibly no way to do it manually. And so I think you're gonna see us lean really heavily into that. And I think, you know, to your point about getting back to business, we love content. We're the content team. We're always gonna talk about how fantastic the content is.

[00:48:22] But the p the reason people are here is to be part of our community, right? And so the more that we can do to enable that is I think really kind of the direction that us going in the future. And, and that's kind of the impetus behind the, the new events that

[00:48:33] Ben Miller: So it, it is not at all daunting that we are doing it all again and just slightly,

[00:48:38] Krystina Gustafson: We've tried to black this out. We're like, let's talk about this after

[00:48:42] Ben Miller: but you know, look, it's less less than six weeks now, 9 to 11th of May in Barcelona a fabulous, progressive and dynamic city, which is just where we want to be for our brand.

[00:48:52] And the challenge of how do you drive retail innovation through digital [00:49:00]transformation in a tough operating environment is as pertinent in Europe as it is in the US. What you've then got a layer on top of that is 30 plus different countries, e-commerce in different states of development, very local retailers.

[00:49:15] So, we think the opportunity for Shop Talk in even greater than it is here. And the reason for that is you've got in their own domestic who are trying to crack the same problems as somebody maybe only 200 kilometers away, but they don't have a relationship with, but they don't compete.

[00:49:29] So the opportunity for collaboration, for cooperation, for learning Immense. So we are really excited about what we are building in, in Europe what we're gonna build in Barcelona. And yeah, the show will open at 11:00 AM on the ninth.

[00:49:44] Krystina Gustafson: on May. 

[00:49:45] keep saying, are you guys ready? We're like, well, it's It's coming. So 

[00:49:49] Ben Miller: we've got, we've got incredible lineup. We, the, the European retail and brand community have lent into the event stronger than they ever have done.

[00:49:56] This is only our second year in Europe, but we've got an incredible lineup. [00:50:00] And it will be both from a speaker, but especially from a, a delegate perspective.

[00:50:03] The most senior Event that we've ever put and we are seeing

[00:50:07] people think, you know what, this is a great way to get our teams together, to bring our individuals from across Europe into a place to, to learn and be inspired. And, and we can be more excited to facilitate that. And can't wait to again, to the Spanish sun because I dunno where you, I dunno where you guys move.

[00:50:22] The heat of bar of Las Vegas, but this has not been what I was expecting.

[00:50:26] when I escaped the London winter. So hopefully the

[00:50:29] Jeff Roster: listen, I'm from California. I'm just glad the, the water's not coming down and it's been a long time since the California and said No more water Stop for a while.

[00:50:38] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. Yep. Well, I, I guess listening to you a Ben, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of gonna gonna say we're, we're back to the people element A again, from what you were saying. So it sounds like super exciting for what's to come and, and shop talk Europe.

[00:50:49] Fantastic. Well, Krystina, Ben, I wanna thank you so much for sitting down and spending all this time with us. It's been a fantastic conversation. I, I think we've all learned a lot and congratulations on a really [00:51:00] great event again, once again this year. I think content was fabulous of course and just the, the energy and like we've been saying now multiple times, that it really brought all the people together, and I think that's probably the most important part of it.

[00:51:12] Ben Miller: Okay. We really appreciate it and thank you for having us,

[00:51:15] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks again. Well, Jeff, I think that wraps us up. 

[00:51:18] Jeff Roster: think we're done. Another good show.

[00:51:19] Ricardo Belmar: Another good show.

[00:51:20] Show Recap

[00:51:20] Casey Golden: Wow, that was such a great discussion you guys had with Christina and Ben, and you covered so much ground. And no surprise you had to cover generative AI and retail media networks in there too.

[00:51:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's true. There's no escaping the impact of generative AI right now, and yes, it did kind of feel like last year's metaverse. I mean, it was everywhere at the show in the sessions and everything, but I think there's an important difference that we kind of touched on that metaverse at last year's shop talk was all about experiments, right?

[00:51:59] [00:52:00] Trying to see what consumers would like. How would you transform that into commerce? But with generative ai, the use cases are already out there. They're being implemented with real world results as we heard in in some of the sessions at Shop Talk. Plus, this doesn't really require consumer adoption like the Metaverse does.

[00:52:18] It's more about operations and efficiency so far, and that does include consumer benefits that just don't require the consumer to adopt anything yet.

[00:52:26] Casey Golden: Yeah, what about the retail media piece? I caught the shout out to Andrew Lipsman, our, our favorite retail media analyst.

[00:52:33] Ricardo Belmar: Well, probably another obvious one, right? I did find it telling that shop Talk picked up on what we've been saying here before, that retail media is just the start of a B2B path for retailers to sell services to other retailers and brands as a high margin way to improve profitability.

[00:52:51] Casey Golden: We definitely will need to revisit these two topics more in our next season.

[00:52:55] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely.

[00:52:56] Casey Golden: So what's coming next with, , you and Jeff?

[00:52:59] Ricardo Belmar: Well, we've [00:53:00] got a few super interesting startups that we talked with, and we'll cap off the series with another great discussion coming with a couple of fan favorite guests. Now, I'll just give one hint. It's a follow up to one of our N R F Live conversations.

[00:53:13] Casey Golden: All right. Well, I think I know who that is. I mean, obviously I know since I know what's on the show, but do our listeners.

[00:53:22] Ricardo Belmar: We'll just have to wait and see on that one. but now I do want to thank both Krystina and Ben for joining Jeff and me for this discussion. I know it was quite a feat for them to make the time for this on the last day of the show, just a couple of hours before they went on stage to give their official wrap up presentation.

[00:53:39] So thank you both so much for joining us.

[00:53:42] Casey Golden: So with that, Ricardo, it's time for us to wrap up this first episode in Our Shop Talk Live mini-series crossover with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation. It's a wrap. 

[00:54:00] Show Close

[00:54:00] Casey Golden: if you enjoyed our shows this season, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Plus, you can watch us, not just listen, on our YouTube channel and like and comment on this season there too.

[00:54:19] And of course, if you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a full transcript of each episode. Take a look at the show notes and handy links for more deets. I'm your co-host, Casey Golden.

[00:54:30] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season, follow us on Twitter at Casey C Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter and LinkedIn at Retail Razor for the latest updates. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar,

[00:54:45] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:54:47] ​

[00:54:50] Ricardo Belmar: and remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. [00:55:00]

]]> <p>Did you miss <a href="https://shoptalk.com/" rel="nofollow">Shoptalk 2023</a> this year? Or were you there and feel like you didn’t catch enough of the content and top trends? We’ve got you covered with another podcast cross-over event with <a href="https://jeffroster.podbean.com/" rel="nofollow">This Week in Innovation</a> and special guest host <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-bb51b8/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Roster</a>! Kicking off this multi-part series, Jeff and regular host Ricardo Belmar sit down with Shoptalk’s content team of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystina-gustafson-908a5a14/" rel="nofollow">Krystina Gustafson</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmillerbbv/" rel="nofollow">Ben Miller</a> live and in-person on the final day of the event. Together they review the top 4 trends and what they mean for retailers, brands, and the retail tech community. The team goes deep to break down the hype vs reality of Generative AI and discuss how retailers are changing and evolving their relationships with consumers, employees, and suppliers. Plus, hear about the latest trends in shopper engagement!</p><p><br></p><p><em>This episode’s guests:</em></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystina-gustafson-908a5a14/" rel="nofollow">Krystina Gustafson</a>, SVP Content, <a href="https://shoptalk.com/" rel="nofollow">Shoptalk</a> and <a href="https://groceryshop.com/" rel="nofollow">Groceryshop</a></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmillerbbv/" rel="nofollow">Ben Miller</a>, Director of original content, <a href="https://shoptalk.com/" rel="nofollow">Shoptalk</a> and <a href="https://groceryshop.com/" rel="nofollow">Groceryshop</a></p><p><br></p><p>We’re at number 19 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review &amp; be mentioned in future episodes! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, </em>and<em> Overclocked, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>S2E12a #ShoptalkLive – SPECIAL - Krystina Gustafson &amp; Ben Miller</strong></p><p>[00:00:00] ​</p><h3>[00:00:00] Show Intro </h3><p>[00:00:20] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Hello Retail Razor Show listeners and viewers, and welcome to retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologist, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden.</p><p>[00:00:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar. And boy do we have a special treat for you this episode! Today we are talking about the changing relationships between retailers and brands, the evolution of shopper engagement. How omnichannel is morphing into seamless stores, and we see how it&#39;s possible to transform over 320,000 meeting requests into over 50,000 actual meetings in a span of three days.</p><p>[00:00:57] But first, let&#39;s talk about our newest [00:01:00] crossover event, and this episode&#39;s special guests.</p><p>[00:01:03] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That&#39;s right after our wildly successful crossover event with This Week In Innovation podcast for our N R F Live miniseries. Joined by one of our favorite guest hosts, Jeff Roster. We&#39;ve done it again for our Shop Talk coverage.</p><p>[00:01:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yes, indeed. By popular demand, and by popular demand, I mean, we really liked the idea, so we thought, let&#39;s do it again. Jeff Roster and I teamed up at Shop Talk for a few special interviews to bring you a Shop Talk live mini-series.</p><p>[00:01:33] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, I&#39;m sad I once again had to miss this one, but I know you guys have pulled together a killer miniseries not to be missed. Who are the episodes special guests?</p><p>[00:01:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I am glad you asked Casey. What better way to kick off this mini-series and with a deep dive discussion on all the hot topics at Shop Talk than sitting down with the Source, Shop talk&#39;s, amazing content team led by Krystina Gustafson, SVP of Content, [00:02:00] and Ben Miller, director of original content.</p><p>[00:02:02] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Christina and Ben are incredible. Uh, you and Jeff really got to dig in to all the hot topics and wasn&#39;t this right after they had delivered their retail zeitgeist presentation on , the main stage, right?</p><p>[00:02:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah, that&#39;s right. We, we recorded this the very next morning after that session where Krystina and Joe Laszlo had run through what Shop Talk was seeing as the major retail trends for the year. Plus , Ben and Krystina gave us some insights into what they found most notable from all the sessions at the show.</p><p>[00:02:33] And did I mention those 50,000 meetings they orchestrated? I mean, just, wow. Wait until you hear all the stats about what was surely the, the biggest shop talk ever.</p><p>[00:02:42] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, let&#39;s get to it then and jump right into you and Jeff&#39;s conversation with Krystina Gustafson and Ben Miller from Shop Talk, recorded live and in person at the show. </p><p>[00:02:54] ​</p><h3>[00:02:59] The Shoptalk Review </h3><p>[00:02:59] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello everyone [00:03:00] and welcome to our special Retail Razor crossover event with This Week In Innovation. I&#39;m Ricardo Belmar, live and in person here at Shop Talk 2023, and I am here with the myth, the legend, Mr. Jeff Roster from This Week In Innovation. How you doing, Jeff?</p><p>[00:03:15] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Really good. Ricardo. I, you know, I, I&#39;m so proud of both of us. We&#39;re, we&#39;re here last day, literally working the show to the last minute, and that&#39;s how we roll. That&#39;s how we</p><p>[00:03:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> what we do. That&#39;s right. And for this special edition episode of our live series here at Shop Talk, we have the incredible pleasure of having two folks from the Shop talk team to talk to us about the event.</p><p>[00:03:36] We&#39;re here with Krystina Gustafson and Ben Miller. Krystina. Ben, how are you doing today?</p><p>[00:03:40] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Doing awesome.</p><p>[00:03:41] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> Yeah, very good. Thank you. Thanks for having us. </p><p>[00:03:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Fantastic. Fantastic. So let&#39;s jump in. And I think, you know, one of the, the probably most in, well maybe not most interesting, but something I&#39;m sure everyone wants to know is just give us a little bit of data around just how big a shop talk was this, this year?</p><p>[00:03:56] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Yeah, happy to start. 10,000 plus attendees, our [00:04:00] largest crowd so far. I would say though, what I take away even more than the size is just the quality of the a attendee. So it really sort of felt like this was. The big year. I know last year was technically retail&#39;s big reunion, but with the loss of corporate travel bands people just really being back down to business, the caliber of attendee, the amount of retailers and brands we had attending the show at a very senior level was, was one of the big takeaways to me beyond just kind of the scale of the event.</p><p>[00:04:25] I know we&#39;ll probably talk about meet up a little bit later, but we also were able to facilitate 50,000 meetings over the course of two days which was incredibly impressive. Other things to note about scale 275 speakers 70 hours. 50 hours of content, 80 sessions seven content theaters. So I would say those are kind of the high level numbers. But Ben, you might have some, some additional stats to toss out there.</p><p>[00:04:48] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> kind of, yeah, I think when we talk about the Meetup 50,000 sounds an incredible number</p><p>[00:04:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right?</p><p>[00:04:53] Yeah, it does.</p><p>[00:04:54] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> We had 323,000 requests to[00:05:00] so the appetite the appetite for, everybody to want to get together, to have some meetings, to meet people, to build their business. And you could feel that energy when you walked around.</p><p>[00:05:10] And that energy, you know, it&#39;s, day four with lagging a little bit, but that energy that that energy is palpable. And that&#39;s, and that&#39;s been, yeah, that&#39;s been a key part of the show this year. </p><p>[00:05:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow. That&#39;s un 323,000 requests . Wow. What I, I, you know, one of the things we were talking about before, you know, what we think is sort of unique about the Shop Talk experience you have you know, for example, like how, how, how many vendors were here, whether exhibiting or, or attendees.</p><p>[00:05:39] I think that&#39;s always a key part of bringing all parts of the industry together. That Shop Talk is so, so special for </p><p>[00:05:45] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> key. No, we, we re really agree our. I think you&#39;ve heard Sophie, our president talk before that we don&#39;t really think about a buy side and a sell side. We don&#39;t try and compartmentalize. We have a community and our vendors, the technology companies, whether they are [00:06:00] really small startups for whom a Series A feels a distant proposition still right through to Google Face meta.</p><p>[00:06:07] You know, some of the biggest organizations and biggest corporations in the country and in the world are here. We have about 700. Technology companies and technology vendors, and many of them are on our show floor exhibiting showing their wear, hosting their their, their clients, and also being involved in the meetings and they&#39;re a really important part of our community.</p><p>[00:06:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And then tell us a little bit about you know, the, the startup community and the relationship with, with the shop talk there.</p><p>[00:06:32] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Yeah, it&#39;s I think, been a part of our community that&#39;s been really special from day one. You know, we were really the first show that was putting Katrina Lake on, on the main stage when she had founded Stitch Fix. You know, the guys at Dollar Shave Club. So I&#39;d say it&#39;s always been a core part of who we are.</p><p>[00:06:45] But we have recognized that it&#39;s Such a differentiator for us that we wanna pour more investment into it. And so we&#39;ve actually been building out our team internally to make sure that we&#39;re really cultivating that community, bringing people on board who are specific to, you know, bringing the big VCs to, to the show because, hey, when you [00:07:00] get the big VCs here, you&#39;re also gonna be be building a, a big start of community.</p><p>[00:07:03] And I had jotted down the number, which of course is escaping me now, but yes, 475 founders who were at Shop Talk this year. I like to think that number&#39;s actually probably a little lower. When you think about the fact that some founders have potentially sold their businesses, gone onto corporate ventures, it&#39;s probably over 500 in, in some capacity.</p><p>[00:07:19] People who are current founders or have founded businesses before. But we just truly think that&#39;s what gives the show so much life. Just the energy that you have from those entrepreneurs who are coming here to learn share what they&#39;re finding. They tend to be also some of the more open folks , when they&#39;re talking about the challenges that they&#39;re facing, which is</p><p>[00:07:34] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah. Not tend to be a hundred percent. What? That&#39;s, that&#39;s why it&#39;s so fun to, to, to talk to the startup community cuz they there is no filter.</p><p>[00:07:41] And there was no AR person to, to say, don&#39;t say that. So, no, it&#39;s, I mean, the difference is an analyst working, you know, with, with the largest companies in my old days of Gartner to work covering the startup committee.</p><p>[00:07:52] I mean, it&#39;s night and day. It&#39;s so refreshing.</p><p>[00:07:55] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> were you I don&#39;t know if you were in the keynote with Imran Khan from Veri Shop, but he, he was unfiltered while he [00:08:00] was up there on stage, which, I mean, we&#39;ve been getting such good feedback on that interview, so yeah, I hear you. </p><p>[00:08:04] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> getting, I think we are incredibly proud about the keynote lineup this. year. And we, we, we&#39;ve, it&#39;s an incredible process to work with all of our keynotes to, to be prepared. But one of the things that we have spoken about is how they can be open. Cuz nobody wants to come to an event and just see someone reading the press release.</p><p>[00:08:19] And some of, the, some the great conversations that we&#39;ve had on the main stage this year and some of the openness of the speakers has been quite a revelation and yeah, I think it&#39;s probably the best keynote group that we put together.</p><p>[00:08:30] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> I agree. And I have to say, just being in the, I spent a lot of my time in the, the depths of the green room at the show, and I have to tell you the authenticity of those leaders. And I know that sounds really cheesy, and I&#39;m not typically the type of prince Ben knows. I&#39;m not the soft emotive type.</p><p>[00:08:44] But I mean, it was palpable. Every single one of them was incredibly kind, incredibly grateful to be here. Willing to be open, recognizing that our audience really wanted to learn. And so I didn&#39;t even feel to the same degree as impacious that we had to push. Obviously we&#39;re always pushing people to say interesting things, but they [00:09:00] were eager to do it which was really unique and special.</p><p>[00:09:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> tell us a bit more about some of the feedback you&#39;ve had, both, both in the keynotes and then even in some of the other track sessions that I know there have been some really interesting speakers there. I know I was in some where you could just feel, you know, and some of the speakers are, or just, I, I would almost have to describe as entertaining and some of the things they said in, in the way that, that the crowd really reacted to them.</p><p>[00:09:20] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:09:20] I think some of the interesting formats that we rolled out have been a lot of fun. So one session that got a ton of great feedback was our rapid fire session. We did two of them. One was with investors, which again, kind of getting back to your point about people that can be unfiltered, a lot of laughter coming outta that one.</p><p>[00:09:34] I think one of the, one of the questions at the end was you know, what&#39;s your most unpopular opinion today? And just really kinda, you know, use poking and prodding</p><p>[00:09:42] them. So that one was a lot of fun. </p><p>[00:09:44] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I&#39;m stealing that one. I&#39;m gonna, that, that&#39;s gonna be my,</p><p>[00:09:46] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah, that&#39;s right. Right. Yeah.</p><p>[00:09:47] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Exactly.</p><p>[00:09:48] We gamify it. There&#39;s a really loud, obnoxious buzzer when people run out of time.</p><p>[00:09:51] They have their four minutes. So, so that was a hit. And then we also did one on tech investing, which was really fun. It had CB Insights, Ulta Beauty and Patagonia on [00:10:00] it. And I think what was really interesting about that one was you had sort of Ulta that has this huge budget. They&#39;re always trying new things.</p><p>[00:10:05] They&#39;re always testing, and, learning. And then you have Patagonia, which is a little bit more conservative, maybe doesn&#39;t have that big budget to blow. So just kind of hearing Prama, who&#39;s the Chief digital officer at Ulta talking about, oh yes, we&#39;re trying this. Yes, we&#39;re doing AR. Oh, this is fantastic. And Patagonia just being kinda like, no hard pass on Metaverse hard pass on this.</p><p>[00:10:19] You know, it really represents the dynamics that our audience has, you know? </p><p>[00:10:23] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> different. Yeah. Yeah.</p><p>[00:10:24] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> And, and I think that authenticity has been something that&#39;s, that&#39;s thread throughout and we, we&#39;ve programmed sessions that were, were about purpose and we wanted to talk about purpose and want to talk about sustainability.</p><p>[00:10:34] But actually what we&#39;ve found is great. We&#39;ve got the specific sessions, but the general principle of authentic leadership has, has woven through so many of the conversations. Whether that&#39;s, you know, leaders openly facing in some of the challenges that they&#39;ve had or talk about their views on social issues.</p><p>[00:10:48] There&#39;s been some really dynamic conversations and that&#39;s been exciting to be part of. </p><p>[00:10:54] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> I think to your question too about feedback though I haven&#39;t had anyone complain to me yet.</p><p>[00:10:57] so that to me is, </p><p>[00:10:59] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s something, </p><p>[00:10:59] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> [00:11:00] that&#39;s a big barometer of, of people being happy. So I think just generally kind of going back to where we started the conversation, everyone&#39;s gritting, ear to ear having a fantastic time, and that&#39;s not really something that&#39;s measurable.</p><p>[00:11:10] We&#39;ll get sort of the more measurable data after the show, but. , but it&#39;s, I mean, so far I think the buzz has been really great. I do really look forward to getting that feedback though. One of the things that I had mentioned for anyone who was in the opening remarks session, when we talked about how we were doing more on seamless stores this year, that was feedback that we got from both Shop Talk and the most recent grocery shop was that people wanted to see us lean more into physical stores.</p><p>[00:11:30] And so, We did that we made sure that it was covered on our keynote stage with Footlocker, with Brilliant Earth. It was something that we dialed up in our track sessions as well. So it&#39;s great to hear kind of the initial buzz and excitement. But we also try to take that constructive feedback post show when we&#39;re getting more concrete data, survey results, and then action that for, the next show </p><h3>[00:11:48] Seamless Stores &amp; the &#34;Death of Omnichannel&#34;</h3><p>[00:11:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. So tell, tell us a little bit more on that topic of Seamless stores, because I, I did, I, cause I noticed that difference as well, right? From back, from both, from last Shop Talk and, and progressing through grocery shop to hear that there was [00:12:00] more emphasis on what&#39;s happening in physical stores and how that ties back into the rest of of the retail organization.</p><p>[00:12:06] So how, tell us more about that.</p><p>[00:12:07] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> I woke up this morning to a notification on my phone flicking through half jet lag still, and there&#39;s this great message that somebody had posted on my LinkedIn saying, thank you, shop Talk 2023 for finally killing omnichannel.</p><p>[00:12:24] And</p><p>[00:12:24] I think, </p><p>[00:12:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> saw that post</p><p>[00:12:26] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> do you know what, we&#39;ve now reached that point where we talk about seamless stores, we talk about unified commerce, the general principle of how do we help customers wherever they are, whenever they want to interact with the brand, to be able to, discover, to be able to explore,</p><p>[00:12:44] to be able to excited it or to be able to buy and whether that&#39;s on a social media channel, whether that&#39;s on the retailer&#39;s own asset, whether that&#39;s having a fantastic experience when they walk through a store.</p><p>[00:12:55] That&#39;s shopping. And I think the number of times I&#39;ve heard that, you know, [00:13:00]there&#39;s been very few conversations about channel management, cuz I think we&#39;ve finally realized that channels are just this artificial construct and actually</p><p>[00:13:05] what it is he&#39;s getting, he&#39;s getting product to people and exciting. about product. And that&#39;s been one of the big things for me for, for the whole show. When we, we, we spent a lot of time talking about it in advance. We&#39;ve been looking at how do you remove friction from the shopping experience, and places where a bit of friction&#39;s good, but also where you want to take out friction.</p><p>[00:13:23] And that&#39;s been a really important thought. How do you link some of these things together about the online experience and the offline experience What are the building blocks? What, what&#39;s the tech stack to enable that? But as a, as a concept, just getting product to people when they want, it has been, I think it&#39;s been the biggest thing for me, </p><p>[00:13:40] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> One of the, one of the cheesy jokes I didn&#39;t get into the zeitgeist was it reminds me of the Nintendo Switch, you know, where you&#39;re playing on your handheld and then you plug it into the TV and your game is picked up. You know exactly where you were in, in the game progress, you don&#39;t have to finish a level.</p><p>[00:13:53] That&#39;s how I, that&#39;s how my brain thinks about what unified retail should be going forward. I didn&#39;t have room for it though. We were already five minutes over. But, but in all [00:14:00]seriousness you know, the example that I did share, which was probably more valuable to the audience, was Brilliant Earth, right?</p><p>[00:14:04] You know, go online. You do an online consultation, you get to the store, Hey, here&#39;s five rings that we picked out for you based off of what you told us online. Like I think that&#39;s kind of how we&#39;re thinking about unified these days. It&#39;s less about shopping where you want, when you want, and making that a continuous experience.</p><p>[00:14:18] Because we were talking, we didn&#39;t wanna undermine in in our zeitgeist presentation that frictionless isn&#39;t hard and it isn&#39;t important. But I think where we landed is more companies have solved for that already, right? The amount of companies that have curbside, that have redesigned their store formats.</p><p>[00:14:31] I think that&#39;s kind of more progressed, if you will. And I think Unified is really still in its early stages seeing what companies like Brilliant Earth are doing. The other speaker who we confirmed was the chief digital Officer from Panera. And they recently signed that deal with Amazon One for the biometric scanning in their stores linking to loyalty programs.</p><p>[00:14:47] So that&#39;s another great example. And it&#39;s a completely different category than fine jewelry, which is what Brilliant Earth is doing. But I feel like those are two early examples of where we see this trend heading. </p><p>[00:14:57]</p><h3>[00:14:57] &#34;Follow the Money&#34; ... but, Omnichannel?</h3><p>[00:14:57] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> And I was in a different room when the Panera presentation was [00:15:00]on, so I missed it. But the social comments and the social feedback on that yeah, we did some work. One of the things that, it goes right back to when Shop Talk was founded by, led by Anil and, and the team was to sit down and look at where does the VC And if you follow the money, then you start to pick up the trends. And we spend a, we spend quite a bit of time looking at this whole idea of, okay, if Shop Talk wants to talk about physical stores, well what&#39;s relevant, what&#39;s new? What&#39;s the future in that? So, you with our friends, at CB Insights, we went into the data and there&#39;s a phenomenal amount of funding&#39;s continuing to go into removing friction.</p><p>[00:15:38] Whether that&#39;s checkout free, for example, they say whole seamless of connecting that shopping journey. It&#39;s, there&#39;s funding there, but it&#39;s, it&#39;s still lower, but we really see that increasing and there some, some of the stats about the levels of is huge. So we believe that&#39;s only gonna get more and that&#39;s only gonna snowball.</p><p>[00:15:55] So understanding that further, pulling out great examples. We talked on the main stage [00:16:00] about Zara and some of the work that they&#39;re doing in their flagship stores. Yeah. Zara is is certainly the biggest apparel retailer in Europe, if not, yeah, the parent company, Inditex, the biggest in the world</p><p>[00:16:11] They&#39;re still only doing it in, in a couple of trial stores. So the potential is, is absolutely huge and, and we wanna celebrate trials like that.</p><p>[00:16:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. Yeah, no, that, that, that makes sense.</p><p>[00:16:20] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah, that&#39;s music in my ears. I mean, I&#39;ve been fighting omnichannel forever. </p><p>[00:16:25] No, no offense, but when, when your competitor coins the term, no, Gardner, Allen should ever use that term. What&#39;s funny, the funniest thing I ever had is somebody, one time, you know, no offense to the, the vendors in the room, but a vendor one time ask me, Hey, do you have omnichannel IT spend?</p><p>[00:16:39] And I said, well, I do, but you&#39;ll have to define what you mean. And the conversation went dead. He had no idea what he he was </p><p>[00:16:44] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> I absolutely love that. My favorite, thing is when people apply to speak at Shop Talk and we&#39;re like, what do you wanna speak about? And they&#39;re like, oh, omnichannel, or, oh, I wanna talk about e-com. And I&#39;m just like, gimme more, gimme more </p><h3>[00:16:53] Supporting Store Teams</h3><p>[00:16:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah. Right. Could you be a little more vague?</p><p>[00:16:56] Yeah. Yeah. So, so one thing I [00:17:00] noticed in particular this time, which I haven&#39;t seen at other shows as much attention. And I think maybe it&#39;s part, it sort of comes out I think, a little bit out of the seamless stores. But I think Krystina, you or Joe mentioned it in this, session that there&#39;s this renewed, focus on how we&#39;re enabling store teams, whether it&#39;s directly with technology or just with different, by changing the processes, but just how they&#39;re able to work and how even if you didn&#39;t have a session that was stated on the agenda, that&#39;s what it was about. I heard that come up from so many presenters and speakers that part of what they were doing was tying back into how they&#39;re supporting those store teams to make their job better. And I, I think I lost track, but maybe three or four times, I heard one of the speakers mention how they see that as something that is enabling a better career path for these retail workers. And I thought that was super interesting to me because I haven&#39;t seen that at other shows or in other events.</p><p>[00:17:53] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> I mean, let me give a big picture of you and I&#39;ll pass over to Krystina for a bit more detail.</p><p>[00:17:58] I would say take one step back from [00:18:00] that. And, and the first step back from that is, is the investment environment that we find ourselves in right now.</p><p>[00:18:05] And the decisions and the hard decisions that people have to make.</p><p>[00:18:10] So if we are going through continued elevated levels of e-commerce sales, we&#39;re going through a store Renaissance, something as we referred to it, and we need to try and deliver to customers, you know, commerce everywhere where, that&#39;s great, but all of those parts require investment.</p><p>[00:18:25] So how do you do it in an investment environment which is, which is tighter and it, this has felt a really optimistic few days, but we are really cognizant of the environment that we&#39;re in. The number of speakers that I&#39;ve heard to say in an environment. The two things that they focus on right now are people and talent, and also the store infrastructure.</p><p>[00:18:44] If you take that together and you think, okay, well where&#39;s the investment in people? In stores?</p><p>[00:18:49] Then you start to realize that actually you&#39;ve got a really cost effective way to be able to drive, drive digital transformation and to drive significant improvement. So we, we deliberately programmed some areas where we wanted to talk about some of the [00:19:00] detail about that, but actually is a theme.</p><p>[00:19:02] Completely agree. Ricardo. It&#39;s cropped up in so many different </p><p>[00:19:05] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Yeah. I would build on that. I think it&#39;s not only the store associates, right? I think people overall ended up being a much bigger theme than we had intended it to be. You know, to Ben&#39;s point, we did have a couple of sessions that were very specific to store employees, whether it was from the retailer brand side, whether it was from the tech side.</p><p>[00:19:21] We had a couple sessions, maybe one or two on culture and leadership. But that theme came up I feel, even more than usual. And I think it&#39;s this whole idea of empathy. Kind of going back to your point too, and, and how you leverage your workers. Leverage is probably a, a crass word, but. </p><p>[00:19:35] Empower your</p><p>[00:19:36] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> There you </p><p>[00:19:37] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> use Empower. What Use Empower. It was really interesting because I, I feel like the dialogue around store associates for so long has been about productivity. And of course we were hearing quite a bit of that. The lens of safety seemed to be a new conversation, right? As much as we hear about automation and the, is that, oh, the robots aren&#39;t gonna take your jobs now, it was sort of, you know, listening into Amazon, okay, well we&#39;re actually using automation to make the warehouse [00:20:00] workers safer and to make sure that we have, you know, safety protocols in place. And that was kind of a new spin on that theme that I hadn&#39;t previously heard and, and wasn&#39;t necessarily expecting coming into the show.</p><p>[00:20:08] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> I&#39;m trying to find a stat and I&#39;m </p><p>[00:20:12] we go. I got it. There&#39;s a great, there&#39;s a great session from Katie Reeves from, who&#39;s the managing director of Cos</p><p>[00:20:20] of the h and m group manager of Cos in North America, and she&#39;s talked about the investment that they are making their smart store</p><p>[00:20:27] portfolio. </p><p>[00:20:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. I, I remember that session. </p><p>[00:20:29] Yeah. But</p><p>[00:20:30] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> one of the key components of the smart store was enabling their teams in the store and they talked about the app that they. And, and they&#39;d use the app for process improvement, bring all the information into the right place to help them operationally as well as help serve customers better.</p><p>[00:20:46] And she shared that in the pilot stores where they have got the app running, their staff retention of install teams has increased by And if you think about the labor market we are in,</p><p>[00:20:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> wow. [00:21:00]</p><p>[00:21:00] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> Joe shared on the main stage, the the quit rate is over 40% higher for retail than it is for as a whole.</p><p>[00:21:07] Yeah. It&#39;s harder to find people, people more expensive. If you&#39;re able to make that sort of change, enable that by technology. That&#39;s incredible.</p><p>[00:21:13] Not only that, she shared that because the process improvements their store staff are having an extra two and a half hours a week to be able to serve their customers better.</p><p>[00:21:25] And that&#39;s, that&#39;s transformational for a</p><p>[00:21:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. That, that&#39;s a massive difference. That&#39;s a massive improvement.</p><p>[00:21:30] Yeah.</p><p>[00:21:30] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> You know, one thing that comes to mind as you&#39;re saying that, and it sort of circles back to what we were talking about before I was in the session with Chobani, and they were actually taking this from more of a perspective. And you know, she was saying, we get asked the question all the time, how do you measure. The impact on sales. How do you measure the impact on the business? And she was actually making the point actually, we see the most measurable statistics in our employee acquisition and retention because there are so many people that want to be a part of a company that is mission driven. So I think it&#39;s always such a [00:22:00] good point.</p><p>[00:22:00] Technology is really enabling workers. It&#39;s, you know, boosting retention. It&#39;s helping that labor shortage, but also a really strong purpose and something that has nothing to do with technology could also be really powerful.</p><p>[00:22:10] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> strong purpose. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.</p><p>[00:22:12] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I mean, how novel people wanna be part of something big. I&#39;m shocking</p><p>[00:22:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Shocking, right.</p><p>[00:22:16] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> We lose sight of it though, don&#39;t we?</p><p>[00:22:18] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Well, we do. And you know, and that was such a strong point. And, and, and I was sitting here thinking as you&#39;re talking you know, of course our, our good friend Ron Thurston is this, is this like his legacy because. Five years ago, four years ago, we weren&#39;t really talking about this stuff.</p><p>[00:22:32] And then Ron pops on and does that amazing podcast and that amazing journey and now all of a sudden it&#39;s, it&#39;s like we all are, are able to say what, what&#39;s common sense? It&#39;s, it&#39;s a people business. You better put your people in front of your people business.</p><p>[00:22:46] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I, I, I even think, you know, the, the biggest change I&#39;ve noticed to your point, if you go back five years, no one used the phrases enabling store teams. No one talked about empowering them with the right technology. What everyone said is, well, we have to get them the right training. [00:23:00] It was all about, training was always the key word, and it was investment in training as if, you know, the only thing you needed to do was to impart a set of skills to just work the store.</p><p>[00:23:09] And now that&#39;s completely transformed that it is. I, I think, you know, you have the right words, Krystina, right, it&#39;s about enabling, empowering those teams with the right elements, whether it&#39;s process, technology or the. People skills itself, whatever it is. And I can&#39;t remember which session it was, but the one that&#39;s also stood out to me, someone was talking about how they recognize that when they look across all of the store associates, they have, people have different skills and the different talents, and some are better than others at certain roles in the store. And that it doesn&#39;t make sense to assume that every store employee should be able to do every single job in the store. And especially if you start layering in things now, like live streaming, for example.</p><p>[00:23:47] And this was one that I keyed in on because and you may remember this, this trip because some time ago on, on the podcast we talked. This idea. And I had, and, and some other conversation I had with with Retail Wire. I think we talked about this idea that, the retailers [00:24:00] have this inherent talent in some of their employees.</p><p>[00:24:02] Because let&#39;s face it, if you go by the, just by age demographics alone, odds are in most retailers, you have employees in stores who may have their own YouTube channel already. Independent of that job function. And they&#39;re good at this and they like doing it. So it makes sense for a retailer to kind of take advantage of that in, in a sense, right?</p><p>[00:24:19] And encourage those skills. But at the same time, that that same person who might like to live stream, they might not be a good stylist. For example, if it&#39;s an apparel store and there might be another employee that loves to do styling with customers and is so much better at it than others. So give them that kind of growth path using those skills.</p><p>[00:24:37] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> using, and this speaks to something at the sort, the very heart of shop content, which is how is technology enabling a lot of this transformation? And if you talk about, you know, enabling and empowering frontline workers, you&#39;ve got a hundred percent, there is this sort of talent.</p><p>[00:24:51] How do you unlock this talent? And things like livestream shoppable video, creating new way for frontline workers to be able to unlock that talent that [00:25:00] they&#39;ve had in that store. And they&#39;ve probably been helping a small number of customers with, but now you can do it on a bigger scale. The second in training,</p><p>[00:25:07] it&#39;s really hard, to take a whole day out or to take a frontline worker away from their store to help them with some of the at times softer to be able to do that.</p><p>[00:25:18] We&#39;ve got some amazing trials and Kroger on the front foot about doing some incredible work to help empower with app enable. Short, quick, accessible training to help be able to improve and to deliver a better experience for their guests. And then finally, there&#39;s that element you talked about, about playing to STRs. There is this group of workers in the in flexible environments economy and tech is enabling retailers to access that pool. But actually more broadly, is enable. Existing workers to have that flexibility to choose which all they want to work in, or tasks that they wanna pick up, working at times their families.</p><p>[00:25:59] So tech is [00:26:00] enabling all these things to take that workforce, drive the attention, drive the engagement, and ultimately serve their customers better.</p><p>[00:26:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:26:07] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> I&#39;m laughing because , it&#39;s a little bit of a tangent, but as you&#39;re talking about this and, and we&#39;re just kind of on this theme about empowering your workers and thinking about building technology for the people who are running the organization. I think about maybe another industry, maybe the airline industry</p><p>[00:26:23] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:26:23] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> didn&#39;t focus on this and Yeah.</p><p>[00:26:24] Somewhat imploded. And so i, I, I laugh because, We always tell people, if you tell me you&#39;re a data-driven, consumer-centric company, get off the stage.</p><p>[00:26:33] Cuz everyone else, like every single company who&#39;s on our stages. If you&#39;re, if you&#39;re not, get outta here.</p><p>[00:26:37] But I do think sometimes by saying that, and it&#39;s obviously the right approach we ignore what needs to happen for the employees to make this whole business run.</p><p>[00:26:46] And we&#39;ve very clearly what can happen when that gets ignored. So I think, even just kind of looking to lessons from other industries. Made us realize just kind of how important is overall as well.</p><h3>[00:26:57] All about the Data &amp; Data Insights</h3><p>[00:26:57] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> Ricardo, there&#39;s a question that I, I wanted to ask you. [00:27:00] What one of the conversations, cause we&#39;re starting to touch about data Mm-hmm. and you, you&#39;ve got such incredible knowledge in this space. We, we&#39;ve picked conversation almost.</p><p>[00:27:09] The number of speakers that almost thrown their hands in the and said, you know what?</p><p>[00:27:13] Data, trying to understand the customer across all touchpoints. You just can&#39;t do First party, hear a party.</p><p>[00:27:19] I, I can&#39;t get an omnichannel, a true of my customer everywhere, and that&#39;s fine. I&#39;m just gonna have to serve them where you can.</p><p>[00:27:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Uhhuh</p><p>[00:27:28] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> Is that a view you recognize?</p><p>[00:27:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I, I I think kind of maybe the, the, I would kind of break that down to say that I, every retailer I talk to Will, will say, you know, at the end of the day, we are overwhelmed with data.</p><p>[00:27:39] There&#39;s no lack of data . It&#39;s, it&#39;s really a matter of a, what can I do with that? How can I actually analyze it in a way that tells me the story about my customer and who they are, what, what their preferences are, what, how they want to engage with us. That&#39;s what every retailer wants to know. And I think the challenge really is I forget what the statistic is, but the [00:28:00] amount of data that retail generates every day is just overwhelming. I think it&#39;s something on the order of it&#39;s more data than the internet generated five years ago or something. Un unbelievable like that. And so the question every retailer has to ask is, so what am I gonna do with this now?</p><p>[00:28:14] Right? What are the tools I have to use? And even if you have the tools, it&#39;s not enough, right? Because it, even that needs to be looked at by people to interpret what do I do now that I have this knowledge? If I convert that data into something useful and knowledgeable, that gives me a, a possible actions to take.</p><p>[00:28:29] Someone has to take those actions, someone has to make the decision, which is the best action, and then it becomes back to a, a people problem. And I know. . I think even today, but in past years, I&#39;ve, I&#39;ve seen retailers will say, you know, now we think we know how to select the right tools to help us with the analysis, but now my challenge is this is so new, we don&#39;t have anyone on staff that knows how to deal with this.</p><p>[00:28:49] And if I try to go out and hire those people, everyone wants to hire those people. So it&#39;s incredibly competitive and I feel like I don&#39;t even know if we can afford those people on to be part of our, [00:29:00] our organization because it&#39;s so competitive.</p><p>[00:29:02] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> We&#39;re back to people in</p><p>[00:29:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Exactly right. Exactly. It always seems to come back to that.</p><p>[00:29:06] You know, I guess what I&#39;ll maybe turn around because sort of the one thing we haven&#39;t talked about that has come up all over the, the place is, everyone&#39;s favorite new, hyped up technology , is generative ai, ? It&#39;s like last year&#39;s metaverse. And, and one of the promises, I guess I&#39;ll use that strong word about this, is that it is supposed to help with this problem and give you better tools and better decision making capability with all that data that you have.</p><h3>[00:29:29] What About Generative AI?</h3><p>[00:29:29] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I, I&#39;m, I&#39;m wondering, I mean, what, what are your, for both of you, what are your thoughts? Cuz obviously everyone must be coming up to you and saying, oh, what, where, where is the session that we&#39;re gonna talk about generative ai </p><p>[00:29:38] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Every, yeah.</p><p>[00:29:39] You know was actually surprised people were more measured than I expected them to be. I thought it was gonna be like Metaverse last year where it was like, the session is not about metaverse and it&#39;s still snuck in. I, I feel like generative AI was a little bit more measured.</p><p>[00:29:50] Look, I think our big thesis on it is, again, still very early. What feels different to us though is that this feels immediately applicable and it feels like something [00:30:00] that you invest in and see real business results on. Right? So, so many opportunities I think.</p><p>[00:30:06] Gosh, he wasn&#39;t. Sean Downey from Google was just kind of talking about the various use cases for it, whether it&#39;s advertising, whether it&#39;s, you know, looking at supply chain data, whether it&#39;s creatives, whether it&#39;s customer service.</p><p>[00:30:14] We had a slide that was kind of making fun of in a, in a good way. The CB insights market map that they built with just all the, and it was just scrolling, right?</p><p>[00:30:21] I mean, it&#39;s not even retail. Right. It&#39;s every single industry, the use cases. Endless, which I think is a really exciting opportunity.</p><p>[00:30:28] I think we would both agree that a lot of work still needs to be done to make sure this is ethical, to make sure it&#39;s accurate. We&#39;re very early stages, but I think it just feels more real than the metaverse</p><p>[00:30:38] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> well, the, the thing that&#39;s real about it is we all, we all are, are playing on it in our own search engine. I</p><p>[00:30:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right. Yeah.</p><p>[00:30:45] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I wanted to ask you know, the Microsoft guys we talked to yesterday, just what. How many more hits on Bing has gotten in the last</p><p>[00:30:52] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> own</p><p>[00:30:52] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I mean,</p><p>[00:30:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, it</p><p>[00:30:53] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> that&#39;s all I&#39;ve used. Yeah.</p><p>[00:30:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, it</p><p>[00:30:55] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> And, and so we&#39;re so it&#39;s</p><p>[00:30:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> extra users</p><p>[00:30:57] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Exactly. Exactly. It just, it has to be [00:31:00] so, so literally. There&#39;s no technology that, that every single person is using that it has this immediate impact in the business. I mean, we all didn&#39;t pick up point of sale devices or all, didn&#39;t pick up whatever, but this one thing hit, but we, I mean, we were tracking it from an, from a startup perspective.</p><p>[00:31:17] I mean, the amount of, of spending AI even 2, 3, 4 years ago, it&#39;s, it&#39;s, it&#39;s orders of magnitude compared to everything else. Yeah. And then it just exploded.</p><p>[00:31:25] And then it got a little controversial, so then people even used it more and everyone&#39;s trying to trick it and all this stuff,</p><p>[00:31:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. It kinda </p><p>[00:31:30] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> but I think you, you hit on something really important there, right? One of the biggest problems with the metaverse conversation, and we were very clear about this last year as well, the learning curve.</p><p>[00:31:39] To even understand what it is to understand what blockchain is.</p><p>[00:31:42] is virtual gaming actually, the metaverse, what ,is it goggles?</p><p>[00:31:46] ChatGPT, my parents can go, go. on the website, tape it. It is So easily accessible and it&#39;s so Easily understandable. And I think that&#39;s why you&#39;ve seen just meteor meteoric rise in interest compared to the metaverse.</p><p>[00:31:57] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> And the other thing is if you break it down, [00:32:00] There is three potential areas that generative AI can help with, which are fundamental retail challenges.</p><p>[00:32:08] Number one, can I make repetitive tasks more efficient</p><p>[00:32:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Mm-hmm. </p><p>[00:32:11] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> Mm-hmm. , and scale retail is the efficiency of process.</p><p>[00:32:16] that&#39;s what it is. it&#39;s, about </p><p>[00:32:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> scale, right? It&#39;s about </p><p>[00:32:18] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> Great. This is something that can help it. So of course retail&#39;s gonna lean in. The second is can it help drive commerce everywhere? You know, we started a conversation with seamless stores, The amount of copy and creative that it be required to be wherever your customers want to be is mind boggling. Generative AI might be able to help. And thirdly, that the holy grail of mass retail, physical, of personalization, we&#39;ve talked about it every time. And the reason we talk about it every single conference is cause we haven&#39;t cracked it</p><p>[00:32:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> confidence, right? That&#39;s right.</p><p>[00:32:46] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> generative AI has the potential to be able to help in in stalled areas. So there&#39;s three absolutely cool retail, pr drivers that we can see. cases for. So no wonder people are very excited on the plus side.</p><p>[00:32:57] We were, we were in the staff room just before we came [00:33:00] down, and I, we brought up chat, G b T, and I asked you chat, G b T what were the key themes from Shop Talk 2023. And of course he told me that unfortunately it&#39;s historic and can&#39;t can&#39;t Do that. So Krystina pointed out that maybe our jobs were secure for another year yet. So </p><p>[00:33:13] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. </p><p>[00:33:14] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> we&#39;ll take, we&#39;ll take, we&#39;ll take that. </p><p>[00:33:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> that&#39;s right. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I think you&#39;re, you&#39;re, you&#39;re spot on on that. I mean, I, I, I like to I sort of, I steal a, a quote from one of my colleagues at Microsoft who like tells everyone in every meeting, you know, if I haven&#39;t had five retailers I talked to today about generative, generative ai, it&#39;s only because the fourth retailer didn&#39;t get off the phone with me till the end of the day and I couldn&#39;t get to the fifth call</p><p>[00:33:37] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> I like that.</p><p>[00:33:38] That&#39;s a good one! </p><p>[00:33:39] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And, and it&#39;s, and it so true.</p><p>[00:33:40] And, and I think, you&#39;re right about the, different categories. I mean, one of our. Favorite customers that we, we talk about is CarMax, where they&#39;ve taken this technology and, you know, one of, they found that one of the pain points in their customer journey is people go to their website and they wanna research the cars they have in inventory.</p><p>[00:33:57] And one of the tools, of course, is to look at reviews and [00:34:00] comments from people who&#39;ve bought past cars. Well there are thousands of reviews! So you go on there and if you wanna look at a car, what&#39;s your, your choice is to read a thousand reviews before you decide what you want to go look at. Or maybe you just give up or you find some other tool to help you do that research.</p><p>[00:34:14] So they&#39;ve actually leveraged these tools now to do all of that summarization for you. So you can go to their website now and you give it the parameters that interest you about a car. Their new AI tool just comes back to you with immediately the summarization across all those thousands of reviews.</p><p>[00:34:29] Here are the key points that you&#39;re interested in. Here&#39;s how it compares in these cars that you chose to look at.</p><p>[00:34:33] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> I need this so bad. The joke, the joke. in Our household is whenever we travel, I don&#39;t read anything. I literally, I just see, I see a pretty picture and I&#39;m like, book. And it kills my husband. He is like the one that&#39;s reading</p><p>[00:34:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> He wants to research everything, right?</p><p>[00:34:46] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> my god. Every single thing. Well, I think the bars in the wrong place in this hotel or the room is only this many. Yeah, he&#39;s, he&#39;s, on, he&#39;s on it. And I am not So this, this, will help me be a better </p><p>[00:34:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> you go,</p><p>[00:34:56] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> partner</p><h3>[00:34:57] Retail Media Networks</h3><p>[00:34:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> There you go. So I guess let me shift [00:35:00] then to the kind of the last one trending thing I wanted to ask you about because it&#39;s, it&#39;s one that, it&#39;s probably one of my favorites. So, over the past year, and Jeff likes to poke fun of me for this quite a bit.</p><p>[00:35:10] You know, I, I&#39;ve been really big on retail media networks and knew I was going this way. And part of the reason why I&#39;ve been beating the retail media network&#39;s drum for so long cuz I, I started talking about it back in, what did I talk October, 2021,</p><p>[00:35:23] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> it seemed like two decades</p><p>[00:35:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. . Yeah. Yeah.</p><p>[00:35:25] But it, it&#39;s evolved and and I think, again, I think you, you guys mentioned this in this session, that really, what has it evolved to? It&#39;s become more about retailers looking more like a technology company and offering technology solutions and services to other retailers. . And I think that to me is a, is just really interesting into how their own, their whole core business is evolving.</p><p>[00:35:45] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> I think that Ben will jump out of his skin if he doesn&#39;t get to answer</p><p>[00:35:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I know. Well, and I, and Ben&#39;s laugh and Ben&#39;s laughing, so anyone not who&#39;s not can&#39;t see this. I mean, Ben&#39;s laughing because he and I have had this conversation exactly before . </p><p>[00:35:56] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> I don&#39;t, think, I don&#39;t think an hour goes by without ben talking [00:36:00] about in a, in a Very positive way. </p><p>[00:36:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> We&#39;re, we&#39;re of like, minds . </p><p>[00:36:03] we&#39;re of like minds.</p><p>[00:36:04] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> I, I, I, You did a very good job leaving that to the last question, because otherwise we&#39;d have lost a whole of the podcast. </p><p>[00:36:10] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> else if we had started with that. Yes. , </p><p>[00:36:12] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> this is, it&#39;s what the, why is it so important and why do I get so interested about it? Because there&#39;s two levels. One, I think at the, our friend Andrew lipman Insider says it so well. this is the third wave of digital. </p><p>[00:36:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. I absolutely, yeah, totally agree.</p><p>[00:36:26] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> You see the numbers, okay, the numbers, let&#39;s be honest, the numbers are hugely hugely skewed by investment in search returns on Amazon, so yes, we recognize the prize, but you&#39;ve gotta recognize that&#39;s skew in it. But when you strip that back, there is a marketing a digital marketing channel where, which has the opportunity to directly attribute sales to investment and whether retail media is more efficient than other digital marketing channels or at, or it&#39;s just that you can actually prove it, then actually that point is really valuable.</p><p>[00:36:59] [00:37:00] it&#39;s a, it&#39;s a phenomenal trend. It&#39;s a, it&#39;s a huge wave and what&#39;s been really exciting in this particular event, and yeah, we, we, we&#39;ll continue the conversation in a, a European Barcelona as well, I is to stand back and say, okay, we all know what retail media is now. We don&#39;t need to do that. a lot of us are doing it, really, how do we get efficient?</p><p>[00:37:19] Okay, do we, and do I need 600, retail media networks in my portfolio?</p><p>[00:37:23] Where, where do I spend the money? What&#39;s exciting about it is he&#39;s coming back to, and I think this is a point that we made Joe made during the zeitgeist, is it&#39;s about the basics of great advertising. So let&#39;s talk again about creative, let&#39;s talk about engagement, let&#39;s talk about generating fun, and this is another channel to enable us, us to do that.</p><p>[00:37:41] So that that, that&#39;s really exciting. The second element of it, which is why it&#39;s so important, is that element about changing relationships.</p><p>[00:37:49] This idea that a retailer is as, as well as a buyer, is now a seller to their vendors. And it&#39;s not, that&#39;s not just limited to retail media that, that think you have these, we call it [00:38:00]collaborative commerce networks, which is the sharing of logistics, for example. and when you&#39;re adding marketplaces and you see how the Their customers and we feel the retailers are changing and how do you do all of that and drive the margin that&#39;s there to be taken at the same time as keeping that laser focus? Cause we know that as soon as a retailer loses their laser focus on the customer, then that&#39;s a challenge for them. How do you balance those two together? And that&#39;s, that&#39;s still a working progress.</p><p>[00:38:30] And that&#39;s one of the fun conversations that we&#39;ve been having and seeing where, seeing what next and seeing how retailers map that you&#39;ve got. Yeah. If you are a serious retailer or a significant scale, you&#39;ve got to be in the retail media game.</p><p>[00:38:40] You cannot leave that margin on the table. But how do you do it in a way that keeps focused on the customer and you&#39;re targeted now calling that out in their earnings reports to say to the center of their thinking. And that customer-centric approach to alternative revenue streams is gonna be a really interesting trend to </p><p>[00:38:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I agree.</p><p>[00:38:57] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> yeah, I gotta tell you, Ricardo, so, so I was [00:39:00] kidding you about, you know, that. I spent probably three and a half hours yesterday about four different vendors. And I think I now begin, am only beginning to understand literally how much money we&#39;re talking about in re in, in retail media. And it is it&#39;s never been, I mean, it really was never a focus at the, at the other show in in the cold part of the country in January and it&#39;s ever present here. Yeah. And you can&#39;t, as an analyst, it covers the entire landscape. You can&#39;t get away with it. But the people that actually built some of this stuff I talked to. Right. And it&#39;s, and you know, it got the history and it&#39;s like, oh my gosh, we&#39;re not talking about something that&#39;s been around a hundred years.</p><p>[00:39:38] We&#39;re talking about something, it&#39;s really exploding the last three years.</p><p>[00:39:40] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> yes, </p><p>[00:39:41] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> And, and it&#39;s like, that&#39;s what he&#39;s been talking </p><p>[00:39:45] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Ricardo, I&#39;d be curious your thoughts. One debate that we&#39;ve kind of been having, and we haven&#39;t come up with an answer to it yet, is just kind of the dynamics of how this plays out in industries outside of grocery because. . That&#39;s of course been the industry that&#39;s adopted it the fastest, but yeah, the incestuousness of, [00:40:00] of that industry compared to department stores. Apparel. Yeah. Places where companies have the opportunity to be more D to C.</p><p>[00:40:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:40:06] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Part of me wonders if it&#39;s as scalable there where the retailers don&#39;t have as much, let&#39;s go back to the word leverage as they do in the grocery industry. Like, have you thought about that at all? </p><p>[00:40:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I have because you&#39;re right. I mean, there is a very unique kind of trade relationship in grocery between grocers and the CPG companies that, that have all, you know, all those products. That&#39;s a different dynamic. . Then you look at a department store, which is maybe the easiest, I guess, example to kind of look at here, where there&#39;s so many third party apparel products, right?</p><p>[00:40:34] Yes. There&#39;s private labels in, in your department store. Generally people are shopping there because of all the, the name brands that are available. So what&#39;s the say equivalent opportunity? I, I&#39;ve actually been saying, department stores to me feels like probably the number one most untapped opportunity for this, because I think department stores, we all say the same things, right?</p><p>[00:40:53] They&#39;ve sort of lost their luster a little bit, right. Just are shopping less at department stores, but what could department [00:41:00] stores do to make this more interesting? You know, I would say one of those is they have to increase the, just the overall experience in the store. And if you think of visual impression as a consumer walking into a department store versus, any an apparel store where you just see apparel hung on rack.</p><p>[00:41:15] In a department store. I think the merchandising opportunities are much bigger. And if you think about the in-store advertising they can do with digital screens, not the sort where, you know, oh look, there&#39;s a screen hanging on the wall showing a video clip about this designer and their products running.</p><p>[00:41:30] Not that right, because anyone can do that. And, and that&#39;s probably my, my number one least favorite example that anyone can do. And, and I&#39;ve, I&#39;ve been working with digital signage. Since more than 10 years, and, and Jeff is laughing because one of the comments I keep making about retail media is from the early days back in the, you know, maybe early 2010s when I was marketing digital signage solutions, we talked to retailers about creating this kind of media network.</p><p>[00:41:57] It for their brand in their stores. And [00:42:00] not one retailer ever executed it well. The only, they all never got as far as, let&#39;s hang a screen here, let&#39;s hang a screen there and then ask brands to give us content. And I suppose part of the, the conclusion we had is that you can&#39;t ask IT to run that operation.</p><p>[00:42:13] It really needs to be run by marketing, but. If you think about what you can do with screen technology now that you couldn&#39;t do then, you&#39;re not limited by the form factor of a traditional TV monitor type screen. You can have the screen shaped any way you want and you can have any sort of visual layout for it.</p><p>[00:42:29] And if you do that, then I think that opens up new advertising opportunities for those brands that the department store can work with, that feels more, you know, lifestyle oriented. It feels more aspirational for the apparel merchandise that&#39;s there, that they can build off of and entice customers that when you walk by it, you feel like, oh yeah, if I was wearing that jacket, I, I could be doing what this person&#39;s doing on, on that video.</p><p>[00:42:51] I&#39;d be out on the mountain, you know, doing, doing this. And I think it, it just creates a different feel that even if you went to that brand store, you know, they may or may not be [00:43:00]doing that, but uh, it&#39;s different and it&#39;s a different experience. So that&#39;s why I think that&#39;s an untapped opportunity for department stores, and I think that&#39;s where that needs to go.</p><p>[00:43:09] And that&#39;s why I think, adding the in-store component to retail media is so important right now. I think that&#39;s why, that&#39;s where the, the real story is gonna start to surface in, in this whole concept. </p><p>[00:43:18] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> It&#39;s almost like a And I, I, that was really helpful. Thank you for sharing that. But it, it, it sounds to me so different than the conversations that we hear about retail media today. Right. I. Know some friends who work for some large CPG companies, and it&#39;s more of a conversation of, you have to do this, but what you&#39;re describing is like a desire to differentiate your brand.</p><p>[00:43:35] It, it, it feels like a, a shift in, in, in the why.</p><p>[00:43:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:43:38] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Don&#39;t you also think though, that with grocery groceries had slotting fees for forever mm-hmm. , and it just sort of seems like that&#39;s a logical extension of the, those co-marketing allows going back and forth where, actually, I don&#39;t even know this, but I don&#39;t think department stores really have slotting fees because the, the product is constantly changing.</p><p>[00:43:54] So you have other, you have other something, but I, I mean, but</p><p>[00:43:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> way. I mean, you, you have you know, a designer [00:44:00] like a Ralph Lauren may have an arrangement. The departments are based on how much space they get on the floor. and is allocated for them as a brand. And then that dictates, you know, what merchandise do they make available to that department store versus a competitive department store that might give them more space and they make different merchandise available to them.</p><p>[00:44:15] It&#39;s kind of negotiated that way. Not quite the same as the slotting fees that CPG is doing. Grocery.</p><p>[00:44:20] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> and I think the other thing that&#39;s the big drivers, the fact, I mean, just who was on the, who was on the the exhibit floor TikTok, and what were they doing? There was at least three or four live streamers. So the idea that we&#39;re all creating, we&#39;re all creating content and want to create content. , I mean, and that now we&#39;re finally getting to the point where retailers are comfortable maybe not having everything be so hyper produced.</p><p>[00:44:40] You know, I think the, the best example I have is I just love B n h photo. And if, if you don&#39;t know what that is, it&#39;s, it&#39;s a, it&#39;s the best photo shop in, in the world and super high-end skill photographers that, that are selling camera equipment. And my first experience with, I dunno if it&#39;s live streaming, it&#39;s one-to-one.</p><p>[00:44:56] Working with them. I mean, for a camera shop, the, the video quality was [00:45:00] not very high. I mean, it was a little shocking, but it didn&#39;t matter because the expertise and the engagement for me sitting in Silicon Valley to, to Midtown Manhattan and that experience was amazing. And if retailers just embrace that and let their associates create or do whatever they want and, and, and produce all this content to fill up all the screens, you&#39;re gonna see it&#39;s gonna be great.</p><p>[00:45:21] What I don&#39;t wanna see is it becomes so. So over, over marketed and just take the soul out of it because retail should be passion. I mean, I think, I think my dad back in the seventies, you know, in his, his butcher shop, I mean, it was all about passion. It was about this and that, and engaging up and down and da, da, da, da.</p><p>[00:45:40] And, and I think in some ways as we expanded retail, we&#39;ve lost that a little bit of passion. And maybe this is an opportunity, maybe it&#39;s a nice thing, you know, post covid.</p><p>[00:45:50] We&#39;ve now re-embraced and learned and knew what we missed. And man, let&#39;s just have this retail renaissance and let&#39;s get back to the business of having, having fun and having [00:46:00]people engage in this process that we call retail.</p><p>[00:46:02] And then you, and then, you know, all those years you pitched me, you know, with those whole digital signages, now all of a sudden everything&#39;s coming together. The infrastructure, the screens, the cheap, you know, the the screens, the abil, the, the equipment we have to, to create all this content. And we have now, we&#39;ve taught almost everyone, you know, if you have something to say, turn on your, your, your phone and, and shoot something out.</p><p>[00:46:25] Well, when retailers unleashed that, holy smokes</p><p>[00:46:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. And, and now we have all these tools. Kinda coming back to the whole immersive commerce idea. You know, I, I just gave an example of using, fancy screen design, but it could be much more tactile and immersive with all these sensor technologies available.</p><p>[00:46:40] I could pick up a product in a store and that triggers something on, on some sort of visual environment nearby that to give me a different bit of content about it because I interacted with the merchandise and that we couldn&#39;t do that before. Right. So, so that&#39;s another new, new approach that couldn&#39;t, I think, and again, it&#39;s, it&#39;s in-store media and I think that&#39;s why that&#39;s gonna be such a, an</p><p>[00:46:58] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> yeah, that&#39;s, it&#39;s just gonna be such an [00:47:00] insane category. I mean, I almost want to go back to my forecasting days and just start trying to build a model out of that, cuz it is gonna be a massive number. A massive number.</p><h3>[00:47:09] The Evolution of Shop Talk</h3><p>[00:47:09] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, I guess maybe the last thing to kind of wrap us up here we, we talked a little bit before about just how the, how Shop talk is changing itself and you guys announced a new Fall Shop Talk for next year.</p><p>[00:47:19] So I mean, anything you can share with us about how Shop Talk itself is evolving.</p><p>[00:47:23] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Well, we are taking on new challenges listening to customer feedback and just really kind of growing the brand in new and exciting ways. I&#39;ll let Ben kind of tell you a little bit about Europe, cuz that&#39;s in six weeks time, which is hard to wrap your head around. But that&#39;s that&#39;s gonna be really fun.</p><p>[00:47:38] And Barcelona, we&#39;ve got 175 speakers. I&#39;m stealing all your thunder. But, but a fantastic lineup. That&#39;s gonna be in Barcelona and then I think. You know, Ben kind of said it earlier with just the number of meeting requests that we saw in our platform. We recognize that doing this once a year just isn&#39;t quite fulfilling the appetite that people have.</p><p>[00:47:55] And so I think you&#39;ll see us lean a lot more heavily into the networking component. I think we have a [00:48:00] real differentiator there with the Meetup platform. You know, it&#39;s not something that other events in the retail industry have, and so it&#39;s a real competitive edge. The fact that it&#39;s powered by technology, you know, even if someone tried to do it there&#39;s just feasibly no way to do it manually. And so I think you&#39;re gonna see us lean really heavily into that. And I think, you know, to your point about getting back to business, we love content. We&#39;re the content team. We&#39;re always gonna talk about how fantastic the content is.</p><p>[00:48:22] But the p the reason people are here is to be part of our community, right? And so the more that we can do to enable that is I think really kind of the direction that us going in the future. And, and that&#39;s kind of the impetus behind the, the new events that</p><p>[00:48:33] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> So it, it is not at all daunting that we are doing it all again and just slightly,</p><p>[00:48:38] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> We&#39;ve tried to black this out. We&#39;re like, let&#39;s talk about this after</p><p>[00:48:42] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> but you know, look, it&#39;s less less than six weeks now, 9 to 11th of May in Barcelona a fabulous, progressive and dynamic city, which is just where we want to be for our brand.</p><p>[00:48:52] And the challenge of how do you drive retail innovation through digital [00:49:00]transformation in a tough operating environment is as pertinent in Europe as it is in the US. What you&#39;ve then got a layer on top of that is 30 plus different countries, e-commerce in different states of development, very local retailers.</p><p>[00:49:15] So, we think the opportunity for Shop Talk in even greater than it is here. And the reason for that is you&#39;ve got in their own domestic who are trying to crack the same problems as somebody maybe only 200 kilometers away, but they don&#39;t have a relationship with, but they don&#39;t compete.</p><p>[00:49:29] So the opportunity for collaboration, for cooperation, for learning Immense. So we are really excited about what we are building in, in Europe what we&#39;re gonna build in Barcelona. And yeah, the show will open at 11:00 AM on the ninth.</p><p>[00:49:44] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> on May. </p><p>[00:49:45] keep saying, are you guys ready? We&#39;re like, well, it&#39;s It&#39;s coming. So </p><p>[00:49:49] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> we&#39;ve got, we&#39;ve got incredible lineup. We, the, the European retail and brand community have lent into the event stronger than they ever have done.</p><p>[00:49:56] This is only our second year in Europe, but we&#39;ve got an incredible lineup. [00:50:00] And it will be both from a speaker, but especially from a, a delegate perspective.</p><p>[00:50:03] The most senior Event that we&#39;ve ever put and we are seeing</p><p>[00:50:07] people think, you know what, this is a great way to get our teams together, to bring our individuals from across Europe into a place to, to learn and be inspired. And, and we can be more excited to facilitate that. And can&#39;t wait to again, to the Spanish sun because I dunno where you, I dunno where you guys move.</p><p>[00:50:22] The heat of bar of Las Vegas, but this has not been what I was expecting.</p><p>[00:50:26] when I escaped the London winter. So hopefully the</p><p>[00:50:29] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> listen, I&#39;m from California. I&#39;m just glad the, the water&#39;s not coming down and it&#39;s been a long time since the California and said No more water Stop for a while.</p><p>[00:50:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. That&#39;s right. Yep. Well, I, I guess listening to you a Ben, I&#39;m, I&#39;m, I&#39;m kind of gonna gonna say we&#39;re, we&#39;re back to the people element A again, from what you were saying. So it sounds like super exciting for what&#39;s to come and, and shop talk Europe.</p><p>[00:50:49] Fantastic. Well, Krystina, Ben, I wanna thank you so much for sitting down and spending all this time with us. It&#39;s been a fantastic conversation. I, I think we&#39;ve all learned a lot and congratulations on a really [00:51:00] great event again, once again this year. I think content was fabulous of course and just the, the energy and like we&#39;ve been saying now multiple times, that it really brought all the people together, and I think that&#39;s probably the most important part of it.</p><p>[00:51:12] <strong>Ben Miller:</strong> Okay. We really appreciate it and thank you for having us,</p><p>[00:51:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thanks again. Well, Jeff, I think that wraps us up. </p><p>[00:51:18] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> think we&#39;re done. Another good show.</p><p>[00:51:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Another good show.</p><h3>[00:51:20] Show Recap</h3><p>[00:51:20] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Wow, that was such a great discussion you guys had with Christina and Ben, and you covered so much ground. And no surprise you had to cover generative AI and retail media networks in there too.</p><p>[00:51:42] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, that&#39;s true. There&#39;s no escaping the impact of generative AI right now, and yes, it did kind of feel like last year&#39;s metaverse. I mean, it was everywhere at the show in the sessions and everything, but I think there&#39;s an important difference that we kind of touched on that metaverse at last year&#39;s shop talk was all about experiments, right?</p><p>[00:51:59] [00:52:00] Trying to see what consumers would like. How would you transform that into commerce? But with generative ai, the use cases are already out there. They&#39;re being implemented with real world results as we heard in in some of the sessions at Shop Talk. Plus, this doesn&#39;t really require consumer adoption like the Metaverse does.</p><p>[00:52:18] It&#39;s more about operations and efficiency so far, and that does include consumer benefits that just don&#39;t require the consumer to adopt anything yet.</p><p>[00:52:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, what about the retail media piece? I caught the shout out to Andrew Lipsman, our, our favorite retail media analyst.</p><p>[00:52:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, probably another obvious one, right? I did find it telling that shop Talk picked up on what we&#39;ve been saying here before, that retail media is just the start of a B2B path for retailers to sell services to other retailers and brands as a high margin way to improve profitability.</p><p>[00:52:51] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We definitely will need to revisit these two topics more in our next season.</p><p>[00:52:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Absolutely.</p><p>[00:52:56] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So what&#39;s coming next with, , you and Jeff?</p><p>[00:52:59] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, we&#39;ve [00:53:00] got a few super interesting startups that we talked with, and we&#39;ll cap off the series with another great discussion coming with a couple of fan favorite guests. Now, I&#39;ll just give one hint. It&#39;s a follow up to one of our N R F Live conversations.</p><p>[00:53:13] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> All right. Well, I think I know who that is. I mean, obviously I know since I know what&#39;s on the show, but do our listeners.</p><p>[00:53:22] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> We&#39;ll just have to wait and see on that one. but now I do want to thank both Krystina and Ben for joining Jeff and me for this discussion. I know it was quite a feat for them to make the time for this on the last day of the show, just a couple of hours before they went on stage to give their official wrap up presentation.</p><p>[00:53:39] So thank you both so much for joining us.</p><p>[00:53:42] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So with that, Ricardo, it&#39;s time for us to wrap up this first episode in Our Shop Talk Live mini-series crossover with Jeff Roster and This Week In Innovation. It&#39;s a wrap. </p><h3>[00:54:00] Show Close</h3><p>[00:54:00] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> if you enjoyed our shows this season, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don&#39;t miss a minute. Plus, you can watch us, not just listen, on our YouTube channel and like and comment on this season there too.</p><p>[00:54:19] And of course, if you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a full transcript of each episode. Take a look at the show notes and handy links for more deets. I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden.</p><p>[00:54:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> If you&#39;d like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season, follow us on Twitter at Casey C Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter and LinkedIn at Retail Razor for the latest updates. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar,</p><p>[00:54:45] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:54:47] ​</p><p>[00:54:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> and remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. [00:55:00]</p> 18df9e1a-7f9c-49fd-8889-15cfdeb29738 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 07 Apr 2023 20:40:01 +0000 3307 no full S2E11 – Retail Transformers – Ashley Crowder - VNTANA S2E11 – Retail Transformers – Ashley Crowder - VNTANA 11 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E11 – Retail Transformers – Ashley Crowder - VNTANA How will retailers find a path to the metaverse? How can retailers leverage AR and VR long that path? It all starts with having a 3D product infrastructure, but what if all of your systems are designed for 2D and not 3D? How do you adapt your design process, your PLM, and your DAM to 3D when there are so many options? Meet Ashley Crowder, CEO and co-founder of VNTANA, the 3D infrastructure platform that is making 3D accessible to retailers and brands across design, development, sales, and marketing! You’ll find out how Ashley is democratizing access to 3D across the retail business. Not only can this help retailers and brands deliver a unique customer experience but wait until you hear how 3D can help you reduce productions costs, eliminate product samples, and dramatically reduce your time to market for new products. 3D is here and before you need to worry about how you’ll leverage the metaverse, this episode will help you understand how 3D is the beginning of your journey to AR,VR and immersive commerce! And did we mention the cost savings to your retail business? News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E11 Ashley Crowder - VNTANA [00:00:00] [00:00:19] Show Intro [00:00:19] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode eleven of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:00:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show. Retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologist, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. [00:00:37] Ricardo Belmar: We're back with another incredible retail transformer as our guest this week. [00:00:44] Casey Golden: Yes, and I'm so excited to have with us someone who is transforming how retailers and brands embrace the new world of commerce with 3D, AR, VR, and mixed reality. [00:00:55] Ricardo Belmar: If you're a retailer or a brand trying to experiment with the metaverse, or just trying to give [00:01:00] your e-commerce an edge with more visual product pages and 3D visuals of your products or just, you know, looking for ways to incorporate your products digitally in other channels using 3D technology. [00:01:11] This episode is for you. [00:01:13] Casey Golden: So let's welcome our amazing guest, Ashley Crowder, co-founder and C E O of VNTANA, the 3D infrastructure platform that is making 3D accessible across design, development, sales, and marketing. [00:01:26] [00:01:31] Meet Ashley Crowder - VNTANA [00:01:31] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome, Ashley. It's great to have you here with us today. [00:01:33] Ashley Crowder: Thanks so much for having me. [00:01:35] Casey Golden: So just to start off, can you introduce yourself and share a little bit about how you got here and why VNTANA? [00:01:42] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. So my background's in engineering. I went to USC Engineering school, which actually has a partnership with the military called I C T, where they fund research in 3D, AR, VR technology. So I got involved in the space. 15 years ago and [00:02:00] was like, this is gonna change the world. This is amazing. [00:02:03] But there was no career path back then to do this sort of thing. So. ended up co-founding VNTANA with my friend Ben. And, you know, 10 years ago, again, like phones couldn't do AR, web couldn't do 3D. So we were building location-based mixed reality experiences for brands like adidas, Nike, Lexus, and others. [00:02:24] And you know, we built a profitable business doing that, but nobody ever had the right 3D models for web-based or game engine applications. We would get these huge manufacturing design files that would take days or sometimes weeks of manual 3D artist time to fix and convert. And so we started writing software to help automate all this work for ourselves. [00:02:48] And then in 2019 we said, you know what? Now that everyone's phone can do some pretty decent AR, every web browser can support 3D content. We should take this [00:03:00] software we wrote for ourselves and launch it as a platform to make it easy for anybody to instantly embed, share, 3D at scale, you know, anywhere they want. [00:03:10] So, long story short, [00:03:13] Ricardo Belmar: So, Ashley, why don't you tell us a little bit how do companies use VNTANA? [00:03:17] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. So today we work with a lot of apparel and footwear brands who design in 3D today. So apparel tends to use chlo and browse wear. Footwear tends to be key shop moto. Some people use 3D S Max. Whatever program you're using the minute you start to have, you know, hundreds or some of our clients, thousands of 3D assets, some of their IT infrastructure starts to break down. [00:03:41] So most of their existing P L M or DAM systems were only built for 2D assets. And so, you know, they're kind of in this quandary of like, how do I easily manage and distribute these 3D designs within my internal company just for line planning, reviews, merchandising how can [00:04:00] I easily share them with buyers so I can replace physical samples? [00:04:03] And then, you know, how do I get them on E-com? So, That's really what our software comes in. So we wrote patented algorithms that can take these really big 3D files and shrink them down up to 99%, but they still look the same. so we can help you meet whatever specs of whatever end use case you're trying to go to with 3d. [00:04:24] So we get rid of all that manual work. And then it's all housed in our cloud content management system, which you can integrate into your existing dam, PLM or other platforms. So you don't have to replace your IT infrastructure as an organization. You can just quickly upgrade what you have to handle 3D at scale. [00:04:45] Casey Golden: That's awesome. [00:04:47] Ricardo Belmar: Wow, so. Can you tell us a little bit about you know, what kind of results your customers are getting? Because just listening to you now, I, I'm just automatically thinking of that there has to be a pretty sizable time savings, right. In any of [00:05:00] these kind of activities with, with what you're allowing your customers to do. [00:05:03] Ashley Crowder: Yeah, I mean, we're, we're definitely built for that, that scale problem. You know, a lot of people might start with a POC and they're like, oh, we, we did it ourselves. We did 10 3D models. We're like, great, you know, cl clients like Hugo Boss launched 40,000 products a year. You need some automated software to, to be able to do that. [00:05:20] So most clients start using us within that design and development process. So wi within that people like VF Corp, they've been able to upload 2,500 assets. In a couple minutes. They have all the shareable links and file formats they need to deploy in any end use case application. So I know you know, other clients like Adidas, they were able to accomplish in one hour what used to take them six weeks, of manual work. [00:05:47] So definitely a huge time saving. And then kind of the next step is people are, are using us to replace physical samples. So you can quickly, you know, with a click of a button, create a 3D line sheet you can share with a buyer. And so we have [00:06:00] other clients like this, children's clothing brand they've been able to fully replace their physical samples with using our software. [00:06:07] And so they're saving about a hundred thousand dollars per season. And 4.4 tons of carbon, which is pretty cool, uh, that they calculated. And so, you know, that's all in that before you even get to the consumer experience. And then the consumer experience 3D just gives. them such a better understanding of the product. [00:06:28] Clients like Stodd saw returns decrease up to 60% which was pretty amazing. And then we've had other, you know Diesel's used us live on their e-com site. They saw the average cart value increase really significantly and the conversion rate increase with 3d. So yeah, it, it really helps you across your entire product life cycle. [00:06:49] Ricardo Belmar: That's amazing. I mean, you know, we, we focused on that customer side of it in the intro, but just hearing all of the things that you mentioned there really is a, a powerful impact just [00:07:00] across the business. E even you know, you mentioned the carbon savings, so there's even a sustainability impact. [00:07:04] There's an environmental impact. You've got operational process savings, it sounds like. You know, I love, love the example of replacing physical samples cuz then there's automatic cost savings as well. And we always hear in media reports, right? With this kind of technology, just the customer facing piece that you're highlighting, a lot of other internal process areas that really create a lot of savings, [00:07:26] Ashley Crowder: Oh yeah. And, and I mean I still talk to brands all the time with, you know, samples are always late, right? , they're always a pain, they're always late. And even I was talking with this footwear client saying, you know, some retailers. don't wanna meet in person anymore. You know, everybody got used to working from home and I think it was R e I don't hold me to that, but they were like, yeah, we don't wanna do internal, just like send us your digital stuff. [00:07:51] Well, like how do you stand out? Like being able to show, you know, true 3D interactive models and AR, it's like it's sitting on your desk, you know? And [00:08:00] we've got other people who, you know, you might always still make a few samples, but there you don't need to make all the colorways. So maybe you have one shoe or one article of clothing, but then all your colorways are in 3D and you can share, you know, that 3D configurator with them. [00:08:13] So yeah, there's huge benefits and we, we actually did a really great case study with Merrell as well. So, you know, they estimate about 81% cost savings and one month increased speed to market using VNTANA. So that, that speed to market is really important too, cuz you know all that back and forth with before a physical sample. [00:08:35] You make a sample, you ship it, well, I want these changes. Go make another sample. Well now that can happen so much faster. [00:08:43] Casey Golden: I mean, it's, the speed to market is a really big deal. Just being able to get through that process faster. I mean, I feel I would go to market literally with 250 printed CADs [00:08:59] Ashley Crowder: Wow. [00:09:00] Yeah. [00:09:01] Casey Golden: I don't have samples yet, and we definitely did not sample the entire line. Right. [00:09:06] Ashley Crowder: Mm-hmm. [00:09:07] Casey Golden: You'll get to see that later, like in like four months. [00:09:10] I need to sell it in now. And so literally sitting there with little pieces of paper and clothes, happens. [00:09:17] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. [00:09:17] Casey Golden: Merchandise disturbments together, . So a lot of people don't really realize what people are doing at work before the customer ever sees a product. [00:09:30] Ashley Crowder: oh yeah. Like a year [00:09:32] Casey Golden: They're hard jobs, [00:09:34] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. [00:09:36] Casey Golden: and very, very, very oftentimes still archaic in a lot of ways. Do you have a focus point kind of where you start with the company to say like, this is where you can kind of get the biggest ROI out of the challenges that you're, that they're trying to solve? Because I'm sure that when you go in to talk to a brand for the first time, you're able to identify really where, what challenges [00:10:00] or where in their business you can kind of make the highest impact for like a day one project. So if our listeners are, are thinking about this and find it intriguing, where do people start and start at a, in a way that they can get that roi. [00:10:16] Ashley Crowder: So we're generally starting with brands when they are designing in 3d. So they're using CLO brows, you know, key Shop, Moto one of these programs. If you're not there yet, that's where I would start. So if you are an apparel company, look into CLO and browse ware. Those are like the two, you know, best programs. [00:10:36] They each, you know, they're, they're different. But they're both great. So, so check 'em out. For footwear you can generally get Rhino files from your manufacturer, and then you're taking those into a program like KeyShot, I, I think, is much easier to use than Moto. But in KeyShot you can do the uppers and, and create all your different colorways. [00:10:53] So, so I would start there. We also sometimes help create 3D models for people who are just getting started. So sometimes [00:11:00] brands are like, yeah, like we're starting 3d, but like, we don't have enough bandwidth. We have one 3D person for all this stuff. So, so we, we can help create 3D models for you. [00:11:08] And then we're really, y you know, we really were with that like design and B2B sale, that's where everybody starts. Because if you can say, look, I'm gonna reduce my samples by x, I can increase speed to market by y. That's a very clear value proposition for your organization. And then you know that, that kind of next step is using it for e-commerce. [00:11:28] So once you have 3D models on VNTANA, we help. , get them anywhere you want. And, and it's all included. It's instant. One of the big things I'm really excited about is our, our work with Google. And so we're starting, well, one, if you have a 3D viewer on your e-commerce website, we can make sure Google sees that 3D model. [00:11:50] Just like Google sees the 2D images and videos that help with your seo. , they can now see the 3D models, which will help with your seo. And then we can [00:12:00] also we've got early access to published 3D to Google search. So you know, they're, it's not available to everybody yet. They're doing some A B testing. [00:12:08] But if you were to search for, you know, just an example like Merrell Shoe, like you might see a 3D version of that. And so far they're seeing a 6% higher click-through rate with 3D compared to [00:12:20] Ricardo Belmar: Oh wow. [00:12:21] Casey Golden: It's a great way for Google to be pushing innovation. [00:12:25] Ashley Crowder: yeah, and it's just organic search to [00:12:27] Ricardo Belmar: Right, [00:12:28] Ashley Crowder: So, and it makes sense. I mean, 3D is just the, it, it's the next evolution of digital content, right? So, [00:12:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, so just thinking about that, I mean, do you see 3D content like this for, as sort of a, becoming the standard asset that replaces the, the 2D versions, especially once you layer in what Google's doing on search for that? You know, plus anyone working with you that's putting this content on their e-commerce site, do you, do you see this becoming the standard because it's gonna, you know, you mentioned the stat that I picked up on [00:13:00] earlier about lowering your return rates from this, which has become huge now for online retailers. [00:13:04] So do, do you think this is gonna be the new standard [00:13:06] Ashley Crowder: A hundred percent. I mean, it's, think about like when, when web first started supporting video, right? And now it's like, if you don't have video as a brand, what are you doing? You know, like that. That's like everywhere. Everywhere. So 3D is, is that next evolution, right? It it is just more interactive. It's more engaging. [00:13:26] It's showing the product better. On top of that, like. We always talk about 3D as the highest level asset. If you have a 3D model, I can create all the 2D content I want. So, you know, I can generate a product shot from every angle automatically. You know, we're, our team, just like the rest of the world, is like fascinated by all this AI technology that's now out there. [00:13:48] And we're playing around with like, okay, well, like I, I have this 3D model. This Stodd purse, can I automate 2D images of this purse on a bar, this [00:14:00] purse on a yacht? Like, can I automatically generate all these product lifestyle shots? Like this is where all this is going, right? Uh, and at the end of the day, it's gonna be huge cost savings and better consumer experience [00:14:13] Ricardo Belmar: And better time to market with that. [00:14:14] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. [00:14:14] Ricardo Belmar: So then let's, let's keep going on, on that theme. So in addition to the 3D versions of the product becoming sort of the standard asset, let's say for e-commerce we've already kind of talked about and hinted a few other uses for that, that you've brought up. Where, what do you think is next? What do you think comes after that? [00:14:32] What's the next thing that you see retailers going for? Once you have all of this capability? [00:14:37] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. And, and I mean, again, I think you know, step one, it's, it's speeding up to the design process. It's resulting in better products with better fit because 3D just gives you, you know, that better initial design to work off of. You're replacing samples, so you're saving money, increasing speed to market, reducing carbon footprint, and then 3D on E-com is reducing [00:15:00] returns, increasing conversion rate. [00:15:01] But then we can go into all these virtual worlds, right? Like so I'm sure many of you read the the Wall Street Journal article. Every kid is spending all their allowance in Roblox, which is true like my friends can all attest that that's where all their kids' allowance is going. Um, but, but it's true. Like kids aren't going to meet at the mall anymore. [00:15:23] They're like going online and meeting in these virtual worlds, and that's where they wanna look cool. And that's where they're spending money on their, their digital avatar. And you know, the two biggest worlds right now are, are Roblox and Fortnite. Fortnite has, I think 300 and 30 million daily active users, which is pretty crazy. [00:15:42] Um, Roblox Roblox, I think is like a 10th of that. Roblox is like 36 million da daily active users. But either way it's like huge, right? Like if you're a brand. , you need to be there. If you wanna remain relevant and what we're trying to do at VNTANA I is help automate that so [00:16:00] we can take your existing design and instantly deploy a version in Roblox or, or Fortnite. Because right now, you know, only the huge brands like Nike, Walmart have, have just custom built these Roblox worlds from the ground up. Yeah, well that's great. Like how much money does that cost? So not every brand, you know, could have access to that. [00:16:18] So we're trying to help automate getting designs in there. I think another thing that's really cool iHeart Media created iHeart Land in Roblox, and they have programmed content every day of the year. You know, they're a radio station, that's what they do, but they, they have this like virtual concert every day in Roblox and just like a real concert. [00:16:40] If you're a brand, I believe you could do a deal with them for, to do, do a branded sponsor. And I think that's a really cool way to start small. Yeah. Like, you don't need to build your, build your own world like Nike, but you could participate in, in iHeart land, which is cool. So you know, I think this is all really relevant. [00:16:58] You know, everyone obviously like [00:17:00] the, the N F T and crypto market had like a huge plunge. But, but the technology is gonna be around for a while because what , what crypto and NFTs enable is this interoperability. So right now I can buy a Gucci person, Roblox, but it's stuck in Roblox. I can't take that anywhere [00:17:20] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. [00:17:20] Ashley Crowder: With blockchain, I own that Gucci purse and I can take that with me in my wallet into Fortnite or into these other virtual worlds and. You know, that's coming and that's exciting because it really helps, I think, increase the utility of these digital goods. And then, you know, the really creative stuff I've, I've seen too is it's, it's almost people are using crypto and digital goods as like a rewards program. [00:17:45] Right. So you can earn, earn different, you. I'm just making this a Versace coin and then you, you get that. Then I get my robot Versace purse. But it's kind of like building this you know, cult following for people [00:18:00] and, and just with like fun digital giveaways. So, [00:18:03] Casey Golden: Yeah, I'm really excited to see more of the brands coming together to wrap around the customer. And I think that that's something that the Metaverse does really well, that we just kind of fail to do here in the real world. There's so much more of a competitive landscape rather than a community. So I think that that's one of the big takeaways that I'm really excited to see over the next five years is just seeing these brands that used to hang together, actually start playing together. [00:18:29] When you're looking at the future of retail in, in five years, eight years cuz we don't come on. They're slow to adopt. Um, what world are you, are, what world are you envisioning that like as a founder that you're working towards? Like this is the version of the world that you see and everybody kind of needs to take step one and you're really helping them with Welcome to the future. [00:18:57] Ashley Crowder: Yeah, I mean, [00:19:00] I, I see all these amazing interactive 3D consumer experiences with 3D and augmented reality. On e-commerce as well as that same 3D asset within these virtual worlds. So maybe, maybe if you buy a Nike shoe in the real world, it comes with that 3D version of the shoe that you can take in all these virtual spaces. [00:19:23] So your, your virtual avatar can be like your real life, you know, dressing. Um, but in order to do that, and in order to do that at scale, , it's so essential that it starts with that design and so that every brand is like designing in 3D and using that across the retail value chain. Because that's the only way it's gonna work if you're re if you're having to recreate assets for every end use case. [00:19:48] It, it's just not feasible or scalable. It's gonna [00:19:50] Ricardo Belmar: It's not scalable. [00:19:51] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. So so you know, that's what, you know, VNTANA is trying to do with like our automatic optimization to convert what you have into whatever you [00:20:00] need. And then we're also part of the Kronos group, which is a non-profit pushing standards for 3D to make this easier. [00:20:07] So, we have the JPEG of 3D. So everybody can can handle it. It's interoperable. Everybody takes the same thing. And there's startups like us in it, but also huge companies like Wayfair and Microsoft and Nvidia and Autodesk. So there's a lot of people working together to kind of push these standards and, and make it easier for everybody. [00:20:28] So that's what I think is really important. And if you're a brand. Don't be afraid to, to test stuff out. Like that's the beauty of digital is like you can do ab testing and remove it. It's okay. Like don't be afraid. It's , you know? That's my, my biggest thing. Just make sure you set up and test right. Um, cuz then you'll learn and grow and, and, you know. [00:20:50] Casey Golden: I'm, I'm thrilled to see so much more software coming in that is becoming more standardized. And more [00:21:00] scalable where the goal is to get it in and allow it to scale out so we can just move faster, right? We've moved pretty slow over the last 30 years when it comes to the internet to a static e-com store. [00:21:14] Like we haven't , we haven't really done much, um, in that, in that time period because this backend enterprise technology problems, I feel, you know, we a lot, this makes a huge. [00:21:26] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. You know that legacy IT infrastructure, right? And, and we talk with so many clients who are like, well, I'm, you know, doing my PLM upgrade that's gonna take a year and a half. And [00:21:36] Ricardo Belmar: Right, exactly. [00:21:38] Ashley Crowder: OK, . So so, and that's like our whole, that again, why we exist is, okay, well, we're headless. We can, we can upgrade your system to 3D in a day. [00:21:47] We, we can integrate both on, there we go. You don't need to. Try to rewrite everything or replace stuff. Let's just like, you know, upgrade what you have. Because yeah, these legacy systems are [00:22:00] just hard to get rid of and you don't wanna do employee training of, of new products. It's hard. And yeah, so we're, we're trying to just plug in there because yeah, at the end of the day, every system was built for only 2D content in mind, and 3D just has its own, you know, you need a 3D viewer if you're gonna see 3D on the. [00:22:17] You need certain file formats if you're trying to do iOS first Android, because Apple always has to be different . So, [00:22:24] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right. [00:22:25] Ashley Crowder: you know, but, but we help automate that. And I'm kind of jumping around, but I know, uh, uh, just like another suggestion for brands who are starting to design in 3d, I think a, a big thing is to have a material library a consistent material library that your whole team uses to make sure. [00:22:44] you know, if, if someone's designing a brown leather bag, your other designer is using the same brown, right? In the same, same material. And you know, we've got the, there's companies that will scan their own materials using a product like Visu. [00:23:00] Or you can use Adobe Substance. Adobe Substance has thousands of digital materials that are great and amazing. So that's, that's another place you can start, that's not, you know, very expensive. So. [00:23:14] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, a Ashley, let me ask you another question too. As you mentioned a couple interesting things there. What. What's holding back most often? You know, when you start working with a new customer, what are you running into as are the top things that are holding them back and kind of preventing them from really embracing 3d? [00:23:31] You mentioned a few things earlier, but I'm just curious you know, is it that legacy IT infrastructure that they feel like they have to overcome before they can get into this new field? Or are there other things, you know, one of the most common things you, you see that are, are really holding everyone. [00:23:46] Ashley Crowder: Yeah, so I'd say you know, initially it's that just skillset of designing in 3d. So, you know, there, there's a lot of. programs out there, both CLO and browser provide great training materials. They do different [00:24:00] webinars. We actually do monthly webinars now to train people on like, you know, different 3D techniques. [00:24:05] So, so there's that training aspect. Merrill actually has a really great program. So they when they hire students at a school, you know, they're all coming in knowing 3D and software, but like, you know, , they're very green. And then they pair them with this mentor program, with these older designers you know, who've been doing it forever in the company who can teach them more, you know, the, the, the traditional design skills they need, but it's just like pairing. [00:24:29] That's perfect, right? So then they can learn more of the 3D stuff. So I thought that was brilliant. So, so that's initially it, and then once, once you have that 3D design in. , then it's like, oh yeah, crap. We have a thousand 3D models. We can't store them in any system that we currently have. Like what do we do with this? [00:24:47] And like the digital product creation teams we talked to, they're like, yeah, I did all this beautiful work in 3d, but I'm sharing 2D screenshots cuz there's no way I can like, Share a 3D model with someone. I'm like, that's [00:25:00] awful, like [00:25:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:25:01] Ashley Crowder: So yeah. So that's, you know, that's when we come in and help and automate that workflow and make it easy for anybody to view and share and collaborate in, in 3d. [00:25:10] But, but yeah. And then the third I'd say you know, people are just sometimes afraid to try new things. So I'd I'd say, you know, design, you know, work with your, you know, Customer experience team on designing, you know, specific ab tests and, and say, you know, clarify what you're trying to define success as. [00:25:31] You know, before you start the all stuff people know for changing any UX design, right. But, but like, you know, apply it to 3D and do it. And you know, we've, I've continually been surprised at you know, even better outcomes than I thought with, with certain clients. But on the flip side of that, sorry. I will say like, don't be afraid. Like I have like some clients who are like, yeah, we did 3d, but it was like buried on the website because we were kind of like afraid. And I'm like, well, this is like destined to fail, you know, . [00:26:00] So don't do that. [00:26:01] Ricardo Belmar: They were setting themselves up to fail that way. [00:26:03] Casey Golden: I see that a lot actually. A lot of the innovative things that they're doing, there's this level of fear of putting it front and center because of this, gosh, fashion has the biggest fear of failure of any industry like God. Goodness gracious, I'm not putting it up front. We'll bury it here and see what if people like it. [00:26:23] I'm like, that's a terrible guide. Like that's a terrible score. Like put it front and center. There's been some brands that have launched some more immersive experiences or the 3D and they're using a different URL and they're putting it in marketing to take you to a different u l of the brand to keep you away from the limelight, but to do some testing. [00:26:46] And, I find it very interesting because, you know, coming iin from more on the innovation and the tech side and that culture, it's pushed forward with full force and fail fast and iterate. And that's [00:27:00] just not the, the culture that the retail industry has been able to embrace over years. So I see that starting to change more. [00:27:09] Ashley Crowder: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely changing and I think, you know, people see first movers have first mover advantage. Um, you know, I, I've watched a lot of, like Gary Vaynerchuk's videos, love him. He is like, you know, built this like huge empire, but it started with his family wine business. And when email first came out, he was like, oh, I'm gonna advertise with email. [00:27:31] You know, this is when like no one was getting emails. So you actually opened everything. [00:27:35] Ricardo Belmar: read them [00:27:36] Ashley Crowder: You know, and he like, yeah. Yeah. It was exciting [00:27:41] Ricardo Belmar: got email. [00:27:43] Ashley Crowder: Yeah, it was. And, and he like 10 Xed his family wine business by like the first ever email marketing, right. . And then, you know, ended up growing this, this huge marketing empire. [00:27:57] But because he's not afraid to move first and he [00:28:00] sees these new technologies and he implements them and iterates and tests and, and there's a huge advantage to be that first mover for this stuff. [00:28:07] Casey Golden: Yeah. [00:28:08] Ricardo Belmar: Is, is that one of the things you see when you start working with customer and they get you know, more used to using the tools that you're providing? Do you, do you see their confidence improving when it comes to 3d and do they get, or do customers get more excited when they, you, you've given them one success through the system and now do they want, are they ready to jump in right away and find the next thing that they can do with this and succeed at that, and then keep building and building? [00:28:32] Or do they still, do you still see retailers kind of having a very tempered approach and trying to go a little bit slower, even though they got that first success. But they're still cautiously approaching the next one. [00:28:41] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. And, and I will say, I mean our you know, we have an amazing team of like 3D experts who come from like the game engine space and, and look, I get it, 3D is, complex and new. And so, you know, we, we almost end up coming and, and being consultants, some, and, you know, we, we can give you all that information and [00:29:00] explain how this will all work to give you that confidence. [00:29:02] And, and with almost all of our clients, you know, that, I think that's why what we start with that like design and development phase and really show them, hey, like this is how you can easily manage and share. internally, and they see that, you know, save time and costs and, and improve speed to market. And so then, and then they start using it with the sell-in meetings and wholesale, and the buyers love it. [00:29:26] So they're like, okay, this is great. And then they go to, to consumers. That tends to be the general path right. But, you know, I don't know. D Diesel went e-com first. They were great. I mean, they're, they, they're very innovative. [00:29:39] So [00:29:40] Casey Golden: very forward [00:29:41] Ashley Crowder: yeah. [00:29:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:29:43] Casey Golden: No, I think that's great. I mean, I have seen a lot of innovation in the PLM industry. just in general. Like I've seen hologram, like insane hologram technology and it's come out of a PLM company, you know, so the consumer won't see it for years, [00:30:00] but some of the capabilities and some of the things that are possible, definitely the innovation is happening internally for internal tools. [00:30:10] And I think it's important that just more people know that it's coming, and in most cases it's already here and you just don't know about it because it is happening internally. [00:30:21] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. And, and it is coming, I think this year we're gonna see way more 3D on consumer facing experiences, whether it's e-commerce part, partially because of what Google's doing. You know, Amazon is also starting to do 3D and ar. We have an integration so we can publish 3D to Amazon store. Not available to everybody yet. [00:30:40] But you know, I, I think as, as big players like Amazon, Google, and others start to offer 3d, it, it just becomes the standard that much faster, you know? [00:30:52] Casey Golden: It's amazing. [00:30:53] Ricardo Belmar: Right. And so Ashley, we just, one, one last thing before we close this out here, if you could leave listeners, and, [00:31:00] and viewers who will be watching on the, the YouTube channel with one key takeaway from everything we've talked about. What, what would that takeaway be? [00:31:06] Ashley Crowder: 3D is here. , and don't be afraid to experiment. It is adding real value to the bottom line of businesses today. So, you know, 3D is not just the future metaverse Roblox stuff, which yes, I, I love that as a gamer and excited, but it is, you know, saving costs by replacing samples, increasing speeds of market, improving your consumer experience just on your e-comm site, right? [00:31:35] Like this, you don't, you don't have to go VR all the way . You can do the baby steps. So, [00:31:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, go in, go in steps, and go in steps. a Ashley, this has been an amazing discussion. we can't thank you enough for joining us today and having this conversation about what you're doing and what VNTANA is bringing to retailers and brands with 3D capability. [00:31:55] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. [00:31:58] Casey Golden: Hundred percent. I'm so [00:32:00] excited for this space to grow and to watch brands translate 3D aspects into their business. I just hope our listeners were inspired, intrigued, and with the value of 3D assets. It's time to wrap up this episode and wrap up 2D [00:32:17] Ricardo Belmar: It is that time. [00:32:24] Show Close [00:32:24] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. And if you wanna know more about what we talked about today, take a look at the show notes and handy links for more deets. [00:32:43] I'm your co-host Casey Golden. [00:32:44] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at Retail Razor on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:32:59] Casey Golden: [00:33:00] Thanks for joining us. [00:33:01] [00:33:04] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the Retail Razor Show. How will retailers find a path to the metaverse? How can retailers leverage AR and VR along that path? It all starts with having a 3D product infrastructure, but what if all of your systems are designed for 2D and not 3D? How do you adapt your design process, your PLM, and your DAM to 3D when there are so many options? Meet Ashley Crowder, CEO and co-founder of VNTANA, the 3D infrastructure platform that is making 3D accessible to retailers and brands across design, development, sales, and marketing!


You’ll find out how Ashley is democratizing access to 3D across the retail business. Not only can this help retailers and brands deliver a unique customer experience but wait until you hear how 3D can help you reduce productions costs, eliminate product samples, and dramatically reduce your time to market for new products. 3D is here and before you need to worry about how you’ll leverage the metaverse, this episode will help you understand how 3D is the beginning of your journey to AR,VR and immersive commerce! And did we mention the cost savings to your retail business?


News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


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TRANSCRIPT

S2E11 Ashley Crowder - VNTANA

[00:00:00] ​

[00:00:19] Show Intro

[00:00:19] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode eleven of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:00:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show. Retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologist, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.

[00:00:37] Ricardo Belmar: We're back with another incredible retail transformer as our guest this week.

[00:00:44] Casey Golden: Yes, and I'm so excited to have with us someone who is transforming how retailers and brands embrace the new world of commerce with 3D, AR, VR, and mixed reality.

[00:00:55] Ricardo Belmar: If you're a retailer or a brand trying to experiment with the metaverse, or just trying to give [00:01:00] your e-commerce an edge with more visual product pages and 3D visuals of your products or just, you know, looking for ways to incorporate your products digitally in other channels using 3D technology.

[00:01:11] This episode is for you.

[00:01:13] Casey Golden: So let's welcome our amazing guest, Ashley Crowder, co-founder and C E O of VNTANA, the 3D infrastructure platform that is making 3D accessible across design, development, sales, and marketing.

[00:01:26] ​

[00:01:31] Meet Ashley Crowder - VNTANA

[00:01:31] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome, Ashley. It's great to have you here with us today.

[00:01:33] Ashley Crowder: Thanks so much for having me.

[00:01:35] Casey Golden: So just to start off, can you introduce yourself and share a little bit about how you got here and why VNTANA?

[00:01:42] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. So my background's in engineering. I went to USC Engineering school, which actually has a partnership with the military called I C T, where they fund research in 3D, AR, VR technology. So I got involved in the space. 15 years ago and [00:02:00] was like, this is gonna change the world. This is amazing.

[00:02:03] But there was no career path back then to do this sort of thing. So. ended up co-founding VNTANA with my friend Ben. And, you know, 10 years ago, again, like phones couldn't do AR, web couldn't do 3D. So we were building location-based mixed reality experiences for brands like adidas, Nike, Lexus, and others.

[00:02:24] And you know, we built a profitable business doing that, but nobody ever had the right 3D models for web-based or game engine applications. We would get these huge manufacturing design files that would take days or sometimes weeks of manual 3D artist time to fix and convert. And so we started writing software to help automate all this work for ourselves.

[00:02:48] And then in 2019 we said, you know what? Now that everyone's phone can do some pretty decent AR, every web browser can support 3D content. We should take this [00:03:00] software we wrote for ourselves and launch it as a platform to make it easy for anybody to instantly embed, share, 3D at scale, you know, anywhere they want.

[00:03:10] So, long story short,

[00:03:13] Ricardo Belmar: So, Ashley, why don't you tell us a little bit how do companies use VNTANA?

[00:03:17] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. So today we work with a lot of apparel and footwear brands who design in 3D today. So apparel tends to use chlo and browse wear. Footwear tends to be key shop moto. Some people use 3D S Max. Whatever program you're using the minute you start to have, you know, hundreds or some of our clients, thousands of 3D assets, some of their IT infrastructure starts to break down.

[00:03:41] So most of their existing P L M or DAM systems were only built for 2D assets. And so, you know, they're kind of in this quandary of like, how do I easily manage and distribute these 3D designs within my internal company just for line planning, reviews, merchandising how can [00:04:00] I easily share them with buyers so I can replace physical samples?

[00:04:03] And then, you know, how do I get them on E-com? So, That's really what our software comes in. So we wrote patented algorithms that can take these really big 3D files and shrink them down up to 99%, but they still look the same. so we can help you meet whatever specs of whatever end use case you're trying to go to with 3d.

[00:04:24] So we get rid of all that manual work. And then it's all housed in our cloud content management system, which you can integrate into your existing dam, PLM or other platforms. So you don't have to replace your IT infrastructure as an organization. You can just quickly upgrade what you have to handle 3D at scale.

[00:04:45] Casey Golden: That's awesome.

[00:04:47] Ricardo Belmar: Wow, so. Can you tell us a little bit about you know, what kind of results your customers are getting? Because just listening to you now, I, I'm just automatically thinking of that there has to be a pretty sizable time savings, right. In any of [00:05:00] these kind of activities with, with what you're allowing your customers to do.

[00:05:03] Ashley Crowder: Yeah, I mean, we're, we're definitely built for that, that scale problem. You know, a lot of people might start with a POC and they're like, oh, we, we did it ourselves. We did 10 3D models. We're like, great, you know, cl clients like Hugo Boss launched 40,000 products a year. You need some automated software to, to be able to do that.

[00:05:20] So most clients start using us within that design and development process. So wi within that people like VF Corp, they've been able to upload 2,500 assets. In a couple minutes. They have all the shareable links and file formats they need to deploy in any end use case application. So I know you know, other clients like Adidas, they were able to accomplish in one hour what used to take them six weeks, of manual work.

[00:05:47] So definitely a huge time saving. And then kind of the next step is people are, are using us to replace physical samples. So you can quickly, you know, with a click of a button, create a 3D line sheet you can share with a buyer. And so we have [00:06:00] other clients like this, children's clothing brand they've been able to fully replace their physical samples with using our software.

[00:06:07] And so they're saving about a hundred thousand dollars per season. And 4.4 tons of carbon, which is pretty cool, uh, that they calculated. And so, you know, that's all in that before you even get to the consumer experience. And then the consumer experience 3D just gives. them such a better understanding of the product.

[00:06:28] Clients like Stodd saw returns decrease up to 60% which was pretty amazing. And then we've had other, you know Diesel's used us live on their e-com site. They saw the average cart value increase really significantly and the conversion rate increase with 3d. So yeah, it, it really helps you across your entire product life cycle.

[00:06:49] Ricardo Belmar: That's amazing. I mean, you know, we, we focused on that customer side of it in the intro, but just hearing all of the things that you mentioned there really is a, a powerful impact just [00:07:00] across the business. E even you know, you mentioned the carbon savings, so there's even a sustainability impact.

[00:07:04] There's an environmental impact. You've got operational process savings, it sounds like. You know, I love, love the example of replacing physical samples cuz then there's automatic cost savings as well. And we always hear in media reports, right? With this kind of technology, just the customer facing piece that you're highlighting, a lot of other internal process areas that really create a lot of savings,

[00:07:26] Ashley Crowder: Oh yeah. And, and I mean I still talk to brands all the time with, you know, samples are always late, right? , they're always a pain, they're always late. And even I was talking with this footwear client saying, you know, some retailers. don't wanna meet in person anymore. You know, everybody got used to working from home and I think it was R e I don't hold me to that, but they were like, yeah, we don't wanna do internal, just like send us your digital stuff.

[00:07:51] Well, like how do you stand out? Like being able to show, you know, true 3D interactive models and AR, it's like it's sitting on your desk, you know? And [00:08:00] we've got other people who, you know, you might always still make a few samples, but there you don't need to make all the colorways. So maybe you have one shoe or one article of clothing, but then all your colorways are in 3D and you can share, you know, that 3D configurator with them.

[00:08:13] So yeah, there's huge benefits and we, we actually did a really great case study with Merrell as well. So, you know, they estimate about 81% cost savings and one month increased speed to market using VNTANA. So that, that speed to market is really important too, cuz you know all that back and forth with before a physical sample.

[00:08:35] You make a sample, you ship it, well, I want these changes. Go make another sample. Well now that can happen so much faster.

[00:08:43] Casey Golden: I mean, it's, the speed to market is a really big deal. Just being able to get through that process faster. I mean, I feel I would go to market literally with 250 printed CADs

[00:08:59] Ashley Crowder: Wow. [00:09:00] Yeah.

[00:09:01] Casey Golden: I don't have samples yet, and we definitely did not sample the entire line. Right.

[00:09:06] Ashley Crowder: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:07] Casey Golden: You'll get to see that later, like in like four months.

[00:09:10] I need to sell it in now. And so literally sitting there with little pieces of paper and clothes, happens.

[00:09:17] Ashley Crowder: Yeah.

[00:09:17] Casey Golden: Merchandise disturbments together, . So a lot of people don't really realize what people are doing at work before the customer ever sees a product.

[00:09:30] Ashley Crowder: oh yeah. Like a year 

[00:09:32] Casey Golden: They're hard jobs,

[00:09:34] Ashley Crowder: Yeah.

[00:09:36] Casey Golden: and very, very, very oftentimes still archaic in a lot of ways. Do you have a focus point kind of where you start with the company to say like, this is where you can kind of get the biggest ROI out of the challenges that you're, that they're trying to solve? Because I'm sure that when you go in to talk to a brand for the first time, you're able to identify really where, what challenges [00:10:00] or where in their business you can kind of make the highest impact for like a day one project. So if our listeners are, are thinking about this and find it intriguing, where do people start and start at a, in a way that they can get that roi.

[00:10:16] Ashley Crowder: So we're generally starting with brands when they are designing in 3d. So they're using CLO brows, you know, key Shop, Moto one of these programs. If you're not there yet, that's where I would start. So if you are an apparel company, look into CLO and browse ware. Those are like the two, you know, best programs.

[00:10:36] They each, you know, they're, they're different. But they're both great. So, so check 'em out. For footwear you can generally get Rhino files from your manufacturer, and then you're taking those into a program like KeyShot, I, I think, is much easier to use than Moto. But in KeyShot you can do the uppers and, and create all your different colorways.

[00:10:53] So, so I would start there. We also sometimes help create 3D models for people who are just getting started. So sometimes [00:11:00] brands are like, yeah, like we're starting 3d, but like, we don't have enough bandwidth. We have one 3D person for all this stuff. So, so we, we can help create 3D models for you.

[00:11:08] And then we're really, y you know, we really were with that like design and B2B sale, that's where everybody starts. Because if you can say, look, I'm gonna reduce my samples by x, I can increase speed to market by y. That's a very clear value proposition for your organization. And then you know that, that kind of next step is using it for e-commerce.

[00:11:28] So once you have 3D models on VNTANA, we help. , get them anywhere you want. And, and it's all included. It's instant. One of the big things I'm really excited about is our, our work with Google. And so we're starting, well, one, if you have a 3D viewer on your e-commerce website, we can make sure Google sees that 3D model.

[00:11:50] Just like Google sees the 2D images and videos that help with your seo. , they can now see the 3D models, which will help with your seo. And then we can [00:12:00] also we've got early access to published 3D to Google search. So you know, they're, it's not available to everybody yet. They're doing some A B testing.

[00:12:08] But if you were to search for, you know, just an example like Merrell Shoe, like you might see a 3D version of that. And so far they're seeing a 6% higher click-through rate with 3D compared to

[00:12:20] Ricardo Belmar: Oh wow.

[00:12:21] Casey Golden: It's a great way for Google to be pushing innovation.

[00:12:25] Ashley Crowder: yeah, and it's just organic search to 

[00:12:27] Ricardo Belmar: Right, 

[00:12:28] Ashley Crowder: So, and it makes sense. I mean, 3D is just the, it, it's the next evolution of digital content, right? So,

[00:12:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, so just thinking about that, I mean, do you see 3D content like this for, as sort of a, becoming the standard asset that replaces the, the 2D versions, especially once you layer in what Google's doing on search for that? You know, plus anyone working with you that's putting this content on their e-commerce site, do you, do you see this becoming the standard because it's gonna, you know, you mentioned the stat that I picked up on [00:13:00] earlier about lowering your return rates from this, which has become huge now for online retailers.

[00:13:04] So do, do you think this is gonna be the new standard

[00:13:06] Ashley Crowder: A hundred percent. I mean, it's, think about like when, when web first started supporting video, right? And now it's like, if you don't have video as a brand, what are you doing? You know, like that. That's like everywhere. Everywhere. So 3D is, is that next evolution, right? It it is just more interactive. It's more engaging.

[00:13:26] It's showing the product better. On top of that, like. We always talk about 3D as the highest level asset. If you have a 3D model, I can create all the 2D content I want. So, you know, I can generate a product shot from every angle automatically. You know, we're, our team, just like the rest of the world, is like fascinated by all this AI technology that's now out there.

[00:13:48] And we're playing around with like, okay, well, like I, I have this 3D model. This Stodd purse, can I automate 2D images of this purse on a bar, this [00:14:00] purse on a yacht? Like, can I automatically generate all these product lifestyle shots? Like this is where all this is going, right? Uh, and at the end of the day, it's gonna be huge cost savings and better consumer experience

[00:14:13] Ricardo Belmar: And better time to market with that.

[00:14:14] Ashley Crowder: Yeah.

[00:14:14] Ricardo Belmar: So then let's, let's keep going on, on that theme. So in addition to the 3D versions of the product becoming sort of the standard asset, let's say for e-commerce we've already kind of talked about and hinted a few other uses for that, that you've brought up. Where, what do you think is next? What do you think comes after that?

[00:14:32] What's the next thing that you see retailers going for? Once you have all of this capability?

[00:14:37] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. And, and I mean, again, I think you know, step one, it's, it's speeding up to the design process. It's resulting in better products with better fit because 3D just gives you, you know, that better initial design to work off of. You're replacing samples, so you're saving money, increasing speed to market, reducing carbon footprint, and then 3D on E-com is reducing [00:15:00] returns, increasing conversion rate.

[00:15:01] But then we can go into all these virtual worlds, right? Like so I'm sure many of you read the the Wall Street Journal article. Every kid is spending all their allowance in Roblox, which is true like my friends can all attest that that's where all their kids' allowance is going. Um, but, but it's true. Like kids aren't going to meet at the mall anymore.

[00:15:23] They're like going online and meeting in these virtual worlds, and that's where they wanna look cool. And that's where they're spending money on their, their digital avatar. And you know, the two biggest worlds right now are, are Roblox and Fortnite. Fortnite has, I think 300 and 30 million daily active users, which is pretty crazy.

[00:15:42] Um, Roblox Roblox, I think is like a 10th of that. Roblox is like 36 million da daily active users. But either way it's like huge, right? Like if you're a brand. , you need to be there. If you wanna remain relevant and what we're trying to do at VNTANA I is help automate that so [00:16:00] we can take your existing design and instantly deploy a version in Roblox or, or Fortnite. Because right now, you know, only the huge brands like Nike, Walmart have, have just custom built these Roblox worlds from the ground up. Yeah, well that's great. Like how much money does that cost? So not every brand, you know, could have access to that.

[00:16:18] So we're trying to help automate getting designs in there. I think another thing that's really cool iHeart Media created iHeart Land in Roblox, and they have programmed content every day of the year. You know, they're a radio station, that's what they do, but they, they have this like virtual concert every day in Roblox and just like a real concert.

[00:16:40] If you're a brand, I believe you could do a deal with them for, to do, do a branded sponsor. And I think that's a really cool way to start small. Yeah. Like, you don't need to build your, build your own world like Nike, but you could participate in, in iHeart land, which is cool. So you know, I think this is all really relevant.

[00:16:58] You know, everyone obviously like [00:17:00] the, the N F T and crypto market had like a huge plunge. But, but the technology is gonna be around for a while because what , what crypto and NFTs enable is this interoperability. So right now I can buy a Gucci person, Roblox, but it's stuck in Roblox. I can't take that anywhere

[00:17:20] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:20] Ashley Crowder: With blockchain, I own that Gucci purse and I can take that with me in my wallet into Fortnite or into these other virtual worlds and. You know, that's coming and that's exciting because it really helps, I think, increase the utility of these digital goods. And then, you know, the really creative stuff I've, I've seen too is it's, it's almost people are using crypto and digital goods as like a rewards program.

[00:17:45] Right. So you can earn, earn different, you. I'm just making this a Versace coin and then you, you get that. Then I get my robot Versace purse. But it's kind of like building this you know, cult following for people [00:18:00] and, and just with like fun digital giveaways. So,

[00:18:03] Casey Golden: Yeah, I'm really excited to see more of the brands coming together to wrap around the customer. And I think that that's something that the Metaverse does really well, that we just kind of fail to do here in the real world. There's so much more of a competitive landscape rather than a community. So I think that that's one of the big takeaways that I'm really excited to see over the next five years is just seeing these brands that used to hang together, actually start playing together.

[00:18:29] When you're looking at the future of retail in, in five years, eight years cuz we don't come on. They're slow to adopt. Um, what world are you, are, what world are you envisioning that like as a founder that you're working towards? Like this is the version of the world that you see and everybody kind of needs to take step one and you're really helping them with Welcome to the future.

[00:18:57] Ashley Crowder: Yeah, I mean, [00:19:00] I, I see all these amazing interactive 3D consumer experiences with 3D and augmented reality. On e-commerce as well as that same 3D asset within these virtual worlds. So maybe, maybe if you buy a Nike shoe in the real world, it comes with that 3D version of the shoe that you can take in all these virtual spaces.

[00:19:23] So your, your virtual avatar can be like your real life, you know, dressing. Um, but in order to do that, and in order to do that at scale, , it's so essential that it starts with that design and so that every brand is like designing in 3D and using that across the retail value chain. Because that's the only way it's gonna work if you're re if you're having to recreate assets for every end use case.

[00:19:48] It, it's just not feasible or scalable. It's gonna

[00:19:50] Ricardo Belmar: It's not scalable.

[00:19:51] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. So so you know, that's what, you know, VNTANA is trying to do with like our automatic optimization to convert what you have into whatever you [00:20:00] need. And then we're also part of the Kronos group, which is a non-profit pushing standards for 3D to make this easier.

[00:20:07] So, we have the JPEG of 3D. So everybody can can handle it. It's interoperable. Everybody takes the same thing. And there's startups like us in it, but also huge companies like Wayfair and Microsoft and Nvidia and Autodesk. So there's a lot of people working together to kind of push these standards and, and make it easier for everybody.

[00:20:28] So that's what I think is really important. And if you're a brand. Don't be afraid to, to test stuff out. Like that's the beauty of digital is like you can do ab testing and remove it. It's okay. Like don't be afraid. It's , you know? That's my, my biggest thing. Just make sure you set up and test right. Um, cuz then you'll learn and grow and, and, you know.

[00:20:50] Casey Golden: I'm, I'm thrilled to see so much more software coming in that is becoming more standardized. And more [00:21:00] scalable where the goal is to get it in and allow it to scale out so we can just move faster, right? We've moved pretty slow over the last 30 years when it comes to the internet to a static e-com store.

[00:21:14] Like we haven't , we haven't really done much, um, in that, in that time period because this backend enterprise technology problems, I feel, you know, we a lot, this makes a huge.

[00:21:26] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. You know that legacy IT infrastructure, right? And, and we talk with so many clients who are like, well, I'm, you know, doing my PLM upgrade that's gonna take a year and a half. And

[00:21:36] Ricardo Belmar: Right, exactly.

[00:21:38] Ashley Crowder: OK, . So so, and that's like our whole, that again, why we exist is, okay, well, we're headless. We can, we can upgrade your system to 3D in a day.

[00:21:47] We, we can integrate both on, there we go. You don't need to. Try to rewrite everything or replace stuff. Let's just like, you know, upgrade what you have. Because yeah, these legacy systems are [00:22:00] just hard to get rid of and you don't wanna do employee training of, of new products. It's hard. And yeah, so we're, we're trying to just plug in there because yeah, at the end of the day, every system was built for only 2D content in mind, and 3D just has its own, you know, you need a 3D viewer if you're gonna see 3D on the.

[00:22:17] You need certain file formats if you're trying to do iOS first Android, because Apple always has to be different . So,

[00:22:24] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right.

[00:22:25] Ashley Crowder: you know, but, but we help automate that. And I'm kind of jumping around, but I know, uh, uh, just like another suggestion for brands who are starting to design in 3d, I think a, a big thing is to have a material library a consistent material library that your whole team uses to make sure.

[00:22:44] you know, if, if someone's designing a brown leather bag, your other designer is using the same brown, right? In the same, same material. And you know, we've got the, there's companies that will scan their own materials using a product like Visu. [00:23:00] Or you can use Adobe Substance. Adobe Substance has thousands of digital materials that are great and amazing. So that's, that's another place you can start, that's not, you know, very expensive. So.

[00:23:14] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, a Ashley, let me ask you another question too. As you mentioned a couple interesting things there. What. What's holding back most often? You know, when you start working with a new customer, what are you running into as are the top things that are holding them back and kind of preventing them from really embracing 3d?

[00:23:31] You mentioned a few things earlier, but I'm just curious you know, is it that legacy IT infrastructure that they feel like they have to overcome before they can get into this new field? Or are there other things, you know, one of the most common things you, you see that are, are really holding everyone.

[00:23:46] Ashley Crowder: Yeah, so I'd say you know, initially it's that just skillset of designing in 3d. So, you know, there, there's a lot of. programs out there, both CLO and browser provide great training materials. They do different [00:24:00] webinars. We actually do monthly webinars now to train people on like, you know, different 3D techniques.

[00:24:05] So, so there's that training aspect. Merrill actually has a really great program. So they when they hire students at a school, you know, they're all coming in knowing 3D and software, but like, you know, , they're very green. And then they pair them with this mentor program, with these older designers you know, who've been doing it forever in the company who can teach them more, you know, the, the, the traditional design skills they need, but it's just like pairing.

[00:24:29] That's perfect, right? So then they can learn more of the 3D stuff. So I thought that was brilliant. So, so that's initially it, and then once, once you have that 3D design in. , then it's like, oh yeah, crap. We have a thousand 3D models. We can't store them in any system that we currently have. Like what do we do with this?

[00:24:47] And like the digital product creation teams we talked to, they're like, yeah, I did all this beautiful work in 3d, but I'm sharing 2D screenshots cuz there's no way I can like, Share a 3D model with someone. I'm like, that's [00:25:00] awful, like

[00:25:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:25:01] Ashley Crowder: So yeah. So that's, you know, that's when we come in and help and automate that workflow and make it easy for anybody to view and share and collaborate in, in 3d.

[00:25:10] But, but yeah. And then the third I'd say you know, people are just sometimes afraid to try new things. So I'd I'd say, you know, design, you know, work with your, you know, Customer experience team on designing, you know, specific ab tests and, and say, you know, clarify what you're trying to define success as.

[00:25:31] You know, before you start the all stuff people know for changing any UX design, right. But, but like, you know, apply it to 3D and do it. And you know, we've, I've continually been surprised at you know, even better outcomes than I thought with, with certain clients. But on the flip side of that, sorry. I will say like, don't be afraid. Like I have like some clients who are like, yeah, we did 3d, but it was like buried on the website because we were kind of like afraid. And I'm like, well, this is like destined to fail, you know, . [00:26:00] So don't do that.

[00:26:01] Ricardo Belmar: They were setting themselves up to fail that way.

[00:26:03] Casey Golden: I see that a lot actually. A lot of the innovative things that they're doing, there's this level of fear of putting it front and center because of this, gosh, fashion has the biggest fear of failure of any industry like God. Goodness gracious, I'm not putting it up front. We'll bury it here and see what if people like it.

[00:26:23] I'm like, that's a terrible guide. Like that's a terrible score. Like put it front and center. There's been some brands that have launched some more immersive experiences or the 3D and they're using a different URL and they're putting it in marketing to take you to a different u l of the brand to keep you away from the limelight, but to do some testing.

[00:26:46] And, I find it very interesting because, you know, coming iin from more on the innovation and the tech side and that culture, it's pushed forward with full force and fail fast and iterate. And that's [00:27:00] just not the, the culture that the retail industry has been able to embrace over years. So I see that starting to change more.

[00:27:09] Ashley Crowder: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely changing and I think, you know, people see first movers have first mover advantage. Um, you know, I, I've watched a lot of, like Gary Vaynerchuk's videos, love him. He is like, you know, built this like huge empire, but it started with his family wine business. And when email first came out, he was like, oh, I'm gonna advertise with email.

[00:27:31] You know, this is when like no one was getting emails. So you actually opened everything.

[00:27:35] Ricardo Belmar: read them

[00:27:36] Ashley Crowder: You know, and he like, yeah. Yeah. It was exciting

[00:27:41] Ricardo Belmar: got email.

[00:27:43] Ashley Crowder: Yeah, it was. And, and he like 10 Xed his family wine business by like the first ever email marketing, right. . And then, you know, ended up growing this, this huge marketing empire.

[00:27:57] But because he's not afraid to move first and he [00:28:00] sees these new technologies and he implements them and iterates and tests and, and there's a huge advantage to be that first mover for this stuff.

[00:28:07] Casey Golden: Yeah.

[00:28:08] Ricardo Belmar: Is, is that one of the things you see when you start working with customer and they get you know, more used to using the tools that you're providing? Do you, do you see their confidence improving when it comes to 3d and do they get, or do customers get more excited when they, you, you've given them one success through the system and now do they want, are they ready to jump in right away and find the next thing that they can do with this and succeed at that, and then keep building and building?

[00:28:32] Or do they still, do you still see retailers kind of having a very tempered approach and trying to go a little bit slower, even though they got that first success. But they're still cautiously approaching the next one.

[00:28:41] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. And, and I will say, I mean our you know, we have an amazing team of like 3D experts who come from like the game engine space and, and look, I get it, 3D is, complex and new. And so, you know, we, we almost end up coming and, and being consultants, some, and, you know, we, we can give you all that information and [00:29:00] explain how this will all work to give you that confidence.

[00:29:02] And, and with almost all of our clients, you know, that, I think that's why what we start with that like design and development phase and really show them, hey, like this is how you can easily manage and share. internally, and they see that, you know, save time and costs and, and improve speed to market. And so then, and then they start using it with the sell-in meetings and wholesale, and the buyers love it.

[00:29:26] So they're like, okay, this is great. And then they go to, to consumers. That tends to be the general path right. But, you know, I don't know. D Diesel went e-com first. They were great. I mean, they're, they, they're very innovative.

[00:29:39] So 

[00:29:40] Casey Golden: very forward

[00:29:41] Ashley Crowder: yeah.

[00:29:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:29:43] Casey Golden: No, I think that's great. I mean, I have seen a lot of innovation in the PLM industry. just in general. Like I've seen hologram, like insane hologram technology and it's come out of a PLM company, you know, so the consumer won't see it for years, [00:30:00] but some of the capabilities and some of the things that are possible, definitely the innovation is happening internally for internal tools.

[00:30:10] And I think it's important that just more people know that it's coming, and in most cases it's already here and you just don't know about it because it is happening internally.

[00:30:21] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. And, and it is coming, I think this year we're gonna see way more 3D on consumer facing experiences, whether it's e-commerce part, partially because of what Google's doing. You know, Amazon is also starting to do 3D and ar. We have an integration so we can publish 3D to Amazon store. Not available to everybody yet.

[00:30:40] But you know, I, I think as, as big players like Amazon, Google, and others start to offer 3d, it, it just becomes the standard that much faster, you know?

[00:30:52] Casey Golden: It's amazing.

[00:30:53] Ricardo Belmar: Right. And so Ashley, we just, one, one last thing before we close this out here, if you could leave listeners, and, [00:31:00] and viewers who will be watching on the, the YouTube channel with one key takeaway from everything we've talked about. What, what would that takeaway be?

[00:31:06] Ashley Crowder: 3D is here. , and don't be afraid to experiment. It is adding real value to the bottom line of businesses today. So, you know, 3D is not just the future metaverse Roblox stuff, which yes, I, I love that as a gamer and excited, but it is, you know, saving costs by replacing samples, increasing speeds of market, improving your consumer experience just on your e-comm site, right?

[00:31:35] Like this, you don't, you don't have to go VR all the way . You can do the baby steps. So,

[00:31:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, go in, go in steps, and go in steps. a Ashley, this has been an amazing discussion. we can't thank you enough for joining us today and having this conversation about what you're doing and what VNTANA is bringing to retailers and brands with 3D capability.

[00:31:55] Ashley Crowder: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:31:58] Casey Golden: Hundred percent. I'm so [00:32:00] excited for this space to grow and to watch brands translate 3D aspects into their business. I just hope our listeners were inspired, intrigued, and with the value of 3D assets. It's time to wrap up this episode and wrap up 2D

[00:32:17] Ricardo Belmar: It is that time.

[00:32:24] Show Close

[00:32:24] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. And if you wanna know more about what we talked about today, take a look at the show notes and handy links for more deets.

[00:32:43] I'm your co-host Casey Golden.

[00:32:44] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at Retail Razor on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:32:59] Casey Golden: [00:33:00] Thanks for joining us.

[00:33:01] ​

[00:33:04] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the Retail Razor Show. 

]]> <p>How will retailers find a path to the metaverse? How can retailers leverage AR and VR along that path? It all starts with having a 3D product infrastructure, but what if all of your systems are designed for 2D and not 3D? How do you adapt your design process, your PLM, and your DAM to 3D when there are so many options? Meet <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-crowder-55a9875/" rel="nofollow">Ashley Crowder</a>, CEO and co-founder of <a href="https://www.vntana.com/" rel="nofollow">VNTANA</a>, the 3D infrastructure platform that is making 3D accessible to retailers and brands across design, development, sales, and marketing!</p><p><br></p><p>You’ll find out how Ashley is democratizing access to 3D across the retail business. Not only can this help retailers and brands deliver a unique customer experience but wait until you hear how 3D can help you reduce productions costs, eliminate product samples, and dramatically reduce your time to market for new products. 3D is here and before you need to worry about how you’ll leverage the metaverse, this episode will help you understand how 3D is the beginning of your journey to AR,VR and immersive commerce! And did we mention the cost savings to your retail business?</p><p><br></p><p>News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review &amp; be mentioned in future episodes! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, </em>and<em> Overclocked, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><h1>TRANSCRIPT</h1><h2><strong>S2E11 Ashley Crowder - VNTANA</strong></h2><p>[00:00:00] ​</p><h3>[00:00:19] Show Intro</h3><p>[00:00:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello, and welcome to season two, episode eleven of the Retail Razor Show. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:00:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show. Retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologist, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.</p><p>[00:00:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> We&#39;re back with another incredible retail transformer as our guest this week.</p><p>[00:00:44] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yes, and I&#39;m so excited to have with us someone who is transforming how retailers and brands embrace the new world of commerce with 3D, AR, VR, and mixed reality.</p><p>[00:00:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> If you&#39;re a retailer or a brand trying to experiment with the metaverse, or just trying to give [00:01:00] your e-commerce an edge with more visual product pages and 3D visuals of your products or just, you know, looking for ways to incorporate your products digitally in other channels using 3D technology.</p><p>[00:01:11] This episode is for you.</p><p>[00:01:13] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So let&#39;s welcome our amazing guest, Ashley Crowder, co-founder and C E O of VNTANA, the 3D infrastructure platform that is making 3D accessible across design, development, sales, and marketing.</p><p>[00:01:26] ​</p><h3>[00:01:31] Meet Ashley Crowder - VNTANA</h3><p>[00:01:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Welcome, Ashley. It&#39;s great to have you here with us today.</p><p>[00:01:33] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Thanks so much for having me.</p><p>[00:01:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So just to start off, can you introduce yourself and share a little bit about how you got here and why VNTANA?</p><p>[00:01:42] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah. So my background&#39;s in engineering. I went to USC Engineering school, which actually has a partnership with the military called I C T, where they fund research in 3D, AR, VR technology. So I got involved in the space. 15 years ago and [00:02:00] was like, this is gonna change the world. This is amazing.</p><p>[00:02:03] But there was no career path back then to do this sort of thing. So. ended up co-founding VNTANA with my friend Ben. And, you know, 10 years ago, again, like phones couldn&#39;t do AR, web couldn&#39;t do 3D. So we were building location-based mixed reality experiences for brands like adidas, Nike, Lexus, and others.</p><p>[00:02:24] And you know, we built a profitable business doing that, but nobody ever had the right 3D models for web-based or game engine applications. We would get these huge manufacturing design files that would take days or sometimes weeks of manual 3D artist time to fix and convert. And so we started writing software to help automate all this work for ourselves.</p><p>[00:02:48] And then in 2019 we said, you know what? Now that everyone&#39;s phone can do some pretty decent AR, every web browser can support 3D content. We should take this [00:03:00] software we wrote for ourselves and launch it as a platform to make it easy for anybody to instantly embed, share, 3D at scale, you know, anywhere they want.</p><p>[00:03:10] So, long story short,</p><p>[00:03:13] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So, Ashley, why don&#39;t you tell us a little bit how do companies use VNTANA?</p><p>[00:03:17] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah. So today we work with a lot of apparel and footwear brands who design in 3D today. So apparel tends to use chlo and browse wear. Footwear tends to be key shop moto. Some people use 3D S Max. Whatever program you&#39;re using the minute you start to have, you know, hundreds or some of our clients, thousands of 3D assets, some of their IT infrastructure starts to break down.</p><p>[00:03:41] So most of their existing P L M or DAM systems were only built for 2D assets. And so, you know, they&#39;re kind of in this quandary of like, how do I easily manage and distribute these 3D designs within my internal company just for line planning, reviews, merchandising how can [00:04:00] I easily share them with buyers so I can replace physical samples?</p><p>[00:04:03] And then, you know, how do I get them on E-com? So, That&#39;s really what our software comes in. So we wrote patented algorithms that can take these really big 3D files and shrink them down up to 99%, but they still look the same. so we can help you meet whatever specs of whatever end use case you&#39;re trying to go to with 3d.</p><p>[00:04:24] So we get rid of all that manual work. And then it&#39;s all housed in our cloud content management system, which you can integrate into your existing dam, PLM or other platforms. So you don&#39;t have to replace your IT infrastructure as an organization. You can just quickly upgrade what you have to handle 3D at scale.</p><p>[00:04:45] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That&#39;s awesome.</p><p>[00:04:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Wow, so. Can you tell us a little bit about you know, what kind of results your customers are getting? Because just listening to you now, I, I&#39;m just automatically thinking of that there has to be a pretty sizable time savings, right. In any of [00:05:00] these kind of activities with, with what you&#39;re allowing your customers to do.</p><p>[00:05:03] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah, I mean, we&#39;re, we&#39;re definitely built for that, that scale problem. You know, a lot of people might start with a POC and they&#39;re like, oh, we, we did it ourselves. We did 10 3D models. We&#39;re like, great, you know, cl clients like Hugo Boss launched 40,000 products a year. You need some automated software to, to be able to do that.</p><p>[00:05:20] So most clients start using us within that design and development process. So wi within that people like VF Corp, they&#39;ve been able to upload 2,500 assets. In a couple minutes. They have all the shareable links and file formats they need to deploy in any end use case application. So I know you know, other clients like Adidas, they were able to accomplish in one hour what used to take them six weeks, of manual work.</p><p>[00:05:47] So definitely a huge time saving. And then kind of the next step is people are, are using us to replace physical samples. So you can quickly, you know, with a click of a button, create a 3D line sheet you can share with a buyer. And so we have [00:06:00] other clients like this, children&#39;s clothing brand they&#39;ve been able to fully replace their physical samples with using our software.</p><p>[00:06:07] And so they&#39;re saving about a hundred thousand dollars per season. And 4.4 tons of carbon, which is pretty cool, uh, that they calculated. And so, you know, that&#39;s all in that before you even get to the consumer experience. And then the consumer experience 3D just gives. them such a better understanding of the product.</p><p>[00:06:28] Clients like Stodd saw returns decrease up to 60% which was pretty amazing. And then we&#39;ve had other, you know Diesel&#39;s used us live on their e-com site. They saw the average cart value increase really significantly and the conversion rate increase with 3d. So yeah, it, it really helps you across your entire product life cycle.</p><p>[00:06:49] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s amazing. I mean, you know, we, we focused on that customer side of it in the intro, but just hearing all of the things that you mentioned there really is a, a powerful impact just [00:07:00] across the business. E even you know, you mentioned the carbon savings, so there&#39;s even a sustainability impact.</p><p>[00:07:04] There&#39;s an environmental impact. You&#39;ve got operational process savings, it sounds like. You know, I love, love the example of replacing physical samples cuz then there&#39;s automatic cost savings as well. And we always hear in media reports, right? With this kind of technology, just the customer facing piece that you&#39;re highlighting, a lot of other internal process areas that really create a lot of savings,</p><p>[00:07:26] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Oh yeah. And, and I mean I still talk to brands all the time with, you know, samples are always late, right? , they&#39;re always a pain, they&#39;re always late. And even I was talking with this footwear client saying, you know, some retailers. don&#39;t wanna meet in person anymore. You know, everybody got used to working from home and I think it was R e I don&#39;t hold me to that, but they were like, yeah, we don&#39;t wanna do internal, just like send us your digital stuff.</p><p>[00:07:51] Well, like how do you stand out? Like being able to show, you know, true 3D interactive models and AR, it&#39;s like it&#39;s sitting on your desk, you know? And [00:08:00] we&#39;ve got other people who, you know, you might always still make a few samples, but there you don&#39;t need to make all the colorways. So maybe you have one shoe or one article of clothing, but then all your colorways are in 3D and you can share, you know, that 3D configurator with them.</p><p>[00:08:13] So yeah, there&#39;s huge benefits and we, we actually did a really great case study with Merrell as well. So, you know, they estimate about 81% cost savings and one month increased speed to market using VNTANA. So that, that speed to market is really important too, cuz you know all that back and forth with before a physical sample.</p><p>[00:08:35] You make a sample, you ship it, well, I want these changes. Go make another sample. Well now that can happen so much faster.</p><p>[00:08:43] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I mean, it&#39;s, the speed to market is a really big deal. Just being able to get through that process faster. I mean, I feel I would go to market literally with 250 printed CADs</p><p>[00:08:59] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Wow. [00:09:00] Yeah.</p><p>[00:09:01] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I don&#39;t have samples yet, and we definitely did not sample the entire line. Right.</p><p>[00:09:06] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:09:07] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> You&#39;ll get to see that later, like in like four months.</p><p>[00:09:10] I need to sell it in now. And so literally sitting there with little pieces of paper and clothes, happens.</p><p>[00:09:17] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:09:17] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Merchandise disturbments together, . So a lot of people don&#39;t really realize what people are doing at work before the customer ever sees a product.</p><p>[00:09:30] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> oh yeah. Like a year </p><p>[00:09:32] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> They&#39;re hard jobs,</p><p>[00:09:34] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:09:36] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> and very, very, very oftentimes still archaic in a lot of ways. Do you have a focus point kind of where you start with the company to say like, this is where you can kind of get the biggest ROI out of the challenges that you&#39;re, that they&#39;re trying to solve? Because I&#39;m sure that when you go in to talk to a brand for the first time, you&#39;re able to identify really where, what challenges [00:10:00] or where in their business you can kind of make the highest impact for like a day one project. So if our listeners are, are thinking about this and find it intriguing, where do people start and start at a, in a way that they can get that roi.</p><p>[00:10:16] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> So we&#39;re generally starting with brands when they are designing in 3d. So they&#39;re using CLO brows, you know, key Shop, Moto one of these programs. If you&#39;re not there yet, that&#39;s where I would start. So if you are an apparel company, look into CLO and browse ware. Those are like the two, you know, best programs.</p><p>[00:10:36] They each, you know, they&#39;re, they&#39;re different. But they&#39;re both great. So, so check &#39;em out. For footwear you can generally get Rhino files from your manufacturer, and then you&#39;re taking those into a program like KeyShot, I, I think, is much easier to use than Moto. But in KeyShot you can do the uppers and, and create all your different colorways.</p><p>[00:10:53] So, so I would start there. We also sometimes help create 3D models for people who are just getting started. So sometimes [00:11:00] brands are like, yeah, like we&#39;re starting 3d, but like, we don&#39;t have enough bandwidth. We have one 3D person for all this stuff. So, so we, we can help create 3D models for you.</p><p>[00:11:08] And then we&#39;re really, y you know, we really were with that like design and B2B sale, that&#39;s where everybody starts. Because if you can say, look, I&#39;m gonna reduce my samples by x, I can increase speed to market by y. That&#39;s a very clear value proposition for your organization. And then you know that, that kind of next step is using it for e-commerce.</p><p>[00:11:28] So once you have 3D models on VNTANA, we help. , get them anywhere you want. And, and it&#39;s all included. It&#39;s instant. One of the big things I&#39;m really excited about is our, our work with Google. And so we&#39;re starting, well, one, if you have a 3D viewer on your e-commerce website, we can make sure Google sees that 3D model.</p><p>[00:11:50] Just like Google sees the 2D images and videos that help with your seo. , they can now see the 3D models, which will help with your seo. And then we can [00:12:00] also we&#39;ve got early access to published 3D to Google search. So you know, they&#39;re, it&#39;s not available to everybody yet. They&#39;re doing some A B testing.</p><p>[00:12:08] But if you were to search for, you know, just an example like Merrell Shoe, like you might see a 3D version of that. And so far they&#39;re seeing a 6% higher click-through rate with 3D compared to</p><p>[00:12:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh wow.</p><p>[00:12:21] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It&#39;s a great way for Google to be pushing innovation.</p><p>[00:12:25] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> yeah, and it&#39;s just organic search to </p><p>[00:12:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right, </p><p>[00:12:28] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> So, and it makes sense. I mean, 3D is just the, it, it&#39;s the next evolution of digital content, right? So,</p><p>[00:12:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, so just thinking about that, I mean, do you see 3D content like this for, as sort of a, becoming the standard asset that replaces the, the 2D versions, especially once you layer in what Google&#39;s doing on search for that? You know, plus anyone working with you that&#39;s putting this content on their e-commerce site, do you, do you see this becoming the standard because it&#39;s gonna, you know, you mentioned the stat that I picked up on [00:13:00] earlier about lowering your return rates from this, which has become huge now for online retailers.</p><p>[00:13:04] So do, do you think this is gonna be the new standard</p><p>[00:13:06] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> A hundred percent. I mean, it&#39;s, think about like when, when web first started supporting video, right? And now it&#39;s like, if you don&#39;t have video as a brand, what are you doing? You know, like that. That&#39;s like everywhere. Everywhere. So 3D is, is that next evolution, right? It it is just more interactive. It&#39;s more engaging.</p><p>[00:13:26] It&#39;s showing the product better. On top of that, like. We always talk about 3D as the highest level asset. If you have a 3D model, I can create all the 2D content I want. So, you know, I can generate a product shot from every angle automatically. You know, we&#39;re, our team, just like the rest of the world, is like fascinated by all this AI technology that&#39;s now out there.</p><p>[00:13:48] And we&#39;re playing around with like, okay, well, like I, I have this 3D model. This Stodd purse, can I automate 2D images of this purse on a bar, this [00:14:00] purse on a yacht? Like, can I automatically generate all these product lifestyle shots? Like this is where all this is going, right? Uh, and at the end of the day, it&#39;s gonna be huge cost savings and better consumer experience</p><p>[00:14:13] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And better time to market with that.</p><p>[00:14:14] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:14:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So then let&#39;s, let&#39;s keep going on, on that theme. So in addition to the 3D versions of the product becoming sort of the standard asset, let&#39;s say for e-commerce we&#39;ve already kind of talked about and hinted a few other uses for that, that you&#39;ve brought up. Where, what do you think is next? What do you think comes after that?</p><p>[00:14:32] What&#39;s the next thing that you see retailers going for? Once you have all of this capability?</p><p>[00:14:37] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah. And, and I mean, again, I think you know, step one, it&#39;s, it&#39;s speeding up to the design process. It&#39;s resulting in better products with better fit because 3D just gives you, you know, that better initial design to work off of. You&#39;re replacing samples, so you&#39;re saving money, increasing speed to market, reducing carbon footprint, and then 3D on E-com is reducing [00:15:00] returns, increasing conversion rate.</p><p>[00:15:01] But then we can go into all these virtual worlds, right? Like so I&#39;m sure many of you read the the Wall Street Journal article. Every kid is spending all their allowance in Roblox, which is true like my friends can all attest that that&#39;s where all their kids&#39; allowance is going. Um, but, but it&#39;s true. Like kids aren&#39;t going to meet at the mall anymore.</p><p>[00:15:23] They&#39;re like going online and meeting in these virtual worlds, and that&#39;s where they wanna look cool. And that&#39;s where they&#39;re spending money on their, their digital avatar. And you know, the two biggest worlds right now are, are Roblox and Fortnite. Fortnite has, I think 300 and 30 million daily active users, which is pretty crazy.</p><p>[00:15:42] Um, Roblox Roblox, I think is like a 10th of that. Roblox is like 36 million da daily active users. But either way it&#39;s like huge, right? Like if you&#39;re a brand. , you need to be there. If you wanna remain relevant and what we&#39;re trying to do at VNTANA I is help automate that so [00:16:00] we can take your existing design and instantly deploy a version in Roblox or, or Fortnite. Because right now, you know, only the huge brands like Nike, Walmart have, have just custom built these Roblox worlds from the ground up. Yeah, well that&#39;s great. Like how much money does that cost? So not every brand, you know, could have access to that.</p><p>[00:16:18] So we&#39;re trying to help automate getting designs in there. I think another thing that&#39;s really cool iHeart Media created iHeart Land in Roblox, and they have programmed content every day of the year. You know, they&#39;re a radio station, that&#39;s what they do, but they, they have this like virtual concert every day in Roblox and just like a real concert.</p><p>[00:16:40] If you&#39;re a brand, I believe you could do a deal with them for, to do, do a branded sponsor. And I think that&#39;s a really cool way to start small. Yeah. Like, you don&#39;t need to build your, build your own world like Nike, but you could participate in, in iHeart land, which is cool. So you know, I think this is all really relevant.</p><p>[00:16:58] You know, everyone obviously like [00:17:00] the, the N F T and crypto market had like a huge plunge. But, but the technology is gonna be around for a while because what , what crypto and NFTs enable is this interoperability. So right now I can buy a Gucci person, Roblox, but it&#39;s stuck in Roblox. I can&#39;t take that anywhere</p><p>[00:17:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:17:20] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> With blockchain, I own that Gucci purse and I can take that with me in my wallet into Fortnite or into these other virtual worlds and. You know, that&#39;s coming and that&#39;s exciting because it really helps, I think, increase the utility of these digital goods. And then, you know, the really creative stuff I&#39;ve, I&#39;ve seen too is it&#39;s, it&#39;s almost people are using crypto and digital goods as like a rewards program.</p><p>[00:17:45] Right. So you can earn, earn different, you. I&#39;m just making this a Versace coin and then you, you get that. Then I get my robot Versace purse. But it&#39;s kind of like building this you know, cult following for people [00:18:00] and, and just with like fun digital giveaways. So,</p><p>[00:18:03] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I&#39;m really excited to see more of the brands coming together to wrap around the customer. And I think that that&#39;s something that the Metaverse does really well, that we just kind of fail to do here in the real world. There&#39;s so much more of a competitive landscape rather than a community. So I think that that&#39;s one of the big takeaways that I&#39;m really excited to see over the next five years is just seeing these brands that used to hang together, actually start playing together.</p><p>[00:18:29] When you&#39;re looking at the future of retail in, in five years, eight years cuz we don&#39;t come on. They&#39;re slow to adopt. Um, what world are you, are, what world are you envisioning that like as a founder that you&#39;re working towards? Like this is the version of the world that you see and everybody kind of needs to take step one and you&#39;re really helping them with Welcome to the future.</p><p>[00:18:57] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah, I mean, [00:19:00] I, I see all these amazing interactive 3D consumer experiences with 3D and augmented reality. On e-commerce as well as that same 3D asset within these virtual worlds. So maybe, maybe if you buy a Nike shoe in the real world, it comes with that 3D version of the shoe that you can take in all these virtual spaces.</p><p>[00:19:23] So your, your virtual avatar can be like your real life, you know, dressing. Um, but in order to do that, and in order to do that at scale, , it&#39;s so essential that it starts with that design and so that every brand is like designing in 3D and using that across the retail value chain. Because that&#39;s the only way it&#39;s gonna work if you&#39;re re if you&#39;re having to recreate assets for every end use case.</p><p>[00:19:48] It, it&#39;s just not feasible or scalable. It&#39;s gonna</p><p>[00:19:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It&#39;s not scalable.</p><p>[00:19:51] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah. So so you know, that&#39;s what, you know, VNTANA is trying to do with like our automatic optimization to convert what you have into whatever you [00:20:00] need. And then we&#39;re also part of the Kronos group, which is a non-profit pushing standards for 3D to make this easier.</p><p>[00:20:07] So, we have the JPEG of 3D. So everybody can can handle it. It&#39;s interoperable. Everybody takes the same thing. And there&#39;s startups like us in it, but also huge companies like Wayfair and Microsoft and Nvidia and Autodesk. So there&#39;s a lot of people working together to kind of push these standards and, and make it easier for everybody.</p><p>[00:20:28] So that&#39;s what I think is really important. And if you&#39;re a brand. Don&#39;t be afraid to, to test stuff out. Like that&#39;s the beauty of digital is like you can do ab testing and remove it. It&#39;s okay. Like don&#39;t be afraid. It&#39;s , you know? That&#39;s my, my biggest thing. Just make sure you set up and test right. Um, cuz then you&#39;ll learn and grow and, and, you know.</p><p>[00:20:50] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I&#39;m, I&#39;m thrilled to see so much more software coming in that is becoming more standardized. And more [00:21:00] scalable where the goal is to get it in and allow it to scale out so we can just move faster, right? We&#39;ve moved pretty slow over the last 30 years when it comes to the internet to a static e-com store.</p><p>[00:21:14] Like we haven&#39;t , we haven&#39;t really done much, um, in that, in that time period because this backend enterprise technology problems, I feel, you know, we a lot, this makes a huge.</p><p>[00:21:26] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah. You know that legacy IT infrastructure, right? And, and we talk with so many clients who are like, well, I&#39;m, you know, doing my PLM upgrade that&#39;s gonna take a year and a half. And</p><p>[00:21:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right, exactly.</p><p>[00:21:38] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> OK, . So so, and that&#39;s like our whole, that again, why we exist is, okay, well, we&#39;re headless. We can, we can upgrade your system to 3D in a day.</p><p>[00:21:47] We, we can integrate both on, there we go. You don&#39;t need to. Try to rewrite everything or replace stuff. Let&#39;s just like, you know, upgrade what you have. Because yeah, these legacy systems are [00:22:00] just hard to get rid of and you don&#39;t wanna do employee training of, of new products. It&#39;s hard. And yeah, so we&#39;re, we&#39;re trying to just plug in there because yeah, at the end of the day, every system was built for only 2D content in mind, and 3D just has its own, you know, you need a 3D viewer if you&#39;re gonna see 3D on the.</p><p>[00:22:17] You need certain file formats if you&#39;re trying to do iOS first Android, because Apple always has to be different . So,</p><p>[00:22:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right, right.</p><p>[00:22:25] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> you know, but, but we help automate that. And I&#39;m kind of jumping around, but I know, uh, uh, just like another suggestion for brands who are starting to design in 3d, I think a, a big thing is to have a material library a consistent material library that your whole team uses to make sure.</p><p>[00:22:44] you know, if, if someone&#39;s designing a brown leather bag, your other designer is using the same brown, right? In the same, same material. And you know, we&#39;ve got the, there&#39;s companies that will scan their own materials using a product like Visu. [00:23:00] Or you can use Adobe Substance. Adobe Substance has thousands of digital materials that are great and amazing. So that&#39;s, that&#39;s another place you can start, that&#39;s not, you know, very expensive. So.</p><p>[00:23:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, a Ashley, let me ask you another question too. As you mentioned a couple interesting things there. What. What&#39;s holding back most often? You know, when you start working with a new customer, what are you running into as are the top things that are holding them back and kind of preventing them from really embracing 3d?</p><p>[00:23:31] You mentioned a few things earlier, but I&#39;m just curious you know, is it that legacy IT infrastructure that they feel like they have to overcome before they can get into this new field? Or are there other things, you know, one of the most common things you, you see that are, are really holding everyone.</p><p>[00:23:46] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah, so I&#39;d say you know, initially it&#39;s that just skillset of designing in 3d. So, you know, there, there&#39;s a lot of. programs out there, both CLO and browser provide great training materials. They do different [00:24:00] webinars. We actually do monthly webinars now to train people on like, you know, different 3D techniques.</p><p>[00:24:05] So, so there&#39;s that training aspect. Merrill actually has a really great program. So they when they hire students at a school, you know, they&#39;re all coming in knowing 3D and software, but like, you know, , they&#39;re very green. And then they pair them with this mentor program, with these older designers you know, who&#39;ve been doing it forever in the company who can teach them more, you know, the, the, the traditional design skills they need, but it&#39;s just like pairing.</p><p>[00:24:29] That&#39;s perfect, right? So then they can learn more of the 3D stuff. So I thought that was brilliant. So, so that&#39;s initially it, and then once, once you have that 3D design in. , then it&#39;s like, oh yeah, crap. We have a thousand 3D models. We can&#39;t store them in any system that we currently have. Like what do we do with this?</p><p>[00:24:47] And like the digital product creation teams we talked to, they&#39;re like, yeah, I did all this beautiful work in 3d, but I&#39;m sharing 2D screenshots cuz there&#39;s no way I can like, Share a 3D model with someone. I&#39;m like, that&#39;s [00:25:00] awful, like</p><p>[00:25:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:25:01] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> So yeah. So that&#39;s, you know, that&#39;s when we come in and help and automate that workflow and make it easy for anybody to view and share and collaborate in, in 3d.</p><p>[00:25:10] But, but yeah. And then the third I&#39;d say you know, people are just sometimes afraid to try new things. So I&#39;d I&#39;d say, you know, design, you know, work with your, you know, Customer experience team on designing, you know, specific ab tests and, and say, you know, clarify what you&#39;re trying to define success as.</p><p>[00:25:31] You know, before you start the all stuff people know for changing any UX design, right. But, but like, you know, apply it to 3D and do it. And you know, we&#39;ve, I&#39;ve continually been surprised at you know, even better outcomes than I thought with, with certain clients. But on the flip side of that, sorry. I will say like, don&#39;t be afraid. Like I have like some clients who are like, yeah, we did 3d, but it was like buried on the website because we were kind of like afraid. And I&#39;m like, well, this is like destined to fail, you know, . [00:26:00] So don&#39;t do that.</p><p>[00:26:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> They were setting themselves up to fail that way.</p><p>[00:26:03] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I see that a lot actually. A lot of the innovative things that they&#39;re doing, there&#39;s this level of fear of putting it front and center because of this, gosh, fashion has the biggest fear of failure of any industry like God. Goodness gracious, I&#39;m not putting it up front. We&#39;ll bury it here and see what if people like it.</p><p>[00:26:23] I&#39;m like, that&#39;s a terrible guide. Like that&#39;s a terrible score. Like put it front and center. There&#39;s been some brands that have launched some more immersive experiences or the 3D and they&#39;re using a different URL and they&#39;re putting it in marketing to take you to a different u l of the brand to keep you away from the limelight, but to do some testing.</p><p>[00:26:46] And, I find it very interesting because, you know, coming iin from more on the innovation and the tech side and that culture, it&#39;s pushed forward with full force and fail fast and iterate. And that&#39;s [00:27:00] just not the, the culture that the retail industry has been able to embrace over years. So I see that starting to change more.</p><p>[00:27:09] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah, I mean, it&#39;s definitely changing and I think, you know, people see first movers have first mover advantage. Um, you know, I, I&#39;ve watched a lot of, like Gary Vaynerchuk&#39;s videos, love him. He is like, you know, built this like huge empire, but it started with his family wine business. And when email first came out, he was like, oh, I&#39;m gonna advertise with email.</p><p>[00:27:31] You know, this is when like no one was getting emails. So you actually opened everything.</p><p>[00:27:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> read them</p><p>[00:27:36] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> You know, and he like, yeah. Yeah. It was exciting</p><p>[00:27:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> got email.</p><p>[00:27:43] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah, it was. And, and he like 10 Xed his family wine business by like the first ever email marketing, right. . And then, you know, ended up growing this, this huge marketing empire.</p><p>[00:27:57] But because he&#39;s not afraid to move first and he [00:28:00] sees these new technologies and he implements them and iterates and tests and, and there&#39;s a huge advantage to be that first mover for this stuff.</p><p>[00:28:07] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:28:08] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Is, is that one of the things you see when you start working with customer and they get you know, more used to using the tools that you&#39;re providing? Do you, do you see their confidence improving when it comes to 3d and do they get, or do customers get more excited when they, you, you&#39;ve given them one success through the system and now do they want, are they ready to jump in right away and find the next thing that they can do with this and succeed at that, and then keep building and building?</p><p>[00:28:32] Or do they still, do you still see retailers kind of having a very tempered approach and trying to go a little bit slower, even though they got that first success. But they&#39;re still cautiously approaching the next one.</p><p>[00:28:41] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah. And, and I will say, I mean our you know, we have an amazing team of like 3D experts who come from like the game engine space and, and look, I get it, 3D is, complex and new. And so, you know, we, we almost end up coming and, and being consultants, some, and, you know, we, we can give you all that information and [00:29:00] explain how this will all work to give you that confidence.</p><p>[00:29:02] And, and with almost all of our clients, you know, that, I think that&#39;s why what we start with that like design and development phase and really show them, hey, like this is how you can easily manage and share. internally, and they see that, you know, save time and costs and, and improve speed to market. And so then, and then they start using it with the sell-in meetings and wholesale, and the buyers love it.</p><p>[00:29:26] So they&#39;re like, okay, this is great. And then they go to, to consumers. That tends to be the general path right. But, you know, I don&#39;t know. D Diesel went e-com first. They were great. I mean, they&#39;re, they, they&#39;re very innovative.</p><p>[00:29:39] So </p><p>[00:29:40] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> very forward</p><p>[00:29:41] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> yeah.</p><p>[00:29:42] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:29:43] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> No, I think that&#39;s great. I mean, I have seen a lot of innovation in the PLM industry. just in general. Like I&#39;ve seen hologram, like insane hologram technology and it&#39;s come out of a PLM company, you know, so the consumer won&#39;t see it for years, [00:30:00] but some of the capabilities and some of the things that are possible, definitely the innovation is happening internally for internal tools.</p><p>[00:30:10] And I think it&#39;s important that just more people know that it&#39;s coming, and in most cases it&#39;s already here and you just don&#39;t know about it because it is happening internally.</p><p>[00:30:21] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah. And, and it is coming, I think this year we&#39;re gonna see way more 3D on consumer facing experiences, whether it&#39;s e-commerce part, partially because of what Google&#39;s doing. You know, Amazon is also starting to do 3D and ar. We have an integration so we can publish 3D to Amazon store. Not available to everybody yet.</p><p>[00:30:40] But you know, I, I think as, as big players like Amazon, Google, and others start to offer 3d, it, it just becomes the standard that much faster, you know?</p><p>[00:30:52] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It&#39;s amazing.</p><p>[00:30:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. And so Ashley, we just, one, one last thing before we close this out here, if you could leave listeners, and, [00:31:00] and viewers who will be watching on the, the YouTube channel with one key takeaway from everything we&#39;ve talked about. What, what would that takeaway be?</p><p>[00:31:06] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> 3D is here. , and don&#39;t be afraid to experiment. It is adding real value to the bottom line of businesses today. So, you know, 3D is not just the future metaverse Roblox stuff, which yes, I, I love that as a gamer and excited, but it is, you know, saving costs by replacing samples, increasing speeds of market, improving your consumer experience just on your e-comm site, right?</p><p>[00:31:35] Like this, you don&#39;t, you don&#39;t have to go VR all the way . You can do the baby steps. So,</p><p>[00:31:42] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, go in, go in steps, and go in steps. a Ashley, this has been an amazing discussion. we can&#39;t thank you enough for joining us today and having this conversation about what you&#39;re doing and what VNTANA is bringing to retailers and brands with 3D capability.</p><p>[00:31:55] <strong>Ashley Crowder:</strong> Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.</p><p>[00:31:58] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Hundred percent. I&#39;m so [00:32:00] excited for this space to grow and to watch brands translate 3D aspects into their business. I just hope our listeners were inspired, intrigued, and with the value of 3D assets. It&#39;s time to wrap up this episode and wrap up 2D</p><p>[00:32:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It is that time.</p><h3>[00:32:24] Show Close</h3><p>[00:32:24] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don&#39;t miss a minute. And if you wanna know more about what we talked about today, take a look at the show notes and handy links for more deets.</p><p>[00:32:43] I&#39;m your co-host Casey Golden.</p><p>[00:32:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at Retail Razor on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:32:59] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> [00:33:00] Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:33:01] ​</p><p>[00:33:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the Retail Razor Show. </p> bf8ef685-34f7-426d-af8d-fde15bc36f57 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 10 Mar 2023 12:05:00 +0000 2000 no full S2E10e #NRFLive SPECIAL - NRF Recap with Greg Jones S2E10e #NRFLive SPECIAL - NRF Recap with Greg Jones 10 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E10e #NRFLive SPECIAL - NRF Recap with Greg Jones Did you miss #NRF2023 in January this y ear? No worries, we’ve got you covered this episode with our special NRF Recap! It’s all part of our special podcast cross-over series, #NRFLive, with the This Week In Innovation podcast. In Part 5, the final episode in the series, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Jeff Roster speak with the North America Lead for Retail & Consumer Goods at Avanade, Greg Jones. Join Greg, Jeff & Ricardo as they discuss the biggest trends and themes they saw at the show, from exhibitors, to startups, to what retailers told them were their main takeaways from the show. Regular cohost Casey Golden also joins Ricardo for a quick introduction and recap! You’ll also find out why this episode was not recorded live and in-person at #NRF2023 in the fabulous Avanade lounge. Instead it was recorded post-NRF – and yes, there is a story behind that! As a bonus, you can watch the video of the entire conversation on our YouTube channel. A big thank you to Avanade for sponsoring this series and making the recordings possible! News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E10e Avanade - Greg Jones [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Show Intro [00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 part five of the Retail Razor Show. This is the fifth and final episode in our multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 Show in January. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:00:36] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show, retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And welcome N R F fans to our hottake, hashtag N R F Live the mini-series. [00:00:56] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Casey, we are at the last episode in our crossover [00:01:00] event with Jeff Roster and his This Week in Innovation podcast, and this is a, a special final episode to close out the series. Thanks to our sponsor, Avanade that graciously allowed us to record the whole series in their, in their fabulous lounge space overlooking the main expo floor. [00:01:15] For this final episode, Jeff and I were fortunate enough to sit down with Avanade's Greg Jones, their North America lead for Retail and Consumer Goods, and, and also a friend of ours, to recap what we saw at N R F, talk about the state of startups in retail which AAuD actually hosted three startup showcases during NRF with Microsoft for Startups team and our fellow Retail Avenger, Shish Shridhar. [00:01:36] And two of our podcast guests came from those showcases, the 1 M robotics and Z blocks. They're both part of that program. And of course I know it's always near and dear to your heart anytime we talk about retail startups. [00:01:47] Casey Golden: It is so a big shout out to Avanade for supporting and sponsoring this crossover and just, wow. I mean, this whole series has been a celebration of [00:02:00] retail and just showing us what N R F was all about this year. [00:02:04] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. And you know, this discussion with Greg really highlights what I think so many in the media have been missing about the retail industry. That is really a more positive outlook about what's to come in 2023. You know, we hear about all the, the negative things that get reported, but that wasn't really the mood. [00:02:22] At this N R F and, and we talk about that in this in this episode, you know, positive in the sense that even with all of those headwinds that are out there and global problems and everything, retail still finds a way to innovate and finds a way to deliver great customer and employee experiences. [00:02:35] Casey Golden: Yes, and, and the customer experiences always begin with the employee experience, and often that starts with what software they're using or lack thereof. So really enjoy this highlight. [00:02:50] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let's dive right in and listen to our conversation with Greg Jones from Avanade [00:03:01] Greg Jones Interview [00:03:01] Ricardo Belmar: Hello everybody. We are back to wrap up our N R F Live series that Jeff roster and I have been fortunate enough to speak to a number of fascinating folks during N R F Week and graciously as Avanade has sponsored us and gave us the space and facility to record. We're coming back after the show now with Greg Jones from Avanade to kind of talk through what stood out to us, what were some of the highlights of the show, and you know, see what where we think things are gonna go next. So, without any further delay, Jeff, what do you say? We just dive in. [00:03:36] Jeff Roster: Absolutely. Let's get, let's get it going. [00:03:38] Ricardo Belmar: All right. So please to welcome Greg Jones from Avanade. Greg, why don't you introduce yourself, kick us off and tell us a little bit about your background and what you're doing at Avanade. [00:03:47] Greg Jones: Yeah, absolutely. Ricardo. And, and look, thank, thank you both. Yeah, Ricardo and, and Jeff for the time and the opportunity. I think we're, we're. Yeah, really excited collectively on the, on nrf. You know, it was obviously great to be back in, back in person and, and [00:04:00] yeah, great to be able to have this conversation as well. [00:04:01] Cause there's a, a lot, a lot that got learnt and a lot that kind of excited the industry as well. So a bit of background. So Greg Jones run the, and look after the North America practice here at Avanade for retail and consumer goods. Avanade, you know, for, for those who don't know was a, a joint founded organization back in 2000 between Accenture and Microsoft. [00:04:20] We're a global system integrator, you know, over 60,000 people globally, but very focused around industry as a whole. And, and retail is one of the priority industries that we have. And that's what we definitely brought together as part of Avanade as and NRF was the opportunity to be able to showcase some of the capabilities that Avanade is delivering. [00:04:38] So bringing all of our expertise together. So I've been with Avanade for two years. Prior to that I was with Microsoft as part of the global retail team looking after everything from partner ecosystem and business strategy for quite a number of years. And again, pleased to be able to be here with yourself and, and Jeff. [00:04:54] Ricardo Belmar: Well, thanks very much for, for joining us, Greg. What, why don't you give us your sense of, [00:05:00] you know, obviously Avanade, you guys had a, a number of really great activities during N R F. You had the the breakfast session at the beginning of the week. You had some startup showcases happening with Microsoft for startups. [00:05:11] Why don't you, you know, give us what you think are some of the highlights from the various activities, and then maybe we can talk a little bit about what, things stood out to all of us from the overall, from N R F? [00:05:20] Greg Jones: Yeah, no, absolutely. I was gonna say, yeah, we, we did a, a lot to be able to, to really bring you know, the, the view of retail in the current climate as well. So we needed to make sure that, you know, we were coming to the event with capabilities. And some of the, the demos that we had that were very focused around helping organizations you know, get the value out of what they've got now as well. [00:05:40] And, and I would say that, you know, retailers as a whole yeah, I've never faced such a, a volume of, of, or a variety of challenges as well that that's facing them at the moment. And it's also facing and, and making some tough decisions. And that was part of the conversations that happened throughout NRF is that people are there. [00:05:55] To look at where they need to be able to pivot and how to be able to pivot their organizations, you know, during [00:06:00] the, the current climate at the moment as well. And I would say, yeah, through the discussions, there were two primary challenges that were, were being discussed, which is the, the need to control costs. [00:06:09] And also to, yeah, protect margins and there need to be a responsible retailer as, as well and around, you know, doing what matters in the current climate, being able to still ensure that delight experience for the customers. But there's also an element of the employee experience that really came through as part of the discussions that we had. [00:06:27] In particular a breakfast panel. That we did during nrf, where we had, you know, the Chief HR officer from Northern Tools and Equipment, very much talking about the importance of the employees and how through enabling those employees can continue that delight experience and, and be that, you know, continuation of that brand engagement with customers as well. [00:06:46] So, It was actually really interesting on, on some of the elements that that came together. The way that we really came, you know, to N R F was to be able to look at what we're calling yeah, we call it reignite Physical Retail, which is really bringing that [00:07:00] physical retail and, you know, obviously the online worlds together. [00:07:03] And how to be able to, you know, look at all aspects of that, that journey or, you know, what we're calling the, the customers. The only channel is how to be able to engage with that customer through all aspects of the channel of engagement, how we can help retailers and being able to do that. Yeah, it was great to be able to see the, the messaging landed very well with the, the client conversations. [00:07:20] You know, the discussions that we had with, uh, with customers was very on point in regards to, you know, the, the challenges that they're facing and how we can definitely help , but there are also some surprises out there as well that we could talk about a little bit later as well. [00:07:33] Ricardo Belmar: I'm, I'm curious in, in some of your client conversations, so some of the things I heard fairly consistently, and you, and you mentioned it at the beginning too, is this idea of you're trying to find and identify the things I need to do as a retailer to make my operations more efficient, to kind of lower that cost basis while still. [00:07:50] Doing it in a way that's not gonna impact my overall customer experience, particularly in store now, that I think we can all agree that we can put to bed all, all those worries about stores going away, that hadn't been [00:08:00] real narrative for so long that you know, we can now all safely point to and say, yeah, that's not happening. [00:08:04] Stores, stores are here to stay. But we're any, you know, was that a consistent theme that you heard as well? [00:08:09] Greg Jones: Yeah, it was, I mean, you know, obviously the, the stores aren't going away. At all. You know, we've all heard that the business models of stores have to change. You know, and that's, that's no secret. You know, you're looking at new store designs that are, are coming out across the globe of, of how to be able to provide more of a curated experience. [00:08:24] You know, and that, that in itself, I think is just part of the new business model that, you know, retailers are having to be able to make sure that the, the stores are, you know, the showroom. It's that way to be able to bridge , their online channels with the physical channels. And that pivot, I think definitely has been occurring more so post pandemic as well. [00:08:42] And I think that's where, where people are now starting to see we need best, best of both worlds. You know, we're seeing Nike as an example, that are, are very much looking at redefining their, their store environments you know, through that whole direct to consumer engagement and, and element that they're, they're driving for as well, which I think is, is super, super cool in regards to [00:09:00] what they're doing. [00:09:00] And. It almost like if I look at, you know, the Nike store in New York, it's a, it's a destination. You walk past there and people are there to do experience that, that whole engagement point. But I think it also came back to some of the, the fundamentals as well where retailers are, are sitting there going, we've invested in, in a lot of technology over the course of the last three years. [00:09:19] Are we getting the most out of that as well? And that's, again, that was a pivot of the discussion on kind of doing more with less or doing more with the investments that they've already made and, and looking at ways to be able to really squeeze the most out of those investments. Is there opportunities to be able to consolidate? [00:09:35] Absolutely. But it's also a way to be able to look at maximizing the investments that they've already put into place. So I'd be def definitely curious, like, you know, Jeff and, and Ricardo. I mean, you know, from discussions that you had with, with customers, did you look at that or hear in regards to getting more outta the investments that people have made to be able to, to reach the, the goals their wanting to achieve. [00:09:53] Jeff Roster: You wanna go first, Ricardo, or you want. [00:09:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, sure. I mean, from, from my perspective, I, I, I definitely heard [00:10:00] quite a bit of that, of, you know, what do I need to do to extract that benefit, right? From everything I've already invested in. I, I kind of, I tended to hear that coupled with, you know, this recognition that I, my goal isn't to cut a cost, right? [00:10:14] My goal was to gain efficiency. You know, strengthen some aspect of an operation that perhaps when we first created this new capability, the goal at the time was to just get that capability out there with, with not too much regard for how expensive was it gonna be to deliver it. And now was the time to figure out, well, now that I've delivered it and we have this cap, this customer facing capability, how can we do it in a more efficient way? [00:10:37] And if that means I have to invest in, in another, you know, supplemental capability on top of that to help facilitate the overall reduction of the operational cost long term, then that's okay. There was some recognition that that might be necessary, but I think I, I saw as a trend that You know, if there are a lot of really interesting new technologies out there, they were being viewed with the lens of how does that [00:11:00] make me more efficient? [00:11:01] Or how does that make my operation better? Versus where, you know, the last N R F I remember the, the, the thought would've been, wow, that's really neat. How, how, how well received is that gonna be? If my customer sees that, then therefore I need to have it, [00:11:13] Greg Jones: Yeah. [00:11:14] Ricardo Belmar: which is a very different lens. [00:11:15] Greg Jones: Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, one of the, as I said, you know, one of the surprises that, that I saw and certainly heard across, you know, the entire show, show floor was, you know, Leading into N R F. There was certainly, you know, there was you know, amplification, there was obviously the buzz that was happening about the metaverse. [00:11:32] How is that being applied? You know, retailers that are looking at that, brands that are, are definitely jumping in and, and, and exploring and engaging with the, the metaverse for their, for their particular brand. But I was actually quite surprised that, you know, I didn't see walking into, you know, walking into the Javits Center, [00:11:48] yeah, I remember the days where, you know, AI was the, the big topic and you'd have banners all over the place in regards to ai, this and, you know, AI empowered retail and you know, what AI can do for you and your customer experiences [00:12:00] or the, the wonderful world of big data. You know, it was kind of all over the, the place walking to the Javits Center didn't see anything in regards to metaverse. [00:12:09] Now and visually, just in regards to, it wasn't necessarily there as a, you know, welcome to, or the, you know, the metaverse is changing the world and enabling, and I think part of that is, is the fact of people are still on, not on the edge, but they're still looking at how that can be applied and what that is going to do for their engagement, but also from an operational standpoint, given the current climate as well, is around do we look at supply chain visibility in inventory, our employees, how do we gain control of our, our entire data estate? Do we do that or we do metaverse? It's kind of the, there's a, there's an interesting kind of like, almost like a, a, an internal debate that people like it's, it's there, understand it, it's kind of, there's a new way to engage, but there's other things that we need to be focusing on as well. [00:12:56] Jeff Roster: Yeah, that's such an interesting point. Is, in the first three quarters of my [00:13:00] career I was about adoption. You know, my Gartner in i h l days where, where are we in adoption. And it's interesting kind of even talking about the M word metaverse. You know, a lot of analysts that I'm friends with are going back and forth and are saying, well, I didn't see any Metaverse stuff there. [00:13:15] Well you should have went up to the innovation lab because there was plenty of that there. But it, but the thing was, and I agree with you a hundred percent, Greg, there was, I, I don't think I saw the word metaverse once, but there was all the components of it, which is why I'm really such a big fan. And I got this first from Microsoft, the term immersive commerce, because it's not right now, it's, I don't think anybody's looking to buy a metaverse solution, but boy, you sure can find some very interesting stuff around holograms. [00:13:41] You can definitely find a lot around 3D objects. You can definitely find some stuff around around augmented reality. Not so much on the, on the, on the, on the goggles yet. I, I kind of get that. I mean, you know, I, I don't know know they see that, but boy, When you start thinking about what Ulta's doing with Roblox, what [00:14:00] home, what see not Home Depot Walmart is doing with Roblox, you are in, you're really seeing that immersive commerce. [00:14:06] Pieces begin to pick up and it's almost like there's a maturation in how we message the, how the vendor community messages this stuff. And it really, I, I didn't see, I, it just felt like a very mature approach to, to the show. Just. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Like screamy there's a great example. [00:14:24] I'll use, it's one of your competitors. Like, I, I'll, I'll be nice and not use it, but there was one a few years ago, there was like a, a, a certain signage that was everywhere and it was like, you know, it. I don't know. It seemed kind of silly, so I thi I just felt like it was a really, really mature way of going about the business of not just adopt, you know, technology adoption, but also also the, the, the push towards innovation. [00:14:49] Definitely on the you know, in the, in the innovation lab and definitely it. You know, in the Microsoft for startup stuff, I mean, there was some crazy interesting technology. So I, I love that balance. You [00:15:00] know, I just, I, I'm not sure, I'm not sure my, my fellow analysts though, picked up on that, that nuance cuz they're not chasing innovation. [00:15:05] They shouldn't be, they should be worried about where, what, you know, where, where we are in adoption. And boy that's that's gonna be a fun thing for us, some of us to chase, I think in the next, next 18 months. [00:15:15] Ricardo Belmar: Well, and, and you know, there, there's some things I saw too, so, I mean, I agree too. Greg said that, you know, that you didn't see Metaverse being flashed around everywhere. Like, like we had, you know, in places last year. And, and I agree with what you said, Jeff, that there are a lot of components about it spread out and, and lots of different places because, and I kind of perceive it that, as, you know, some of these components have useful things you can do with them today. Whereas I think everyone is still kind of figuring out what's my truly useful revenue generating thing that I can do that's customer facing in the metaverse that I, I know is gonna work with the customers I have? Or what, what can I do that's gonna attract new customers for me? [00:15:52] And I think everyone's still kind of figuring that part out. But there's some things, you know, I, I, I saw people thinking and talking about digital twins, which I view [00:16:00] that as a metaverse use case. [00:16:01] Greg Jones: Yep. [00:16:02] Jeff Roster: I want to, you know, I want a digital twin. I want, I want me, so I can go in and have two or three people going around the show. That's what I [00:16:09] Ricardo Belmar: your own digital twin go and [00:16:10] Jeff Roster: I need my [00:16:11] Ricardo Belmar: right? and go go talk to some [00:16:12] Jeff Roster: still, I [00:16:13] Greg Jones: I was gonna say, I think we had a startup about that as [00:16:16] Jeff Roster: there you go. There you go. And I'm, I still haven't only covered about 15 or 20% of the show. [00:16:20] I mean, I, it was unbelievable how complex that show was to cover. I mean, it was [00:16:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:16:26] Jeff Roster: I, it just, so there was so much stuff and then we haven't even talked about, you know, the stuff that was happening offsite. Really, really that show is just absolutely maturing and, and exploding. [00:16:36] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Well, well let's, let's kind of drill into this theme a little bit on what some of those new things were that it may not have been metaverse, but, you know, I, I, for example, I mean, I still saw some things around web three that I think were pretty interesting, particularly connecting with loyalty programs. [00:16:51] Which I see as a trending, trending thing. And then also saw some things around micro fulfillment that I think continues to be, maybe isn't a, a new topic to [00:17:00] talk about, but still I, I would consider it new in terms of adoption. To your point, Jeff, you know, where are things in adoption and ways to apply it. [00:17:07] So I think a lot of interesting things in, in pockets and areas, and particularly with what different startups were showing. [00:17:12] Greg Jones: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I'll, I'll jump onto the, the startup side. So a as, as you both know, you know, throughout the course of nrf, every day we, we, , in partnership with Microsoft brought together a number of, of, you know, very interesting and unique startups to be able to, it was more of an opportunity to be able to just share, share what are some of the things and, and organizations that are out there, the problems that they're trying to solve. [00:17:33] and the way that we broke it up was, again, very intentional. So the first day that we had we focused around what we were calling the intelligent store. So really looking at the, you know, kind of what is happening around that physical store element. Yeah. And there was some interesting, interesting startups with a likes of Shopic, right? [00:17:48] So Shopic, you know, it was a more of a smart cart frictionless shopping approach where, you know, it's a. Yeah, it's a self, it's a unit that then mounts onto a shopping cart. You can then pick the product off to the shelf, put that into your basket, [00:18:00] transact on the, at the cart itself, bag your product go and put it into the car. [00:18:04] And then you just put the, you know, put the, yeah, the, the rack back onto the, the charging station. Again, a, a cost effective way to be able to provide that frictionless shopping experience. And then you had others with you know, if I look at the, likes of Pathr AI. Which is, you know, really starting to look at, not just around measuring traffic, but it's also looking at the analytics of that physical world. [00:18:26] Understanding the shopper behavior within the retail stores, but it's leveraging the infrastructure that's already in place as well. So being, again, cost conscious, but being able to drive and, and, and pull value out of what's in the, the store that was, there were, that was a couple that we had on, on day one. [00:18:40] Day two, again, we pivoted around what was happening in the, the current days. So it was around looking at unified commerce and supply chain. So, you know, we had, you know, organizations like Next Billion ai. Again, looking at, you know, scale and managing the mapping ecosystem as well, and, and, you know, tackling , complex location based problems and [00:19:00] how to be able to use AI as a means to be able to bring, you know, geography and scale together to be able to look what was happening. [00:19:06] You then start to, to look at the likes of, you know, pocket. You know, and Pocket themselves is, is really a sort of a, a checkout platform that helps businesses access and retain that, the digital native shoppers globally. And it's, it's really, it was quite interesting on the way that they were looking at merchant partners looking at shelf analytics and, and you know, being able to bridge the yeah, bridge that online and, and in-store experience. [00:19:30] But the Day three was the one that kind of, I think, blew people's minds a little bit. And yeah, Jeff it comes back onto what we were all saying about, about Metaverse. We did have a session on Metaverse, but it was to be able to bring different elements. [00:19:42] You know, you start to look at this, you know, this commerce approach, you start to look at how, how different types of capabilities are, are being enabled. And one of, one of the startups that we had there was, was phenomenal. I mean, it it, you could have had an an hour just with this particular startup called Deep Brain ai. [00:19:58] And they're, they're all about, you know, [00:20:00] conversational artificial intelligence. And they were talking about stories of, you know, in the Asia region where, there is a mainstream news program that instead of having a, a, a. and, you know, a physical host hosting the, the TV program. It's a conversational AI and a, it's an AI driven you know, en engagement that happens. [00:20:21] And then radio stations that are you know, we're on a podcast. But, you know, it was kind of scary when it's starting to talk about, you know, again, this, conversational, , AI and how that could become the voice of radio moving forward. And that was one where, . It was good to have it sort of on the last day because I think people were just like, oh, you know, last day we're sitting down. [00:20:39] That's all good. And then there was all of a sudden this, well, hang on a minute. What, what, what are you talking about? And it was actually, it was kind of, it, it created a lot of, lot of great follow on discussions as well. But it was kind of, again, it was an opportunity to be able to bring something new to, you know, customers and, and anybody that was able to, to come past our showcase. [00:20:58] Jeff Roster: Yeah, that was the one with the [00:21:00] the Howie Mandel avatar, correct. [00:21:02] Greg Jones: Yeah, that's correct. Yep. Jeff. [00:21:04] Jeff Roster: So they were up in the they were up in the innovation zone. That's actually real. I mean, Howie is sending his, I don't know, what do you call it? His AI out and you can license that and for a, a, a cheaper rate than having Howie come out personally, I, I, I, I was shocked by that. [00:21:20] I mean, not shocked. That's probably too strong. But you know, again, that innovation versus adoption. Wow. You, you can, you now can you can. Pounds, dollars Euro rupi and say, there, there is money being generated. And obviously it's just, I mean, that's such a crazy scenario. How that's gonna play itself out feels really super metaverse to me. [00:21:41] So. [00:21:42] Greg Jones: Yeah, [00:21:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:21:43] Jeff Roster: It's just, I, I just, [00:21:45] Greg Jones: just, [00:21:45] just say [00:21:46] Jeff Roster: adoption. The [00:21:47] Ricardo Belmar: Just saying. [00:21:48] Jeff Roster: The the, the, not the, not just the innovation, but the adoption. When you can start going in stuff that we really, I don't think that was even around what, three years ago or at least before Covid, and now you, you can say, [00:22:00] wow, there's money being generated here. [00:22:01] That is [00:22:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. [00:22:03] Jeff Roster: adoption. That rapid innovation followed by, I think, pretty significant adoption coming forward. So a lot of stuff happening there. [00:22:11] Greg Jones: And I think to be honest, Jeff, that that in itself is, is part of the challenge for the industry, right? So as you said, yeah, three years ago, you would, I don't think we would, any of us would've been having a conversation about, you know, you know, Howie, Howie out there with his, you know, with his ai and that is, and you can, you know, you can purchase that, get him out there speaking and, and create this kind of character. [00:22:33] you've also then sort of blend that within the, the conversations that really bubbled up on the last day of NRF around chat G p T, right? You and, and you start to look at, okay, as a retailer, how do we, how do we, what do we do with this? How do we consume it? How does it get applied? And I think collectively, if I look at, you know you know, the, the three of us, I think there's a, an element of how can we help retailers? Really start to look at how it could be applied in that, in that [00:23:00] conversation of like responsible retailing, I think there's an element of, of, of a good conversation to have around that as well. [00:23:05] Jeff Roster: Yeah, that, that one's not going away because every analyst I've talked to is, is both intrigued and sweating bolts about that. Um, since I'm on, I'm on the other side of my career, I'm like, yeah, this sounds great. You know, let me just, let me just have this, absorb all this in unbelievable amount of information and then and, you know, spit out some content and let me edit it. [00:23:27] And then, just you know, roster's, opinion edited, or, you know, created by chat G P T and, and edited by me. And it seems fine to me. As long as somebody's sort of validating that Basically. Basically it's just ghost writing. So what does that, what does that mean for retail? I mean, how. [00:23:41] How are they gonna process that? How are they gonna absorb that man? We're, we're, we're, we're really out on the edge when we're, we're talking about that. And just imagine if by next year where we've really now spent six months, eight months, nine months, really beginning to live with this and seeing and seen podcast. [00:23:59] I mean, [00:24:00] there's a podcast where it's already interviewed the ai I mean, you know, it's, and did live. I mean, it was crazy. And that's, we're only on the, the earliest edge. So, So when I look at that, when I look at what teams are gonna need to do what, uh, what retailers are gonna need to do, we've always been screaming about, you know, air of intentional innovation is upon us. [00:24:16] Boy oh boy, that's on, that's on steroids now. You, you live streaming. What are you gonna do with live streaming? Are you gonna be comfortable having your store associates out there presenting your brand out in all kinds of environments? Are we gonna over-engineer that live streaming like we probably would've done 10 years ago? [00:24:31] Hopefully not. You know, [00:24:32] Ricardo Belmar: now you'll also have the option that maybe if, for your best store associates that do that, right, you could have their digital avatar do to live streaming for them while they're still helping a customer in the store. [00:24:40] Jeff Roster: I mean that that [00:24:41] Ricardo Belmar: Think about it that [00:24:42] Jeff Roster: that's just a g. Yeah, that's [00:24:43] Greg Jones: now you've just taken it next level. [00:24:45] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. , I mean, just, just thinking out on some of the, I, you know, there, everyone likes to talk about the customer service use cases, right? [00:24:51] Where today it might be, you know, the what, what every consumer probably learns to hate the chatbot on ev on every retailer's site that tries to solve their support [00:25:00] questions when they come in, ask. But now, when you have something like a chat g p t trying to solve those, you might actually get meaningful responses. And the consumer won't even realize that they're talking to an ai, if you don't tell 'em they're, they're gonna get the answers they want and move on. , you know, you can think of it in, in like, call center applications. I can think of. You know, I, I think to me those demos that we saw from like the deep brain ai, there, there's gotta be an example there of, whether it's Howie or some other celebrity type, you know, pseudo endorsement, right? [00:25:25] Standing at the, in a store window, kind of waving to the people coming by offering to tell 'em about what great new thing is inside the store, ? And to get people inside when it's just, it's not really them, it's their digital avatar. [00:25:34] Greg Jones: Yeah, it's, it's, gonna, it's, it's gonna be really, it's, it's exciting. I think it is exciting in regards to how it gonna be applied. I mean, I, you know, talking to my, my 17 year old son about Chat GPT and he was just like, yeah. It's like, I've known about this for months. I'm like, okay, good. [00:25:47] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:25:48] Greg Jones: you might, you might wanna, you might have wanted to share that with me before I step foot at nrf, but that's, that's a different, different [00:25:53] Jeff Roster: the second question is how much of your homework has, has that done for you? [00:25:57] Ricardo Belmar: has it done for you. [00:25:59] Greg Jones: Yes, [00:26:00] there is, is that subliminal sort of. Okay, let me, let me, let me re-look at your grades and see if there was a spike in improvement. Now I know. Now I know why, but now he's, he's a. [00:26:10] Ricardo Belmar: So, so Greg, let me ask you this to kind of last thing here, to close this out with all these things we just talked about of, based on, on what we saw at N R F. You know, what, what's your take on where retailers go next this year coming out of n r f. [00:26:22] Greg Jones: Yeah, look, I think it's sort of coming, coming out on the, on the back of nrf. You know, I would say that, there's the consistent excitement that is still there in regards to, you know, the market opportunity. You know? Yes. P their discretionary spend is starting to, to definitely slow down and we, we see that in all the reports and, yeah. [00:26:39] Discussions that we're having with our customers. I think, yeah, really for, for me, it's, it's, kind of the, the challenge and the opportunity is really just that bridge, you know, how to be able to bridge that physical and digital world together. You know, really unleash that, that customer experience. [00:26:52] And the other part of it is, is really around the data estate. You know, the, the one thing, and certainly one of the, the key themes that came up [00:27:00] and, and through the discussions that we had is what to do with this vast amount of data that has, yeah, I would say significantly grown over the last three years, just given the, the new. [00:27:09] New market opportunities, new direction that retailers have had to go. And there's a, there's a need and a, and a desire to, to look at, you know, how do we try and get control of of what we have as part of the data estate? Is there the opportunity about to monetize that as well? So if I really look at sort of the, the three th three themes, you know, data, data monetization, how to be able to, to do that, enable and sort of that bridge that physical and digital worlds and, and drive the most out of the investments that that organizations have had. [00:27:35] But being, keeping that in a responsible way. And, and I think, you know, the employees you know, We're having a lot of discussions with with retailers in regards to their employee enablement and how to be able to do that you know, in a responsible way as well. We need, we want to make sure that, you know, the associates are being given access to the right information to make them more informed and to be able to deliver a better customer experience. [00:27:57] But we also wanna make sure that it doesn't open. You know, [00:28:00] kind of the other counter worms in regards to, you know, on the clock and off the clock and hourly employee discussions. And I know that, Microsoft, you know, is very focused on around that, on, you know, the, the whole enablement and controlling access. [00:28:12] You know, it's, I I would say it's still, it's, it's an exci, it's still an exciting time and, and you know, I just know that we're, we're all in this together to be able to help retailers through, you know, through where we are and how to be able to get on the, the other side as well. I'm looking forward to, I'm looking forward to NRF 2024. [00:28:29] I think it's gonna be exciting but it's gonna be, it's gonna be a journey over the, the course of the next few months just on how, how people are pivoting over the, the course of the, of the economy as well. [00:28:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that makes a, a lot of sense and I, I'm gonna delve a little bit on one of the points you made that we didn't talk as much about earlier, but that I caught it in some key moments around the show may not necessarily always a, a big focus, but certainly lots of people talking about is, you know, what kinds of things can be done that focus on, supporting those store associates and, and [00:29:00] frontline workers in, in the store, you know, what's the technology doing to serve them? It, it's not a discussion I believe, anymore about a technology that's replacing people. It's what's the technology that's helping the people that are there? Partly knowing that, , in most cases, re retailers aren't expecting to hire more people. [00:29:16] In the stores, there's still an issue of, of, you know, where do I find enough labor to run the store? And so you, , there's that element of needing the technology, but I think there's, there's now a renewed I'll say, I don't know if I should say new or renewed, but there's an interest for sure now in leveraging the technology to make that store environment a better work environment overall. For the team that's there and you know, doing it in a way that causes people to want to do that job. I, I think that's a key differentiator from what I've seen in past years. [00:29:44] Jeff Roster: Yeah, I'd agree with that. Almost the point where it was noticeable I thought. Uh, where, I don't, I'm trying to think back over the years was the discussion around the employee as, as predominant and I, I just don't think it was, and I just wonder if that maybe is a kind of [00:30:00] a, a fallout from, from Covid where we really saw how, how critical our supply chains are. [00:30:05] We saw how important people in those supply chains are, how important it's to have, you know, a working store, physical store in our neighborhoods. When it came time to get, know, milk or eggs or whatever. I don't know. It just felt, it just felt like a really interesting, it just felt like a better show. [00:30:21] It just felt like a better experience. It just felt like everyone [00:30:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:30:25] Jeff Roster: I don't know. And if, if that, if we got that out of that mess, we've all been through the last three years, uh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say it was worth it, but, but at least it's something positive that came out of all that, all that train wreck [00:30:34] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. [00:30:36] Greg Jones: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I look at NRF as being, you know, it's, it's the big show. Absolutely. But this year was the big reunion, you know, it was really that opportunity for people to be able to get back together in person, catch up, Have a laugh, you know, get and, and just reconnect. And I think it was, it was absolutely, it was, you know, it was energizing to be able to be in that environment. [00:30:56] But as I said, I think it was very much the, the big, big industry [00:31:00] reunion is really what N R F was about this year. [00:31:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:31:02] Jeff Roster: a good phrase. [00:31:03] Ricardo Belmar: I, I, I even kind of think of it almost like a big reset moment in that, you know, everybody had been in sort of a mode the last few years because of Covid, and this was almost felt like finally it was the, the one industry moment that let everybody get past that mood and to move to now we're ready to move on to what we're gonna do to make this industry better. [00:31:22] And I, I, I might, I would probably sum it up as much more of a collaborative note. from an industry point of view on how we're gonna do this than in past years, even pre covid, where, , it wasn't about What am I gonna do? This was more about what are we going to do? [00:31:37] Greg Jones: Yeah. [00:31:38] very much so. That's [00:31:39] a good. [00:31:40] Jeff Roster: that. [00:31:40] Ricardo Belmar: All right, Jeff, any, any last, , thoughts? [00:31:43] Jeff Roster: Oh man. It just, it's so exciting. All that. You know, I, I was one of the 6,000 that was there last year, and it was just, it just broke my heart. , and I just thought, my gosh, are we watching the, the end of retail? You know? And of course, remember that was all the talk about, you know, [00:32:00] buy online, pick up the store. [00:32:01] Awesome, awesome thing. But then, you know, do we are, do we even need this? And all the last mile stuff? And I'm like, no, no, we're, we're people, we're humans. We, we want to, we want to gather. And when I walked in, well, starting with v i p awards on Friday night, and then all the way through, , getting on the plane Wednesday afternoon or yeah, Wednesday afternoon, it just was all about re you know, re-engagement, you know, return. [00:32:23] You know, the celebration of the human experience, which I think retail probably more so than any industry, really captures that. And I just, I haven't felt as good coming out of a, a trade show, probably, probably ever actually. I just, yeah, I'm, uh, it's, it, it's an exciting time ahead. There's tons of stuff for, for us analysts to talk about. [00:32:41] There's a bunch of stuff for us focusing on innovation to talk about, and then there's just this tremendous celebration of, of what we can do as a society and as a, as a group and an industry. I, I'm, I'm really, really excited about the, about 2023. [00:32:54] Greg Jones: Yeah, [00:32:55] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. Greg, any final thoughts? [00:32:57] Greg Jones: I was gonna say sim, similar to Jeff, like excited about [00:33:00] 2023. You know, the. NR NRF is, it's really kind of the, it's the Super bowl of, of the, the industry and it brings everybody together and there's the, you know, the excitement around it. What I am definitely, you know, looking forward to is again, just the continuation of the conversations. [00:33:14] And, you know, it's, The industry is small. We know it's a very small world. You know, and keen to be able to, learn as we're all going through this through this year, just in regards to where we need to be able to pivot and, and how we need to be able to partner. And, you know, really looking forward to, you know, looking forward to a successful 2023 together and and celebrating great successes in 2024 at nrf as well. [00:33:34] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, I agree with that. Fantastic. Well, Greg, thank you so much for, for joining us for this N R F recap. I know we, we, we all attempted to do this live and while we were still in person during the show and had, let's say, a few technical glitches that maybe prevented us from successfully completing [00:33:52] Jeff Roster: One slight one. [00:33:54] Ricardo Belmar: Just, just one slight [00:33:55] Jeff Roster: have an [00:33:56] Ricardo Belmar: uncooperative microphone that, that prevented us from capturing all that [00:34:00] gold commentary that we knew we were gonna get. But , but [00:34:03] Greg Jones: app, Apparently Apparently there's some technology that can help with that. [00:34:06] That's [00:34:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:34:07] Yeah. We'll, we'll, Jeff, we have to look into that for sure. [00:34:10] Jeff Roster: Oh man. [00:34:11] Ricardo Belmar: the next time. [00:34:12] Greg Jones: That all, all good! [00:34:14] Ricardo Belmar: All good. All good. Well, well, thanks again, Greg for joining us and thanks to Avanade for having sponsored us and giving us the ability to, to. Take on this series during n r f by letting us use your, your space which was such a, a, a fabulous, fabulous spot for us to, to capture some, some golden moments w with a number of really interesting people, and that will everybody's been able to enjoy in this series. [00:34:35] Greg Jones: I was gonna say, you're, you're always welcome. [00:34:36] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks very much. All right, Jeff, I think that is a wrap for [00:34:39] Jeff Roster: this [00:34:39] Well, and thank you Ricardo, for letting me shadow you throughout this whole crazy week. I mean, you know, we've talked about doing this sort of a thing for a while and man, what a, what a crazy deal. What an awesome, crazy, fun way to cover N R F 2023. I think we captured some good memories and, and I cannot wait for what [00:35:00] you and I have planned for going forward. [00:35:02] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely, absolutely. Quick little hint your dropping there for you dropping for, for what's yet to come. [00:35:09] Jeff Roster: that's a, that the term is [00:35:10] Ricardo Belmar: listeners and viewers anxiously awaiting. [00:35:12] Jeff Roster: The term is foreshadowing [00:35:14] Ricardo Belmar: foreshadowing. There you go. There you go. All right, and with that we will sign off. Thanks everyone for joining us. [00:35:20] Jeff Roster: See ya. [00:35:20] Greg Jones: Thanks. [00:35:21] Show Recap [00:35:21] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone. So Ricardo, you have to give us some more details. What happened to the original recording of this conversation? I, I, I understand there's a story. [00:35:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, there, there is. And as much as I'd like to find someone else to blame , I can honestly say I have no idea what happened. So, you know, Jeff and I set up all the mics all our equipment, just like we always did in the Avanade lounge for each of these sessions. But somehow despite, you know, all the, all the sound checks we did when we start before we hit that record button, When I went back to listen to that [00:36:00] recording that, that I got on my Zoom Podtrak recorder, it turned out that Greg's mic was somehow just not functioning at all, and we only had his voice spill over onto the other two mics, so he sounded totally faint and distant. [00:36:12] It just was not a useful recording at all. So Jeff and I had to go back to Greg after we all got back from N R F and we set up a remote recording session to wrap up the series. So of course that meant technically we didn't record this last one in the crossover series, live and in person at N R F, like the others in the series. [00:36:29] But in exchange, you know, we get to show off more video podcasts this season with this one. [00:36:33] Casey Golden: Yeah, and hopefully some of our listeners became viewers on YouTube for this one. I also really love how you guys wrapped it up by talking about the energy and emotion that everyone brought with them at N R F this year. I was there. I felt it, and I don't think I've ever seen that much at nrf. Have you? [00:36:55] Ricardo Belmar: No, no. I mean, that's a hundred percent of That's so true. This was a really unique N [00:37:00] R f I have to give a special shout out to Jeff Roster too for, for joining me on this little onsite recording adventure. We honestly didn't know if we'd be able to pull this off. For both of us it was our first true, legitimate attempt at some live onsite, in-person recording at an event like this. [00:37:17] I gotta say, we've all been so used to doing this remotely in, in our podcasts. and looking at each other like we are right now and a little square on our screens. It was just so amazing to have the chance to do this in person. It really brings a whole new feel to the podcast. [00:37:29] Casey Golden: Absolutely. I know. I really enjoyed listening and watching these. I hope our show listeners and viewers did too, and I just, I adore what Greg mentioned Avanade is doing with those startup showcases. It's just, I feel it's really important at nrf, so now I have to ask. , were you and Jeff hinting at the end there? [00:37:52] Are we able to say something here about what's to come? [00:37:56] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I think we're gonna have to keep listeners in suspense on [00:38:00] this one for a little bit longer, but let's just say this won't be the last time you see our two podcasts team up. In fact, we may be doing something even bigger next time, so just stay tuned, keep listening to the show you know, keep listening to our show. [00:38:11] Keep listening to Jeff's This Week in Innovation so you don't miss out. [00:38:14] Casey Golden: Fine. Keep everyone in suspense. I know it's worth it. And I'm going to give one last shout out to Avanade. We can't say enough about how grateful we are for you providing a space for you and Jeff and sponsoring this series for us. Thank you Avanade. And I do also wanna thank Jeff again. He's just absolutely awesome to work with. [00:38:40] And at this, I wish I could have joined you guys for those recordings. But as you know, N r F and Startup Life. Uh, soon we gotta divide and conquer [00:38:52] And one final thank you to Shish for helping us connect with 1MRobotics and Z [00:39:00] Blocks. They're doing incredible things. [00:39:02] Ricardo Belmar: I totally agree. And with that, Casey, this crossover event is a wrap. [00:39:07] Show Close [00:39:07] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today? Take a look at the show notes and handy links for more deets. [00:39:31] I'm your co-host Casey Golden. [00:39:34] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter, at Retail Razor, on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:39:50] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:39:52] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you [00:40:00] cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the Retail Razor Show. [00:40:03] Did you miss #NRF2023 in January this year? No worries, we’ve got you covered this episode with our special NRF Recap! It’s all part of our special podcast cross-over series, #NRFLive, with the This Week In Innovation podcast. In Part 5, the final episode in the series, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Jeff Roster speak with the North America Lead for Retail & Consumer Goods at Avanade, Greg Jones. Join Greg, Jeff & Ricardo as they discuss the biggest trends and themes they saw at the show, from exhibitors, to startups, to what retailers told them were their main takeaways from the show. Regular cohost Casey Golden also joins Ricardo for a quick introduction and recap!


You’ll also find out why this episode was not recorded live and in-person at #NRF2023 in the fabulous Avanade lounge. Instead it was recorded post-NRF – and yes, there is a story behind that! As a bonus, you can watch the video of the entire conversation on our YouTube channel. A big thank you to Avanade for sponsoring this series and making the recordings possible!


News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

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Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

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Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

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Co-host → Casey Golden,

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Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey


TRANSCRIPT

S2E10e Avanade - Greg Jones

[00:00:00] ​

[00:00:00] Show Intro 

[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 part five of the Retail Razor Show. This is the fifth and final episode in our multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 Show in January. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:00:36] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show, retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And welcome N R F fans to our hottake, hashtag N R F Live the mini-series.

[00:00:56] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Casey, we are at the last episode in our crossover [00:01:00] event with Jeff Roster and his This Week in Innovation podcast, and this is a, a special final episode to close out the series. Thanks to our sponsor, Avanade that graciously allowed us to record the whole series in their, in their fabulous lounge space overlooking the main expo floor.

[00:01:15] For this final episode, Jeff and I were fortunate enough to sit down with Avanade's Greg Jones, their North America lead for Retail and Consumer Goods, and, and also a friend of ours, to recap what we saw at N R F, talk about the state of startups in retail which AAuD actually hosted three startup showcases during NRF with Microsoft for Startups team and our fellow Retail Avenger, Shish Shridhar.

[00:01:36] And two of our podcast guests came from those showcases, the 1 M robotics and Z blocks. They're both part of that program. And of course I know it's always near and dear to your heart anytime we talk about retail startups.

[00:01:47] Casey Golden: It is so a big shout out to Avanade for supporting and sponsoring this crossover and just, wow. I mean, this whole series has been a celebration of [00:02:00] retail and just showing us what N R F was all about this year.

[00:02:04] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. And you know, this discussion with Greg really highlights what I think so many in the media have been missing about the retail industry. That is really a more positive outlook about what's to come in 2023. You know, we hear about all the, the negative things that get reported, but that wasn't really the mood.

[00:02:22] At this N R F and, and we talk about that in this in this episode, you know, positive in the sense that even with all of those headwinds that are out there and global problems and everything, retail still finds a way to innovate and finds a way to deliver great customer and employee experiences.

[00:02:35] Casey Golden: Yes, and, and the customer experiences always begin with the employee experience, and often that starts with what software they're using or lack thereof. So really enjoy this highlight.

[00:02:50] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let's dive right in and listen to our conversation with Greg Jones from Avanade

[00:03:01] Greg Jones Interview

[00:03:01] Ricardo Belmar: Hello everybody. We are back to wrap up our N R F Live series that Jeff roster and I have been fortunate enough to speak to a number of fascinating folks during N R F Week and graciously as Avanade has sponsored us and gave us the space and facility to record. We're coming back after the show now with Greg Jones from Avanade to kind of talk through what stood out to us, what were some of the highlights of the show, and you know, see what where we think things are gonna go next. So, without any further delay, Jeff, what do you say? We just dive in.

[00:03:36] Jeff Roster: Absolutely. Let's get, let's get it going.

[00:03:38] Ricardo Belmar: All right. So please to welcome Greg Jones from Avanade. Greg, why don't you introduce yourself, kick us off and tell us a little bit about your background and what you're doing at Avanade.

[00:03:47] Greg Jones: Yeah, absolutely. Ricardo. And, and look, thank, thank you both. Yeah, Ricardo and, and Jeff for the time and the opportunity. I think we're, we're. Yeah, really excited collectively on the, on nrf. You know, it was obviously great to be back in, back in person and, and [00:04:00] yeah, great to be able to have this conversation as well.

[00:04:01] Cause there's a, a lot, a lot that got learnt and a lot that kind of excited the industry as well. So a bit of background. So Greg Jones run the, and look after the North America practice here at Avanade for retail and consumer goods. Avanade, you know, for, for those who don't know was a, a joint founded organization back in 2000 between Accenture and Microsoft.

[00:04:20] We're a global system integrator, you know, over 60,000 people globally, but very focused around industry as a whole. And, and retail is one of the priority industries that we have. And that's what we definitely brought together as part of Avanade as and NRF was the opportunity to be able to showcase some of the capabilities that Avanade is delivering. 

[00:04:38] So bringing all of our expertise together. So I've been with Avanade for two years. Prior to that I was with Microsoft as part of the global retail team looking after everything from partner ecosystem and business strategy for quite a number of years. And again, pleased to be able to be here with yourself and, and Jeff.

[00:04:54] Ricardo Belmar: Well, thanks very much for, for joining us, Greg. What, why don't you give us your sense of, [00:05:00] you know, obviously Avanade, you guys had a, a number of really great activities during N R F. You had the the breakfast session at the beginning of the week. You had some startup showcases happening with Microsoft for startups.

[00:05:11] Why don't you, you know, give us what you think are some of the highlights from the various activities, and then maybe we can talk a little bit about what, things stood out to all of us from the overall, from N R F?

[00:05:20] Greg Jones: Yeah, no, absolutely. I was gonna say, yeah, we, we did a, a lot to be able to, to really bring you know, the, the view of retail in the current climate as well. So we needed to make sure that, you know, we were coming to the event with capabilities. And some of the, the demos that we had that were very focused around helping organizations you know, get the value out of what they've got now as well.

[00:05:40] And, and I would say that, you know, retailers as a whole yeah, I've never faced such a, a volume of, of, or a variety of challenges as well that that's facing them at the moment. And it's also facing and, and making some tough decisions. And that was part of the conversations that happened throughout NRF is that people are there.

[00:05:55] To look at where they need to be able to pivot and how to be able to pivot their organizations, you know, during [00:06:00] the, the current climate at the moment as well. And I would say, yeah, through the discussions, there were two primary challenges that were, were being discussed, which is the, the need to control costs.

[00:06:09] And also to, yeah, protect margins and there need to be a responsible retailer as, as well and around, you know, doing what matters in the current climate, being able to still ensure that delight experience for the customers. But there's also an element of the employee experience that really came through as part of the discussions that we had.

[00:06:27] In particular a breakfast panel. That we did during nrf, where we had, you know, the Chief HR officer from Northern Tools and Equipment, very much talking about the importance of the employees and how through enabling those employees can continue that delight experience and, and be that, you know, continuation of that brand engagement with customers as well.

[00:06:46] So, It was actually really interesting on, on some of the elements that that came together. The way that we really came, you know, to N R F was to be able to look at what we're calling yeah, we call it reignite Physical Retail, which is really bringing that [00:07:00] physical retail and, you know, obviously the online worlds together.

[00:07:03] And how to be able to, you know, look at all aspects of that, that journey or, you know, what we're calling the, the customers. The only channel is how to be able to engage with that customer through all aspects of the channel of engagement, how we can help retailers and being able to do that. Yeah, it was great to be able to see the, the messaging landed very well with the, the client conversations.

[00:07:20] You know, the discussions that we had with, uh, with customers was very on point in regards to, you know, the, the challenges that they're facing and how we can definitely help , but there are also some surprises out there as well that we could talk about a little bit later as well.

[00:07:33] Ricardo Belmar: I'm, I'm curious in, in some of your client conversations, so some of the things I heard fairly consistently, and you, and you mentioned it at the beginning too, is this idea of you're trying to find and identify the things I need to do as a retailer to make my operations more efficient, to kind of lower that cost basis while still.

[00:07:50] Doing it in a way that's not gonna impact my overall customer experience, particularly in store now, that I think we can all agree that we can put to bed all, all those worries about stores going away, that hadn't been [00:08:00] real narrative for so long that you know, we can now all safely point to and say, yeah, that's not happening.

[00:08:04] Stores, stores are here to stay. But we're any, you know, was that a consistent theme that you heard as well?

[00:08:09] Greg Jones: Yeah, it was, I mean, you know, obviously the, the stores aren't going away. At all. You know, we've all heard that the business models of stores have to change. You know, and that's, that's no secret. You know, you're looking at new store designs that are, are coming out across the globe of, of how to be able to provide more of a curated experience.

[00:08:24] You know, and that, that in itself, I think is just part of the new business model that, you know, retailers are having to be able to make sure that the, the stores are, you know, the showroom. It's that way to be able to bridge , their online channels with the physical channels. And that pivot, I think definitely has been occurring more so post pandemic as well.

[00:08:42] And I think that's where, where people are now starting to see we need best, best of both worlds. You know, we're seeing Nike as an example, that are, are very much looking at redefining their, their store environments you know, through that whole direct to consumer engagement and, and element that they're, they're driving for as well, which I think is, is super, super cool in regards to [00:09:00] what they're doing.

[00:09:00] And. It almost like if I look at, you know, the Nike store in New York, it's a, it's a destination. You walk past there and people are there to do experience that, that whole engagement point. But I think it also came back to some of the, the fundamentals as well where retailers are, are sitting there going, we've invested in, in a lot of technology over the course of the last three years.

[00:09:19] Are we getting the most out of that as well? And that's, again, that was a pivot of the discussion on kind of doing more with less or doing more with the investments that they've already made and, and looking at ways to be able to really squeeze the most out of those investments. Is there opportunities to be able to consolidate?

[00:09:35] Absolutely. But it's also a way to be able to look at maximizing the investments that they've already put into place. So I'd be def definitely curious, like, you know, Jeff and, and Ricardo. I mean, you know, from discussions that you had with, with customers, did you look at that or hear in regards to getting more outta the investments that people have made to be able to, to reach the, the goals their wanting to achieve.

[00:09:53] Jeff Roster: You wanna go first, Ricardo, or you want.

[00:09:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, sure. I mean, from, from my perspective, I, I, I definitely heard [00:10:00] quite a bit of that, of, you know, what do I need to do to extract that benefit, right? From everything I've already invested in. I, I kind of, I tended to hear that coupled with, you know, this recognition that I, my goal isn't to cut a cost, right?

[00:10:14] My goal was to gain efficiency. You know, strengthen some aspect of an operation that perhaps when we first created this new capability, the goal at the time was to just get that capability out there with, with not too much regard for how expensive was it gonna be to deliver it. And now was the time to figure out, well, now that I've delivered it and we have this cap, this customer facing capability, how can we do it in a more efficient way?

[00:10:37] And if that means I have to invest in, in another, you know, supplemental capability on top of that to help facilitate the overall reduction of the operational cost long term, then that's okay. There was some recognition that that might be necessary, but I think I, I saw as a trend that You know, if there are a lot of really interesting new technologies out there, they were being viewed with the lens of how does that [00:11:00] make me more efficient?

[00:11:01] Or how does that make my operation better? Versus where, you know, the last N R F I remember the, the, the thought would've been, wow, that's really neat. How, how, how well received is that gonna be? If my customer sees that, then therefore I need to have it,

[00:11:13] Greg Jones: Yeah.

[00:11:14] Ricardo Belmar: which is a very different lens.

[00:11:15] Greg Jones: Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, one of the, as I said, you know, one of the surprises that, that I saw and certainly heard across, you know, the entire show, show floor was, you know, Leading into N R F. There was certainly, you know, there was you know, amplification, there was obviously the buzz that was happening about the metaverse.

[00:11:32] How is that being applied? You know, retailers that are looking at that, brands that are, are definitely jumping in and, and, and exploring and engaging with the, the metaverse for their, for their particular brand. But I was actually quite surprised that, you know, I didn't see walking into, you know, walking into the Javits Center,

[00:11:48] yeah, I remember the days where, you know, AI was the, the big topic and you'd have banners all over the place in regards to ai, this and, you know, AI empowered retail and you know, what AI can do for you and your customer experiences [00:12:00] or the, the wonderful world of big data. You know, it was kind of all over the, the place walking to the Javits Center didn't see anything in regards to metaverse.

[00:12:09] Now and visually, just in regards to, it wasn't necessarily there as a, you know, welcome to, or the, you know, the metaverse is changing the world and enabling, and I think part of that is, is the fact of people are still on, not on the edge, but they're still looking at how that can be applied and what that is going to do for their engagement, but also from an operational standpoint, given the current climate as well, is around do we look at supply chain visibility in inventory, our employees, how do we gain control of our, our entire data estate? Do we do that or we do metaverse? It's kind of the, there's a, there's an interesting kind of like, almost like a, a, an internal debate that people like it's, it's there, understand it, it's kind of, there's a new way to engage, but there's other things that we need to be focusing on as well.

[00:12:56] Jeff Roster: Yeah, that's such an interesting point. Is, in the first three quarters of my [00:13:00] career I was about adoption. You know, my Gartner in i h l days where, where are we in adoption. And it's interesting kind of even talking about the M word metaverse. You know, a lot of analysts that I'm friends with are going back and forth and are saying, well, I didn't see any Metaverse stuff there.

[00:13:15] Well you should have went up to the innovation lab because there was plenty of that there. But it, but the thing was, and I agree with you a hundred percent, Greg, there was, I, I don't think I saw the word metaverse once, but there was all the components of it, which is why I'm really such a big fan. And I got this first from Microsoft, the term immersive commerce, because it's not right now, it's, I don't think anybody's looking to buy a metaverse solution, but boy, you sure can find some very interesting stuff around holograms.

[00:13:41] You can definitely find a lot around 3D objects. You can definitely find some stuff around around augmented reality. Not so much on the, on the, on the, on the goggles yet. I, I kind of get that. I mean, you know, I, I don't know know they see that, but boy, When you start thinking about what Ulta's doing with Roblox, what [00:14:00] home, what see not Home Depot Walmart is doing with Roblox, you are in, you're really seeing that immersive commerce.

[00:14:06] Pieces begin to pick up and it's almost like there's a maturation in how we message the, how the vendor community messages this stuff. And it really, I, I didn't see, I, it just felt like a very mature approach to, to the show. Just. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Like screamy there's a great example.

[00:14:24] I'll use, it's one of your competitors. Like, I, I'll, I'll be nice and not use it, but there was one a few years ago, there was like a, a, a certain signage that was everywhere and it was like, you know, it. I don't know. It seemed kind of silly, so I thi I just felt like it was a really, really mature way of going about the business of not just adopt, you know, technology adoption, but also also the, the, the push towards innovation.

[00:14:49] Definitely on the you know, in the, in the innovation lab and definitely it. You know, in the Microsoft for startup stuff, I mean, there was some crazy interesting technology. So I, I love that balance. You [00:15:00] know, I just, I, I'm not sure, I'm not sure my, my fellow analysts though, picked up on that, that nuance cuz they're not chasing innovation.

[00:15:05] They shouldn't be, they should be worried about where, what, you know, where, where we are in adoption. And boy that's that's gonna be a fun thing for us, some of us to chase, I think in the next, next 18 months.

[00:15:15] Ricardo Belmar: Well, and, and you know, there, there's some things I saw too, so, I mean, I agree too. Greg said that, you know, that you didn't see Metaverse being flashed around everywhere. Like, like we had, you know, in places last year. And, and I agree with what you said, Jeff, that there are a lot of components about it spread out and, and lots of different places because, and I kind of perceive it that, as, you know, some of these components have useful things you can do with them today. Whereas I think everyone is still kind of figuring out what's my truly useful revenue generating thing that I can do that's customer facing in the metaverse that I, I know is gonna work with the customers I have? Or what, what can I do that's gonna attract new customers for me?

[00:15:52] And I think everyone's still kind of figuring that part out. But there's some things, you know, I, I, I saw people thinking and talking about digital twins, which I view [00:16:00] that as a metaverse use case.

[00:16:01] Greg Jones: Yep.

[00:16:02] Jeff Roster: I want to, you know, I want a digital twin. I want, I want me, so I can go in and have two or three people going around the show. That's what I

[00:16:09] Ricardo Belmar: your own digital twin go and 

[00:16:10] Jeff Roster: I need my 

[00:16:11] Ricardo Belmar: right? and go go talk to some 

[00:16:12] Jeff Roster: still, I

[00:16:13] Greg Jones: I was gonna say, I think we had a startup about that as 

[00:16:16] Jeff Roster: there you go. There you go. And I'm, I still haven't only covered about 15 or 20% of the show.

[00:16:20] I mean, I, it was unbelievable how complex that show was to cover. I mean, it was

[00:16:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:16:26] Jeff Roster: I, it just, so there was so much stuff and then we haven't even talked about, you know, the stuff that was happening offsite. Really, really that show is just absolutely maturing and, and exploding.

[00:16:36] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Well, well let's, let's kind of drill into this theme a little bit on what some of those new things were that it may not have been metaverse, but, you know, I, I, for example, I mean, I still saw some things around web three that I think were pretty interesting, particularly connecting with loyalty programs.

[00:16:51] Which I see as a trending, trending thing. And then also saw some things around micro fulfillment that I think continues to be, maybe isn't a, a new topic to [00:17:00] talk about, but still I, I would consider it new in terms of adoption. To your point, Jeff, you know, where are things in adoption and ways to apply it.

[00:17:07] So I think a lot of interesting things in, in pockets and areas, and particularly with what different startups were showing.

[00:17:12] Greg Jones: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I'll, I'll jump onto the, the startup side. So a as, as you both know, you know, throughout the course of nrf, every day we, we, , in partnership with Microsoft brought together a number of, of, you know, very interesting and unique startups to be able to, it was more of an opportunity to be able to just share, share what are some of the things and, and organizations that are out there, the problems that they're trying to solve.

[00:17:33] and the way that we broke it up was, again, very intentional. So the first day that we had we focused around what we were calling the intelligent store. So really looking at the, you know, kind of what is happening around that physical store element. Yeah. And there was some interesting, interesting startups with a likes of Shopic, right?

[00:17:48] So Shopic, you know, it was a more of a smart cart frictionless shopping approach where, you know, it's a. Yeah, it's a self, it's a unit that then mounts onto a shopping cart. You can then pick the product off to the shelf, put that into your basket, [00:18:00] transact on the, at the cart itself, bag your product go and put it into the car.

[00:18:04] And then you just put the, you know, put the, yeah, the, the rack back onto the, the charging station. Again, a, a cost effective way to be able to provide that frictionless shopping experience. And then you had others with you know, if I look at the, likes of Pathr AI. Which is, you know, really starting to look at, not just around measuring traffic, but it's also looking at the analytics of that physical world.

[00:18:26] Understanding the shopper behavior within the retail stores, but it's leveraging the infrastructure that's already in place as well. So being, again, cost conscious, but being able to drive and, and, and pull value out of what's in the, the store that was, there were, that was a couple that we had on, on day one.

[00:18:40] Day two, again, we pivoted around what was happening in the, the current days. So it was around looking at unified commerce and supply chain. So, you know, we had, you know, organizations like Next Billion ai. Again, looking at, you know, scale and managing the mapping ecosystem as well, and, and, you know, tackling , complex location based problems and [00:19:00] how to be able to use AI as a means to be able to bring, you know, geography and scale together to be able to look what was happening.

[00:19:06] You then start to, to look at the likes of, you know, pocket. You know, and Pocket themselves is, is really a sort of a, a checkout platform that helps businesses access and retain that, the digital native shoppers globally. And it's, it's really, it was quite interesting on the way that they were looking at merchant partners looking at shelf analytics and, and you know, being able to bridge the yeah, bridge that online and, and in-store experience. 

[00:19:30] But the Day three was the one that kind of, I think, blew people's minds a little bit. And yeah, Jeff it comes back onto what we were all saying about, about Metaverse. We did have a session on Metaverse, but it was to be able to bring different elements.

[00:19:42] You know, you start to look at this, you know, this commerce approach, you start to look at how, how different types of capabilities are, are being enabled. And one of, one of the startups that we had there was, was phenomenal. I mean, it it, you could have had an an hour just with this particular startup called Deep Brain ai.

[00:19:58] And they're, they're all about, you know, [00:20:00] conversational artificial intelligence. And they were talking about stories of, you know, in the Asia region where, there is a mainstream news program that instead of having a, a, a. and, you know, a physical host hosting the, the TV program. It's a conversational AI and a, it's an AI driven you know, en engagement that happens.

[00:20:21] And then radio stations that are you know, we're on a podcast. But, you know, it was kind of scary when it's starting to talk about, you know, again, this, conversational, , AI and how that could become the voice of radio moving forward. And that was one where, . It was good to have it sort of on the last day because I think people were just like, oh, you know, last day we're sitting down.

[00:20:39] That's all good. And then there was all of a sudden this, well, hang on a minute. What, what, what are you talking about? And it was actually, it was kind of, it, it created a lot of, lot of great follow on discussions as well. But it was kind of, again, it was an opportunity to be able to bring something new to, you know, customers and, and anybody that was able to, to come past our showcase.

[00:20:58] Jeff Roster: Yeah, that was the one with the [00:21:00] the Howie Mandel avatar, correct.

[00:21:02] Greg Jones: Yeah, that's correct. Yep. Jeff.

[00:21:04] Jeff Roster: So they were up in the they were up in the innovation zone. That's actually real. I mean, Howie is sending his, I don't know, what do you call it? His AI out and you can license that and for a, a, a cheaper rate than having Howie come out personally, I, I, I, I was shocked by that.

[00:21:20] I mean, not shocked. That's probably too strong. But you know, again, that innovation versus adoption. Wow. You, you can, you now can you can. Pounds, dollars Euro rupi and say, there, there is money being generated. And obviously it's just, I mean, that's such a crazy scenario. How that's gonna play itself out feels really super metaverse to me.

[00:21:41] So.

[00:21:42] Greg Jones: Yeah,

[00:21:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:21:43] Jeff Roster: It's just, I, I just, 

[00:21:45] Greg Jones: just,

[00:21:45] just say

[00:21:46] Jeff Roster: adoption. The

[00:21:47] Ricardo Belmar: Just saying.

[00:21:48] Jeff Roster: The the, the, not the, not just the innovation, but the adoption. When you can start going in stuff that we really, I don't think that was even around what, three years ago or at least before Covid, and now you, you can say, [00:22:00] wow, there's money being generated here.

[00:22:01] That is

[00:22:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:03] Jeff Roster: adoption. That rapid innovation followed by, I think, pretty significant adoption coming forward. So a lot of stuff happening there.

[00:22:11] Greg Jones: And I think to be honest, Jeff, that that in itself is, is part of the challenge for the industry, right? So as you said, yeah, three years ago, you would, I don't think we would, any of us would've been having a conversation about, you know, you know, Howie, Howie out there with his, you know, with his ai and that is, and you can, you know, you can purchase that, get him out there speaking and, and create this kind of character.

[00:22:33] you've also then sort of blend that within the, the conversations that really bubbled up on the last day of NRF around chat G p T, right? You and, and you start to look at, okay, as a retailer, how do we, how do we, what do we do with this? How do we consume it? How does it get applied? And I think collectively, if I look at, you know you know, the, the three of us, I think there's a, an element of how can we help retailers? Really start to look at how it could be applied in that, in that [00:23:00]conversation of like responsible retailing, I think there's an element of, of, of a good conversation to have around that as well.

[00:23:05] Jeff Roster: Yeah, that, that one's not going away because every analyst I've talked to is, is both intrigued and sweating bolts about that. Um, since I'm on, I'm on the other side of my career, I'm like, yeah, this sounds great. You know, let me just, let me just have this, absorb all this in unbelievable amount of information and then and, you know, spit out some content and let me edit it.

[00:23:27] And then, just you know, roster's, opinion edited, or, you know, created by chat G P T and, and edited by me. And it seems fine to me. As long as somebody's sort of validating that Basically. Basically it's just ghost writing. So what does that, what does that mean for retail? I mean, how.

[00:23:41] How are they gonna process that? How are they gonna absorb that man? We're, we're, we're, we're really out on the edge when we're, we're talking about that. And just imagine if by next year where we've really now spent six months, eight months, nine months, really beginning to live with this and seeing and seen podcast.

[00:23:59] I mean, [00:24:00] there's a podcast where it's already interviewed the ai I mean, you know, it's, and did live. I mean, it was crazy. And that's, we're only on the, the earliest edge. So, So when I look at that, when I look at what teams are gonna need to do what, uh, what retailers are gonna need to do, we've always been screaming about, you know, air of intentional innovation is upon us.

[00:24:16] Boy oh boy, that's on, that's on steroids now. You, you live streaming. What are you gonna do with live streaming? Are you gonna be comfortable having your store associates out there presenting your brand out in all kinds of environments? Are we gonna over-engineer that live streaming like we probably would've done 10 years ago?

[00:24:31] Hopefully not. You know, 

[00:24:32] Ricardo Belmar: now you'll also have the option that maybe if, for your best store associates that do that, right, you could have their digital avatar do to live streaming for them while they're still helping a customer in the store.

[00:24:40] Jeff Roster: I mean that that

[00:24:41] Ricardo Belmar: Think about it that

[00:24:42] Jeff Roster: that's just a g. Yeah, that's 

[00:24:43] Greg Jones: now you've just taken it next level.

[00:24:45] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. , I mean, just, just thinking out on some of the, I, you know, there, everyone likes to talk about the customer service use cases, right?

[00:24:51] Where today it might be, you know, the what, what every consumer probably learns to hate the chatbot on ev on every retailer's site that tries to solve their support [00:25:00] questions when they come in, ask. But now, when you have something like a chat g p t trying to solve those, you might actually get meaningful responses. And the consumer won't even realize that they're talking to an ai, if you don't tell 'em they're, they're gonna get the answers they want and move on. , you know, you can think of it in, in like, call center applications. I can think of. You know, I, I think to me those demos that we saw from like the deep brain ai, there, there's gotta be an example there of, whether it's Howie or some other celebrity type, you know, pseudo endorsement, right?

[00:25:25] Standing at the, in a store window, kind of waving to the people coming by offering to tell 'em about what great new thing is inside the store, ? And to get people inside when it's just, it's not really them, it's their digital avatar.

[00:25:34] Greg Jones: Yeah, it's, it's, gonna, it's, it's gonna be really, it's, it's exciting. I think it is exciting in regards to how it gonna be applied. I mean, I, you know, talking to my, my 17 year old son about Chat GPT and he was just like, yeah. It's like, I've known about this for months. I'm like, okay, good.

[00:25:47] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:25:48] Greg Jones: you might, you might wanna, you might have wanted to share that with me before I step foot at nrf, but that's, that's a different, different 

[00:25:53] Jeff Roster: the second question is how much of your homework has, has that done for you?

[00:25:57] Ricardo Belmar: has it done for you.

[00:25:59] Greg Jones: Yes, [00:26:00] there is, is that subliminal sort of. Okay, let me, let me, let me re-look at your grades and see if there was a spike in improvement. Now I know. Now I know why, but now he's, he's a.

[00:26:10] Ricardo Belmar: So, so Greg, let me ask you this to kind of last thing here, to close this out with all these things we just talked about of, based on, on what we saw at N R F. You know, what, what's your take on where retailers go next this year coming out of n r f. 

[00:26:22] Greg Jones: Yeah, look, I think it's sort of coming, coming out on the, on the back of nrf. You know, I would say that, there's the consistent excitement that is still there in regards to, you know, the market opportunity. You know? Yes. P their discretionary spend is starting to, to definitely slow down and we, we see that in all the reports and, yeah.

[00:26:39] Discussions that we're having with our customers. I think, yeah, really for, for me, it's, it's, kind of the, the challenge and the opportunity is really just that bridge, you know, how to be able to bridge that physical and digital world together. You know, really unleash that, that customer experience.

[00:26:52] And the other part of it is, is really around the data estate. You know, the, the one thing, and certainly one of the, the key themes that came up [00:27:00] and, and through the discussions that we had is what to do with this vast amount of data that has, yeah, I would say significantly grown over the last three years, just given the, the new.

[00:27:09] New market opportunities, new direction that retailers have had to go. And there's a, there's a need and a, and a desire to, to look at, you know, how do we try and get control of of what we have as part of the data estate? Is there the opportunity about to monetize that as well? So if I really look at sort of the, the three th three themes, you know, data, data monetization, how to be able to, to do that, enable and sort of that bridge that physical and digital worlds and, and drive the most out of the investments that that organizations have had.

[00:27:35] But being, keeping that in a responsible way. And, and I think, you know, the employees you know, We're having a lot of discussions with with retailers in regards to their employee enablement and how to be able to do that you know, in a responsible way as well. We need, we want to make sure that, you know, the associates are being given access to the right information to make them more informed and to be able to deliver a better customer experience.

[00:27:57] But we also wanna make sure that it doesn't open. You know, [00:28:00] kind of the other counter worms in regards to, you know, on the clock and off the clock and hourly employee discussions. And I know that, Microsoft, you know, is very focused on around that, on, you know, the, the whole enablement and controlling access.

[00:28:12] You know, it's, I I would say it's still, it's, it's an exci, it's still an exciting time and, and you know, I just know that we're, we're all in this together to be able to help retailers through, you know, through where we are and how to be able to get on the, the other side as well. I'm looking forward to, I'm looking forward to NRF 2024.

[00:28:29] I think it's gonna be exciting but it's gonna be, it's gonna be a journey over the, the course of the next few months just on how, how people are pivoting over the, the course of the, of the economy as well.

[00:28:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that makes a, a lot of sense and I, I'm gonna delve a little bit on one of the points you made that we didn't talk as much about earlier, but that I caught it in some key moments around the show may not necessarily always a, a big focus, but certainly lots of people talking about is, you know, what kinds of things can be done that focus on, supporting those store associates and, and [00:29:00] frontline workers in, in the store, you know, what's the technology doing to serve them? It, it's not a discussion I believe, anymore about a technology that's replacing people. It's what's the technology that's helping the people that are there? Partly knowing that, , in most cases, re retailers aren't expecting to hire more people.

[00:29:16] In the stores, there's still an issue of, of, you know, where do I find enough labor to run the store? And so you, , there's that element of needing the technology, but I think there's, there's now a renewed I'll say, I don't know if I should say new or renewed, but there's an interest for sure now in leveraging the technology to make that store environment a better work environment overall. For the team that's there and you know, doing it in a way that causes people to want to do that job. I, I think that's a key differentiator from what I've seen in past years.

[00:29:44] Jeff Roster: Yeah, I'd agree with that. Almost the point where it was noticeable I thought. Uh, where, I don't, I'm trying to think back over the years was the discussion around the employee as, as predominant and I, I just don't think it was, and I just wonder if that maybe is a kind of [00:30:00] a, a fallout from, from Covid where we really saw how, how critical our supply chains are.

[00:30:05] We saw how important people in those supply chains are, how important it's to have, you know, a working store, physical store in our neighborhoods. When it came time to get, know, milk or eggs or whatever. I don't know. It just felt, it just felt like a really interesting, it just felt like a better show.

[00:30:21] It just felt like a better experience. It just felt like everyone

[00:30:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:30:25] Jeff Roster: I don't know. And if, if that, if we got that out of that mess, we've all been through the last three years, uh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say it was worth it, but, but at least it's something positive that came out of all that, all that train wreck

[00:30:34] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:36] Greg Jones: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I look at NRF as being, you know, it's, it's the big show. Absolutely. But this year was the big reunion, you know, it was really that opportunity for people to be able to get back together in person, catch up, Have a laugh, you know, get and, and just reconnect. And I think it was, it was absolutely, it was, you know, it was energizing to be able to be in that environment.

[00:30:56] But as I said, I think it was very much the, the big, big industry [00:31:00] reunion is really what N R F was about this year.

[00:31:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:31:02] Jeff Roster: a good phrase.

[00:31:03] Ricardo Belmar: I, I, I even kind of think of it almost like a big reset moment in that, you know, everybody had been in sort of a mode the last few years because of Covid, and this was almost felt like finally it was the, the one industry moment that let everybody get past that mood and to move to now we're ready to move on to what we're gonna do to make this industry better.

[00:31:22] And I, I, I might, I would probably sum it up as much more of a collaborative note. from an industry point of view on how we're gonna do this than in past years, even pre covid, where, , it wasn't about What am I gonna do? This was more about what are we going to do? 

[00:31:37] Greg Jones: Yeah.

[00:31:38] very much so. That's

[00:31:39] a good. 

[00:31:40] Jeff Roster: that.

[00:31:40] Ricardo Belmar: All right, Jeff, any, any last, , thoughts?

[00:31:43] Jeff Roster: Oh man. It just, it's so exciting. All that. You know, I, I was one of the 6,000 that was there last year, and it was just, it just broke my heart. , and I just thought, my gosh, are we watching the, the end of retail? You know? And of course, remember that was all the talk about, you know, [00:32:00] buy online, pick up the store.

[00:32:01] Awesome, awesome thing. But then, you know, do we are, do we even need this? And all the last mile stuff? And I'm like, no, no, we're, we're people, we're humans. We, we want to, we want to gather. And when I walked in, well, starting with v i p awards on Friday night, and then all the way through, , getting on the plane Wednesday afternoon or yeah, Wednesday afternoon, it just was all about re you know, re-engagement, you know, return.

[00:32:23] You know, the celebration of the human experience, which I think retail probably more so than any industry, really captures that. And I just, I haven't felt as good coming out of a, a trade show, probably, probably ever actually. I just, yeah, I'm, uh, it's, it, it's an exciting time ahead. There's tons of stuff for, for us analysts to talk about.

[00:32:41] There's a bunch of stuff for us focusing on innovation to talk about, and then there's just this tremendous celebration of, of what we can do as a society and as a, as a group and an industry. I, I'm, I'm really, really excited about the, about 2023.

[00:32:54] Greg Jones: Yeah,

[00:32:55] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. Greg, any final thoughts?

[00:32:57] Greg Jones: I was gonna say sim, similar to Jeff, like excited about [00:33:00] 2023. You know, the. NR NRF is, it's really kind of the, it's the Super bowl of, of the, the industry and it brings everybody together and there's the, you know, the excitement around it. What I am definitely, you know, looking forward to is again, just the continuation of the conversations.

[00:33:14] And, you know, it's, The industry is small. We know it's a very small world. You know, and keen to be able to, learn as we're all going through this through this year, just in regards to where we need to be able to pivot and, and how we need to be able to partner. And, you know, really looking forward to, you know, looking forward to a successful 2023 together and and celebrating great successes in 2024 at nrf as well.

[00:33:34] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, I agree with that. Fantastic. Well, Greg, thank you so much for, for joining us for this N R F recap. I know we, we, we all attempted to do this live and while we were still in person during the show and had, let's say, a few technical glitches that maybe prevented us from successfully completing

[00:33:52] Jeff Roster: One slight one.

[00:33:54] Ricardo Belmar: Just, just one slight 

[00:33:55] Jeff Roster: have an 

[00:33:56] Ricardo Belmar: uncooperative microphone that, that prevented us from capturing all that [00:34:00] gold commentary that we knew we were gonna get. But , but 

[00:34:03] Greg Jones: app, Apparently Apparently there's some technology that can help with that.

[00:34:06] That's 

[00:34:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:34:07] Yeah. We'll, we'll, Jeff, we have to look into that for sure.

[00:34:10] Jeff Roster: Oh man.

[00:34:11] Ricardo Belmar: the next time.

[00:34:12] Greg Jones: That all, all good!

[00:34:14] Ricardo Belmar: All good. All good. Well, well, thanks again, Greg for joining us and thanks to Avanade for having sponsored us and giving us the ability to, to. Take on this series during n r f by letting us use your, your space which was such a, a, a fabulous, fabulous spot for us to, to capture some, some golden moments w with a number of really interesting people, and that will everybody's been able to enjoy in this series.

[00:34:35] Greg Jones: I was gonna say, you're, you're always welcome.

[00:34:36] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks very much. All right, Jeff, I think that is a wrap for 

[00:34:39] Jeff Roster: this

[00:34:39] Well, and thank you Ricardo, for letting me shadow you throughout this whole crazy week. I mean, you know, we've talked about doing this sort of a thing for a while and man, what a, what a crazy deal. What an awesome, crazy, fun way to cover N R F 2023. I think we captured some good memories and, and I cannot wait for what [00:35:00] you and I have planned for going forward.

[00:35:02] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely, absolutely. Quick little hint your dropping there for you dropping for, for what's yet to come.

[00:35:09] Jeff Roster: that's a, that the term is

[00:35:10] Ricardo Belmar: listeners and viewers anxiously awaiting.

[00:35:12] Jeff Roster: The term is foreshadowing

[00:35:14] Ricardo Belmar: foreshadowing. There you go. There you go. All right, and with that we will sign off. Thanks everyone for joining us.

[00:35:20] Jeff Roster: See ya.

[00:35:20] Greg Jones: Thanks.

[00:35:21] Show Recap

[00:35:21] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone. So Ricardo, you have to give us some more details. What happened to the original recording of this conversation? I, I, I understand there's a story.

[00:35:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, there, there is. And as much as I'd like to find someone else to blame , I can honestly say I have no idea what happened. So, you know, Jeff and I set up all the mics all our equipment, just like we always did in the Avanade lounge for each of these sessions. But somehow despite, you know, all the, all the sound checks we did when we start before we hit that record button, When I went back to listen to that [00:36:00] recording that, that I got on my Zoom Podtrak recorder, it turned out that Greg's mic was somehow just not functioning at all, and we only had his voice spill over onto the other two mics, so he sounded totally faint and distant.

[00:36:12] It just was not a useful recording at all. So Jeff and I had to go back to Greg after we all got back from N R F and we set up a remote recording session to wrap up the series. So of course that meant technically we didn't record this last one in the crossover series, live and in person at N R F, like the others in the series.

[00:36:29] But in exchange, you know, we get to show off more video podcasts this season with this one.

[00:36:33] Casey Golden: Yeah, and hopefully some of our listeners became viewers on YouTube for this one. I also really love how you guys wrapped it up by talking about the energy and emotion that everyone brought with them at N R F this year. I was there. I felt it, and I don't think I've ever seen that much at nrf. Have you?

[00:36:55] Ricardo Belmar: No, no. I mean, that's a hundred percent of That's so true. This was a really unique N [00:37:00] R f I have to give a special shout out to Jeff Roster too for, for joining me on this little onsite recording adventure. We honestly didn't know if we'd be able to pull this off. For both of us it was our first true, legitimate attempt at some live onsite, in-person recording at an event like this.

[00:37:17] I gotta say, we've all been so used to doing this remotely in, in our podcasts. and looking at each other like we are right now and a little square on our screens. It was just so amazing to have the chance to do this in person. It really brings a whole new feel to the podcast.

[00:37:29] Casey Golden: Absolutely. I know. I really enjoyed listening and watching these. I hope our show listeners and viewers did too, and I just, I adore what Greg mentioned Avanade is doing with those startup showcases. It's just, I feel it's really important at nrf, so now I have to ask. , were you and Jeff hinting at the end there?

[00:37:52] Are we able to say something here about what's to come?

[00:37:56] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I think we're gonna have to keep listeners in suspense on [00:38:00] this one for a little bit longer, but let's just say this won't be the last time you see our two podcasts team up. In fact, we may be doing something even bigger next time, so just stay tuned, keep listening to the show you know, keep listening to our show.

[00:38:11] Keep listening to Jeff's This Week in Innovation so you don't miss out.

[00:38:14] Casey Golden: Fine. Keep everyone in suspense. I know it's worth it. And I'm going to give one last shout out to Avanade. We can't say enough about how grateful we are for you providing a space for you and Jeff and sponsoring this series for us. Thank you Avanade. And I do also wanna thank Jeff again. He's just absolutely awesome to work with.

[00:38:40] And at this, I wish I could have joined you guys for those recordings. But as you know, N r F and Startup Life. Uh, soon we gotta divide and conquer

[00:38:52] And one final thank you to Shish for helping us connect with 1MRobotics and Z [00:39:00]Blocks. They're doing incredible things.

[00:39:02] Ricardo Belmar: I totally agree. And with that, Casey, this crossover event is a wrap.

[00:39:07] Show Close 

[00:39:07] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today? Take a look at the show notes and handy links for more deets.

[00:39:31] I'm your co-host Casey Golden.

[00:39:34] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter, at Retail Razor, on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:39:50] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:39:52] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you [00:40:00] cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the Retail Razor Show.

[00:40:03]

]]> <p>Did you miss #NRF2023 in January this year? No worries, we’ve got you covered this episode with our special NRF Recap! It’s all part of our special podcast cross-over series, <strong>#NRFLive</strong>, with the <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-innovation/id1562068014?i=1000598067761" rel="nofollow"><strong>This Week In Innovation</strong></a> podcast. In Part 5, the final episode in the series, hosts Ricardo Belmar and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-bb51b8/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Roster</a> speak with the North America Lead for Retail &amp; Consumer Goods at <a href="https://www.avanade.com/en" rel="nofollow">Avanade</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/grjones/" rel="nofollow">Greg Jones</a>. Join Greg, Jeff &amp; Ricardo as they discuss the biggest trends and themes they saw at the show, from exhibitors, to startups, to what retailers told them were their main takeaways from the show. Regular cohost Casey Golden also joins Ricardo for a quick introduction and recap!</p><p><br></p><p>You’ll also find out why this episode was not recorded live and in-person at <strong>#NRF2023</strong> in the fabulous <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/avanade/" rel="nofollow">Avanade</a> lounge. Instead it was recorded post-NRF – and yes, there is a story behind that! As a bonus, you can watch the video of the entire conversation on our YouTube channel. A big thank you to Avanade for sponsoring this series and making the recordings possible!</p><p><br></p><p>News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review &amp; be mentioned in future episodes! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, </em>and<em> Overclocked, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><h1>TRANSCRIPT</h1><h2><strong>S2E10e Avanade - Greg Jones</strong></h2><p>[00:00:00] ​</p><h3>[00:00:00] Show Intro </h3><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 part five of the Retail Razor Show. This is the fifth and final episode in our multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 Show in January. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:00:36] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show, retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And welcome N R F fans to our hottake, hashtag N R F Live the mini-series.</p><p>[00:00:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, Casey, we are at the last episode in our crossover [00:01:00] event with Jeff Roster and his This Week in Innovation podcast, and this is a, a special final episode to close out the series. Thanks to our sponsor, Avanade that graciously allowed us to record the whole series in their, in their fabulous lounge space overlooking the main expo floor.</p><p>[00:01:15] For this final episode, Jeff and I were fortunate enough to sit down with Avanade&#39;s Greg Jones, their North America lead for Retail and Consumer Goods, and, and also a friend of ours, to recap what we saw at N R F, talk about the state of startups in retail which AAuD actually hosted three startup showcases during NRF with Microsoft for Startups team and our fellow Retail Avenger, Shish Shridhar.</p><p>[00:01:36] And two of our podcast guests came from those showcases, the 1 M robotics and Z blocks. They&#39;re both part of that program. And of course I know it&#39;s always near and dear to your heart anytime we talk about retail startups.</p><p>[00:01:47] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It is so a big shout out to Avanade for supporting and sponsoring this crossover and just, wow. I mean, this whole series has been a celebration of [00:02:00] retail and just showing us what N R F was all about this year.</p><p>[00:02:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Absolutely. And you know, this discussion with Greg really highlights what I think so many in the media have been missing about the retail industry. That is really a more positive outlook about what&#39;s to come in 2023. You know, we hear about all the, the negative things that get reported, but that wasn&#39;t really the mood.</p><p>[00:02:22] At this N R F and, and we talk about that in this in this episode, you know, positive in the sense that even with all of those headwinds that are out there and global problems and everything, retail still finds a way to innovate and finds a way to deliver great customer and employee experiences.</p><p>[00:02:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yes, and, and the customer experiences always begin with the employee experience, and often that starts with what software they&#39;re using or lack thereof. So really enjoy this highlight.</p><p>[00:02:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let&#39;s dive right in and listen to our conversation with Greg Jones from Avanade</p><h3>[00:03:01] Greg Jones Interview</h3><p>[00:03:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello everybody. We are back to wrap up our N R F Live series that Jeff roster and I have been fortunate enough to speak to a number of fascinating folks during N R F Week and graciously as Avanade has sponsored us and gave us the space and facility to record. We&#39;re coming back after the show now with Greg Jones from Avanade to kind of talk through what stood out to us, what were some of the highlights of the show, and you know, see what where we think things are gonna go next. So, without any further delay, Jeff, what do you say? We just dive in.</p><p>[00:03:36] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Absolutely. Let&#39;s get, let&#39;s get it going.</p><p>[00:03:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right. So please to welcome Greg Jones from Avanade. Greg, why don&#39;t you introduce yourself, kick us off and tell us a little bit about your background and what you&#39;re doing at Avanade.</p><p>[00:03:47] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yeah, absolutely. Ricardo. And, and look, thank, thank you both. Yeah, Ricardo and, and Jeff for the time and the opportunity. I think we&#39;re, we&#39;re. Yeah, really excited collectively on the, on nrf. You know, it was obviously great to be back in, back in person and, and [00:04:00] yeah, great to be able to have this conversation as well.</p><p>[00:04:01] Cause there&#39;s a, a lot, a lot that got learnt and a lot that kind of excited the industry as well. So a bit of background. So Greg Jones run the, and look after the North America practice here at Avanade for retail and consumer goods. Avanade, you know, for, for those who don&#39;t know was a, a joint founded organization back in 2000 between Accenture and Microsoft.</p><p>[00:04:20] We&#39;re a global system integrator, you know, over 60,000 people globally, but very focused around industry as a whole. And, and retail is one of the priority industries that we have. And that&#39;s what we definitely brought together as part of Avanade as and NRF was the opportunity to be able to showcase some of the capabilities that Avanade is delivering. </p><p>[00:04:38] So bringing all of our expertise together. So I&#39;ve been with Avanade for two years. Prior to that I was with Microsoft as part of the global retail team looking after everything from partner ecosystem and business strategy for quite a number of years. And again, pleased to be able to be here with yourself and, and Jeff.</p><p>[00:04:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, thanks very much for, for joining us, Greg. What, why don&#39;t you give us your sense of, [00:05:00] you know, obviously Avanade, you guys had a, a number of really great activities during N R F. You had the the breakfast session at the beginning of the week. You had some startup showcases happening with Microsoft for startups.</p><p>[00:05:11] Why don&#39;t you, you know, give us what you think are some of the highlights from the various activities, and then maybe we can talk a little bit about what, things stood out to all of us from the overall, from N R F?</p><p>[00:05:20] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yeah, no, absolutely. I was gonna say, yeah, we, we did a, a lot to be able to, to really bring you know, the, the view of retail in the current climate as well. So we needed to make sure that, you know, we were coming to the event with capabilities. And some of the, the demos that we had that were very focused around helping organizations you know, get the value out of what they&#39;ve got now as well.</p><p>[00:05:40] And, and I would say that, you know, retailers as a whole yeah, I&#39;ve never faced such a, a volume of, of, or a variety of challenges as well that that&#39;s facing them at the moment. And it&#39;s also facing and, and making some tough decisions. And that was part of the conversations that happened throughout NRF is that people are there.</p><p>[00:05:55] To look at where they need to be able to pivot and how to be able to pivot their organizations, you know, during [00:06:00] the, the current climate at the moment as well. And I would say, yeah, through the discussions, there were two primary challenges that were, were being discussed, which is the, the need to control costs.</p><p>[00:06:09] And also to, yeah, protect margins and there need to be a responsible retailer as, as well and around, you know, doing what matters in the current climate, being able to still ensure that delight experience for the customers. But there&#39;s also an element of the employee experience that really came through as part of the discussions that we had.</p><p>[00:06:27] In particular a breakfast panel. That we did during nrf, where we had, you know, the Chief HR officer from Northern Tools and Equipment, very much talking about the importance of the employees and how through enabling those employees can continue that delight experience and, and be that, you know, continuation of that brand engagement with customers as well.</p><p>[00:06:46] So, It was actually really interesting on, on some of the elements that that came together. The way that we really came, you know, to N R F was to be able to look at what we&#39;re calling yeah, we call it reignite Physical Retail, which is really bringing that [00:07:00] physical retail and, you know, obviously the online worlds together.</p><p>[00:07:03] And how to be able to, you know, look at all aspects of that, that journey or, you know, what we&#39;re calling the, the customers. The only channel is how to be able to engage with that customer through all aspects of the channel of engagement, how we can help retailers and being able to do that. Yeah, it was great to be able to see the, the messaging landed very well with the, the client conversations.</p><p>[00:07:20] You know, the discussions that we had with, uh, with customers was very on point in regards to, you know, the, the challenges that they&#39;re facing and how we can definitely help , but there are also some surprises out there as well that we could talk about a little bit later as well.</p><p>[00:07:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I&#39;m, I&#39;m curious in, in some of your client conversations, so some of the things I heard fairly consistently, and you, and you mentioned it at the beginning too, is this idea of you&#39;re trying to find and identify the things I need to do as a retailer to make my operations more efficient, to kind of lower that cost basis while still.</p><p>[00:07:50] Doing it in a way that&#39;s not gonna impact my overall customer experience, particularly in store now, that I think we can all agree that we can put to bed all, all those worries about stores going away, that hadn&#39;t been [00:08:00] real narrative for so long that you know, we can now all safely point to and say, yeah, that&#39;s not happening.</p><p>[00:08:04] Stores, stores are here to stay. But we&#39;re any, you know, was that a consistent theme that you heard as well?</p><p>[00:08:09] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yeah, it was, I mean, you know, obviously the, the stores aren&#39;t going away. At all. You know, we&#39;ve all heard that the business models of stores have to change. You know, and that&#39;s, that&#39;s no secret. You know, you&#39;re looking at new store designs that are, are coming out across the globe of, of how to be able to provide more of a curated experience.</p><p>[00:08:24] You know, and that, that in itself, I think is just part of the new business model that, you know, retailers are having to be able to make sure that the, the stores are, you know, the showroom. It&#39;s that way to be able to bridge , their online channels with the physical channels. And that pivot, I think definitely has been occurring more so post pandemic as well.</p><p>[00:08:42] And I think that&#39;s where, where people are now starting to see we need best, best of both worlds. You know, we&#39;re seeing Nike as an example, that are, are very much looking at redefining their, their store environments you know, through that whole direct to consumer engagement and, and element that they&#39;re, they&#39;re driving for as well, which I think is, is super, super cool in regards to [00:09:00] what they&#39;re doing.</p><p>[00:09:00] And. It almost like if I look at, you know, the Nike store in New York, it&#39;s a, it&#39;s a destination. You walk past there and people are there to do experience that, that whole engagement point. But I think it also came back to some of the, the fundamentals as well where retailers are, are sitting there going, we&#39;ve invested in, in a lot of technology over the course of the last three years.</p><p>[00:09:19] Are we getting the most out of that as well? And that&#39;s, again, that was a pivot of the discussion on kind of doing more with less or doing more with the investments that they&#39;ve already made and, and looking at ways to be able to really squeeze the most out of those investments. Is there opportunities to be able to consolidate?</p><p>[00:09:35] Absolutely. But it&#39;s also a way to be able to look at maximizing the investments that they&#39;ve already put into place. So I&#39;d be def definitely curious, like, you know, Jeff and, and Ricardo. I mean, you know, from discussions that you had with, with customers, did you look at that or hear in regards to getting more outta the investments that people have made to be able to, to reach the, the goals their wanting to achieve.</p><p>[00:09:53] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> You wanna go first, Ricardo, or you want.</p><p>[00:09:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, sure. I mean, from, from my perspective, I, I, I definitely heard [00:10:00] quite a bit of that, of, you know, what do I need to do to extract that benefit, right? From everything I&#39;ve already invested in. I, I kind of, I tended to hear that coupled with, you know, this recognition that I, my goal isn&#39;t to cut a cost, right?</p><p>[00:10:14] My goal was to gain efficiency. You know, strengthen some aspect of an operation that perhaps when we first created this new capability, the goal at the time was to just get that capability out there with, with not too much regard for how expensive was it gonna be to deliver it. And now was the time to figure out, well, now that I&#39;ve delivered it and we have this cap, this customer facing capability, how can we do it in a more efficient way?</p><p>[00:10:37] And if that means I have to invest in, in another, you know, supplemental capability on top of that to help facilitate the overall reduction of the operational cost long term, then that&#39;s okay. There was some recognition that that might be necessary, but I think I, I saw as a trend that You know, if there are a lot of really interesting new technologies out there, they were being viewed with the lens of how does that [00:11:00] make me more efficient?</p><p>[00:11:01] Or how does that make my operation better? Versus where, you know, the last N R F I remember the, the, the thought would&#39;ve been, wow, that&#39;s really neat. How, how, how well received is that gonna be? If my customer sees that, then therefore I need to have it,</p><p>[00:11:13] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:11:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> which is a very different lens.</p><p>[00:11:15] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, one of the, as I said, you know, one of the surprises that, that I saw and certainly heard across, you know, the entire show, show floor was, you know, Leading into N R F. There was certainly, you know, there was you know, amplification, there was obviously the buzz that was happening about the metaverse.</p><p>[00:11:32] How is that being applied? You know, retailers that are looking at that, brands that are, are definitely jumping in and, and, and exploring and engaging with the, the metaverse for their, for their particular brand. But I was actually quite surprised that, you know, I didn&#39;t see walking into, you know, walking into the Javits Center,</p><p>[00:11:48] yeah, I remember the days where, you know, AI was the, the big topic and you&#39;d have banners all over the place in regards to ai, this and, you know, AI empowered retail and you know, what AI can do for you and your customer experiences [00:12:00] or the, the wonderful world of big data. You know, it was kind of all over the, the place walking to the Javits Center didn&#39;t see anything in regards to metaverse.</p><p>[00:12:09] Now and visually, just in regards to, it wasn&#39;t necessarily there as a, you know, welcome to, or the, you know, the metaverse is changing the world and enabling, and I think part of that is, is the fact of people are still on, not on the edge, but they&#39;re still looking at how that can be applied and what that is going to do for their engagement, but also from an operational standpoint, given the current climate as well, is around do we look at supply chain visibility in inventory, our employees, how do we gain control of our, our entire data estate? Do we do that or we do metaverse? It&#39;s kind of the, there&#39;s a, there&#39;s an interesting kind of like, almost like a, a, an internal debate that people like it&#39;s, it&#39;s there, understand it, it&#39;s kind of, there&#39;s a new way to engage, but there&#39;s other things that we need to be focusing on as well.</p><p>[00:12:56] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah, that&#39;s such an interesting point. Is, in the first three quarters of my [00:13:00] career I was about adoption. You know, my Gartner in i h l days where, where are we in adoption. And it&#39;s interesting kind of even talking about the M word metaverse. You know, a lot of analysts that I&#39;m friends with are going back and forth and are saying, well, I didn&#39;t see any Metaverse stuff there.</p><p>[00:13:15] Well you should have went up to the innovation lab because there was plenty of that there. But it, but the thing was, and I agree with you a hundred percent, Greg, there was, I, I don&#39;t think I saw the word metaverse once, but there was all the components of it, which is why I&#39;m really such a big fan. And I got this first from Microsoft, the term immersive commerce, because it&#39;s not right now, it&#39;s, I don&#39;t think anybody&#39;s looking to buy a metaverse solution, but boy, you sure can find some very interesting stuff around holograms.</p><p>[00:13:41] You can definitely find a lot around 3D objects. You can definitely find some stuff around around augmented reality. Not so much on the, on the, on the, on the goggles yet. I, I kind of get that. I mean, you know, I, I don&#39;t know know they see that, but boy, When you start thinking about what Ulta&#39;s doing with Roblox, what [00:14:00] home, what see not Home Depot Walmart is doing with Roblox, you are in, you&#39;re really seeing that immersive commerce.</p><p>[00:14:06] Pieces begin to pick up and it&#39;s almost like there&#39;s a maturation in how we message the, how the vendor community messages this stuff. And it really, I, I didn&#39;t see, I, it just felt like a very mature approach to, to the show. Just. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Like screamy there&#39;s a great example.</p><p>[00:14:24] I&#39;ll use, it&#39;s one of your competitors. Like, I, I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll be nice and not use it, but there was one a few years ago, there was like a, a, a certain signage that was everywhere and it was like, you know, it. I don&#39;t know. It seemed kind of silly, so I thi I just felt like it was a really, really mature way of going about the business of not just adopt, you know, technology adoption, but also also the, the, the push towards innovation.</p><p>[00:14:49] Definitely on the you know, in the, in the innovation lab and definitely it. You know, in the Microsoft for startup stuff, I mean, there was some crazy interesting technology. So I, I love that balance. You [00:15:00] know, I just, I, I&#39;m not sure, I&#39;m not sure my, my fellow analysts though, picked up on that, that nuance cuz they&#39;re not chasing innovation.</p><p>[00:15:05] They shouldn&#39;t be, they should be worried about where, what, you know, where, where we are in adoption. And boy that&#39;s that&#39;s gonna be a fun thing for us, some of us to chase, I think in the next, next 18 months.</p><p>[00:15:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, and, and you know, there, there&#39;s some things I saw too, so, I mean, I agree too. Greg said that, you know, that you didn&#39;t see Metaverse being flashed around everywhere. Like, like we had, you know, in places last year. And, and I agree with what you said, Jeff, that there are a lot of components about it spread out and, and lots of different places because, and I kind of perceive it that, as, you know, some of these components have useful things you can do with them today. Whereas I think everyone is still kind of figuring out what&#39;s my truly useful revenue generating thing that I can do that&#39;s customer facing in the metaverse that I, I know is gonna work with the customers I have? Or what, what can I do that&#39;s gonna attract new customers for me?</p><p>[00:15:52] And I think everyone&#39;s still kind of figuring that part out. But there&#39;s some things, you know, I, I, I saw people thinking and talking about digital twins, which I view [00:16:00] that as a metaverse use case.</p><p>[00:16:01] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yep.</p><p>[00:16:02] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I want to, you know, I want a digital twin. I want, I want me, so I can go in and have two or three people going around the show. That&#39;s what I</p><p>[00:16:09] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> your own digital twin go and </p><p>[00:16:10] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I need my </p><p>[00:16:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right? and go go talk to some </p><p>[00:16:12] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> still, I</p><p>[00:16:13] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> I was gonna say, I think we had a startup about that as </p><p>[00:16:16] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> there you go. There you go. And I&#39;m, I still haven&#39;t only covered about 15 or 20% of the show.</p><p>[00:16:20] I mean, I, it was unbelievable how complex that show was to cover. I mean, it was</p><p>[00:16:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:16:26] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I, it just, so there was so much stuff and then we haven&#39;t even talked about, you know, the stuff that was happening offsite. Really, really that show is just absolutely maturing and, and exploding.</p><p>[00:16:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Well, well let&#39;s, let&#39;s kind of drill into this theme a little bit on what some of those new things were that it may not have been metaverse, but, you know, I, I, for example, I mean, I still saw some things around web three that I think were pretty interesting, particularly connecting with loyalty programs.</p><p>[00:16:51] Which I see as a trending, trending thing. And then also saw some things around micro fulfillment that I think continues to be, maybe isn&#39;t a, a new topic to [00:17:00] talk about, but still I, I would consider it new in terms of adoption. To your point, Jeff, you know, where are things in adoption and ways to apply it.</p><p>[00:17:07] So I think a lot of interesting things in, in pockets and areas, and particularly with what different startups were showing.</p><p>[00:17:12] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll jump onto the, the startup side. So a as, as you both know, you know, throughout the course of nrf, every day we, we, , in partnership with Microsoft brought together a number of, of, you know, very interesting and unique startups to be able to, it was more of an opportunity to be able to just share, share what are some of the things and, and organizations that are out there, the problems that they&#39;re trying to solve.</p><p>[00:17:33] and the way that we broke it up was, again, very intentional. So the first day that we had we focused around what we were calling the intelligent store. So really looking at the, you know, kind of what is happening around that physical store element. Yeah. And there was some interesting, interesting startups with a likes of Shopic, right?</p><p>[00:17:48] So Shopic, you know, it was a more of a smart cart frictionless shopping approach where, you know, it&#39;s a. Yeah, it&#39;s a self, it&#39;s a unit that then mounts onto a shopping cart. You can then pick the product off to the shelf, put that into your basket, [00:18:00] transact on the, at the cart itself, bag your product go and put it into the car.</p><p>[00:18:04] And then you just put the, you know, put the, yeah, the, the rack back onto the, the charging station. Again, a, a cost effective way to be able to provide that frictionless shopping experience. And then you had others with you know, if I look at the, likes of Pathr AI. Which is, you know, really starting to look at, not just around measuring traffic, but it&#39;s also looking at the analytics of that physical world.</p><p>[00:18:26] Understanding the shopper behavior within the retail stores, but it&#39;s leveraging the infrastructure that&#39;s already in place as well. So being, again, cost conscious, but being able to drive and, and, and pull value out of what&#39;s in the, the store that was, there were, that was a couple that we had on, on day one.</p><p>[00:18:40] Day two, again, we pivoted around what was happening in the, the current days. So it was around looking at unified commerce and supply chain. So, you know, we had, you know, organizations like Next Billion ai. Again, looking at, you know, scale and managing the mapping ecosystem as well, and, and, you know, tackling , complex location based problems and [00:19:00] how to be able to use AI as a means to be able to bring, you know, geography and scale together to be able to look what was happening.</p><p>[00:19:06] You then start to, to look at the likes of, you know, pocket. You know, and Pocket themselves is, is really a sort of a, a checkout platform that helps businesses access and retain that, the digital native shoppers globally. And it&#39;s, it&#39;s really, it was quite interesting on the way that they were looking at merchant partners looking at shelf analytics and, and you know, being able to bridge the yeah, bridge that online and, and in-store experience. </p><p>[00:19:30] But the Day three was the one that kind of, I think, blew people&#39;s minds a little bit. And yeah, Jeff it comes back onto what we were all saying about, about Metaverse. We did have a session on Metaverse, but it was to be able to bring different elements.</p><p>[00:19:42] You know, you start to look at this, you know, this commerce approach, you start to look at how, how different types of capabilities are, are being enabled. And one of, one of the startups that we had there was, was phenomenal. I mean, it it, you could have had an an hour just with this particular startup called Deep Brain ai.</p><p>[00:19:58] And they&#39;re, they&#39;re all about, you know, [00:20:00] conversational artificial intelligence. And they were talking about stories of, you know, in the Asia region where, there is a mainstream news program that instead of having a, a, a. and, you know, a physical host hosting the, the TV program. It&#39;s a conversational AI and a, it&#39;s an AI driven you know, en engagement that happens.</p><p>[00:20:21] And then radio stations that are you know, we&#39;re on a podcast. But, you know, it was kind of scary when it&#39;s starting to talk about, you know, again, this, conversational, , AI and how that could become the voice of radio moving forward. And that was one where, . It was good to have it sort of on the last day because I think people were just like, oh, you know, last day we&#39;re sitting down.</p><p>[00:20:39] That&#39;s all good. And then there was all of a sudden this, well, hang on a minute. What, what, what are you talking about? And it was actually, it was kind of, it, it created a lot of, lot of great follow on discussions as well. But it was kind of, again, it was an opportunity to be able to bring something new to, you know, customers and, and anybody that was able to, to come past our showcase.</p><p>[00:20:58] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah, that was the one with the [00:21:00] the Howie Mandel avatar, correct.</p><p>[00:21:02] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yeah, that&#39;s correct. Yep. Jeff.</p><p>[00:21:04] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So they were up in the they were up in the innovation zone. That&#39;s actually real. I mean, Howie is sending his, I don&#39;t know, what do you call it? His AI out and you can license that and for a, a, a cheaper rate than having Howie come out personally, I, I, I, I was shocked by that.</p><p>[00:21:20] I mean, not shocked. That&#39;s probably too strong. But you know, again, that innovation versus adoption. Wow. You, you can, you now can you can. Pounds, dollars Euro rupi and say, there, there is money being generated. And obviously it&#39;s just, I mean, that&#39;s such a crazy scenario. How that&#39;s gonna play itself out feels really super metaverse to me.</p><p>[00:21:41] So.</p><p>[00:21:42] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:21:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:21:43] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> It&#39;s just, I, I just, </p><p>[00:21:45] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> just,</p><p>[00:21:45] just say</p><p>[00:21:46] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> adoption. The</p><p>[00:21:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Just saying.</p><p>[00:21:48] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> The the, the, not the, not just the innovation, but the adoption. When you can start going in stuff that we really, I don&#39;t think that was even around what, three years ago or at least before Covid, and now you, you can say, [00:22:00] wow, there&#39;s money being generated here.</p><p>[00:22:01] That is</p><p>[00:22:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah.</p><p>[00:22:03] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> adoption. That rapid innovation followed by, I think, pretty significant adoption coming forward. So a lot of stuff happening there.</p><p>[00:22:11] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> And I think to be honest, Jeff, that that in itself is, is part of the challenge for the industry, right? So as you said, yeah, three years ago, you would, I don&#39;t think we would, any of us would&#39;ve been having a conversation about, you know, you know, Howie, Howie out there with his, you know, with his ai and that is, and you can, you know, you can purchase that, get him out there speaking and, and create this kind of character.</p><p>[00:22:33] you&#39;ve also then sort of blend that within the, the conversations that really bubbled up on the last day of NRF around chat G p T, right? You and, and you start to look at, okay, as a retailer, how do we, how do we, what do we do with this? How do we consume it? How does it get applied? And I think collectively, if I look at, you know you know, the, the three of us, I think there&#39;s a, an element of how can we help retailers? Really start to look at how it could be applied in that, in that [00:23:00]conversation of like responsible retailing, I think there&#39;s an element of, of, of a good conversation to have around that as well.</p><p>[00:23:05] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah, that, that one&#39;s not going away because every analyst I&#39;ve talked to is, is both intrigued and sweating bolts about that. Um, since I&#39;m on, I&#39;m on the other side of my career, I&#39;m like, yeah, this sounds great. You know, let me just, let me just have this, absorb all this in unbelievable amount of information and then and, you know, spit out some content and let me edit it.</p><p>[00:23:27] And then, just you know, roster&#39;s, opinion edited, or, you know, created by chat G P T and, and edited by me. And it seems fine to me. As long as somebody&#39;s sort of validating that Basically. Basically it&#39;s just ghost writing. So what does that, what does that mean for retail? I mean, how.</p><p>[00:23:41] How are they gonna process that? How are they gonna absorb that man? We&#39;re, we&#39;re, we&#39;re, we&#39;re really out on the edge when we&#39;re, we&#39;re talking about that. And just imagine if by next year where we&#39;ve really now spent six months, eight months, nine months, really beginning to live with this and seeing and seen podcast.</p><p>[00:23:59] I mean, [00:24:00] there&#39;s a podcast where it&#39;s already interviewed the ai I mean, you know, it&#39;s, and did live. I mean, it was crazy. And that&#39;s, we&#39;re only on the, the earliest edge. So, So when I look at that, when I look at what teams are gonna need to do what, uh, what retailers are gonna need to do, we&#39;ve always been screaming about, you know, air of intentional innovation is upon us.</p><p>[00:24:16] Boy oh boy, that&#39;s on, that&#39;s on steroids now. You, you live streaming. What are you gonna do with live streaming? Are you gonna be comfortable having your store associates out there presenting your brand out in all kinds of environments? Are we gonna over-engineer that live streaming like we probably would&#39;ve done 10 years ago?</p><p>[00:24:31] Hopefully not. You know, </p><p>[00:24:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> now you&#39;ll also have the option that maybe if, for your best store associates that do that, right, you could have their digital avatar do to live streaming for them while they&#39;re still helping a customer in the store.</p><p>[00:24:40] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I mean that that</p><p>[00:24:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Think about it that</p><p>[00:24:42] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> that&#39;s just a g. Yeah, that&#39;s </p><p>[00:24:43] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> now you&#39;ve just taken it next level.</p><p>[00:24:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. , I mean, just, just thinking out on some of the, I, you know, there, everyone likes to talk about the customer service use cases, right?</p><p>[00:24:51] Where today it might be, you know, the what, what every consumer probably learns to hate the chatbot on ev on every retailer&#39;s site that tries to solve their support [00:25:00] questions when they come in, ask. But now, when you have something like a chat g p t trying to solve those, you might actually get meaningful responses. And the consumer won&#39;t even realize that they&#39;re talking to an ai, if you don&#39;t tell &#39;em they&#39;re, they&#39;re gonna get the answers they want and move on. , you know, you can think of it in, in like, call center applications. I can think of. You know, I, I think to me those demos that we saw from like the deep brain ai, there, there&#39;s gotta be an example there of, whether it&#39;s Howie or some other celebrity type, you know, pseudo endorsement, right?</p><p>[00:25:25] Standing at the, in a store window, kind of waving to the people coming by offering to tell &#39;em about what great new thing is inside the store, ? And to get people inside when it&#39;s just, it&#39;s not really them, it&#39;s their digital avatar.</p><p>[00:25:34] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yeah, it&#39;s, it&#39;s, gonna, it&#39;s, it&#39;s gonna be really, it&#39;s, it&#39;s exciting. I think it is exciting in regards to how it gonna be applied. I mean, I, you know, talking to my, my 17 year old son about Chat GPT and he was just like, yeah. It&#39;s like, I&#39;ve known about this for months. I&#39;m like, okay, good.</p><p>[00:25:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:25:48] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> you might, you might wanna, you might have wanted to share that with me before I step foot at nrf, but that&#39;s, that&#39;s a different, different </p><p>[00:25:53] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> the second question is how much of your homework has, has that done for you?</p><p>[00:25:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> has it done for you.</p><p>[00:25:59] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yes, [00:26:00] there is, is that subliminal sort of. Okay, let me, let me, let me re-look at your grades and see if there was a spike in improvement. Now I know. Now I know why, but now he&#39;s, he&#39;s a.</p><p>[00:26:10] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So, so Greg, let me ask you this to kind of last thing here, to close this out with all these things we just talked about of, based on, on what we saw at N R F. You know, what, what&#39;s your take on where retailers go next this year coming out of n r f. </p><p>[00:26:22] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yeah, look, I think it&#39;s sort of coming, coming out on the, on the back of nrf. You know, I would say that, there&#39;s the consistent excitement that is still there in regards to, you know, the market opportunity. You know? Yes. P their discretionary spend is starting to, to definitely slow down and we, we see that in all the reports and, yeah.</p><p>[00:26:39] Discussions that we&#39;re having with our customers. I think, yeah, really for, for me, it&#39;s, it&#39;s, kind of the, the challenge and the opportunity is really just that bridge, you know, how to be able to bridge that physical and digital world together. You know, really unleash that, that customer experience.</p><p>[00:26:52] And the other part of it is, is really around the data estate. You know, the, the one thing, and certainly one of the, the key themes that came up [00:27:00] and, and through the discussions that we had is what to do with this vast amount of data that has, yeah, I would say significantly grown over the last three years, just given the, the new.</p><p>[00:27:09] New market opportunities, new direction that retailers have had to go. And there&#39;s a, there&#39;s a need and a, and a desire to, to look at, you know, how do we try and get control of of what we have as part of the data estate? Is there the opportunity about to monetize that as well? So if I really look at sort of the, the three th three themes, you know, data, data monetization, how to be able to, to do that, enable and sort of that bridge that physical and digital worlds and, and drive the most out of the investments that that organizations have had.</p><p>[00:27:35] But being, keeping that in a responsible way. And, and I think, you know, the employees you know, We&#39;re having a lot of discussions with with retailers in regards to their employee enablement and how to be able to do that you know, in a responsible way as well. We need, we want to make sure that, you know, the associates are being given access to the right information to make them more informed and to be able to deliver a better customer experience.</p><p>[00:27:57] But we also wanna make sure that it doesn&#39;t open. You know, [00:28:00] kind of the other counter worms in regards to, you know, on the clock and off the clock and hourly employee discussions. And I know that, Microsoft, you know, is very focused on around that, on, you know, the, the whole enablement and controlling access.</p><p>[00:28:12] You know, it&#39;s, I I would say it&#39;s still, it&#39;s, it&#39;s an exci, it&#39;s still an exciting time and, and you know, I just know that we&#39;re, we&#39;re all in this together to be able to help retailers through, you know, through where we are and how to be able to get on the, the other side as well. I&#39;m looking forward to, I&#39;m looking forward to NRF 2024.</p><p>[00:28:29] I think it&#39;s gonna be exciting but it&#39;s gonna be, it&#39;s gonna be a journey over the, the course of the next few months just on how, how people are pivoting over the, the course of the, of the economy as well.</p><p>[00:28:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I think that makes a, a lot of sense and I, I&#39;m gonna delve a little bit on one of the points you made that we didn&#39;t talk as much about earlier, but that I caught it in some key moments around the show may not necessarily always a, a big focus, but certainly lots of people talking about is, you know, what kinds of things can be done that focus on, supporting those store associates and, and [00:29:00] frontline workers in, in the store, you know, what&#39;s the technology doing to serve them? It, it&#39;s not a discussion I believe, anymore about a technology that&#39;s replacing people. It&#39;s what&#39;s the technology that&#39;s helping the people that are there? Partly knowing that, , in most cases, re retailers aren&#39;t expecting to hire more people.</p><p>[00:29:16] In the stores, there&#39;s still an issue of, of, you know, where do I find enough labor to run the store? And so you, , there&#39;s that element of needing the technology, but I think there&#39;s, there&#39;s now a renewed I&#39;ll say, I don&#39;t know if I should say new or renewed, but there&#39;s an interest for sure now in leveraging the technology to make that store environment a better work environment overall. For the team that&#39;s there and you know, doing it in a way that causes people to want to do that job. I, I think that&#39;s a key differentiator from what I&#39;ve seen in past years.</p><p>[00:29:44] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah, I&#39;d agree with that. Almost the point where it was noticeable I thought. Uh, where, I don&#39;t, I&#39;m trying to think back over the years was the discussion around the employee as, as predominant and I, I just don&#39;t think it was, and I just wonder if that maybe is a kind of [00:30:00] a, a fallout from, from Covid where we really saw how, how critical our supply chains are.</p><p>[00:30:05] We saw how important people in those supply chains are, how important it&#39;s to have, you know, a working store, physical store in our neighborhoods. When it came time to get, know, milk or eggs or whatever. I don&#39;t know. It just felt, it just felt like a really interesting, it just felt like a better show.</p><p>[00:30:21] It just felt like a better experience. It just felt like everyone</p><p>[00:30:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:30:25] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I don&#39;t know. And if, if that, if we got that out of that mess, we&#39;ve all been through the last three years, uh, I wouldn&#39;t, I wouldn&#39;t say it was worth it, but, but at least it&#39;s something positive that came out of all that, all that train wreck</p><p>[00:30:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah.</p><p>[00:30:36] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I look at NRF as being, you know, it&#39;s, it&#39;s the big show. Absolutely. But this year was the big reunion, you know, it was really that opportunity for people to be able to get back together in person, catch up, Have a laugh, you know, get and, and just reconnect. And I think it was, it was absolutely, it was, you know, it was energizing to be able to be in that environment.</p><p>[00:30:56] But as I said, I think it was very much the, the big, big industry [00:31:00] reunion is really what N R F was about this year.</p><p>[00:31:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:31:02] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> a good phrase.</p><p>[00:31:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I, I, I even kind of think of it almost like a big reset moment in that, you know, everybody had been in sort of a mode the last few years because of Covid, and this was almost felt like finally it was the, the one industry moment that let everybody get past that mood and to move to now we&#39;re ready to move on to what we&#39;re gonna do to make this industry better.</p><p>[00:31:22] And I, I, I might, I would probably sum it up as much more of a collaborative note. from an industry point of view on how we&#39;re gonna do this than in past years, even pre covid, where, , it wasn&#39;t about What am I gonna do? This was more about what are we going to do? </p><p>[00:31:37] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:31:38] very much so. That&#39;s</p><p>[00:31:39] a good. </p><p>[00:31:40] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> that.</p><p>[00:31:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right, Jeff, any, any last, , thoughts?</p><p>[00:31:43] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Oh man. It just, it&#39;s so exciting. All that. You know, I, I was one of the 6,000 that was there last year, and it was just, it just broke my heart. , and I just thought, my gosh, are we watching the, the end of retail? You know? And of course, remember that was all the talk about, you know, [00:32:00] buy online, pick up the store.</p><p>[00:32:01] Awesome, awesome thing. But then, you know, do we are, do we even need this? And all the last mile stuff? And I&#39;m like, no, no, we&#39;re, we&#39;re people, we&#39;re humans. We, we want to, we want to gather. And when I walked in, well, starting with v i p awards on Friday night, and then all the way through, , getting on the plane Wednesday afternoon or yeah, Wednesday afternoon, it just was all about re you know, re-engagement, you know, return.</p><p>[00:32:23] You know, the celebration of the human experience, which I think retail probably more so than any industry, really captures that. And I just, I haven&#39;t felt as good coming out of a, a trade show, probably, probably ever actually. I just, yeah, I&#39;m, uh, it&#39;s, it, it&#39;s an exciting time ahead. There&#39;s tons of stuff for, for us analysts to talk about.</p><p>[00:32:41] There&#39;s a bunch of stuff for us focusing on innovation to talk about, and then there&#39;s just this tremendous celebration of, of what we can do as a society and as a, as a group and an industry. I, I&#39;m, I&#39;m really, really excited about the, about 2023.</p><p>[00:32:54] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:32:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. Greg, any final thoughts?</p><p>[00:32:57] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> I was gonna say sim, similar to Jeff, like excited about [00:33:00] 2023. You know, the. NR NRF is, it&#39;s really kind of the, it&#39;s the Super bowl of, of the, the industry and it brings everybody together and there&#39;s the, you know, the excitement around it. What I am definitely, you know, looking forward to is again, just the continuation of the conversations.</p><p>[00:33:14] And, you know, it&#39;s, The industry is small. We know it&#39;s a very small world. You know, and keen to be able to, learn as we&#39;re all going through this through this year, just in regards to where we need to be able to pivot and, and how we need to be able to partner. And, you know, really looking forward to, you know, looking forward to a successful 2023 together and and celebrating great successes in 2024 at nrf as well.</p><p>[00:33:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh, I agree with that. Fantastic. Well, Greg, thank you so much for, for joining us for this N R F recap. I know we, we, we all attempted to do this live and while we were still in person during the show and had, let&#39;s say, a few technical glitches that maybe prevented us from successfully completing</p><p>[00:33:52] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> One slight one.</p><p>[00:33:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Just, just one slight </p><p>[00:33:55] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> have an </p><p>[00:33:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> uncooperative microphone that, that prevented us from capturing all that [00:34:00] gold commentary that we knew we were gonna get. But , but </p><p>[00:34:03] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> app, Apparently Apparently there&#39;s some technology that can help with that.</p><p>[00:34:06] That&#39;s </p><p>[00:34:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:34:07] Yeah. We&#39;ll, we&#39;ll, Jeff, we have to look into that for sure.</p><p>[00:34:10] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Oh man.</p><p>[00:34:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> the next time.</p><p>[00:34:12] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> That all, all good!</p><p>[00:34:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All good. All good. Well, well, thanks again, Greg for joining us and thanks to Avanade for having sponsored us and giving us the ability to, to. Take on this series during n r f by letting us use your, your space which was such a, a, a fabulous, fabulous spot for us to, to capture some, some golden moments w with a number of really interesting people, and that will everybody&#39;s been able to enjoy in this series.</p><p>[00:34:35] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> I was gonna say, you&#39;re, you&#39;re always welcome.</p><p>[00:34:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thanks very much. All right, Jeff, I think that is a wrap for </p><p>[00:34:39] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> this</p><p>[00:34:39] Well, and thank you Ricardo, for letting me shadow you throughout this whole crazy week. I mean, you know, we&#39;ve talked about doing this sort of a thing for a while and man, what a, what a crazy deal. What an awesome, crazy, fun way to cover N R F 2023. I think we captured some good memories and, and I cannot wait for what [00:35:00] you and I have planned for going forward.</p><p>[00:35:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Absolutely, absolutely. Quick little hint your dropping there for you dropping for, for what&#39;s yet to come.</p><p>[00:35:09] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> that&#39;s a, that the term is</p><p>[00:35:10] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> listeners and viewers anxiously awaiting.</p><p>[00:35:12] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> The term is foreshadowing</p><p>[00:35:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> foreshadowing. There you go. There you go. All right, and with that we will sign off. Thanks everyone for joining us.</p><p>[00:35:20] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> See ya.</p><p>[00:35:20] <strong>Greg Jones:</strong> Thanks.</p><h3>[00:35:21] Show Recap</h3><p>[00:35:21] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Welcome back everyone. So Ricardo, you have to give us some more details. What happened to the original recording of this conversation? I, I, I understand there&#39;s a story.</p><p>[00:35:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, there, there is. And as much as I&#39;d like to find someone else to blame , I can honestly say I have no idea what happened. So, you know, Jeff and I set up all the mics all our equipment, just like we always did in the Avanade lounge for each of these sessions. But somehow despite, you know, all the, all the sound checks we did when we start before we hit that record button, When I went back to listen to that [00:36:00] recording that, that I got on my Zoom Podtrak recorder, it turned out that Greg&#39;s mic was somehow just not functioning at all, and we only had his voice spill over onto the other two mics, so he sounded totally faint and distant.</p><p>[00:36:12] It just was not a useful recording at all. So Jeff and I had to go back to Greg after we all got back from N R F and we set up a remote recording session to wrap up the series. So of course that meant technically we didn&#39;t record this last one in the crossover series, live and in person at N R F, like the others in the series.</p><p>[00:36:29] But in exchange, you know, we get to show off more video podcasts this season with this one.</p><p>[00:36:33] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, and hopefully some of our listeners became viewers on YouTube for this one. I also really love how you guys wrapped it up by talking about the energy and emotion that everyone brought with them at N R F this year. I was there. I felt it, and I don&#39;t think I&#39;ve ever seen that much at nrf. Have you?</p><p>[00:36:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> No, no. I mean, that&#39;s a hundred percent of That&#39;s so true. This was a really unique N [00:37:00] R f I have to give a special shout out to Jeff Roster too for, for joining me on this little onsite recording adventure. We honestly didn&#39;t know if we&#39;d be able to pull this off. For both of us it was our first true, legitimate attempt at some live onsite, in-person recording at an event like this.</p><p>[00:37:17] I gotta say, we&#39;ve all been so used to doing this remotely in, in our podcasts. and looking at each other like we are right now and a little square on our screens. It was just so amazing to have the chance to do this in person. It really brings a whole new feel to the podcast.</p><p>[00:37:29] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Absolutely. I know. I really enjoyed listening and watching these. I hope our show listeners and viewers did too, and I just, I adore what Greg mentioned Avanade is doing with those startup showcases. It&#39;s just, I feel it&#39;s really important at nrf, so now I have to ask. , were you and Jeff hinting at the end there?</p><p>[00:37:52] Are we able to say something here about what&#39;s to come?</p><p>[00:37:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, I think we&#39;re gonna have to keep listeners in suspense on [00:38:00] this one for a little bit longer, but let&#39;s just say this won&#39;t be the last time you see our two podcasts team up. In fact, we may be doing something even bigger next time, so just stay tuned, keep listening to the show you know, keep listening to our show.</p><p>[00:38:11] Keep listening to Jeff&#39;s This Week in Innovation so you don&#39;t miss out.</p><p>[00:38:14] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Fine. Keep everyone in suspense. I know it&#39;s worth it. And I&#39;m going to give one last shout out to Avanade. We can&#39;t say enough about how grateful we are for you providing a space for you and Jeff and sponsoring this series for us. Thank you Avanade. And I do also wanna thank Jeff again. He&#39;s just absolutely awesome to work with.</p><p>[00:38:40] And at this, I wish I could have joined you guys for those recordings. But as you know, N r F and Startup Life. Uh, soon we gotta divide and conquer</p><p>[00:38:52] And one final thank you to Shish for helping us connect with 1MRobotics and Z [00:39:00]Blocks. They&#39;re doing incredible things.</p><p>[00:39:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I totally agree. And with that, Casey, this crossover event is a wrap.</p><h3>[00:39:07] Show Close </h3><p>[00:39:07] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don&#39;t miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today? Take a look at the show notes and handy links for more deets.</p><p>[00:39:31] I&#39;m your co-host Casey Golden.</p><p>[00:39:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter, at Retail Razor, on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:39:50] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:39:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail if you [00:40:00] cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the Retail Razor Show.</p><p>[00:40:03]</p> 617e8ea9-96d5-4250-a9e1-56fc33c8e506 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 03 Mar 2023 12:05:00 +0000 2411 no full S2E10d #NRFLive SPECIAL - Micro-fulfillment with 1MRobotics S2E10d #NRFLive SPECIAL - Micro-fulfillment with 1MRobotics 10 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E10d #NRFLive SPECIAL - Micro-fulfillment with 1MRobotics How do you leverage micro-fulfillment capabilities as a retailer? What are the costs and capital investment necessary? Micro-fulfillment is a hot trend to bring retail products closer to the customer to meet rapid delivery schedules. But is there a better way, at a lower cost, without capital investment, that can deliver the customer experience you want? Enter 1MRobotics, a nano-fulfillment as a service provider that turns the concept into a cookie-cutter approach the size of a shipping container! This episode continues our special podcast cross-over series, #NRFLive, with the This Week In Innovation podcast. In Part 4, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Jeff Roster speak with the VP of Sales at 1MRobotics, Gonen Gershuni. 1MRobotics delivers a nano-fulfillment center as a service to retailers, designed especially for urban deployments at scale. Join Jeff & Ricardo as they learn how nano-fulfillment can revolutionize retail with new use cases. Regular cohost Casey Golden also joins Ricardo for a quick introduction and recap This discussion was recorded live & in-person during #NRF2023, in the fabulous Avanade lounge. A big thank you to Avanade for sponsoring this series and making the recordings possible! News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E10d Micro-fulfillment with 1MRobotics [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Show Intro [00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 part four of the Retail Razor Show. This is the fourth in our multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 Show in January. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:00:33] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show, retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And once again, for this special bonus, welcome N R F fans to our hot take hashtag N R F Live mini-series. [00:00:54] Ricardo Belmar: So Casey, we are here again with our podcast crossover event with [00:01:00] Jeff Foster and the This Week in Innovation podcast. And thanks to our sponsor, Avanade, we were able to record in this series live and in person at the N R F Show in Avanade's fabulous lounge space overlooking the main expo floor. [00:01:12] Casey Golden: A big shout out to our friends at Avanade for giving you and Jeff such a great space to record from. They know how to get things done! [00:01:20] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. So let's dive right into this week's discussion. Casey, when I say micro fulfillment to you, what do you think of and what would you say if I said micro fulfillment specifically for dense urban locations? [00:01:32] Casey Golden: Hmm. Quick and smart fill-ins for your best sellers so you don't miss out on a sale? [00:01:37] Ricardo Belmar: Ah, well, I think you're gonna be fascinated by this discussion with our special guest, Gonen Gershuni, the VP of Sales at 1 M Robotics. Have to say, when Jeff and I sat down with him in the lounge to talk about how they're transforming micro fulfillment, especially for dense urban areas where, let's face it, you, you don't expect to find a lot of available space for really [00:02:00] large micro fulfillment centers. [00:02:01] And, and yeah, I know it sounds kind of odd to say large micro fulfillment centers, but that's the way, the way it goes. But 1 M Robotics, they're, they're talking about a fully automated, micro fulfillment center, that's basically the size of a shipping container. And did I mention they can easily convert it into a fully automated store that's customer facing. [00:02:18] We're, we're gonna hear about a lot of different possibilities and configurations of this technology. [00:02:23] Casey Golden: So the first thing I thought was, sounds expensive for a large micro fulfillment center. Now I'm intrigued when you said shipping container. So I'm ready for it. And you know how much I love powering the future of e-commerce, and this sounds like something really interesting to help those use cases. [00:02:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I, I a hundred percent agree. So let's jump right in and listen to Jeff and my discussion with Gonen from 1 M Robotics. [00:02:55] 1MRobotics Interview [00:02:55] Ricardo Belmar: Hey everyone. We are back at NRF 2023 [00:03:00] with another special bonus episode in our series here. I'm Ricardo Belmar, and I'm here with my special guest host Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation. [00:03:09] Jeff Roster: Ricardo, how you doing today? [00:03:11] Ricardo Belmar: I am doing great. A little tired at this point after I lost track of how many days this is again, we start each of these sessions trying to remember where are we, , what are we doing? [00:03:22] How far into the event are we? And I guess that says it's kind of back to normal because in a normal NRF, I'd be lost by the time we get to the end, [00:03:30] Jeff Roster: I can see the finish line. [00:03:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, there you go. There you go. [00:03:33] Jeff Roster: I can feel it. We're running through the tape. And what a tape it is to run through. [00:03:38] What what an amazing week couldn't be prouder of, of N R F, the industry, the tech community. They showed up strong strong energy. Literally, literally at the end of the show. And they're still laughing. Some of your colleagues at Microsoft are toasting. I know. I noticed you've giving up the champagne toast, just so you know. [00:03:54] I'm not sure I would've done [00:03:55] Ricardo Belmar: I know. Yeah, I know. [00:03:56] Jeff Roster: know. So just a fantastic deal. Excellent. All around. Could not be [00:04:00] happier, could not be proud of the industry. [00:04:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. I agree. I agree. And to that end, we are fortunate enough to have another special guest. So we're joined here by Gonen Gershuni of 1M robotics and Gonen I think we're just gonna jump right in. First of all, I'm, I'm super excited that we've got some time with you here to record, but why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your background how 1M Robotics came to be and what your solution is, how you're helping retailer is, and, and give us the, the scoop on [00:04:31] that. [00:04:32] Gonen Gershuni: Sure. So Ricardo, Jeff, thanks so much for this opportunity. Couldn't be more excited to be here with you today. What an amazing stage this is. I mean, NRF B Beck, B Beck larger, bigger than ever. And this is an amazing facility. Well done for the NRF crowd. [00:04:50] A bit about myself, Goen Gari, VP sales at one of robotics. [00:04:54] I joined the company a bit under a year and a half ago. Prior to that, I worked at another successful [00:05:00] Israeli startup called Bring. They're also here. Shout out to the Bring team. You guys are [00:05:03] Ricardo Belmar: know The Bring team. Yeah. [00:05:04] Jeff Roster: met them, I bumped into them. [00:05:05] Gonen Gershuni: Yeah. So [00:05:07] Jeff Roster: the [00:05:07] only company that actually had a bottle of wine that we toasted while we were, while, while we were talking. [00:05:14] That, that, that's a, that's a first now I've had, I've had people at, at happy hour bring, not in the middle of the day. So that was, that was a fun, fun interview. [00:05:22] Gonen Gershuni: It's yeah, it's always Happy Hour at Israeli Startups. And Israelis like the party, so it's a great it's a great company. I worked at Bring for about five years in various sales roles, from business development to global partnership sales, overseeing various strategic initiatives. [00:05:37] So this gave me, I would say, a very rich and deep understanding and background on e-commerce, last mile fulfillment and all that. Prior to that, I was about, I was in performance marketing for about three to four years, so for the better part of the last decade and a bit more, I wa I'm, I've been in various high-tech companies in very, at various lifecycle lifecycle stages and very proud to be at 1M robotics today. [00:05:59] In a [00:06:00] nutshell, one of robotics is a startup that's focused on automating hyper-local logistics infrastructure. It's a mouthful, but this pretty much means that we are creating urban facilities for last mile fulfillment that are leveraging automation and robotic technology to alleviate the main pain points of last mile. [00:06:19] Those two, those are being, those are mainly two challenges, unit economics and scale operating at scale while remaining ROI positive. [00:06:28] Ricardo Belmar: I think that was a mouthful, but I'm, I'm like it so far. So let me ask you this, give us a little more go down another layer and tell us how you're doing that. [00:06:36] Gonen Gershuni: Okay, great. So let's first start with a quick background story or the origin story, as I like to say in comics of 1M Robotics. [00:06:43] 1M Robotics was founded by co-founder and ceo, Eyal Yair, and co-founder and coo, Roee Tuval. Eyal is a seasoned entrepreneur having led various startups, this is his fourth, two were sold, one was less of a success story, but nonetheless, a great experience to be [00:07:00] had. And he brings a wealth of experience in sales, business development, and other related functions. [00:07:05] Roee Tuval co-founder and COO, brings a rich background in robotics, photonics and other related materials, material handling. The two collaborated as they got together to identify the main needs in last mile or fulfillment infrastructure, and they saw that micro fulfillment or just about any other large sized facility leveraged today, that's a hotly contested field, a red ocean as they, as it's typically called, meaning tons of competition, tons of players operating in the space, and they're all great formidable companies addressing some major pain points, but not last mile fulfillment, not rapid delivery. They are at best able to offer what's called same day order today, receive it later in the day toward the evening time at best. Again, most of the time it's next day, but really they saw a major gap when it came to rapid delivery. [00:07:54] And when we say rapid delivery, yes, it can be the quick commerce type of delivery increments of [00:08:00] 30 minutes and below, but it's just about anything below two hours. [00:08:04] And that was a, a really blue ocean with tremendous opportunity and a major need from just about any retailer and CPG brand looking to address or to reach their customers in a closer and faster, timely manner. So they saw that there was zero automation in that space, and that's how they decided to form this company to create urban facilities that are way smaller. So we're talking about facilities that are about the size of a standard store, convenience store, et cetera. So think some, think somewhere along the lines of hundreds to to thousands in the few of square feet. [00:08:40] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. So I, I take it then based on, on the size, right? When you, when, when I, when I think of micro fulfillment, I think of a larger format, large store, not the size of a distribution center, but, or fulfillment center, but something smaller than that. [00:08:54] So clearly larger form factor than you're talking about, which I guess makes it difficult to put that in an urban [00:09:00] environment cause it's hard to find that large space. So is the idea here then, that, by doing this in that smaller format, you're able to get a higher density in an urban environment for someone that wants to do this kind of rapid delivery. [00:09:12] Gonen Gershuni: It's twofold. First of all, spot on. Physically it's very challenging to place a micro fulfillment center in a dense, urban, metropolitan area, think downtown Manhattan. [00:09:22] It's impossible. Authorities wouldn't allow it. It's very costly and it would create lots of friction because those facilities are predominantly not 100% automated. Now, let's take a facility that's about the size of a standard seven 11 store Micro fulfillment operators would not take such a project on. [00:09:38] It's too small for them, and they also would have to adapt their technology solution to fit inside a way smaller form factor. And this is where we come in with our technology innovation. We're able to fit into very densely populated urban metropolitan areas and locate our, or deploy our facilities within a very small retail footprint. By introducing [00:10:00] automation, we're able to also do two things. For one, expedite workflows alleviate the pain of the human workforce, and in doing so, also completely eliminate shrinkage, human error and other related challenges. [00:10:12] Ricardo Belmar: So, so how automated are, are we talking about? Are, are you saying this is, this is a fully automated facility or is very light to no human touch required? [00:10:20] Gonen Gershuni: So we have two types of solutions, two types of installments or two types of systems, as we call them. One, an autonomous lights out facility. And that, as you said, Ricardo, is 100% lights out, an end-to-end automated facility. We've already got this deployed with various exciting customers around the world, such as Nespresso, such as AB InBev, et C. [00:10:41] And that is a, a facility that requires zero headcount. A customer places an order on an online channel, and then our system does everything picking, packing, and the pushes out an order for a delivery guide to collect or a customer pickup. In addition to that, this can also serve returns and [00:11:00] things are way faster and easier to do from one single, let's call it omnichannel presence. [00:11:04] Second option or the second infrastructure that we've created is what's called collaborative automation. [00:11:09] In cases where the, the human workforce is still required to operate some sort of function within the facility, we expedite and simplify workflows by introducing automation into the game, taking a fully manually relying operation and adopting it to this new reality. [00:11:30] Incorporating innovation into the story and automation makes things a lot faster. It's sort of like, think about the assembly line as it was first introduced in the days of. All the way to where it's at today with Tesla, [00:11:40] a lot more innovation, a lot less reliance on the human workforce while still having some workforce, some, some work tests done by the human operator. [00:11:48] Jeff Roster: Now you you showed the ne I can't even talk right now. My, my throat's so thrashed, the coffee example. How many SKUs was that in that automated footprint store? [00:11:58] Gonen Gershuni: So in that specific facility, because [00:12:00] we're talking about a rather limited product assortment to begin with, right? That's a few hundreds we can support all the way up to around 4,000 SKUs. And I would say another differentiating factor in our technologies is that we also support frozens. [00:12:13] That's unheard of in warehousing automation, [00:12:16] Jeff Roster: So 4,000 SKUs. What's a typical 7-Eleven. [00:12:19] Le less than 4,000 SKUs. Okay. [00:12:22] Gonen Gershuni: Aldi US for example, they're around, they're somewhere along the lines of 2000 [00:12:27] Average quick commerce players between 1,500 to 3000 ma max. We are, we are not trying to address a hypermarket. [00:12:36] I am less relevant for that Costco, that Walmart, but for the small format stores, for the convenience store chains, for consumer, electronic, small format stores like the Best, like Best Buy is trying to now launch. This is a great fit. [00:12:49] And this is where we play. We're playing in the fast moving goods line where we're talking about product assortment that you want to get out your customers as fast as possible, offer that brand new [00:13:00] iPhone as fast as possible. [00:13:02] As you are doing the npi, [00:13:04] Jeff Roster: There's also a almost a loss prevention component of that too, I would assume. I, I'm, I'm in California and we have loss prevention's, a major, major issue. [00:13:11] You sort of solve that by no one's inside the, the store. [00:13:15] Exactly. [00:13:15] Wow. Interesting. [00:13:16] Gonen Gershuni: Yes, we provide the software suite as well, so we've developed our own wms. [00:13:20] It's not a must, it's not a mandatory element to, for our customers, but we do have live visibility and true inventory tracking at any single point. And this also allows us to provide demand forecasting, restocking, and replenishment reporting, and other smart alerts to support our businesses with their mission critical operations. [00:13:37] I would also add that shrink is a major pain point because at the end of the day when we're talking about consumer electronics, we, we are operate, we are already working with some leading apple distributors globally. And in many markets, the product it's that is being sold might be more costly than the human workforce. [00:13:53] One single human employee. And in such case, if you lose one iPhone, this is a major [00:14:00] challenge for you as a business. And we're able to completely eliminate that by providing live visibility to each and every single skew that we. [00:14:06] Jeff Roster: That's so interesting. Wow. How many deployments do you have of that? That that example where it's literally, I mean, it's, it's automation, but I mean, it almost feels like a giant giant you know, kiosk. [00:14:19] Gonen Gershuni: Yeah. So we've touched on an important point. Our system go, comes shipped in a container sized form factor, meaning we use standard shipping containers to ship our systems globally by land or sea. [00:14:32] This allows us to operate very flexibly and to ship out our system super fast. In addition to that, we can deploy the system just about anywhere, either as is, as a standalone unit within the container, and then it's a great way to address smaller towns, rural areas and also deploy this next to a venue or where ever. [00:14:50] Second option is to remove it from the container shell and just re and place the system as is within a retail facility within a retail real estate in such [00:15:00] case takes us about under two hours to deploy inside of a facility. So it's an off-the-shelf solution with almost with near as the zero launch time. [00:15:09] So this for a business is a game changer. [00:15:11] Jeff Roster: Yeah. So, so you are in fact an automated store. [00:15:15] I didn't realize that. [00:15:16] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, [00:15:16] Gonen Gershuni: but I think that that's also a [00:15:18] Jeff Roster: I mean, you're, you're a really automated, automated store. I mean, cuz you're not even, I guess the difference is, you know, some of the examples we look at I don't wanna say which, which vendors, but I mean, you walk into the store, you pick it up and you, you know, so shop and go, or however you wanna say it. [00:15:31] You're not, I'm obviously not getting into the store, which makes you a perfect loss prevention. [00:15:37] Gonen Gershuni: Correct. [00:15:37] But I would add though, that in some cases, for example, let's think of Walgreens. Okay? They work with Verizon. Verizon effectively develop, gives them a store within a store, right? A designated section that's purely the product assortment of a, that Verizon is selling. [00:15:52] At Walgreens, we can also incorporate our system directly into a retail facility. So for example, this we be, we can be talking to a [00:16:00] retailer. And he might be thinking, okay, how do I utilize this within my existing real estate network? They can just allocate or designate, designate a specific zone for us to add to automate, and then they can have one third store automated for e-commerce orders and deliveries and colle and customer pickups. [00:16:18] And the other part be experiential. Have the customers, the walk-in traffic roaming around the store doing their purchases. Not nothing is interrupted. And this allows me to avoid that friction of couriers coming in, flocking into the store, while also having walking traffic roaming around. [00:16:36] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. Interesting. But then, and then, So you have lots of different ways and that you can help because I, I'm assuming because of the automation, you could also operate in a truly totally dark, you mentioned before a lights out mode right? Where completely standalone everything is, is, is packaged up. You just have whoever's doing the delivery basically picks it up. [00:16:53] Gonen Gershuni: Yes. [00:16:54] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:16:55] Gonen Gershuni: I would also add that because it's it's an automated robotic mechanism, we're able to also [00:17:00] leverage addition, I would say expansion dimensions. What I mean by that is that if, for example, the ceiling height within retail facility is around four meters. We're able to expand going higher, longer, or wider, accommodating the needs or the challenges and constraints of the actual retail facility. [00:17:17] So let's say it's an L-shaped facility, the system can be expandable to accommodate and to maximize on storage capacity. [00:17:24] And in doing so, we can cover more SKUs. We can reach higher, wider, longer, whatever. Some, some, some specific areas where a human operator simply put would not be able to. I'm not four meters tall. [00:17:37] I wish I was [00:17:38] Ricardo Belmar: right. [00:17:39] Gonen Gershuni: I'd have a promising NBA career. [00:17:41] Ricardo Belmar: Right. . Right, right. So there's so a lot of flexibility obviously in the, in the form factor you can take and how you support a given retailer. So and I guess that's the differentiator then for you versus other. You know, cause like you said at the beginning, there's so many other micro fulfillment players, but they're all geared around the much [00:18:00] larger form factor where almost each location is like, is like a custom build out. [00:18:04] Gonen Gershuni: Yeah. [00:18:04] Ricardo Belmar: And you've almost made this into almost a cookie cutter approach for the retailer [00:18:08] Gonen Gershuni: it's, exactly a cookie [00:18:09] Jeff Roster: I would a yeah. [00:18:10] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. [00:18:11] Gonen Gershuni: an off-the-shelf solution with zero [00:18:13] launch [00:18:13] Jeff Roster: shipping in the cart, the container that you would just drop at a stadium or at a [00:18:19] racetrack or something. You literally just drop it. [00:18:21] Gonen Gershuni: it. Indy 500, let's go. [00:18:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, [00:18:23] Yeah [00:18:23] Gonen Gershuni: do [00:18:24] Jeff Roster: somebody, there's somebody already there though. [00:18:25] Gonen Gershuni: No problem. You're right. But I think it's three main differentiators. It's size, scale, and the fact that we're off the shelf size-wise. Again, we can work in a very impractically, a way smaller facility that's about the size of a standard convenience store scale because the system is off the shelf. [00:18:41] This means that it can be deployed in zero time and can easily be deployed in many, many more locations. It's practically, it's practically something that can easily be duplicated to address more crowds, reaching more customers. And third it's an off the shelf offering so that we are able to mass produce these systems [00:19:00] and be up and running faster. [00:19:02] The, just to give you some under general understanding on the micro fulfillment space, a traditional facility requires around a year to just launch one single site. It costs in the millions, and it requires a lot of onsite construction. Here we're talking about a plug and play offering that costs a fraction of the price at an OPEX commercial model, meaning we're only pay, the customer is only paying us one a monthly usage fee. [00:19:28] No installation fee, no hidden costs. Nada. It's way faster and easier to adopt. I think that it's pretty much an an adoption or an adaptation of a SaaS model. Mm-hmm. on a hardware and software base. [00:19:41] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. Wow. [00:19:42] Gonen Gershuni: It's an adaptation. [00:19:43] Ricardo Belmar: that's an interesting model! [00:19:44] Jeff Roster: That I know we're, we're, Ricardo and I both looked at each other and after five days of exhaustion, that, that, that perked me up [00:19:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, exactly. [00:19:51] Jeff Roster: And I, I didn't realize in the demonstration, you're literally an autonomous store. [00:19:55] I, yeah, I got the whole, the whole pick and pack or thing, but boy, that's a, that's a whole interesting [00:20:00] con scenario to say the least. [00:20:02] Gonen Gershuni: the retail. I think that the retail angle is clearly a very strong one for us in terms of product market fit, but we are also seeing high demand now also from coming from upstream, meaning taking this into a DC. A facility that still is very much manually operated and incorporating our systems directly into that to address a specific line of products within the DC or to take this into industrial use cases, auto parts. [00:20:26] Just think of an example. Let's say you're now about to board that plane taking you home, right? If right now there's a maintenance issue, they're putting out a, a real-time request, right? Calling the maintenance crew to bring that missing part, even a tiny. Every single, any single minute of delay is now costing millions to the airline. [00:20:44] Customers are now frustrated. They're, they're, they're annoyed. They're gone to demand compensation. So that's a lot of, that's millions of dollars in fines. We're able to address them with front, front frontline warehouse that is fully [00:21:00] automated with full visibility into inventory. This is also a game changer for the airline industry, and that's just off the top of my head. Yes, [00:21:07] Jeff Roster: that's, I [00:21:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, [00:21:08] that's a big deal. [00:21:08] Yeah. [00:21:09] Jeff Roster: Wow. [00:21:10] Ricardo Belmar: So, so then if we look out into 2023 and this year and, and beyond, obviously you, you, you've got a really positive outlook on, on the potential here. I, I'm just thinking this year in particular, how, how would you gauge the retailer interest? [00:21:24] Just based on what you've seen here at the show? Are you expecting to have. A really successful 2023. You think you expect to see a lot of engage new engagements with retailers because there's a lot of pent up demand for this. [00:21:36] Gonen Gershuni: So I, yes, there's definitely a huge demand for this, but being a startup, we need to be minded to the fact that we should also be focused on the markets where we are seeing the immediate the, where there's a clear line of site on the ROI we're bringing for our customers and the value to be had. [00:21:53] If it's a nice to have. Then we, we'll probably not dive into any such opportunity. We're mainly [00:22:00] addressing the businesses that have, that have an immediate need for this. Whether it's urgency driven in terms of their customers demanding faster service, whether it's because of the tight SLA that they're promising to customers and are failing to meet or various other parameters. [00:22:14] I would say that the immediate sectors that we are addressing are those in retail, where there is a urgency for the product to. [00:22:22] And also an understanding on the retail side that automation is their way to go forward, their future for the business. We're not trying to replace an existing warehousing automation technology stack. [00:22:34] Contrary. On the contrary, we are happy to work alongside an MFC because we are not replacing them. It's an additional node in their supply chain, and we see this as an ecosystem play. Where're partnering up with additional players such as Microsoft powering their tech stack such as SAP maybe, or any other player, is an additional part in this holistic approach. [00:22:57] Ricardo Belmar: wow. [00:22:57] Jeff Roster: Yeah. [00:22:58] Very [00:22:58] Ricardo Belmar: interesting. Very, yeah, [00:23:00] really fascinating. Wow. Looking forward to seeing how, how this plays out for you this year. Yeah. This is [00:23:05] Gonen Gershuni: When are you guys coming to either Israel or, or either dep, other deployments? [00:23:09] Jeff Roster: You gotta invite me. [00:23:10] I'd come in a heartbeat. [00:23:11] Gonen Gershuni: Okay. We need to check two things first, number one, that you that you are open to having lots of hummus. Number two, that you're open to drinking anytime of the day. [00:23:20] Ricardo Belmar: I, I, I think we've got those two covered. [00:23:21] So, yeah. [00:23:23] Jeff Roster: so funny story on that. I've never, ever, ever liked eggplant. And well, well, you'd have to see how Americans cook eggplant. And I got, I got to Israel and we're having, I mean, I've never seen more hummus in my entire life. [00:23:36] And I'm eating, there's, I'm eating this and I go, wow, what is this? And the, the waiter comes and says, well, that's baba ganoush. [00:23:42] Ahhh. I go, what's [00:23:43] Ricardo Belmar: yep. I love Baba ganoush. [00:23:44] Jeff Roster: It's eggplant. ah, [00:23:47] Gonen Gershuni: I'm with you Jeff. I'm not a fan of eggplant. Eggplant is my nemesis, archnemesis [00:23:52] Jeff Roster: But I'll [00:23:52] lead [00:23:53] Ricardo Belmar: that baba gsh all day [00:23:54] Jeff Roster: I like saying it, I like [00:23:55] eating it. So that is, that is a, that is an, an offer I will like gladly [00:24:00] accept. [00:24:00] Gonen Gershuni: Okay. Sounds good to me. [00:24:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. That'll work. All right. Well, Gonen, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been an, an another really special learning experience, I think for us to, to hear about what you're doing. And this is really fascinating. I'm looking forward to seeing how this grows. [00:24:16] Gonen Gershuni: Ricardo, Jeff, thank you so much for this opportunity. [00:24:18] I've been following your show for a long time now, and I love your work. Keep up your amazing energy and pretty much driving innovation across retail through your thought [00:24:26] Jeff Roster: It's, It's, [00:24:27] wilted, but we'll rally when we get home. [00:24:29] Ricardo Belmar: And, and. [00:24:30] right. After we recover and [00:24:31] Jeff Roster: me just say special thanks to Microsoft for Startups, Shish and, and Ricardo for what you've done up here. We're up in this beautiful suite overlooking NRF and there have been a per a parade of startups that have come through and, and I, you've just done a fantastic job. [00:24:46] So well done Microsoft and Shish. Looking forward to seeing more of what you do going forward. [00:24:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. And then I'll also add another special thank you to Avanade for having made this series that we did possible by graciously letting us use some of your space. And [00:25:00] helping us be, be quite flexible on the timing and our ability to react quickly to use this. So thanks to to both groups for, for helping us out on this series. [00:25:09] Gonen Gershuni: Just to chime in, thank you. Also, I'd also like to thank Microsoft, our close partners for their amazing work, Shish and the rest of the team. You guys are phenomenal. Keep driving the industry forward with your forward thinking, thought leadership, and amazing work. [00:25:22] And thank you Ricardo and Jeff. [00:25:23] Jeff Roster: Excellent. [00:25:24] Ricardo Belmar: excellent. Thank you. [00:25:25] Jeff Roster: Safe travels. [00:25:26] Show Recap [00:25:26] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone. So, wow. Talk about endless possibilities with something that started out as just a small form factor micro fulfillment service. I mean, I can totally see this being integrated into other stores in urban geographies and maybe by e-commerce brands trying to offer rapid delivery. [00:25:54] So much opportunity here. [00:25:55] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it's like I previewed at, at the start, Gonen goes through a number of use [00:26:00] cases that I just wouldn't have thought of as micro fulfillment as the solution for those. [00:26:04] Casey Golden: when you think about it. I can really see these guys taking off and being very successful. [00:26:11] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, a hundred percent. I, I certainly came away learning so much about new use cases for micro fulfillment with the way 1M Robotics can deliver it. Honestly, we, we may have to have Gonen or, or one of their founders come on the show next season just to give us an update on how they're doing. [00:26:25] Casey Golden: Absolutely. [00:26:27] Well, Ricardo, I think that is a wrap for part four of our N R F Live crossover series. Can't wait to see how you and Jeff wrap up this next episode. [00:26:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, Jeff and I saved a really great fun discussion with Greg Jones from Avanade to wrap us up with a discussion on trends we saw at NRF. Plus a few thoughts on the startups in retail. So tune in next time for part five. [00:26:49] Casey Golden: Oh, I love to hear that. So that means this episode is a wrap. [00:26:55] Show Closing [00:26:55] Casey Golden: [00:27:00] If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today. Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets. [00:27:18] I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. [00:27:20] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at Retail Razor on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:27:36] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:27:37] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there has never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. How do you leverage micro-fulfillment capabilities as a retailer? What are the costs and capital investment necessary? Micro-fulfillment is a hot trend to bring retail products closer to the customer to meet rapid delivery schedules. But is there a better way, at a lower cost, without capital investment, that can deliver the customer experience you want? Enter 1MRobotics, a nano-fulfillment as a service provider that turns the concept into a cookie-cutter approach the size of a shipping container!


This episode continues our special podcast cross-over series, #NRFLive, with the This Week In Innovation podcast. In Part 4, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Jeff Roster speak with the VP of Sales at 1MRobotics, Gonen Gershuni. 1MRobotics delivers a nano-fulfillment center as a service to retailers, designed especially for urban deployments at scale. Join Jeff & Ricardo as they learn how nano-fulfillment can revolutionize retail with new use cases. Regular cohost Casey Golden also joins Ricardo for a quick introduction and recap


This discussion was recorded live & in-person during #NRF2023, in the fabulous Avanade lounge. A big thank you to Avanade for sponsoring this series and making the recordings possible!


News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


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Host → Ricardo Belmar,

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Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey



TRANSCRIPT

S2E10d Micro-fulfillment with 1MRobotics

[00:00:00] ​

[00:00:00] Show Intro 

[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 part four of the Retail Razor Show. This is the fourth in our multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 Show in January. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:00:33] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show, retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And once again, for this special bonus, welcome N R F fans to our hot take hashtag N R F Live mini-series.

[00:00:54] Ricardo Belmar: So Casey, we are here again with our podcast crossover event with [00:01:00] Jeff Foster and the This Week in Innovation podcast. And thanks to our sponsor, Avanade, we were able to record in this series live and in person at the N R F Show in Avanade's fabulous lounge space overlooking the main expo floor.

[00:01:12] Casey Golden: A big shout out to our friends at Avanade for giving you and Jeff such a great space to record from. They know how to get things done!

[00:01:20] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. So let's dive right into this week's discussion. Casey, when I say micro fulfillment to you, what do you think of and what would you say if I said micro fulfillment specifically for dense urban locations?

[00:01:32] Casey Golden: Hmm. Quick and smart fill-ins for your best sellers so you don't miss out on a sale?

[00:01:37] Ricardo Belmar: Ah, well, I think you're gonna be fascinated by this discussion with our special guest, Gonen Gershuni, the VP of Sales at 1 M Robotics. Have to say, when Jeff and I sat down with him in the lounge to talk about how they're transforming micro fulfillment, especially for dense urban areas where, let's face it, you, you don't expect to find a lot of available space for really [00:02:00] large micro fulfillment centers.

[00:02:01] And, and yeah, I know it sounds kind of odd to say large micro fulfillment centers, but that's the way, the way it goes. But 1 M Robotics, they're, they're talking about a fully automated, micro fulfillment center, that's basically the size of a shipping container. And did I mention they can easily convert it into a fully automated store that's customer facing.

[00:02:18] We're, we're gonna hear about a lot of different possibilities and configurations of this technology.

[00:02:23] Casey Golden: So the first thing I thought was, sounds expensive for a large micro fulfillment center. Now I'm intrigued when you said shipping container. So I'm ready for it. And you know how much I love powering the future of e-commerce, and this sounds like something really interesting to help those use cases.

[00:02:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I, I a hundred percent agree. So let's jump right in and listen to Jeff and my discussion with Gonen from 1 M Robotics.

[00:02:55] 1MRobotics Interview

[00:02:55] Ricardo Belmar: Hey everyone. We are back at NRF 2023 [00:03:00] with another special bonus episode in our series here. I'm Ricardo Belmar, and I'm here with my special guest host Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation.

[00:03:09] Jeff Roster: Ricardo, how you doing today?

[00:03:11] Ricardo Belmar: I am doing great. A little tired at this point after I lost track of how many days this is again, we start each of these sessions trying to remember where are we, , what are we doing?

[00:03:22] How far into the event are we? And I guess that says it's kind of back to normal because in a normal NRF, I'd be lost by the time we get to the end,

[00:03:30] Jeff Roster: I can see the finish line.

[00:03:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, there you go. There you go. 

[00:03:33] Jeff Roster: I can feel it. We're running through the tape. And what a tape it is to run through.

[00:03:38] What what an amazing week couldn't be prouder of, of N R F, the industry, the tech community. They showed up strong strong energy. Literally, literally at the end of the show. And they're still laughing. Some of your colleagues at Microsoft are toasting. I know. I noticed you've giving up the champagne toast, just so you know.

[00:03:54] I'm not sure I would've done

[00:03:55] Ricardo Belmar: I know. Yeah, I know.

[00:03:56] Jeff Roster: know. So just a fantastic deal. Excellent. All around. Could not be [00:04:00]happier, could not be proud of the industry.

[00:04:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. I agree. I agree. And to that end, we are fortunate enough to have another special guest. So we're joined here by Gonen Gershuni of 1M robotics and Gonen I think we're just gonna jump right in. First of all, I'm, I'm super excited that we've got some time with you here to record, but why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your background how 1M Robotics came to be and what your solution is, how you're helping retailer is, and, and give us the, the scoop on 

[00:04:31] that.

[00:04:32] Gonen Gershuni: Sure. So Ricardo, Jeff, thanks so much for this opportunity. Couldn't be more excited to be here with you today. What an amazing stage this is. I mean, NRF B Beck, B Beck larger, bigger than ever. And this is an amazing facility. Well done for the NRF crowd.

[00:04:50] A bit about myself, Goen Gari, VP sales at one of robotics.

[00:04:54] I joined the company a bit under a year and a half ago. Prior to that, I worked at another successful [00:05:00] Israeli startup called Bring. They're also here. Shout out to the Bring team. You guys are

[00:05:03] Ricardo Belmar: know The Bring team. Yeah.

[00:05:04] Jeff Roster: met them, I bumped into them.

[00:05:05] Gonen Gershuni: Yeah. So

[00:05:07] Jeff Roster: the

[00:05:07] only company that actually had a bottle of wine that we toasted while we were, while, while we were talking.

[00:05:14] That, that, that's a, that's a first now I've had, I've had people at, at happy hour bring, not in the middle of the day. So that was, that was a fun, fun interview.

[00:05:22] Gonen Gershuni: It's yeah, it's always Happy Hour at Israeli Startups. And Israelis like the party, so it's a great it's a great company. I worked at Bring for about five years in various sales roles, from business development to global partnership sales, overseeing various strategic initiatives.

[00:05:37] So this gave me, I would say, a very rich and deep understanding and background on e-commerce, last mile fulfillment and all that. Prior to that, I was about, I was in performance marketing for about three to four years, so for the better part of the last decade and a bit more, I wa I'm, I've been in various high-tech companies in very, at various lifecycle lifecycle stages and very proud to be at 1M robotics today.

[00:05:59] In a [00:06:00] nutshell, one of robotics is a startup that's focused on automating hyper-local logistics infrastructure. It's a mouthful, but this pretty much means that we are creating urban facilities for last mile fulfillment that are leveraging automation and robotic technology to alleviate the main pain points of last mile.

[00:06:19] Those two, those are being, those are mainly two challenges, unit economics and scale operating at scale while remaining ROI positive.

[00:06:28] Ricardo Belmar: I think that was a mouthful, but I'm, I'm like it so far. So let me ask you this, give us a little more go down another layer and tell us how you're doing that.

[00:06:36] Gonen Gershuni: Okay, great. So let's first start with a quick background story or the origin story, as I like to say in comics of 1M Robotics.

[00:06:43] 1M Robotics was founded by co-founder and ceo, Eyal Yair, and co-founder and coo, Roee Tuval. Eyal is a seasoned entrepreneur having led various startups, this is his fourth, two were sold, one was less of a success story, but nonetheless, a great experience to be [00:07:00] had. And he brings a wealth of experience in sales, business development, and other related functions.

[00:07:05] Roee Tuval co-founder and COO, brings a rich background in robotics, photonics and other related materials, material handling. The two collaborated as they got together to identify the main needs in last mile or fulfillment infrastructure, and they saw that micro fulfillment or just about any other large sized facility leveraged today, that's a hotly contested field, a red ocean as they, as it's typically called, meaning tons of competition, tons of players operating in the space, and they're all great formidable companies addressing some major pain points, but not last mile fulfillment, not rapid delivery. They are at best able to offer what's called same day order today, receive it later in the day toward the evening time at best. Again, most of the time it's next day, but really they saw a major gap when it came to rapid delivery.

[00:07:54] And when we say rapid delivery, yes, it can be the quick commerce type of delivery increments of [00:08:00] 30 minutes and below, but it's just about anything below two hours.

[00:08:04] And that was a, a really blue ocean with tremendous opportunity and a major need from just about any retailer and CPG brand looking to address or to reach their customers in a closer and faster, timely manner. So they saw that there was zero automation in that space, and that's how they decided to form this company to create urban facilities that are way smaller. So we're talking about facilities that are about the size of a standard store, convenience store, et cetera. So think some, think somewhere along the lines of hundreds to to thousands in the few of square feet.

[00:08:40] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. So I, I take it then based on, on the size, right? When you, when, when I, when I think of micro fulfillment, I think of a larger format, large store, not the size of a distribution center, but, or fulfillment center, but something smaller than that.

[00:08:54] So clearly larger form factor than you're talking about, which I guess makes it difficult to put that in an urban [00:09:00] environment cause it's hard to find that large space. So is the idea here then, that, by doing this in that smaller format, you're able to get a higher density in an urban environment for someone that wants to do this kind of rapid delivery.

[00:09:12] Gonen Gershuni: It's twofold. First of all, spot on. Physically it's very challenging to place a micro fulfillment center in a dense, urban, metropolitan area, think downtown Manhattan.

[00:09:22] It's impossible. Authorities wouldn't allow it. It's very costly and it would create lots of friction because those facilities are predominantly not 100% automated. Now, let's take a facility that's about the size of a standard seven 11 store Micro fulfillment operators would not take such a project on.

[00:09:38] It's too small for them, and they also would have to adapt their technology solution to fit inside a way smaller form factor. And this is where we come in with our technology innovation. We're able to fit into very densely populated urban metropolitan areas and locate our, or deploy our facilities within a very small retail footprint. By introducing [00:10:00] automation, we're able to also do two things. For one, expedite workflows alleviate the pain of the human workforce, and in doing so, also completely eliminate shrinkage, human error and other related challenges.

[00:10:12] Ricardo Belmar: So, so how automated are, are we talking about? Are, are you saying this is, this is a fully automated facility or is very light to no human touch required?

[00:10:20] Gonen Gershuni: So we have two types of solutions, two types of installments or two types of systems, as we call them. One, an autonomous lights out facility. And that, as you said, Ricardo, is 100% lights out, an end-to-end automated facility. We've already got this deployed with various exciting customers around the world, such as Nespresso, such as AB InBev, et C.

[00:10:41] And that is a, a facility that requires zero headcount. A customer places an order on an online channel, and then our system does everything picking, packing, and the pushes out an order for a delivery guide to collect or a customer pickup. In addition to that, this can also serve returns and [00:11:00] things are way faster and easier to do from one single, let's call it omnichannel presence.

[00:11:04] Second option or the second infrastructure that we've created is what's called collaborative automation.

[00:11:09] In cases where the, the human workforce is still required to operate some sort of function within the facility, we expedite and simplify workflows by introducing automation into the game, taking a fully manually relying operation and adopting it to this new reality.

[00:11:30] Incorporating innovation into the story and automation makes things a lot faster. It's sort of like, think about the assembly line as it was first introduced in the days of. All the way to where it's at today with Tesla,

[00:11:40] a lot more innovation, a lot less reliance on the human workforce while still having some workforce, some, some work tests done by the human operator.

[00:11:48] Jeff Roster: Now you you showed the ne I can't even talk right now. My, my throat's so thrashed, the coffee example. How many SKUs was that in that automated footprint store?

[00:11:58] Gonen Gershuni: So in that specific facility, because [00:12:00] we're talking about a rather limited product assortment to begin with, right? That's a few hundreds we can support all the way up to around 4,000 SKUs. And I would say another differentiating factor in our technologies is that we also support frozens.

[00:12:13] That's unheard of in warehousing automation,

[00:12:16] Jeff Roster: So 4,000 SKUs. What's a typical 7-Eleven. 

[00:12:19] Le less than 4,000 SKUs. Okay.

[00:12:22] Gonen Gershuni: Aldi US for example, they're around, they're somewhere along the lines of 2000 

[00:12:27] Average quick commerce players between 1,500 to 3000 ma max. We are, we are not trying to address a hypermarket.

[00:12:36] I am less relevant for that Costco, that Walmart, but for the small format stores, for the convenience store chains, for consumer, electronic, small format stores like the Best, like Best Buy is trying to now launch. This is a great fit.

[00:12:49] And this is where we play. We're playing in the fast moving goods line where we're talking about product assortment that you want to get out your customers as fast as possible, offer that brand new [00:13:00] iPhone as fast as possible.

[00:13:02] As you are doing the npi,

[00:13:04] Jeff Roster: There's also a almost a loss prevention component of that too, I would assume. I, I'm, I'm in California and we have loss prevention's, a major, major issue.

[00:13:11] You sort of solve that by no one's inside the, the store. 

[00:13:15] Exactly. 

[00:13:15] Wow. Interesting.

[00:13:16] Gonen Gershuni: Yes, we provide the software suite as well, so we've developed our own wms.

[00:13:20] It's not a must, it's not a mandatory element to, for our customers, but we do have live visibility and true inventory tracking at any single point. And this also allows us to provide demand forecasting, restocking, and replenishment reporting, and other smart alerts to support our businesses with their mission critical operations.

[00:13:37] I would also add that shrink is a major pain point because at the end of the day when we're talking about consumer electronics, we, we are operate, we are already working with some leading apple distributors globally. And in many markets, the product it's that is being sold might be more costly than the human workforce.

[00:13:53] One single human employee. And in such case, if you lose one iPhone, this is a major [00:14:00] challenge for you as a business. And we're able to completely eliminate that by providing live visibility to each and every single skew that we.

[00:14:06] Jeff Roster: That's so interesting. Wow. How many deployments do you have of that? That that example where it's literally, I mean, it's, it's automation, but I mean, it almost feels like a giant giant you know, kiosk.

[00:14:19] Gonen Gershuni: Yeah. So we've touched on an important point. Our system go, comes shipped in a container sized form factor, meaning we use standard shipping containers to ship our systems globally by land or sea.

[00:14:32] This allows us to operate very flexibly and to ship out our system super fast. In addition to that, we can deploy the system just about anywhere, either as is, as a standalone unit within the container, and then it's a great way to address smaller towns, rural areas and also deploy this next to a venue or where ever.

[00:14:50] Second option is to remove it from the container shell and just re and place the system as is within a retail facility within a retail real estate in such [00:15:00] case takes us about under two hours to deploy inside of a facility. So it's an off-the-shelf solution with almost with near as the zero launch time.

[00:15:09] So this for a business is a game changer.

[00:15:11] Jeff Roster: Yeah. So, so you are in fact an automated store.

[00:15:15] I didn't realize that.

[00:15:16] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah,

[00:15:16] Gonen Gershuni: but I think that that's also a

[00:15:18] Jeff Roster: I mean, you're, you're a really automated, automated store. I mean, cuz you're not even, I guess the difference is, you know, some of the examples we look at I don't wanna say which, which vendors, but I mean, you walk into the store, you pick it up and you, you know, so shop and go, or however you wanna say it.

[00:15:31] You're not, I'm obviously not getting into the store, which makes you a perfect loss prevention.

[00:15:37] Gonen Gershuni: Correct.

[00:15:37] But I would add though, that in some cases, for example, let's think of Walgreens. Okay? They work with Verizon. Verizon effectively develop, gives them a store within a store, right? A designated section that's purely the product assortment of a, that Verizon is selling.

[00:15:52] At Walgreens, we can also incorporate our system directly into a retail facility. So for example, this we be, we can be talking to a [00:16:00] retailer. And he might be thinking, okay, how do I utilize this within my existing real estate network? They can just allocate or designate, designate a specific zone for us to add to automate, and then they can have one third store automated for e-commerce orders and deliveries and colle and customer pickups.

[00:16:18] And the other part be experiential. Have the customers, the walk-in traffic roaming around the store doing their purchases. Not nothing is interrupted. And this allows me to avoid that friction of couriers coming in, flocking into the store, while also having walking traffic roaming around.

[00:16:36] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. Interesting. But then, and then, So you have lots of different ways and that you can help because I, I'm assuming because of the automation, you could also operate in a truly totally dark, you mentioned before a lights out mode right? Where completely standalone everything is, is, is packaged up. You just have whoever's doing the delivery basically picks it up.

[00:16:53] Gonen Gershuni: Yes. 

[00:16:54] Ricardo Belmar: Right.

[00:16:55] Gonen Gershuni: I would also add that because it's it's an automated robotic mechanism, we're able to also [00:17:00] leverage addition, I would say expansion dimensions. What I mean by that is that if, for example, the ceiling height within retail facility is around four meters. We're able to expand going higher, longer, or wider, accommodating the needs or the challenges and constraints of the actual retail facility.

[00:17:17] So let's say it's an L-shaped facility, the system can be expandable to accommodate and to maximize on storage capacity. 

[00:17:24] And in doing so, we can cover more SKUs. We can reach higher, wider, longer, whatever. Some, some, some specific areas where a human operator simply put would not be able to. I'm not four meters tall.

[00:17:37] I wish I was 

[00:17:38] Ricardo Belmar: right.

[00:17:39] Gonen Gershuni: I'd have a promising NBA career.

[00:17:41] Ricardo Belmar: Right. . Right, right. So there's so a lot of flexibility obviously in the, in the form factor you can take and how you support a given retailer. So and I guess that's the differentiator then for you versus other. You know, cause like you said at the beginning, there's so many other micro fulfillment players, but they're all geared around the much [00:18:00] larger form factor where almost each location is like, is like a custom build out.

[00:18:04] Gonen Gershuni: Yeah. 

[00:18:04] Ricardo Belmar: And you've almost made this into almost a cookie cutter approach for the retailer 

[00:18:08] Gonen Gershuni: it's, exactly a cookie

[00:18:09] Jeff Roster: I would a yeah.

[00:18:10] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. 

[00:18:11] Gonen Gershuni: an off-the-shelf solution with zero 

[00:18:13] launch 

[00:18:13] Jeff Roster: shipping in the cart, the container that you would just drop at a stadium or at a 

[00:18:19] racetrack or something. You literally just drop it.

[00:18:21] Gonen Gershuni: it. Indy 500, let's go.

[00:18:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah,

[00:18:23] Yeah 

[00:18:23] Gonen Gershuni: do

[00:18:24] Jeff Roster: somebody, there's somebody already there though.

[00:18:25] Gonen Gershuni: No problem. You're right. But I think it's three main differentiators. It's size, scale, and the fact that we're off the shelf size-wise. Again, we can work in a very impractically, a way smaller facility that's about the size of a standard convenience store scale because the system is off the shelf.

[00:18:41] This means that it can be deployed in zero time and can easily be deployed in many, many more locations. It's practically, it's practically something that can easily be duplicated to address more crowds, reaching more customers. And third it's an off the shelf offering so that we are able to mass produce these systems [00:19:00] and be up and running faster.

[00:19:02] The, just to give you some under general understanding on the micro fulfillment space, a traditional facility requires around a year to just launch one single site. It costs in the millions, and it requires a lot of onsite construction. Here we're talking about a plug and play offering that costs a fraction of the price at an OPEX commercial model, meaning we're only pay, the customer is only paying us one a monthly usage fee.

[00:19:28] No installation fee, no hidden costs. Nada. It's way faster and easier to adopt. I think that it's pretty much an an adoption or an adaptation of a SaaS model. Mm-hmm. on a hardware and software base.

[00:19:41] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. Wow.

[00:19:42] Gonen Gershuni: It's an adaptation.

[00:19:43] Ricardo Belmar: that's an interesting model!

[00:19:44] Jeff Roster: That I know we're, we're, Ricardo and I both looked at each other and after five days of exhaustion, that, that, that perked me up

[00:19:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, exactly.

[00:19:51] Jeff Roster: And I, I didn't realize in the demonstration, you're literally an autonomous store.

[00:19:55] I, yeah, I got the whole, the whole pick and pack or thing, but boy, that's a, that's a whole interesting [00:20:00] con scenario to say the least.

[00:20:02] Gonen Gershuni: the retail. I think that the retail angle is clearly a very strong one for us in terms of product market fit, but we are also seeing high demand now also from coming from upstream, meaning taking this into a DC. A facility that still is very much manually operated and incorporating our systems directly into that to address a specific line of products within the DC or to take this into industrial use cases, auto parts.

[00:20:26] Just think of an example. Let's say you're now about to board that plane taking you home, right? If right now there's a maintenance issue, they're putting out a, a real-time request, right? Calling the maintenance crew to bring that missing part, even a tiny. Every single, any single minute of delay is now costing millions to the airline.

[00:20:44] Customers are now frustrated. They're, they're, they're annoyed. They're gone to demand compensation. So that's a lot of, that's millions of dollars in fines. We're able to address them with front, front frontline warehouse that is fully [00:21:00] automated with full visibility into inventory. This is also a game changer for the airline industry, and that's just off the top of my head. Yes, 

[00:21:07] Jeff Roster: that's, I 

[00:21:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, 

[00:21:08] that's a big deal. 

[00:21:08] Yeah.

[00:21:09] Jeff Roster: Wow. 

[00:21:10] Ricardo Belmar: So, so then if we look out into 2023 and this year and, and beyond, obviously you, you, you've got a really positive outlook on, on the potential here. I, I'm just thinking this year in particular, how, how would you gauge the retailer interest?

[00:21:24] Just based on what you've seen here at the show? Are you expecting to have. A really successful 2023. You think you expect to see a lot of engage new engagements with retailers because there's a lot of pent up demand for this.

[00:21:36] Gonen Gershuni: So I, yes, there's definitely a huge demand for this, but being a startup, we need to be minded to the fact that we should also be focused on the markets where we are seeing the immediate the, where there's a clear line of site on the ROI we're bringing for our customers and the value to be had.

[00:21:53] If it's a nice to have. Then we, we'll probably not dive into any such opportunity. We're mainly [00:22:00] addressing the businesses that have, that have an immediate need for this. Whether it's urgency driven in terms of their customers demanding faster service, whether it's because of the tight SLA that they're promising to customers and are failing to meet or various other parameters.

[00:22:14] I would say that the immediate sectors that we are addressing are those in retail, where there is a urgency for the product to.

[00:22:22] And also an understanding on the retail side that automation is their way to go forward, their future for the business. We're not trying to replace an existing warehousing automation technology stack.

[00:22:34] Contrary. On the contrary, we are happy to work alongside an MFC because we are not replacing them. It's an additional node in their supply chain, and we see this as an ecosystem play. Where're partnering up with additional players such as Microsoft powering their tech stack such as SAP maybe, or any other player, is an additional part in this holistic approach.

[00:22:57] Ricardo Belmar: wow. 

[00:22:57] Jeff Roster: Yeah.

[00:22:58] Very

[00:22:58] Ricardo Belmar: interesting. Very, yeah, [00:23:00] really fascinating. Wow. Looking forward to seeing how, how this plays out for you this year. Yeah. This is

[00:23:05] Gonen Gershuni: When are you guys coming to either Israel or, or either dep, other deployments? 

[00:23:09] Jeff Roster: You gotta invite me. 

[00:23:10] I'd come in a heartbeat.

[00:23:11] Gonen Gershuni: Okay. We need to check two things first, number one, that you that you are open to having lots of hummus. Number two, that you're open to drinking anytime of the day.

[00:23:20] Ricardo Belmar: I, I, I think we've got those two covered. 

[00:23:21] So, yeah.

[00:23:23] Jeff Roster: so funny story on that. I've never, ever, ever liked eggplant. And well, well, you'd have to see how Americans cook eggplant. And I got, I got to Israel and we're having, I mean, I've never seen more hummus in my entire life.

[00:23:36] And I'm eating, there's, I'm eating this and I go, wow, what is this? And the, the waiter comes and says, well, that's baba ganoush. 

[00:23:42] Ahhh. I go, what's 

[00:23:43] Ricardo Belmar: yep. I love Baba ganoush.

[00:23:44] Jeff Roster: It's eggplant. ah,

[00:23:47] Gonen Gershuni: I'm with you Jeff. I'm not a fan of eggplant. Eggplant is my nemesis, archnemesis

[00:23:52] Jeff Roster: But I'll 

[00:23:52] lead 

[00:23:53] Ricardo Belmar: that baba gsh all day

[00:23:54] Jeff Roster: I like saying it, I like 

[00:23:55] eating it. So that is, that is a, that is an, an offer I will like gladly [00:24:00] accept.

[00:24:00] Gonen Gershuni: Okay. Sounds good to me.

[00:24:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. That'll work. All right. Well, Gonen, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been an, an another really special learning experience, I think for us to, to hear about what you're doing. And this is really fascinating. I'm looking forward to seeing how this grows.

[00:24:16] Gonen Gershuni: Ricardo, Jeff, thank you so much for this opportunity.

[00:24:18] I've been following your show for a long time now, and I love your work. Keep up your amazing energy and pretty much driving innovation across retail through your thought 

[00:24:26] Jeff Roster: It's, It's,

[00:24:27] wilted, but we'll rally when we get home.

[00:24:29] Ricardo Belmar: And, and.

[00:24:30] right. After we recover and 

[00:24:31] Jeff Roster: me just say special thanks to Microsoft for Startups, Shish and, and Ricardo for what you've done up here. We're up in this beautiful suite overlooking NRF and there have been a per a parade of startups that have come through and, and I, you've just done a fantastic job.

[00:24:46] So well done Microsoft and Shish. Looking forward to seeing more of what you do going forward.

[00:24:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. And then I'll also add another special thank you to Avanade for having made this series that we did possible by graciously letting us use some of your space. And [00:25:00] helping us be, be quite flexible on the timing and our ability to react quickly to use this. So thanks to to both groups for, for helping us out on this series.

[00:25:09] Gonen Gershuni: Just to chime in, thank you. Also, I'd also like to thank Microsoft, our close partners for their amazing work, Shish and the rest of the team. You guys are phenomenal. Keep driving the industry forward with your forward thinking, thought leadership, and amazing work.

[00:25:22] And thank you Ricardo and Jeff.

[00:25:23] Jeff Roster: Excellent. 

[00:25:24] Ricardo Belmar: excellent. Thank you. 

[00:25:25] Jeff Roster: Safe travels.

[00:25:26] Show Recap

[00:25:26] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone. So, wow. Talk about endless possibilities with something that started out as just a small form factor micro fulfillment service. I mean, I can totally see this being integrated into other stores in urban geographies and maybe by e-commerce brands trying to offer rapid delivery.

[00:25:54] So much opportunity here.

[00:25:55] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it's like I previewed at, at the start, Gonen goes through a number of use [00:26:00] cases that I just wouldn't have thought of as micro fulfillment as the solution for those.

[00:26:04] Casey Golden: when you think about it. I can really see these guys taking off and being very successful.

[00:26:11] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, a hundred percent. I, I certainly came away learning so much about new use cases for micro fulfillment with the way 1M Robotics can deliver it. Honestly, we, we may have to have Gonen or, or one of their founders come on the show next season just to give us an update on how they're doing.

[00:26:25] Casey Golden: Absolutely. 

[00:26:27] Well, Ricardo, I think that is a wrap for part four of our N R F Live crossover series. Can't wait to see how you and Jeff wrap up this next episode.

[00:26:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, Jeff and I saved a really great fun discussion with Greg Jones from Avanade to wrap us up with a discussion on trends we saw at NRF. Plus a few thoughts on the startups in retail. So tune in next time for part five.

[00:26:49] Casey Golden: Oh, I love to hear that. So that means this episode is a wrap.

[00:26:55] Show Closing

[00:26:55] Casey Golden: [00:27:00] If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today. Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets.

[00:27:18] I'm your co-host, Casey Golden.

[00:27:20] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at Retail Razor on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:27:36] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:27:37] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there has never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. 

]]> <p>How do you leverage micro-fulfillment capabilities as a retailer? What are the costs and capital investment necessary? Micro-fulfillment is a hot trend to bring retail products closer to the customer to meet rapid delivery schedules. But is there a better way, at a lower cost, without capital investment, that can deliver the customer experience you want? Enter 1MRobotics, a nano-fulfillment as a service provider that turns the concept into a cookie-cutter approach the size of a shipping container!</p><p><br></p><p>This episode continues our special podcast cross-over series, <strong>#NRFLive</strong>, with the <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-innovation/id1562068014?i=1000598067761" rel="nofollow"><strong>This Week In Innovation</strong></a> podcast. In Part 4, hosts Ricardo Belmar and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-bb51b8/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Roster</a> speak with the VP of Sales at 1MRobotics, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/goneng/" rel="nofollow">Gonen Gershuni</a>. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/1mrobotics/" rel="nofollow">1MRobotics</a> delivers a nano-fulfillment center as a service to retailers, designed especially for urban deployments at scale. Join Jeff &amp; Ricardo as they learn how nano-fulfillment can revolutionize retail with new use cases. Regular cohost Casey Golden also joins Ricardo for a quick introduction and recap</p><p><br></p><p>This discussion was recorded live &amp; in-person during <strong>#NRF2023</strong>, in the fabulous <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/avanade/" rel="nofollow">Avanade</a> lounge. A big thank you to Avanade for sponsoring this series and making the recordings possible!</p><p><br></p><p>News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review &amp; be mentioned in future episodes! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, </em>and<em> Overclocked, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h1>TRANSCRIPT</h1><h2><strong>S2E10d Micro-fulfillment with 1MRobotics</strong></h2><p>[00:00:00] ​</p><h3>[00:00:00] Show Intro </h3><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 part four of the Retail Razor Show. This is the fourth in our multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 Show in January. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:00:33] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show, retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And once again, for this special bonus, welcome N R F fans to our hot take hashtag N R F Live mini-series.</p><p>[00:00:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So Casey, we are here again with our podcast crossover event with [00:01:00] Jeff Foster and the This Week in Innovation podcast. And thanks to our sponsor, Avanade, we were able to record in this series live and in person at the N R F Show in Avanade&#39;s fabulous lounge space overlooking the main expo floor.</p><p>[00:01:12] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> A big shout out to our friends at Avanade for giving you and Jeff such a great space to record from. They know how to get things done!</p><p>[00:01:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Absolutely. So let&#39;s dive right into this week&#39;s discussion. Casey, when I say micro fulfillment to you, what do you think of and what would you say if I said micro fulfillment specifically for dense urban locations?</p><p>[00:01:32] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Hmm. Quick and smart fill-ins for your best sellers so you don&#39;t miss out on a sale?</p><p>[00:01:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Ah, well, I think you&#39;re gonna be fascinated by this discussion with our special guest, Gonen Gershuni, the VP of Sales at 1 M Robotics. Have to say, when Jeff and I sat down with him in the lounge to talk about how they&#39;re transforming micro fulfillment, especially for dense urban areas where, let&#39;s face it, you, you don&#39;t expect to find a lot of available space for really [00:02:00] large micro fulfillment centers.</p><p>[00:02:01] And, and yeah, I know it sounds kind of odd to say large micro fulfillment centers, but that&#39;s the way, the way it goes. But 1 M Robotics, they&#39;re, they&#39;re talking about a fully automated, micro fulfillment center, that&#39;s basically the size of a shipping container. And did I mention they can easily convert it into a fully automated store that&#39;s customer facing.</p><p>[00:02:18] We&#39;re, we&#39;re gonna hear about a lot of different possibilities and configurations of this technology.</p><p>[00:02:23] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So the first thing I thought was, sounds expensive for a large micro fulfillment center. Now I&#39;m intrigued when you said shipping container. So I&#39;m ready for it. And you know how much I love powering the future of e-commerce, and this sounds like something really interesting to help those use cases.</p><p>[00:02:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I, I a hundred percent agree. So let&#39;s jump right in and listen to Jeff and my discussion with Gonen from 1 M Robotics.</p><h3>[00:02:55] 1MRobotics Interview</h3><p>[00:02:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hey everyone. We are back at NRF 2023 [00:03:00] with another special bonus episode in our series here. I&#39;m Ricardo Belmar, and I&#39;m here with my special guest host Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation.</p><p>[00:03:09] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Ricardo, how you doing today?</p><p>[00:03:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I am doing great. A little tired at this point after I lost track of how many days this is again, we start each of these sessions trying to remember where are we, , what are we doing?</p><p>[00:03:22] How far into the event are we? And I guess that says it&#39;s kind of back to normal because in a normal NRF, I&#39;d be lost by the time we get to the end,</p><p>[00:03:30] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I can see the finish line.</p><p>[00:03:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, there you go. There you go. </p><p>[00:03:33] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I can feel it. We&#39;re running through the tape. And what a tape it is to run through.</p><p>[00:03:38] What what an amazing week couldn&#39;t be prouder of, of N R F, the industry, the tech community. They showed up strong strong energy. Literally, literally at the end of the show. And they&#39;re still laughing. Some of your colleagues at Microsoft are toasting. I know. I noticed you&#39;ve giving up the champagne toast, just so you know.</p><p>[00:03:54] I&#39;m not sure I would&#39;ve done</p><p>[00:03:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I know. Yeah, I know.</p><p>[00:03:56] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> know. So just a fantastic deal. Excellent. All around. Could not be [00:04:00]happier, could not be proud of the industry.</p><p>[00:04:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. I agree. I agree. And to that end, we are fortunate enough to have another special guest. So we&#39;re joined here by Gonen Gershuni of 1M robotics and Gonen I think we&#39;re just gonna jump right in. First of all, I&#39;m, I&#39;m super excited that we&#39;ve got some time with you here to record, but why don&#39;t you go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your background how 1M Robotics came to be and what your solution is, how you&#39;re helping retailer is, and, and give us the, the scoop on </p><p>[00:04:31] that.</p><p>[00:04:32] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> Sure. So Ricardo, Jeff, thanks so much for this opportunity. Couldn&#39;t be more excited to be here with you today. What an amazing stage this is. I mean, NRF B Beck, B Beck larger, bigger than ever. And this is an amazing facility. Well done for the NRF crowd.</p><p>[00:04:50] A bit about myself, Goen Gari, VP sales at one of robotics.</p><p>[00:04:54] I joined the company a bit under a year and a half ago. Prior to that, I worked at another successful [00:05:00] Israeli startup called Bring. They&#39;re also here. Shout out to the Bring team. You guys are</p><p>[00:05:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> know The Bring team. Yeah.</p><p>[00:05:04] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> met them, I bumped into them.</p><p>[00:05:05] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> Yeah. So</p><p>[00:05:07] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> the</p><p>[00:05:07] only company that actually had a bottle of wine that we toasted while we were, while, while we were talking.</p><p>[00:05:14] That, that, that&#39;s a, that&#39;s a first now I&#39;ve had, I&#39;ve had people at, at happy hour bring, not in the middle of the day. So that was, that was a fun, fun interview.</p><p>[00:05:22] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> It&#39;s yeah, it&#39;s always Happy Hour at Israeli Startups. And Israelis like the party, so it&#39;s a great it&#39;s a great company. I worked at Bring for about five years in various sales roles, from business development to global partnership sales, overseeing various strategic initiatives.</p><p>[00:05:37] So this gave me, I would say, a very rich and deep understanding and background on e-commerce, last mile fulfillment and all that. Prior to that, I was about, I was in performance marketing for about three to four years, so for the better part of the last decade and a bit more, I wa I&#39;m, I&#39;ve been in various high-tech companies in very, at various lifecycle lifecycle stages and very proud to be at 1M robotics today.</p><p>[00:05:59] In a [00:06:00] nutshell, one of robotics is a startup that&#39;s focused on automating hyper-local logistics infrastructure. It&#39;s a mouthful, but this pretty much means that we are creating urban facilities for last mile fulfillment that are leveraging automation and robotic technology to alleviate the main pain points of last mile.</p><p>[00:06:19] Those two, those are being, those are mainly two challenges, unit economics and scale operating at scale while remaining ROI positive.</p><p>[00:06:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I think that was a mouthful, but I&#39;m, I&#39;m like it so far. So let me ask you this, give us a little more go down another layer and tell us how you&#39;re doing that.</p><p>[00:06:36] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> Okay, great. So let&#39;s first start with a quick background story or the origin story, as I like to say in comics of 1M Robotics.</p><p>[00:06:43] 1M Robotics was founded by co-founder and ceo, Eyal Yair, and co-founder and coo, Roee Tuval. Eyal is a seasoned entrepreneur having led various startups, this is his fourth, two were sold, one was less of a success story, but nonetheless, a great experience to be [00:07:00] had. And he brings a wealth of experience in sales, business development, and other related functions.</p><p>[00:07:05] Roee Tuval co-founder and COO, brings a rich background in robotics, photonics and other related materials, material handling. The two collaborated as they got together to identify the main needs in last mile or fulfillment infrastructure, and they saw that micro fulfillment or just about any other large sized facility leveraged today, that&#39;s a hotly contested field, a red ocean as they, as it&#39;s typically called, meaning tons of competition, tons of players operating in the space, and they&#39;re all great formidable companies addressing some major pain points, but not last mile fulfillment, not rapid delivery. They are at best able to offer what&#39;s called same day order today, receive it later in the day toward the evening time at best. Again, most of the time it&#39;s next day, but really they saw a major gap when it came to rapid delivery.</p><p>[00:07:54] And when we say rapid delivery, yes, it can be the quick commerce type of delivery increments of [00:08:00] 30 minutes and below, but it&#39;s just about anything below two hours.</p><p>[00:08:04] And that was a, a really blue ocean with tremendous opportunity and a major need from just about any retailer and CPG brand looking to address or to reach their customers in a closer and faster, timely manner. So they saw that there was zero automation in that space, and that&#39;s how they decided to form this company to create urban facilities that are way smaller. So we&#39;re talking about facilities that are about the size of a standard store, convenience store, et cetera. So think some, think somewhere along the lines of hundreds to to thousands in the few of square feet.</p><p>[00:08:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. So I, I take it then based on, on the size, right? When you, when, when I, when I think of micro fulfillment, I think of a larger format, large store, not the size of a distribution center, but, or fulfillment center, but something smaller than that.</p><p>[00:08:54] So clearly larger form factor than you&#39;re talking about, which I guess makes it difficult to put that in an urban [00:09:00] environment cause it&#39;s hard to find that large space. So is the idea here then, that, by doing this in that smaller format, you&#39;re able to get a higher density in an urban environment for someone that wants to do this kind of rapid delivery.</p><p>[00:09:12] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> It&#39;s twofold. First of all, spot on. Physically it&#39;s very challenging to place a micro fulfillment center in a dense, urban, metropolitan area, think downtown Manhattan.</p><p>[00:09:22] It&#39;s impossible. Authorities wouldn&#39;t allow it. It&#39;s very costly and it would create lots of friction because those facilities are predominantly not 100% automated. Now, let&#39;s take a facility that&#39;s about the size of a standard seven 11 store Micro fulfillment operators would not take such a project on.</p><p>[00:09:38] It&#39;s too small for them, and they also would have to adapt their technology solution to fit inside a way smaller form factor. And this is where we come in with our technology innovation. We&#39;re able to fit into very densely populated urban metropolitan areas and locate our, or deploy our facilities within a very small retail footprint. By introducing [00:10:00] automation, we&#39;re able to also do two things. For one, expedite workflows alleviate the pain of the human workforce, and in doing so, also completely eliminate shrinkage, human error and other related challenges.</p><p>[00:10:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So, so how automated are, are we talking about? Are, are you saying this is, this is a fully automated facility or is very light to no human touch required?</p><p>[00:10:20] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> So we have two types of solutions, two types of installments or two types of systems, as we call them. One, an autonomous lights out facility. And that, as you said, Ricardo, is 100% lights out, an end-to-end automated facility. We&#39;ve already got this deployed with various exciting customers around the world, such as Nespresso, such as AB InBev, et C.</p><p>[00:10:41] And that is a, a facility that requires zero headcount. A customer places an order on an online channel, and then our system does everything picking, packing, and the pushes out an order for a delivery guide to collect or a customer pickup. In addition to that, this can also serve returns and [00:11:00] things are way faster and easier to do from one single, let&#39;s call it omnichannel presence.</p><p>[00:11:04] Second option or the second infrastructure that we&#39;ve created is what&#39;s called collaborative automation.</p><p>[00:11:09] In cases where the, the human workforce is still required to operate some sort of function within the facility, we expedite and simplify workflows by introducing automation into the game, taking a fully manually relying operation and adopting it to this new reality.</p><p>[00:11:30] Incorporating innovation into the story and automation makes things a lot faster. It&#39;s sort of like, think about the assembly line as it was first introduced in the days of. All the way to where it&#39;s at today with Tesla,</p><p>[00:11:40] a lot more innovation, a lot less reliance on the human workforce while still having some workforce, some, some work tests done by the human operator.</p><p>[00:11:48] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Now you you showed the ne I can&#39;t even talk right now. My, my throat&#39;s so thrashed, the coffee example. How many SKUs was that in that automated footprint store?</p><p>[00:11:58] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> So in that specific facility, because [00:12:00] we&#39;re talking about a rather limited product assortment to begin with, right? That&#39;s a few hundreds we can support all the way up to around 4,000 SKUs. And I would say another differentiating factor in our technologies is that we also support frozens.</p><p>[00:12:13] That&#39;s unheard of in warehousing automation,</p><p>[00:12:16] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So 4,000 SKUs. What&#39;s a typical 7-Eleven. </p><p>[00:12:19] Le less than 4,000 SKUs. Okay.</p><p>[00:12:22] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> Aldi US for example, they&#39;re around, they&#39;re somewhere along the lines of 2000 </p><p>[00:12:27] Average quick commerce players between 1,500 to 3000 ma max. We are, we are not trying to address a hypermarket.</p><p>[00:12:36] I am less relevant for that Costco, that Walmart, but for the small format stores, for the convenience store chains, for consumer, electronic, small format stores like the Best, like Best Buy is trying to now launch. This is a great fit.</p><p>[00:12:49] And this is where we play. We&#39;re playing in the fast moving goods line where we&#39;re talking about product assortment that you want to get out your customers as fast as possible, offer that brand new [00:13:00] iPhone as fast as possible.</p><p>[00:13:02] As you are doing the npi,</p><p>[00:13:04] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> There&#39;s also a almost a loss prevention component of that too, I would assume. I, I&#39;m, I&#39;m in California and we have loss prevention&#39;s, a major, major issue.</p><p>[00:13:11] You sort of solve that by no one&#39;s inside the, the store. </p><p>[00:13:15] Exactly. </p><p>[00:13:15] Wow. Interesting.</p><p>[00:13:16] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> Yes, we provide the software suite as well, so we&#39;ve developed our own wms.</p><p>[00:13:20] It&#39;s not a must, it&#39;s not a mandatory element to, for our customers, but we do have live visibility and true inventory tracking at any single point. And this also allows us to provide demand forecasting, restocking, and replenishment reporting, and other smart alerts to support our businesses with their mission critical operations.</p><p>[00:13:37] I would also add that shrink is a major pain point because at the end of the day when we&#39;re talking about consumer electronics, we, we are operate, we are already working with some leading apple distributors globally. And in many markets, the product it&#39;s that is being sold might be more costly than the human workforce.</p><p>[00:13:53] One single human employee. And in such case, if you lose one iPhone, this is a major [00:14:00] challenge for you as a business. And we&#39;re able to completely eliminate that by providing live visibility to each and every single skew that we.</p><p>[00:14:06] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> That&#39;s so interesting. Wow. How many deployments do you have of that? That that example where it&#39;s literally, I mean, it&#39;s, it&#39;s automation, but I mean, it almost feels like a giant giant you know, kiosk.</p><p>[00:14:19] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> Yeah. So we&#39;ve touched on an important point. Our system go, comes shipped in a container sized form factor, meaning we use standard shipping containers to ship our systems globally by land or sea.</p><p>[00:14:32] This allows us to operate very flexibly and to ship out our system super fast. In addition to that, we can deploy the system just about anywhere, either as is, as a standalone unit within the container, and then it&#39;s a great way to address smaller towns, rural areas and also deploy this next to a venue or where ever.</p><p>[00:14:50] Second option is to remove it from the container shell and just re and place the system as is within a retail facility within a retail real estate in such [00:15:00] case takes us about under two hours to deploy inside of a facility. So it&#39;s an off-the-shelf solution with almost with near as the zero launch time.</p><p>[00:15:09] So this for a business is a game changer.</p><p>[00:15:11] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah. So, so you are in fact an automated store.</p><p>[00:15:15] I didn&#39;t realize that.</p><p>[00:15:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:15:16] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> but I think that that&#39;s also a</p><p>[00:15:18] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I mean, you&#39;re, you&#39;re a really automated, automated store. I mean, cuz you&#39;re not even, I guess the difference is, you know, some of the examples we look at I don&#39;t wanna say which, which vendors, but I mean, you walk into the store, you pick it up and you, you know, so shop and go, or however you wanna say it.</p><p>[00:15:31] You&#39;re not, I&#39;m obviously not getting into the store, which makes you a perfect loss prevention.</p><p>[00:15:37] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> Correct.</p><p>[00:15:37] But I would add though, that in some cases, for example, let&#39;s think of Walgreens. Okay? They work with Verizon. Verizon effectively develop, gives them a store within a store, right? A designated section that&#39;s purely the product assortment of a, that Verizon is selling.</p><p>[00:15:52] At Walgreens, we can also incorporate our system directly into a retail facility. So for example, this we be, we can be talking to a [00:16:00] retailer. And he might be thinking, okay, how do I utilize this within my existing real estate network? They can just allocate or designate, designate a specific zone for us to add to automate, and then they can have one third store automated for e-commerce orders and deliveries and colle and customer pickups.</p><p>[00:16:18] And the other part be experiential. Have the customers, the walk-in traffic roaming around the store doing their purchases. Not nothing is interrupted. And this allows me to avoid that friction of couriers coming in, flocking into the store, while also having walking traffic roaming around.</p><p>[00:16:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hmm. Interesting. But then, and then, So you have lots of different ways and that you can help because I, I&#39;m assuming because of the automation, you could also operate in a truly totally dark, you mentioned before a lights out mode right? Where completely standalone everything is, is, is packaged up. You just have whoever&#39;s doing the delivery basically picks it up.</p><p>[00:16:53] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> Yes. </p><p>[00:16:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right.</p><p>[00:16:55] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> I would also add that because it&#39;s it&#39;s an automated robotic mechanism, we&#39;re able to also [00:17:00] leverage addition, I would say expansion dimensions. What I mean by that is that if, for example, the ceiling height within retail facility is around four meters. We&#39;re able to expand going higher, longer, or wider, accommodating the needs or the challenges and constraints of the actual retail facility.</p><p>[00:17:17] So let&#39;s say it&#39;s an L-shaped facility, the system can be expandable to accommodate and to maximize on storage capacity. </p><p>[00:17:24] And in doing so, we can cover more SKUs. We can reach higher, wider, longer, whatever. Some, some, some specific areas where a human operator simply put would not be able to. I&#39;m not four meters tall.</p><p>[00:17:37] I wish I was </p><p>[00:17:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right.</p><p>[00:17:39] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> I&#39;d have a promising NBA career.</p><p>[00:17:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. . Right, right. So there&#39;s so a lot of flexibility obviously in the, in the form factor you can take and how you support a given retailer. So and I guess that&#39;s the differentiator then for you versus other. You know, cause like you said at the beginning, there&#39;s so many other micro fulfillment players, but they&#39;re all geared around the much [00:18:00] larger form factor where almost each location is like, is like a custom build out.</p><p>[00:18:04] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:18:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And you&#39;ve almost made this into almost a cookie cutter approach for the retailer </p><p>[00:18:08] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> it&#39;s, exactly a cookie</p><p>[00:18:09] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I would a yeah.</p><p>[00:18:10] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah. </p><p>[00:18:11] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> an off-the-shelf solution with zero </p><p>[00:18:13] launch </p><p>[00:18:13] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> shipping in the cart, the container that you would just drop at a stadium or at a </p><p>[00:18:19] racetrack or something. You literally just drop it.</p><p>[00:18:21] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> it. Indy 500, let&#39;s go.</p><p>[00:18:23] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:18:23] Yeah </p><p>[00:18:23] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> do</p><p>[00:18:24] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> somebody, there&#39;s somebody already there though.</p><p>[00:18:25] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> No problem. You&#39;re right. But I think it&#39;s three main differentiators. It&#39;s size, scale, and the fact that we&#39;re off the shelf size-wise. Again, we can work in a very impractically, a way smaller facility that&#39;s about the size of a standard convenience store scale because the system is off the shelf.</p><p>[00:18:41] This means that it can be deployed in zero time and can easily be deployed in many, many more locations. It&#39;s practically, it&#39;s practically something that can easily be duplicated to address more crowds, reaching more customers. And third it&#39;s an off the shelf offering so that we are able to mass produce these systems [00:19:00] and be up and running faster.</p><p>[00:19:02] The, just to give you some under general understanding on the micro fulfillment space, a traditional facility requires around a year to just launch one single site. It costs in the millions, and it requires a lot of onsite construction. Here we&#39;re talking about a plug and play offering that costs a fraction of the price at an OPEX commercial model, meaning we&#39;re only pay, the customer is only paying us one a monthly usage fee.</p><p>[00:19:28] No installation fee, no hidden costs. Nada. It&#39;s way faster and easier to adopt. I think that it&#39;s pretty much an an adoption or an adaptation of a SaaS model. Mm-hmm. on a hardware and software base.</p><p>[00:19:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hmm. Wow.</p><p>[00:19:42] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> It&#39;s an adaptation.</p><p>[00:19:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> that&#39;s an interesting model!</p><p>[00:19:44] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> That I know we&#39;re, we&#39;re, Ricardo and I both looked at each other and after five days of exhaustion, that, that, that perked me up</p><p>[00:19:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, exactly.</p><p>[00:19:51] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> And I, I didn&#39;t realize in the demonstration, you&#39;re literally an autonomous store.</p><p>[00:19:55] I, yeah, I got the whole, the whole pick and pack or thing, but boy, that&#39;s a, that&#39;s a whole interesting [00:20:00] con scenario to say the least.</p><p>[00:20:02] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> the retail. I think that the retail angle is clearly a very strong one for us in terms of product market fit, but we are also seeing high demand now also from coming from upstream, meaning taking this into a DC. A facility that still is very much manually operated and incorporating our systems directly into that to address a specific line of products within the DC or to take this into industrial use cases, auto parts.</p><p>[00:20:26] Just think of an example. Let&#39;s say you&#39;re now about to board that plane taking you home, right? If right now there&#39;s a maintenance issue, they&#39;re putting out a, a real-time request, right? Calling the maintenance crew to bring that missing part, even a tiny. Every single, any single minute of delay is now costing millions to the airline.</p><p>[00:20:44] Customers are now frustrated. They&#39;re, they&#39;re, they&#39;re annoyed. They&#39;re gone to demand compensation. So that&#39;s a lot of, that&#39;s millions of dollars in fines. We&#39;re able to address them with front, front frontline warehouse that is fully [00:21:00] automated with full visibility into inventory. This is also a game changer for the airline industry, and that&#39;s just off the top of my head. Yes, </p><p>[00:21:07] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> that&#39;s, I </p><p>[00:21:07] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, </p><p>[00:21:08] that&#39;s a big deal. </p><p>[00:21:08] Yeah.</p><p>[00:21:09] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Wow. </p><p>[00:21:10] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So, so then if we look out into 2023 and this year and, and beyond, obviously you, you, you&#39;ve got a really positive outlook on, on the potential here. I, I&#39;m just thinking this year in particular, how, how would you gauge the retailer interest?</p><p>[00:21:24] Just based on what you&#39;ve seen here at the show? Are you expecting to have. A really successful 2023. You think you expect to see a lot of engage new engagements with retailers because there&#39;s a lot of pent up demand for this.</p><p>[00:21:36] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> So I, yes, there&#39;s definitely a huge demand for this, but being a startup, we need to be minded to the fact that we should also be focused on the markets where we are seeing the immediate the, where there&#39;s a clear line of site on the ROI we&#39;re bringing for our customers and the value to be had.</p><p>[00:21:53] If it&#39;s a nice to have. Then we, we&#39;ll probably not dive into any such opportunity. We&#39;re mainly [00:22:00] addressing the businesses that have, that have an immediate need for this. Whether it&#39;s urgency driven in terms of their customers demanding faster service, whether it&#39;s because of the tight SLA that they&#39;re promising to customers and are failing to meet or various other parameters.</p><p>[00:22:14] I would say that the immediate sectors that we are addressing are those in retail, where there is a urgency for the product to.</p><p>[00:22:22] And also an understanding on the retail side that automation is their way to go forward, their future for the business. We&#39;re not trying to replace an existing warehousing automation technology stack.</p><p>[00:22:34] Contrary. On the contrary, we are happy to work alongside an MFC because we are not replacing them. It&#39;s an additional node in their supply chain, and we see this as an ecosystem play. Where&#39;re partnering up with additional players such as Microsoft powering their tech stack such as SAP maybe, or any other player, is an additional part in this holistic approach.</p><p>[00:22:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> wow. </p><p>[00:22:57] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:22:58] Very</p><p>[00:22:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> interesting. Very, yeah, [00:23:00] really fascinating. Wow. Looking forward to seeing how, how this plays out for you this year. Yeah. This is</p><p>[00:23:05] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> When are you guys coming to either Israel or, or either dep, other deployments? </p><p>[00:23:09] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> You gotta invite me. </p><p>[00:23:10] I&#39;d come in a heartbeat.</p><p>[00:23:11] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> Okay. We need to check two things first, number one, that you that you are open to having lots of hummus. Number two, that you&#39;re open to drinking anytime of the day.</p><p>[00:23:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I, I, I think we&#39;ve got those two covered. </p><p>[00:23:21] So, yeah.</p><p>[00:23:23] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> so funny story on that. I&#39;ve never, ever, ever liked eggplant. And well, well, you&#39;d have to see how Americans cook eggplant. And I got, I got to Israel and we&#39;re having, I mean, I&#39;ve never seen more hummus in my entire life.</p><p>[00:23:36] And I&#39;m eating, there&#39;s, I&#39;m eating this and I go, wow, what is this? And the, the waiter comes and says, well, that&#39;s baba ganoush. </p><p>[00:23:42] Ahhh. I go, what&#39;s </p><p>[00:23:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yep. I love Baba ganoush.</p><p>[00:23:44] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> It&#39;s eggplant. ah,</p><p>[00:23:47] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> I&#39;m with you Jeff. I&#39;m not a fan of eggplant. Eggplant is my nemesis, archnemesis</p><p>[00:23:52] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> But I&#39;ll </p><p>[00:23:52] lead </p><p>[00:23:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> that baba gsh all day</p><p>[00:23:54] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I like saying it, I like </p><p>[00:23:55] eating it. So that is, that is a, that is an, an offer I will like gladly [00:24:00] accept.</p><p>[00:24:00] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> Okay. Sounds good to me.</p><p>[00:24:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. That&#39;ll work. All right. Well, Gonen, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been an, an another really special learning experience, I think for us to, to hear about what you&#39;re doing. And this is really fascinating. I&#39;m looking forward to seeing how this grows.</p><p>[00:24:16] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> Ricardo, Jeff, thank you so much for this opportunity.</p><p>[00:24:18] I&#39;ve been following your show for a long time now, and I love your work. Keep up your amazing energy and pretty much driving innovation across retail through your thought </p><p>[00:24:26] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> It&#39;s, It&#39;s,</p><p>[00:24:27] wilted, but we&#39;ll rally when we get home.</p><p>[00:24:29] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And, and.</p><p>[00:24:30] right. After we recover and </p><p>[00:24:31] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> me just say special thanks to Microsoft for Startups, Shish and, and Ricardo for what you&#39;ve done up here. We&#39;re up in this beautiful suite overlooking NRF and there have been a per a parade of startups that have come through and, and I, you&#39;ve just done a fantastic job.</p><p>[00:24:46] So well done Microsoft and Shish. Looking forward to seeing more of what you do going forward.</p><p>[00:24:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. And then I&#39;ll also add another special thank you to Avanade for having made this series that we did possible by graciously letting us use some of your space. And [00:25:00] helping us be, be quite flexible on the timing and our ability to react quickly to use this. So thanks to to both groups for, for helping us out on this series.</p><p>[00:25:09] <strong>Gonen Gershuni:</strong> Just to chime in, thank you. Also, I&#39;d also like to thank Microsoft, our close partners for their amazing work, Shish and the rest of the team. You guys are phenomenal. Keep driving the industry forward with your forward thinking, thought leadership, and amazing work.</p><p>[00:25:22] And thank you Ricardo and Jeff.</p><p>[00:25:23] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Excellent. </p><p>[00:25:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> excellent. Thank you. </p><p>[00:25:25] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Safe travels.</p><h3>[00:25:26] Show Recap</h3><p>[00:25:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Welcome back everyone. So, wow. Talk about endless possibilities with something that started out as just a small form factor micro fulfillment service. I mean, I can totally see this being integrated into other stores in urban geographies and maybe by e-commerce brands trying to offer rapid delivery.</p><p>[00:25:54] So much opportunity here.</p><p>[00:25:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, it&#39;s like I previewed at, at the start, Gonen goes through a number of use [00:26:00] cases that I just wouldn&#39;t have thought of as micro fulfillment as the solution for those.</p><p>[00:26:04] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> when you think about it. I can really see these guys taking off and being very successful.</p><p>[00:26:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, a hundred percent. I, I certainly came away learning so much about new use cases for micro fulfillment with the way 1M Robotics can deliver it. Honestly, we, we may have to have Gonen or, or one of their founders come on the show next season just to give us an update on how they&#39;re doing.</p><p>[00:26:25] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Absolutely. </p><p>[00:26:27] Well, Ricardo, I think that is a wrap for part four of our N R F Live crossover series. Can&#39;t wait to see how you and Jeff wrap up this next episode.</p><p>[00:26:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, Jeff and I saved a really great fun discussion with Greg Jones from Avanade to wrap us up with a discussion on trends we saw at NRF. Plus a few thoughts on the startups in retail. So tune in next time for part five.</p><p>[00:26:49] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Oh, I love to hear that. So that means this episode is a wrap.</p><h3>[00:26:55] Show Closing</h3><p>[00:26:55] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> [00:27:00] If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don&#39;t miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today. Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets.</p><p>[00:27:18] I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden.</p><p>[00:27:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> If you&#39;d like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at Retail Razor on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:27:36] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:27:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there has never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. </p> 49291922-4547-4a40-b43b-705a0d7ba646 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Mon, 27 Feb 2023 12:05:00 +0000 1676 no full S2E10c #NRFLive SPECIAL - web3 & blockchain with zblocks S2E10c #NRFLive SPECIAL - web3 & blockchain with zblocks 10 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E10c #NRFLive SPECIAL - web3 & blockchain with zblocks When you hear, “web3” and “blockchain”, if you’re like most retailers you might panic or realize that you just don’t know how to leverage these technologies in your retail business. Do you gain operational efficiencies? Reduce costs? Improve supply chain visibility? Deliver a better customer experience? Increase brand loyalty? Or is it all the above if done with the right technology partner? This episode continues our special podcast cross-over series, #NRFLive, with the This Week In Innovation podcast. In Part 3, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Jeff Roster speak with the co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of zblocks, Max Cacheux. Zblocks mission is to be retailers’ the easy button for web3 and blockchain! Max walks Jeff and Ricardo through numerous web3 use cases on customer experience, gated commerce, and loyalty programs, plus a few surprises. If you have questions about web3 & blockchain, you’ll find answers in this episode, recorded live & in-person during #NRF2023! A special thanks to our sponsor Avanade for making this series possible by providing an amazing recording space in their NRF lounge. Listen, or watch on YouTube, to see how much Jeff and Ricardo learn from Max about web3 & blockchain! Regular cohost Casey Golden also joins Ricardo for a quick introduction and recap. News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E10c web3 & blockchain with zblocks [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Show Intro [00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 part three of the Retail Razor Show. This is the third of our multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 Show in January. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:00:35] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show, retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And once again, the special bonus. Welcome N R F fans to our hot take, hashtag N R F Live miniseries. [00:00:56] Ricardo Belmar: So Casey, we are continuing our special [00:01:00] podcast Crossover Event with Jeff Foster and this week and innovation podcast. We recorded this series live and in person at the N R F Show in the fabulous lounge space. Our good friends at Avena graciously allowed us to use overlooking the main expo floor. [00:01:14] Casey Golden: Special shout out to our friends and sponsors at Avenade for giving you and Jeff such an amazing space. [00:01:21] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. So let's jump right in. Casey, this episode is one that is near and dear to your heart. It is all about web three and taking the complexity out of it for retailers and consumers. [00:01:33] Casey Golden: I love it. I'm a big fan of a velvet rope strategy, so naturally I'm an advocate for gated commerce experiences and more efficient ways to manage VIPs and loyalty in general. [00:01:45] Ricardo Belmar: Well, you are going to love this discussion. Jeff and I had with Max Cacheux, co-founder of Z Blocks. Max talks to us about how Z Blocks is enabling so many use cases for retailers from gated content to NFTs and loyalty [00:02:00] programs in a way that any consumer can participate in, not just as Max calls them crypto enthusiasts and for the retailer, wait until you hear what some of the special sauce Max has cooked up for them to make everything web three as easy as pressing a button. [00:02:13] Casey Golden: Very cool, and I know our listeners have to be dying to get into the discussion now. [00:02:20] Ricardo Belmar: I agree. So let's jump in and listen to our interview with Max Cacheux, co-founder of zblocks. Soon to be everyone's new web three best friend. [00:02:30] Casey Golden: Looking forward to hearing this one. [00:02:37] zblocks Interview [00:02:37] Ricardo Belmar: Hey everyone. We are back at the NRF 2023 Show, continuing our bonus series. I'm Ricardo Belmar and I'm here with a special guest host Jeff Roster from This Week in Innovation. How you doing, Jeff? [00:02:50] Jeff Roster: I am tired. [00:02:51] Ricardo Belmar: It's like, I don't remember. I was gonna say which day it is, but I've lost track. I just know it's the last [00:02:56] Jeff Roster: It's the last day. [00:02:57] Well, actually it's not, some of us are still [00:03:00] working tomorrow. We have meetings Wednesday. [00:03:03] Ricardo Belmar: on Wednesday, so I can't even say [00:03:05] Jeff Roster: but I am exhausted, but I'm elated. Yeah, [00:03:08] Ricardo Belmar: exactly. [00:03:09] Jeff Roster: show, fantastic energy. [00:03:11] Ricardo Belmar: I'm with you on that. [00:03:12] Jeff Roster: just an amazing, amazing celebration of retail and the, the energy and the startup community, the energy and the, the, the tech landscape. [00:03:21] Fantastic. [00:03:22] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. I agree. Well, and, and to that end, we have one of those tech stars with us today. So I'm gonna introduce Max Cacheux, co-founder of Z Blocks. Max, how are you? [00:03:33] Maxence Cacheux: Very good. Great to meet you. Thanks for hosting me. [00:03:35] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. Thank you for joining us. [00:03:37] So why don't we just start, and Max, I'm gonna let you give your own introduction. Tell us a little bit about yourself, about Z Blocks, how Z Blocks came to be and, and what it is that you're doing for retailers. [00:03:47] Maxence Cacheux: Absolutely. So thanks for your opportunity. So I'm Max from Z Blocks. I'm one of the, one of the cofounder at Z Blocks and I've been in the tech space and enterprise space for more than 20 years. [00:03:57] And, What Z Blocks is [00:04:00] about, is about making blockchain adoption easy for enterprises, right? So we come from an enterprise and tech background at Z Blocks together with the, the co-founders. And what we realized more than a year ago when we started Z Blocks, is that there are many barriers for enterprises to add blockchain. [00:04:17] And we have created a platform for them running on Azure that give them the ability to build blockchain application quickly and easily without the complexity. So we're abstracting that complexity for them. [00:04:28] Jeff Roster: So you're taking the complexity out of blockchain? [00:04:32] Okay. , that's a very . Bold statement. [00:04:34] Maxence Cacheux: We want to be the easy button for web3 [00:04:36] Jeff Roster: Okay. [00:04:37] Ricardo Belmar: I like that. The easy button for web three. Well, [00:04:39] Jeff Roster: what, you can be, I'll be your Guinea pig cuz I'm trying to do web three and there there's zero anything easy. So I'll be your Guinea pig to see. [00:04:46] Maxence Cacheux: There, there are many barriers for adoption. So we look at solving them. So, [00:04:50] Ricardo Belmar: Okay, well, let me back into that a little bit then. Talk to us a little bit about what are the, the most common complexities that hold retailers back from being [00:05:00] involved in a web three project That, that would speak to what you're simplifying essentially. [00:05:04] Maxence Cacheux: So I'll give you challenges that are applied to retailers, but also other verticals, right? I'm seeing five key challenge and these are like the five barriers that we saw that when started, right? So number one, you have a lack of blockchain developers, right? [00:05:17] They're hard to find, they're expensive. Blockchain programming language are complex. Number two web three World is different from the Web two world. I mean, we're talking about crypto wallet. You need your private key, your public keys and retailers and others are used to email ID. So how do you reconcile? [00:05:34] number three, retailers are looking at building in blockchain, but they want to connect to their existing systems, right? So how do you do that? How do you connect the, the two worlds together, right? And then a lot of them are looking at blockchains and seeing different protocols that are available. You have multiple layer one, right? [00:05:50] And which one should I choose for what use case? Can I build once and deploy another? Right? And finally, when you talk to their cfo, it's, I don't want crypto on the balance sheet. [00:06:00] So you need to solve all these barriers for them and make it easy for them to develop. Right? And that's where we come with our, with our platform. [00:06:07] Jeff Roster: So give us an example of what that would look like. [00:06:09] Maxence Cacheux: So one of the vertical use case that we built on the platform is a solution leveraging NFT or digital tokens that give them the ability to engage with consumers and they can engage with consumers in acquisition, in retention, and leveraging these digital token for loyalty program retention. [00:06:30] And we're seeing a lot of potential of the NFT technology for such use cases, right? Because it's becoming harder to acquire customers for them. So using web three, using blockchain for retention, for loyalty has a lot of potential and we're seeing a lot of very interesting use case around that and we're helping them in that space. [00:06:49] Ricardo Belmar: give me an idea what, when you have this conversation with a retailer around loyalty, I, I'm thinking of, and, and I'm, I guess this, the example here is you'd be talking to a retailer who [00:07:00] wants to add value into their loyalty program beyond, you know, let's say just offering someone discounts, which so many loyalty programs do. [00:07:06] But your, I'm guessing your message to them is, if by leveraging this technology, You're gonna have something much more tangible to offer in, in a loyalty program. [00:07:15] Maxence Cacheux: Yes. Yes. So we're, we're not telling them, you know, to throw away their existing program. What we are telling them is, Hey, if you add this additional layer, leveraging this additonal layer of blockchain, there's some very interesting use case that you can do, right? [00:07:29] So if you look at for example, the utility that you can provide with digital token, you can provide gated access to certain content. So it could be a website where I'm giving access to v i p customer to a pre-sales event, right? And only the NFT holder are able to access it, right? It could be an NFT or a token that give you access to an event in real life or in a, in the digital, right? [00:07:52] So, so on the very interesting use case around utility. The transferability, right? It's one of the key [00:08:00] property of these tokens makes some very interesting business cases, right? So you could have a membership that I can transfer to, friends that I could potentially resell. You could potentially collect royalty from the resell of that membership. [00:08:13] Right. So there's some very interesting use case around the transferability. What we're seeing as well is around customers that are creating collectibles and they're rewarding with these customers, with the collectibles, and there's a gamification around this collectible that can be exchange traded as a way to engage your existing community consumers as well. [00:08:33] Ricardo Belmar: I like this concept of, you know, the ability to offer the gated access to things or, or use that as a token to access things in, in, in real life events. Do, do you have some examples of, of retailers that are, are pursuing that and how they're, you know, what's the impact of them doing that? [00:08:48] Is what, what? I'm curious, you know, for example, when you have this conversation with the retailer , will they ask you, how do I measure the impact of offering this? How do I know this is gonna create more loyalty with my customer versus what I'm [00:09:00] doing today? [00:09:01] Maxence Cacheux: Yes. So that's, that's definitely a quick key question that they have. Right. Who is going to bring some move the needle versus my existing web two program? [00:09:09] So in many of this cases, it's very new. We might not know in advance, right? So what we do is that we're able to connect these NFTs and this blockchain solution to the existing CRM and marketing tools. [00:09:25] So they have the ability to do ab testing and compare what is the engagement of of this token, right? [00:09:31] So for example, we're giving them the ability to mint NFT that can be dynamically updated with different offers and push notification and token gated access. And they can provide some very interesting you know, token gate access to these customers, right? The token gated access that we see that makes sense is access to special offers e-com website or access to a special , community room where you can meet [00:10:00] other consumers that have the same interest as you so that you get a sense of community ownership as well. [00:10:05] So that's also an interesting use cases that we're seeing there. [00:10:08] Jeff Roster: how much work does it take to do that? So in other words, let's say and I'm gonna watch the San Francisco 49ers win this Sunday. And it's just, it's such a logical thing to say, if I'm gonna go to that game, why don't I just have coupons, programs, unique content related to that game? And why don't I send it out? [00:10:27] Why don't I brand that? Why don't I, you know Levi's Stadium is in Silicon Valley. Intel's all over it. Why wouldn't they create programs or something specific to that event? How hard is it to do that? [00:10:39] Maxence Cacheux: So we're making it very easy for the brand or the retailer to create this campaign, right? [00:10:44] So starting from a one click minting, right? So you just upload the content that you want. The NFT is being minted very easily. We can distribute that across different channel. And we make it easy so that a hundred percent of consumers are able to claim it. Right. [00:11:00] So I don't know if some of you have have been trying to claim in nft it's quite complex because you need to set up crypto wallet and keys. [00:11:06] So here we just do one click claim [00:11:08] Jeff Roster: never tried to claim an NFT for [00:11:11] Ricardo Belmar: because of that complexity. [00:11:13] Jeff Roster: here. [00:11:14] Maxence Cacheux: Exactly. So here, that's what we looked at because when we talked to brands and retailers say, Hey, I want to engage a hundred percent of the customers. I don't want to talk to the crypto enthusiast, so, we're making it very easy. It could be a QR code on a big dashboard. It could be a, a text message, anything. And in one click with a social media id, you're able to get the nft either arrive in the wallet, you might not even know it's blockchain. Just look like a coupon [00:11:40] Jeff Roster: Why would I care? [00:11:41] Maxence Cacheux: You won't care. [00:11:41] Jeff Roster: a consumer, why would I care? [00:11:42] Maxence Cacheux: You don't care. Right. And, and we're able to update that dynamically. So we provide them with the platform to build these use cases. Right. And then based on what they want to do how they want to engage a consumer. We give them the ability to remotely update that token and provide different experiences while getting all the analytics [00:12:00] from these experiences from the blockchain back to their existing marketing tool. [00:12:04] Right? So back to the AB testing. How can I compare that versus my web two marketing campaign? What is the clickthrough rate? How are people engaging? Are they taking the offer? Are they, are they transferring it or not? So what is working, what is not working? So this analytics is really important for them, and we provide that to them as part of the platform. [00:12:23] Jeff Roster: so in that scenario, fully built out, when would I get that nft? When I walk in the stadium, do I scan a barcode? Does it come to me via text? Do I have to give, how do I, how do I actually start that whole process [00:12:34] Maxence Cacheux: imagine you arrive in the stadium. There is a big jumbotron, there's a big QR code. You scan that QR code on the jumbotron. [00:12:42] Then one click access. You log in with your social media id. It could be Instagram, Facebook, gmail, outlook series. [00:12:50] You get the NFT to write in the wallet, the wallet gets automatically created. You don't even know you are in the blockchain. So you have that token and it will be a branded wallet that is made [00:13:00] available to the brand. [00:13:01] And that could also be made available as part of the existing app. So we have a way to integrate with any existing mobile application from from the customer, right? So the onboarding is seamless. [00:13:13] Like a web two experience, right? Because we want to have everybody on board. We don't want to lose anybody, right? [00:13:18] So we're not only talking to the crypto enthusiast there. [00:13:21] Jeff Roster: and the verification is in the social media login or the id Okay. [00:13:26] Maxence Cacheux: media login. And then what's interesting is that suddenly you can see from your crm, Hey, I have all this person who logged in, I have their social media. And now you have a direct relationship with. [00:13:38] So you can further engage them, right? So you can engage em during the event. After the event, they can receive an additional NFT that is memorabilia of that event that they attended, which could be a collectible. We would have value because that was an important event. There could be a video of the event, try to add, right? [00:13:55] And then they have the possibility to upsell you and engage for further events, right? It's [00:14:00] really, we're talking from a switch from CRM to orm Ownership Relationship management. Where? [00:14:06] Jeff Roster: om, yeah. Ownership [00:14:07] Maxence Cacheux: owner, relationship [00:14:09] Ricardo Belmar: Owner relationship Management [00:14:10] Jeff Roster: that one? [00:14:11] Ricardo Belmar: I can't say that I have, that's a new term on me. I'm, I'm paying attention here. I'm, I'm learning. [00:14:16] Jeff Roster: got a new [00:14:17] Maxence Cacheux: new [00:14:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. ORM. [00:14:18] Maxence Cacheux: in the future. Brands are going to need to have a direct relationship with the wallet of consumers. Right. In the past you had a connect with the emails, but more, we're missing more. Many of our emails today, not everybody's reading [00:14:32] Jeff Roster: well by design, [00:14:33] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Right. Yeah. By design. Yeah. [00:14:35] Jeff Roster: just so you know, I am doing that on purpose, my friend, right? [00:14:39] Maxence Cacheux: So in the future, so having a connection to the wallet of consumer is going to be very important, right. The direct consumers. Without the platform in the middle, right? Having first party data in that direct interaction with your customers and also getting them the ability to choose what they share with you and how they engage with you. [00:14:57] Jeff Roster: I have [00:15:00] garbage, 95, 1 thirty4@yahoo.com that I give to retailers because they have proven to me they are not trustworthy with not spamming me. So you're telling me, I, I, now I'm gonna give access to a wallet, so, so I can't get rid of them. That's, I guess from a consumer that's a concern. [00:15:17] Maxence Cacheux: Yeah. But you will, you will accept to claim that NFT or that digital token because there is a utility in it, right? [00:15:25] If I'm a retailer and I'm just minting and distributed nft, you need to provide goodies, right? So if you're not providing value to that consumer, and with the roadmap of features that provide benefits to them, they're not going to be interested to engage with you. Right. So that's super important. [00:15:42] Jeff Roster: So okay, interesting [00:15:43] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. [00:15:44] So from the consumer's perspective on this, if I go through, I'm engaging with a retailer. [00:15:50] I've, I've done this. I, I'm not a crypto enthusiast, so I, I'm, I'm thrilled that all, I don't have to know anything about that, right. In order to engage in this manner I'm curious what, so what happens [00:16:00] as that same consumer goes to another retailer, Do they know that they have this crypto wallet that this digital wallet that's been created, are they taking that with them? [00:16:09] Does that sit with the re that retailer they got it from, or how, how does that part of this work for the consumer? [00:16:15] Maxence Cacheux: Yes. So typically what we provide, we give the ability for the retailer to mint and distribute these tokens very easily to any consumer. And when you click on that link that you receive either on social media or via text message or via email, right? Or in a jumbotron on a QR code that you see on a product, right? One click, you have a wallet that gets automatically created. [00:16:39] This wallet is a branded wallet, right? So it'll be a retailer branded wallet, and it gives the ability for the retailer to engage you through that wallet, right? So it's like a a direct connection between you as a retailer and the, and the consumer. Right? As a consumer, if I'm a crypto knowledgeable person or I already [00:17:00] have a wallet, I could potentially transfer that to another wallet where I have all my NFT or tokens, right? [00:17:05] But another retailers would not know that a retailer send me that token, right? So there's no sharing right of this data. [00:17:13] Jeff Roster: So how many wallets would I have? Hundreds. [00:17:17] Maxence Cacheux: You could have multiples. You may have you may have a issue of the brand. You love the retailer. You may have that, that wallet for that retailers like you have different loyalty card today, right? In your wallet. So you could have different different NFT wallet with different experience at the retailers are providing [00:17:31] Jeff Roster: so NFT wallet by store or a brand or Oh, okay. [00:17:36] Interesting. [00:17:37] Maxence Cacheux: The key is for the, the retailer really to provide utility to keep you engaged, right? [00:17:42] There needs to be a benefit for me to come back, being part of a community, getting coupon discount invitation tokens points that I can exchange. So this is really the, the key for a retailer to engage consumers. Right? [00:17:55] Jeff Roster: how far off do you see mainline adoption? You know, maybe 30, 40% of [00:18:00] retailers doing something like this. [00:18:01] Maxence Cacheux: So I think in this year we're going to see definitely a lot of movement in that space. You probably have heard about Starbucks. [00:18:09] Ricardo Belmar: right [00:18:10] Maxence Cacheux: starbucks have an amazing web two loyalty program and they decided to revamp that and basically add the web three layers to provide new experience to their consumer. [00:18:20] Program called Starbuck all this is going to be launched this year, and everybody's looking at that. There's still some secrecy here on that, but I think it's going to be a lighthouse. For many retailers and many B2C brands many of the, the brands that we're talking to, they are really looking at creating token based loyalty programs, right? [00:18:38] Airlines hotels. So it's happening across the ball in the B2C space, right? Because. It can allow you to create new experiences that are not possible in web two today. And it also provide an additional layer of security. Again, the transferability of these tokens make it very interesting in terms of new use cases as well. [00:18:58] So [00:18:59] Jeff Roster: Okay. [00:19:00] [00:19:00] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Interesting. [00:19:00] Jeff Roster: It's a pretty, pretty aggressive prediction. We'll see.. [00:19:03] Maxence Cacheux: Yeah. [00:19:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Okay. [00:19:05] Jeff Roster: be watching that [00:19:06] Maxence Cacheux: But we need as Satya Nadella was saying few days back, we need a chat GPT moment in in web three and we think that's [00:19:15] right. [00:19:15] Jeff Roster: that's a pretty, that's a pretty high bar to get over though, to [00:19:18] Maxence Cacheux: And I think the use case, the use case that we're saying where is a lot of interest, is really around loyalty, around the experience that you can provide, right? [00:19:25] So how do I engage consumer di differently? How can I get first party data, first party consumer engagement? There's a lot of interesting things we're discovering every day. I'm, I'm discovering new ways of using the technology, so every day. So there's a lot of use cases that are being brainstormed right now, so it's a fantastic space to be in. [00:19:44] So, [00:19:44] Jeff Roster: Sounds good. Where am I gonna bump into your technology? [00:19:48] Maxence Cacheux: Cool. [00:19:49] Jeff Roster: Which, any, any examples today that I can use? [00:19:52] Maxence Cacheux: Yeah, you can use it for we did recently campaign an NFT marketing campaign for a major retail bank in Asia called [00:20:00] Access Bank. And what they wanted to do is to target younger audience, gen Z millennial, so they maintain thousands of NFTs. [00:20:08] And these NFT gave you the ability to enter into contest. And win the tickets for World Cup. Right. So the more you reshare the token and talk about it on social media, you could increase your chance of winning the tickets, right? [00:20:21] Jeff Roster: Thanks. Thanks for the warning on that one. [00:20:23] Maxence Cacheux: And they were able to see clickthrough rates that were much better than the existing web two marketing campaign. [00:20:30] And very interestingly, the quality of data that they got back to their CRM was very interesting because they were able now to engage directly with this consumers younger audience directly to try to convert them as customers. So that was a very interesting NFT marketing acquisition use case. The other use case that we're seeing is, are on the loyalty space, so brands that want to re reward consumer with experiences. [00:20:54] So again, the, the token gated access is very exciting around that. [00:20:57] Jeff Roster: Hmm. Okay. [00:20:58] Maxence Cacheux: yeah. [00:20:58] Ricardo Belmar: Interesting. Wow. [00:21:00] I guess definitely something we're gonna have to be watching out for Jeff. [00:21:02] Jeff Roster: Yeah. Boy. Oh boy. [00:21:03] Maxence Cacheux: And there's lot of use case. One that I didn't talk about as well is the digital passport certificate. We're seeing a lot of retailers looking at this either in the fashion or in white goods. [00:21:13] So a token being a digital passport certificate of your product where you can have your warranty proof of purchase. You could have all the maintenance if a white goods, for example if it's a fashion nft, you could potentially wear it in the metaverse in the game where some people are spending a couple of hours per day. [00:21:32] So there's also very interesting use cases there. So [00:21:35] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. I, I guess the, the. Last question I have for you on that though, I just triggers from, as you were describing that, is there a particular segment or segments within retail that you think are more inclined to be the early adopters here? [00:21:48] You know, what you do, you expect to see it more in, fashion versus luxury goods versus home goods and, and so on. Are, are there leading segments that you expect to see this this year? [00:21:58] Maxence Cacheux: Yes. So we're [00:22:00] seeing a lot of traction in luxury in fashion with retailers that are also produce their own product rights. So, not Pure retailers, but designers and retailers because this token can have multiple properties, right? [00:22:12] It could tell the story about the brand. Who created this where did it come from? Was it responsibility stores or made, right? What is the, the story? It becomes like a proof of ownership, proof of authenticity. It could be a token that I transferred to someone. [00:22:27] When I'm reselling it and to the brand is like super important because you can then engage with the secondary market customers. [00:22:34] So for these type of retailers, fashion and luxury, it's a token that you can use from cradle to recycling for the full life cycle. You have very interesting use cases that are being explored by by those brands, [00:22:49] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm, interesting. [00:22:53] Jeff Roster: My first nrf, I worried about point of sale devices, [00:22:58] Maxence Cacheux: Yes. [00:22:58] Ricardo Belmar: and here you are now waiting [00:23:00] for what, which retailer is gonna go dive into Web three [00:23:03] Jeff Roster: point of sale devices and merchandising. And in 22 years we've come from that, which was cutting edge technology at the time to where we're talking about this and some of the other things we've talked about in the last two or three days. Really just an amazing acceleration of what we're talking about. [00:23:19] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. Absolutely. [00:23:21] Maxence Cacheux: Yeah. [00:23:21] Ricardo Belmar: Well, max, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a really illuminating discussion for me. I'm actually kind of excited to see where this is going. I think there's, you've described a lot of interesting use cases and scenarios that would let retailers do new levels of engagement. [00:23:36] I think, so this is gonna be really fascinating to watch. [00:23:39] Maxence Cacheux: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks Jeff. Thanks Ricardo. So very excited. So for what's coming up, [00:23:44] Jeff Roster: Our pleasure [00:23:44] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you. [00:23:45] Maxence Cacheux: Thank you. [00:23:46] Show Recap [00:23:46] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone. So are you as excited as us to watch how retailers and brands will use Web three and blockchain to transform their [00:24:00] customer experience? It's truly more than meets the eye. [00:24:03] Ricardo Belmar: Hey, wait a minute. I thought that was my line. I thought I'm the one who's supposed to make all the eighties pop culture references. [00:24:08] Casey Golden: As soon as I said it, I knew. Oh, at least you're a good influence, Ricardo. [00:24:14] Ricardo Belmar: Hundred percent. A hundred percent . So I have to say I came away learning a lot more about the challenges retailers are facing, implementing Web three and blockchain from listening to what max told us. But most importantly, now we've all got an easy button for this thanks to zblocks. [00:24:30] Casey Golden: Absolutely. [00:24:32] Well, Ricardo, as amazing as this episode was, I can't wait to hear what you and Jeff come up with next. Who do we have to look forward in the next show? [00:24:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, Jeff and I have yet another super interesting person to talk to coming up. Next time, we are diving into what I'll call a new take on micro fulfillment that you might not have expected. So believe me, it's the one that nobody wants to miss. [00:24:56] Casey Golden: super, but now it's time to wrap this [00:25:00] episode. [00:25:00] Show Closing [00:25:00] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today, take a look at our show notes and handy links for more deets. [00:25:24] I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. [00:25:27] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter, at, Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter, at Retail Razor, on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:25:43] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:25:44] [00:25:47] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the retail Razor Show.[00:26:00] When you hear, “web3” and “blockchain”, if you’re like most retailers you might panic or realize that you just don’t know how to leverage these technologies in your retail business. Do you gain operational efficiencies? Reduce costs? Improve supply chain visibility? Deliver a better customer experience? Increase brand loyalty? Or is it all the above if done with the right technology partner?


This episode continues our special podcast cross-over series, #NRFLive, with the This Week In Innovation podcast. In Part 3, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Jeff Roster speak with the co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of zblocks, Max Cacheux. Zblocks mission is to be retailers’ the easy button for web3 and blockchain! Max walks Jeff and Ricardo through numerous web3 use cases on customer experience, gated commerce, and loyalty programs, plus a few surprises. If you have questions about web3 & blockchain, you’ll find answers in this episode, recorded live & in-person during #NRF2023!


A special thanks to our sponsor Avanade for making this series possible by providing an amazing recording space in their NRF lounge.


Listen, or watch on YouTube, to see how much Jeff and Ricardo learn from Max about web3 & blockchain! Regular cohost Casey Golden also joins Ricardo for a quick introduction and recap.


News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


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Co-host → Casey Golden,

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TRANSCRIPT


S2E10c web3 & blockchain with zblocks

[00:00:00] ​

[00:00:00] Show Intro 

[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 part three of the Retail Razor Show. This is the third of our multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 Show in January. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:00:35] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show, retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And once again, the special bonus. Welcome N R F fans to our hot take, hashtag N R F Live miniseries.

[00:00:56] Ricardo Belmar: So Casey, we are continuing our special [00:01:00] podcast Crossover Event with Jeff Foster and this week and innovation podcast. We recorded this series live and in person at the N R F Show in the fabulous lounge space. Our good friends at Avena graciously allowed us to use overlooking the main expo floor.

[00:01:14] Casey Golden: Special shout out to our friends and sponsors at Avanade for giving you and Jeff such an amazing space.

[00:01:21] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. So let's jump right in. Casey, this episode is one that is near and dear to your heart. It is all about web three and taking the complexity out of it for retailers and consumers.

[00:01:33] Casey Golden: I love it. I'm a big fan of a velvet rope strategy, so naturally I'm an advocate for gated commerce experiences and more efficient ways to manage VIPs and loyalty in general.

[00:01:45] Ricardo Belmar: Well, you are going to love this discussion. Jeff and I had with Max Cacheux, co-founder of Z Blocks. Max talks to us about how Z Blocks is enabling so many use cases for retailers from gated content to NFTs and loyalty [00:02:00] programs in a way that any consumer can participate in, not just as Max calls them crypto enthusiasts and for the retailer, wait until you hear what some of the special sauce Max has cooked up for them to make everything web three as easy as pressing a button.

[00:02:13] Casey Golden: Very cool, and I know our listeners have to be dying to get into the discussion now.

[00:02:20] Ricardo Belmar: I agree. So let's jump in and listen to our interview with Max Cacheux, co-founder of zblocks. Soon to be everyone's new web three best friend.

[00:02:30] Casey Golden: Looking forward to hearing this one. ​

[00:02:37] zblocks Interview

[00:02:37] Ricardo Belmar: Hey everyone. We are back at the NRF 2023 Show, continuing our bonus series. I'm Ricardo Belmar and I'm here with a special guest host Jeff Roster from This Week in Innovation. How you doing, Jeff?

[00:02:50] Jeff Roster: I am tired.

[00:02:51] Ricardo Belmar: It's like, I don't remember. I was gonna say which day it is, but I've lost track. I just know it's the last

[00:02:56] Jeff Roster: It's the last day.

[00:02:57] Well, actually it's not, some of us are still [00:03:00] working tomorrow. We have meetings Wednesday.

[00:03:03] Ricardo Belmar: on Wednesday, so I can't even say

[00:03:05] Jeff Roster: but I am exhausted, but I'm elated. Yeah, 

[00:03:08] Ricardo Belmar: exactly. 

[00:03:09] Jeff Roster: show, fantastic energy.

[00:03:11] Ricardo Belmar: I'm with you on that.

[00:03:12] Jeff Roster: just an amazing, amazing celebration of retail and the, the energy and the startup community, the energy and the, the, the tech landscape.

[00:03:21] Fantastic.

[00:03:22] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. I agree. Well, and, and to that end, we have one of those tech stars with us today. So I'm gonna introduce Max Cacheux, co-founder of Z Blocks. Max, how are you?

[00:03:33] Maxence Cacheux: Very good. Great to meet you. Thanks for hosting me.

[00:03:35] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. Thank you for joining us.

[00:03:37] So why don't we just start, and Max, I'm gonna let you give your own introduction. Tell us a little bit about yourself, about Z Blocks, how Z Blocks came to be and, and what it is that you're doing for retailers.

[00:03:47] Maxence Cacheux: Absolutely. So thanks for your opportunity. So I'm Max from Z Blocks. I'm one of the, one of the cofounder at Z Blocks and I've been in the tech space and enterprise space for more than 20 years.

[00:03:57] And, What Z Blocks is [00:04:00] about, is about making blockchain adoption easy for enterprises, right? So we come from an enterprise and tech background at Z Blocks together with the, the co-founders. And what we realized more than a year ago when we started Z Blocks, is that there are many barriers for enterprises to add blockchain.

[00:04:17] And we have created a platform for them running on Azure that give them the ability to build blockchain application quickly and easily without the complexity. So we're abstracting that complexity for them.

[00:04:28] Jeff Roster: So you're taking the complexity out of blockchain?

[00:04:32] Okay. , that's a very . Bold statement.

[00:04:34] Maxence Cacheux: We want to be the easy button for web3

[00:04:36] Jeff Roster: Okay.

[00:04:37] Ricardo Belmar: I like that. The easy button for web three. Well,

[00:04:39] Jeff Roster: what, you can be, I'll be your Guinea pig cuz I'm trying to do web three and there there's zero anything easy. So I'll be your Guinea pig to see.

[00:04:46] Maxence Cacheux: There, there are many barriers for adoption. So we look at solving them. So,

[00:04:50] Ricardo Belmar: Okay, well, let me back into that a little bit then. Talk to us a little bit about what are the, the most common complexities that hold retailers back from being [00:05:00]involved in a web three project That, that would speak to what you're simplifying essentially.

[00:05:04] Maxence Cacheux: So I'll give you challenges that are applied to retailers, but also other verticals, right? I'm seeing five key challenge and these are like the five barriers that we saw that when started, right? So number one, you have a lack of blockchain developers, right?

[00:05:17] They're hard to find, they're expensive. Blockchain programming language are complex. Number two web three World is different from the Web two world. I mean, we're talking about crypto wallet. You need your private key, your public keys and retailers and others are used to email ID. So how do you reconcile?

[00:05:34] number three, retailers are looking at building in blockchain, but they want to connect to their existing systems, right? So how do you do that? How do you connect the, the two worlds together, right? And then a lot of them are looking at blockchains and seeing different protocols that are available. You have multiple layer one, right?

[00:05:50] And which one should I choose for what use case? Can I build once and deploy another? Right? And finally, when you talk to their cfo, it's, I don't want crypto on the balance sheet. [00:06:00]So you need to solve all these barriers for them and make it easy for them to develop. Right? And that's where we come with our, with our platform.

[00:06:07] Jeff Roster: So give us an example of what that would look like.

[00:06:09] Maxence Cacheux: So one of the vertical use case that we built on the platform is a solution leveraging NFT or digital tokens that give them the ability to engage with consumers and they can engage with consumers in acquisition, in retention, and leveraging these digital token for loyalty program retention.

[00:06:30] And we're seeing a lot of potential of the NFT technology for such use cases, right? Because it's becoming harder to acquire customers for them. So using web three, using blockchain for retention, for loyalty has a lot of potential and we're seeing a lot of very interesting use case around that and we're helping them in that space.

[00:06:49] Ricardo Belmar: give me an idea what, when you have this conversation with a retailer around loyalty, I, I'm thinking of, and, and I'm, I guess this, the example here is you'd be talking to a retailer who [00:07:00] wants to add value into their loyalty program beyond, you know, let's say just offering someone discounts, which so many loyalty programs do.

[00:07:06] But your, I'm guessing your message to them is, if by leveraging this technology, You're gonna have something much more tangible to offer in, in a loyalty program.

[00:07:15] Maxence Cacheux: Yes. Yes. So we're, we're not telling them, you know, to throw away their existing program. What we are telling them is, Hey, if you add this additional layer, leveraging this additonal layer of blockchain, there's some very interesting use case that you can do, right?

[00:07:29] So if you look at for example, the utility that you can provide with digital token, you can provide gated access to certain content. So it could be a website where I'm giving access to v i p customer to a pre-sales event, right? And only the NFT holder are able to access it, right? It could be an NFT or a token that give you access to an event in real life or in a, in the digital, right?

[00:07:52] So, so on the very interesting use case around utility. The transferability, right? It's one of the key [00:08:00] property of these tokens makes some very interesting business cases, right? So you could have a membership that I can transfer to, friends that I could potentially resell. You could potentially collect royalty from the resell of that membership.

[00:08:13] Right. So there's some very interesting use case around the transferability. What we're seeing as well is around customers that are creating collectibles and they're rewarding with these customers, with the collectibles, and there's a gamification around this collectible that can be exchange traded as a way to engage your existing community consumers as well.

[00:08:33] Ricardo Belmar: I like this concept of, you know, the ability to offer the gated access to things or, or use that as a token to access things in, in, in real life events. Do, do you have some examples of, of retailers that are, are pursuing that and how they're, you know, what's the impact of them doing that?

[00:08:48] Is what, what? I'm curious, you know, for example, when you have this conversation with the retailer , will they ask you, how do I measure the impact of offering this? How do I know this is gonna create more loyalty with my customer versus what I'm [00:09:00] doing today?

[00:09:01] Maxence Cacheux: Yes. So that's, that's definitely a quick key question that they have. Right. Who is going to bring some move the needle versus my existing web two program?

[00:09:09] So in many of this cases, it's very new. We might not know in advance, right? So what we do is that we're able to connect these NFTs and this blockchain solution to the existing CRM and marketing tools.

[00:09:25] So they have the ability to do ab testing and compare what is the engagement of of this token, right?

[00:09:31] So for example, we're giving them the ability to mint NFT that can be dynamically updated with different offers and push notification and token gated access. And they can provide some very interesting you know, token gate access to these customers, right? The token gated access that we see that makes sense is access to special offers e-com website or access to a special , community room where you can meet [00:10:00] other consumers that have the same interest as you so that you get a sense of community ownership as well.

[00:10:05] So that's also an interesting use cases that we're seeing there.

[00:10:08] Jeff Roster: how much work does it take to do that? So in other words, let's say and I'm gonna watch the San Francisco 49ers win this Sunday. And it's just, it's such a logical thing to say, if I'm gonna go to that game, why don't I just have coupons, programs, unique content related to that game? And why don't I send it out?

[00:10:27] Why don't I brand that? Why don't I, you know Levi's Stadium is in Silicon Valley. Intel's all over it. Why wouldn't they create programs or something specific to that event? How hard is it to do that?

[00:10:39] Maxence Cacheux: So we're making it very easy for the brand or the retailer to create this campaign, right?

[00:10:44] So starting from a one click minting, right? So you just upload the content that you want. The NFT is being minted very easily. We can distribute that across different channel. And we make it easy so that a hundred percent of consumers are able to claim it. Right. [00:11:00] So I don't know if some of you have have been trying to claim in nft it's quite complex because you need to set up crypto wallet and keys.

[00:11:06] So here we just do one click claim

[00:11:08] Jeff Roster: never tried to claim an NFT for 

[00:11:11] Ricardo Belmar: because of that complexity.

[00:11:13] Jeff Roster: here.

[00:11:14] Maxence Cacheux: Exactly. So here, that's what we looked at because when we talked to brands and retailers say, Hey, I want to engage a hundred percent of the customers. I don't want to talk to the crypto enthusiast, so, we're making it very easy. It could be a QR code on a big dashboard. It could be a, a text message, anything. And in one click with a social media id, you're able to get the nft either arrive in the wallet, you might not even know it's blockchain. Just look like a coupon

[00:11:40] Jeff Roster: Why would I care?

[00:11:41] Maxence Cacheux: You won't care.

[00:11:41] Jeff Roster: a consumer, why would I care?

[00:11:42] Maxence Cacheux: You don't care. Right. And, and we're able to update that dynamically. So we provide them with the platform to build these use cases. Right. And then based on what they want to do how they want to engage a consumer. We give them the ability to remotely update that token and provide different experiences while getting all the analytics [00:12:00] from these experiences from the blockchain back to their existing marketing tool.

[00:12:04] Right? So back to the AB testing. How can I compare that versus my web two marketing campaign? What is the clickthrough rate? How are people engaging? Are they taking the offer? Are they, are they transferring it or not? So what is working, what is not working? So this analytics is really important for them, and we provide that to them as part of the platform.

[00:12:23] Jeff Roster: so in that scenario, fully built out, when would I get that nft? When I walk in the stadium, do I scan a barcode? Does it come to me via text? Do I have to give, how do I, how do I actually start that whole process

[00:12:34] Maxence Cacheux: imagine you arrive in the stadium. There is a big jumbotron, there's a big QR code. You scan that QR code on the jumbotron.

[00:12:42] Then one click access. You log in with your social media id. It could be Instagram, Facebook, gmail, outlook series.

[00:12:50] You get the NFT to write in the wallet, the wallet gets automatically created. You don't even know you are in the blockchain. So you have that token and it will be a branded wallet that is made [00:13:00] available to the brand.

[00:13:01] And that could also be made available as part of the existing app. So we have a way to integrate with any existing mobile application from from the customer, right? So the onboarding is seamless.

[00:13:13] Like a web two experience, right? Because we want to have everybody on board. We don't want to lose anybody, right?

[00:13:18] So we're not only talking to the crypto enthusiast there. 

[00:13:21] Jeff Roster: and the verification is in the social media login or the id Okay.

[00:13:26] Maxence Cacheux: media login. And then what's interesting is that suddenly you can see from your crm, Hey, I have all this person who logged in, I have their social media. And now you have a direct relationship with.

[00:13:38] So you can further engage them, right? So you can engage em during the event. After the event, they can receive an additional NFT that is memorabilia of that event that they attended, which could be a collectible. We would have value because that was an important event. There could be a video of the event, try to add, right?

[00:13:55] And then they have the possibility to upsell you and engage for further events, right? It's [00:14:00] really, we're talking from a switch from CRM to orm Ownership Relationship management. Where?

[00:14:06] Jeff Roster: om, yeah. Ownership

[00:14:07] Maxence Cacheux: owner, relationship 

[00:14:09] Ricardo Belmar: Owner relationship Management 

[00:14:10] Jeff Roster: that one?

[00:14:11] Ricardo Belmar: I can't say that I have, that's a new term on me. I'm, I'm paying attention here. I'm, I'm learning.

[00:14:16] Jeff Roster: got a new 

[00:14:17] Maxence Cacheux: new

[00:14:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. ORM.

[00:14:18] Maxence Cacheux: in the future. Brands are going to need to have a direct relationship with the wallet of consumers. Right. In the past you had a connect with the emails, but more, we're missing more. Many of our emails today, not everybody's reading

[00:14:32] Jeff Roster: well by design,

[00:14:33] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Right. Yeah. By design. Yeah.

[00:14:35] Jeff Roster: just so you know, I am doing that on purpose, my friend, right?

[00:14:39] Maxence Cacheux: So in the future, so having a connection to the wallet of consumer is going to be very important, right. The direct consumers. Without the platform in the middle, right? Having first party data in that direct interaction with your customers and also getting them the ability to choose what they share with you and how they engage with you.

[00:14:57] Jeff Roster: I have [00:15:00] garbage, 95, 1 thirty4@yahoo.com that I give to retailers because they have proven to me they are not trustworthy with not spamming me. So you're telling me, I, I, now I'm gonna give access to a wallet, so, so I can't get rid of them. That's, I guess from a consumer that's a concern.

[00:15:17] Maxence Cacheux: Yeah. But you will, you will accept to claim that NFT or that digital token because there is a utility in it, right?

[00:15:25] If I'm a retailer and I'm just minting and distributed nft, you need to provide goodies, right? So if you're not providing value to that consumer, and with the roadmap of features that provide benefits to them, they're not going to be interested to engage with you. Right. So that's super important.

[00:15:42] Jeff Roster: So okay, interesting 

[00:15:43] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. 

[00:15:44] So from the consumer's perspective on this, if I go through, I'm engaging with a retailer.

[00:15:50] I've, I've done this. I, I'm not a crypto enthusiast, so I, I'm, I'm thrilled that all, I don't have to know anything about that, right. In order to engage in this manner I'm curious what, so what happens [00:16:00] as that same consumer goes to another retailer, Do they know that they have this crypto wallet that this digital wallet that's been created, are they taking that with them?

[00:16:09] Does that sit with the re that retailer they got it from, or how, how does that part of this work for the consumer?

[00:16:15] Maxence Cacheux: Yes. So typically what we provide, we give the ability for the retailer to mint and distribute these tokens very easily to any consumer. And when you click on that link that you receive either on social media or via text message or via email, right? Or in a jumbotron on a QR code that you see on a product, right? One click, you have a wallet that gets automatically created.

[00:16:39] This wallet is a branded wallet, right? So it'll be a retailer branded wallet, and it gives the ability for the retailer to engage you through that wallet, right? So it's like a a direct connection between you as a retailer and the, and the consumer. Right? As a consumer, if I'm a crypto knowledgeable person or I already [00:17:00] have a wallet, I could potentially transfer that to another wallet where I have all my NFT or tokens, right?

[00:17:05] But another retailers would not know that a retailer send me that token, right? So there's no sharing right of this data.

[00:17:13] Jeff Roster: So how many wallets would I have? Hundreds.

[00:17:17] Maxence Cacheux: You could have multiples. You may have you may have a issue of the brand. You love the retailer. You may have that, that wallet for that retailers like you have different loyalty card today, right? In your wallet. So you could have different different NFT wallet with different experience at the retailers are providing

[00:17:31] Jeff Roster: so NFT wallet by store or a brand or Oh, okay.

[00:17:36] Interesting.

[00:17:37] Maxence Cacheux: The key is for the, the retailer really to provide utility to keep you engaged, right?

[00:17:42] There needs to be a benefit for me to come back, being part of a community, getting coupon discount invitation tokens points that I can exchange. So this is really the, the key for a retailer to engage consumers. Right?

[00:17:55] Jeff Roster: how far off do you see mainline adoption? You know, maybe 30, 40% of [00:18:00] retailers doing something like this.

[00:18:01] Maxence Cacheux: So I think in this year we're going to see definitely a lot of movement in that space. You probably have heard about Starbucks.

[00:18:09] Ricardo Belmar: right

[00:18:10] Maxence Cacheux: starbucks have an amazing web two loyalty program and they decided to revamp that and basically add the web three layers to provide new experience to their consumer.

[00:18:20] Program called Starbuck all this is going to be launched this year, and everybody's looking at that. There's still some secrecy here on that, but I think it's going to be a lighthouse. For many retailers and many B2C brands many of the, the brands that we're talking to, they are really looking at creating token based loyalty programs, right?

[00:18:38] Airlines hotels. So it's happening across the ball in the B2C space, right? Because. It can allow you to create new experiences that are not possible in web two today. And it also provide an additional layer of security. Again, the transferability of these tokens make it very interesting in terms of new use cases as well.

[00:18:58] So

[00:18:59] Jeff Roster: Okay. [00:19:00]

[00:19:00] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Interesting.

[00:19:00] Jeff Roster: It's a pretty, pretty aggressive prediction. We'll see..

[00:19:03] Maxence Cacheux: Yeah.

[00:19:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Okay.

[00:19:05] Jeff Roster: be watching that

[00:19:06] Maxence Cacheux: But we need as Satya Nadella was saying few days back, we need a chat GPT moment in in web three and we think that's

[00:19:15] right. 

[00:19:15] Jeff Roster: that's a pretty, that's a pretty high bar to get over though, to

[00:19:18] Maxence Cacheux: And I think the use case, the use case that we're saying where is a lot of interest, is really around loyalty, around the experience that you can provide, right?

[00:19:25] So how do I engage consumer di differently? How can I get first party data, first party consumer engagement? There's a lot of interesting things we're discovering every day. I'm, I'm discovering new ways of using the technology, so every day. So there's a lot of use cases that are being brainstormed right now, so it's a fantastic space to be in.

[00:19:44] So, 

[00:19:44] Jeff Roster: Sounds good. Where am I gonna bump into your technology?

[00:19:48] Maxence Cacheux: Cool.

[00:19:49] Jeff Roster: Which, any, any examples today that I can use?

[00:19:52] Maxence Cacheux: Yeah, you can use it for we did recently campaign an NFT marketing campaign for a major retail bank in Asia called [00:20:00] Access Bank. And what they wanted to do is to target younger audience, gen Z millennial, so they maintain thousands of NFTs.

[00:20:08] And these NFT gave you the ability to enter into contest. And win the tickets for World Cup. Right. So the more you reshare the token and talk about it on social media, you could increase your chance of winning the tickets, right?

[00:20:21] Jeff Roster: Thanks. Thanks for the warning on that one.

[00:20:23] Maxence Cacheux: And they were able to see clickthrough rates that were much better than the existing web two marketing campaign.

[00:20:30] And very interestingly, the quality of data that they got back to their CRM was very interesting because they were able now to engage directly with this consumers younger audience directly to try to convert them as customers. So that was a very interesting NFT marketing acquisition use case. The other use case that we're seeing is, are on the loyalty space, so brands that want to re reward consumer with experiences.

[00:20:54] So again, the, the token gated access is very exciting around that.

[00:20:57] Jeff Roster: Hmm. Okay.

[00:20:58] Maxence Cacheux: yeah.

[00:20:58] Ricardo Belmar: Interesting. Wow. [00:21:00] I guess definitely something we're gonna have to be watching out for Jeff.

[00:21:02] Jeff Roster: Yeah. Boy. Oh boy.

[00:21:03] Maxence Cacheux: And there's lot of use case. One that I didn't talk about as well is the digital passport certificate. We're seeing a lot of retailers looking at this either in the fashion or in white goods.

[00:21:13] So a token being a digital passport certificate of your product where you can have your warranty proof of purchase. You could have all the maintenance if a white goods, for example if it's a fashion nft, you could potentially wear it in the metaverse in the game where some people are spending a couple of hours per day.

[00:21:32] So there's also very interesting use cases there. So

[00:21:35] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. I, I guess the, the. Last question I have for you on that though, I just triggers from, as you were describing that, is there a particular segment or segments within retail that you think are more inclined to be the early adopters here?

[00:21:48] You know, what you do, you expect to see it more in, fashion versus luxury goods versus home goods and, and so on. Are, are there leading segments that you expect to see this this year?

[00:21:58] Maxence Cacheux: Yes. So we're [00:22:00] seeing a lot of traction in luxury in fashion with retailers that are also produce their own product rights. So, not Pure retailers, but designers and retailers because this token can have multiple properties, right?

[00:22:12] It could tell the story about the brand. Who created this where did it come from? Was it responsibility stores or made, right? What is the, the story? It becomes like a proof of ownership, proof of authenticity. It could be a token that I transferred to someone.

[00:22:27] When I'm reselling it and to the brand is like super important because you can then engage with the secondary market customers.

[00:22:34] So for these type of retailers, fashion and luxury, it's a token that you can use from cradle to recycling for the full life cycle. You have very interesting use cases that are being explored by by those brands, 

[00:22:49] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm, interesting.

[00:22:53] Jeff Roster: My first nrf, I worried about point of sale devices, 

[00:22:58] Maxence Cacheux: Yes. 

[00:22:58] Ricardo Belmar: and here you are now waiting [00:23:00] for what, which retailer is gonna go dive into Web three

[00:23:03] Jeff Roster: point of sale devices and merchandising. And in 22 years we've come from that, which was cutting edge technology at the time to where we're talking about this and some of the other things we've talked about in the last two or three days. Really just an amazing acceleration of what we're talking about.

[00:23:19] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:23:21] Maxence Cacheux: Yeah.

[00:23:21] Ricardo Belmar: Well, max, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a really illuminating discussion for me. I'm actually kind of excited to see where this is going. I think there's, you've described a lot of interesting use cases and scenarios that would let retailers do new levels of engagement.

[00:23:36] I think, so this is gonna be really fascinating to watch.

[00:23:39] Maxence Cacheux: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks Jeff. Thanks Ricardo. So very excited. So for what's coming up,

[00:23:44] Jeff Roster: Our pleasure

[00:23:44] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you. 

[00:23:45] Maxence Cacheux: Thank you.

[00:23:46] Show Recap

[00:23:46] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone. So are you as excited as us to watch how retailers and brands will use Web three and blockchain to transform their [00:24:00] customer experience? It's truly more than meets the eye.

[00:24:03] Ricardo Belmar: Hey, wait a minute. I thought that was my line. I thought I'm the one who's supposed to make all the eighties pop culture references.

[00:24:08] Casey Golden: As soon as I said it, I knew. Oh, at least you're a good influence, Ricardo.

[00:24:14] Ricardo Belmar: Hundred percent. A hundred percent . So I have to say I came away learning a lot more about the challenges retailers are facing, implementing Web three and blockchain from listening to what max told us. But most importantly, now we've all got an easy button for this thanks to zblocks.

[00:24:30] Casey Golden: Absolutely. 

[00:24:32] Well, Ricardo, as amazing as this episode was, I can't wait to hear what you and Jeff come up with next. Who do we have to look forward in the next show?

[00:24:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, Jeff and I have yet another super interesting person to talk to coming up. Next time, we are diving into what I'll call a new take on micro fulfillment that you might not have expected. So believe me, it's the one that nobody wants to miss.

[00:24:56] Casey Golden: super, but now it's time to wrap this [00:25:00] episode. 

[00:25:00] Show Closing

[00:25:00] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today, take a look at our show notes and handy links for more deets.

[00:25:24] I'm your co-host, Casey Golden.

[00:25:27] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter, at, Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter, at Retail Razor, on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:25:43] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:25:44] ​

[00:25:47] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the retail Razor Show.​[00:26:00]

]]> <p>When you hear, “web3” and “blockchain”, if you’re like most retailers you might panic or realize that you just don’t know how to leverage these technologies in your retail business. Do you gain operational efficiencies? Reduce costs? Improve supply chain visibility? Deliver a better customer experience? Increase brand loyalty? Or is it all the above if done with the right technology partner?</p><p><br></p><p>This episode continues our special podcast cross-over series, #NRFLive, with the This Week In Innovation podcast. In Part 3, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Jeff Roster speak with the co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of zblocks, Max Cacheux. Zblocks mission is to be retailers’ the easy button for web3 and blockchain! Max walks Jeff and Ricardo through numerous web3 use cases on customer experience, gated commerce, and loyalty programs, plus a few surprises. If you have questions about web3 &amp; blockchain, you’ll find answers in this episode, recorded live &amp; in-person during #NRF2023!</p><p><br></p><p>A special thanks to our sponsor Avanade for making this series possible by providing an amazing recording space in their NRF lounge.</p><p><br></p><p>Listen, or watch on YouTube, to see how much Jeff and Ricardo learn from Max about web3 &amp; blockchain! Regular cohost Casey Golden also joins Ricardo for a quick introduction and recap.</p><p><br></p><p>News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review &amp; be mentioned in future episodes! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, </em>and<em> Overclocked, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><br></p><p><strong>S2E10c web3 &amp; blockchain with zblocks</strong></p><p>[00:00:00] ​</p><h3>[00:00:00] Show Intro </h3><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 part three of the Retail Razor Show. This is the third of our multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 Show in January. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:00:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show, retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And once again, the special bonus. Welcome N R F fans to our hot take, hashtag N R F Live miniseries.</p><p>[00:00:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So Casey, we are continuing our special [00:01:00] podcast Crossover Event with Jeff Foster and this week and innovation podcast. We recorded this series live and in person at the N R F Show in the fabulous lounge space. Our good friends at Avena graciously allowed us to use overlooking the main expo floor.</p><p>[00:01:14] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Special shout out to our friends and sponsors at Avanade for giving you and Jeff such an amazing space.</p><p>[00:01:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Absolutely. So let&#39;s jump right in. Casey, this episode is one that is near and dear to your heart. It is all about web three and taking the complexity out of it for retailers and consumers.</p><p>[00:01:33] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I love it. I&#39;m a big fan of a velvet rope strategy, so naturally I&#39;m an advocate for gated commerce experiences and more efficient ways to manage VIPs and loyalty in general.</p><p>[00:01:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, you are going to love this discussion. Jeff and I had with Max Cacheux, co-founder of Z Blocks. Max talks to us about how Z Blocks is enabling so many use cases for retailers from gated content to NFTs and loyalty [00:02:00] programs in a way that any consumer can participate in, not just as Max calls them crypto enthusiasts and for the retailer, wait until you hear what some of the special sauce Max has cooked up for them to make everything web three as easy as pressing a button.</p><p>[00:02:13] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Very cool, and I know our listeners have to be dying to get into the discussion now.</p><p>[00:02:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I agree. So let&#39;s jump in and listen to our interview with Max Cacheux, co-founder of zblocks. Soon to be everyone&#39;s new web three best friend.</p><p>[00:02:30] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Looking forward to hearing this one. ​</p><h3>[00:02:37] zblocks Interview</h3><p>[00:02:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hey everyone. We are back at the NRF 2023 Show, continuing our bonus series. I&#39;m Ricardo Belmar and I&#39;m here with a special guest host Jeff Roster from This Week in Innovation. How you doing, Jeff?</p><p>[00:02:50] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I am tired.</p><p>[00:02:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It&#39;s like, I don&#39;t remember. I was gonna say which day it is, but I&#39;ve lost track. I just know it&#39;s the last</p><p>[00:02:56] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> It&#39;s the last day.</p><p>[00:02:57] Well, actually it&#39;s not, some of us are still [00:03:00] working tomorrow. We have meetings Wednesday.</p><p>[00:03:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> on Wednesday, so I can&#39;t even say</p><p>[00:03:05] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> but I am exhausted, but I&#39;m elated. Yeah, </p><p>[00:03:08] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> exactly. </p><p>[00:03:09] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> show, fantastic energy.</p><p>[00:03:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I&#39;m with you on that.</p><p>[00:03:12] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> just an amazing, amazing celebration of retail and the, the energy and the startup community, the energy and the, the, the tech landscape.</p><p>[00:03:21] Fantastic.</p><p>[00:03:22] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. I agree. Well, and, and to that end, we have one of those tech stars with us today. So I&#39;m gonna introduce Max Cacheux, co-founder of Z Blocks. Max, how are you?</p><p>[00:03:33] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Very good. Great to meet you. Thanks for hosting me.</p><p>[00:03:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Absolutely. Thank you for joining us.</p><p>[00:03:37] So why don&#39;t we just start, and Max, I&#39;m gonna let you give your own introduction. Tell us a little bit about yourself, about Z Blocks, how Z Blocks came to be and, and what it is that you&#39;re doing for retailers.</p><p>[00:03:47] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Absolutely. So thanks for your opportunity. So I&#39;m Max from Z Blocks. I&#39;m one of the, one of the cofounder at Z Blocks and I&#39;ve been in the tech space and enterprise space for more than 20 years.</p><p>[00:03:57] And, What Z Blocks is [00:04:00] about, is about making blockchain adoption easy for enterprises, right? So we come from an enterprise and tech background at Z Blocks together with the, the co-founders. And what we realized more than a year ago when we started Z Blocks, is that there are many barriers for enterprises to add blockchain.</p><p>[00:04:17] And we have created a platform for them running on Azure that give them the ability to build blockchain application quickly and easily without the complexity. So we&#39;re abstracting that complexity for them.</p><p>[00:04:28] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So you&#39;re taking the complexity out of blockchain?</p><p>[00:04:32] Okay. , that&#39;s a very . Bold statement.</p><p>[00:04:34] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> We want to be the easy button for web3</p><p>[00:04:36] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Okay.</p><p>[00:04:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I like that. The easy button for web three. Well,</p><p>[00:04:39] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> what, you can be, I&#39;ll be your Guinea pig cuz I&#39;m trying to do web three and there there&#39;s zero anything easy. So I&#39;ll be your Guinea pig to see.</p><p>[00:04:46] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> There, there are many barriers for adoption. So we look at solving them. So,</p><p>[00:04:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay, well, let me back into that a little bit then. Talk to us a little bit about what are the, the most common complexities that hold retailers back from being [00:05:00]involved in a web three project That, that would speak to what you&#39;re simplifying essentially.</p><p>[00:05:04] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> So I&#39;ll give you challenges that are applied to retailers, but also other verticals, right? I&#39;m seeing five key challenge and these are like the five barriers that we saw that when started, right? So number one, you have a lack of blockchain developers, right?</p><p>[00:05:17] They&#39;re hard to find, they&#39;re expensive. Blockchain programming language are complex. Number two web three World is different from the Web two world. I mean, we&#39;re talking about crypto wallet. You need your private key, your public keys and retailers and others are used to email ID. So how do you reconcile?</p><p>[00:05:34] number three, retailers are looking at building in blockchain, but they want to connect to their existing systems, right? So how do you do that? How do you connect the, the two worlds together, right? And then a lot of them are looking at blockchains and seeing different protocols that are available. You have multiple layer one, right?</p><p>[00:05:50] And which one should I choose for what use case? Can I build once and deploy another? Right? And finally, when you talk to their cfo, it&#39;s, I don&#39;t want crypto on the balance sheet. [00:06:00]So you need to solve all these barriers for them and make it easy for them to develop. Right? And that&#39;s where we come with our, with our platform.</p><p>[00:06:07] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So give us an example of what that would look like.</p><p>[00:06:09] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> So one of the vertical use case that we built on the platform is a solution leveraging NFT or digital tokens that give them the ability to engage with consumers and they can engage with consumers in acquisition, in retention, and leveraging these digital token for loyalty program retention.</p><p>[00:06:30] And we&#39;re seeing a lot of potential of the NFT technology for such use cases, right? Because it&#39;s becoming harder to acquire customers for them. So using web three, using blockchain for retention, for loyalty has a lot of potential and we&#39;re seeing a lot of very interesting use case around that and we&#39;re helping them in that space.</p><p>[00:06:49] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> give me an idea what, when you have this conversation with a retailer around loyalty, I, I&#39;m thinking of, and, and I&#39;m, I guess this, the example here is you&#39;d be talking to a retailer who [00:07:00] wants to add value into their loyalty program beyond, you know, let&#39;s say just offering someone discounts, which so many loyalty programs do.</p><p>[00:07:06] But your, I&#39;m guessing your message to them is, if by leveraging this technology, You&#39;re gonna have something much more tangible to offer in, in a loyalty program.</p><p>[00:07:15] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Yes. Yes. So we&#39;re, we&#39;re not telling them, you know, to throw away their existing program. What we are telling them is, Hey, if you add this additional layer, leveraging this additonal layer of blockchain, there&#39;s some very interesting use case that you can do, right?</p><p>[00:07:29] So if you look at for example, the utility that you can provide with digital token, you can provide gated access to certain content. So it could be a website where I&#39;m giving access to v i p customer to a pre-sales event, right? And only the NFT holder are able to access it, right? It could be an NFT or a token that give you access to an event in real life or in a, in the digital, right?</p><p>[00:07:52] So, so on the very interesting use case around utility. The transferability, right? It&#39;s one of the key [00:08:00] property of these tokens makes some very interesting business cases, right? So you could have a membership that I can transfer to, friends that I could potentially resell. You could potentially collect royalty from the resell of that membership.</p><p>[00:08:13] Right. So there&#39;s some very interesting use case around the transferability. What we&#39;re seeing as well is around customers that are creating collectibles and they&#39;re rewarding with these customers, with the collectibles, and there&#39;s a gamification around this collectible that can be exchange traded as a way to engage your existing community consumers as well.</p><p>[00:08:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I like this concept of, you know, the ability to offer the gated access to things or, or use that as a token to access things in, in, in real life events. Do, do you have some examples of, of retailers that are, are pursuing that and how they&#39;re, you know, what&#39;s the impact of them doing that?</p><p>[00:08:48] Is what, what? I&#39;m curious, you know, for example, when you have this conversation with the retailer , will they ask you, how do I measure the impact of offering this? How do I know this is gonna create more loyalty with my customer versus what I&#39;m [00:09:00] doing today?</p><p>[00:09:01] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Yes. So that&#39;s, that&#39;s definitely a quick key question that they have. Right. Who is going to bring some move the needle versus my existing web two program?</p><p>[00:09:09] So in many of this cases, it&#39;s very new. We might not know in advance, right? So what we do is that we&#39;re able to connect these NFTs and this blockchain solution to the existing CRM and marketing tools.</p><p>[00:09:25] So they have the ability to do ab testing and compare what is the engagement of of this token, right?</p><p>[00:09:31] So for example, we&#39;re giving them the ability to mint NFT that can be dynamically updated with different offers and push notification and token gated access. And they can provide some very interesting you know, token gate access to these customers, right? The token gated access that we see that makes sense is access to special offers e-com website or access to a special , community room where you can meet [00:10:00] other consumers that have the same interest as you so that you get a sense of community ownership as well.</p><p>[00:10:05] So that&#39;s also an interesting use cases that we&#39;re seeing there.</p><p>[00:10:08] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> how much work does it take to do that? So in other words, let&#39;s say and I&#39;m gonna watch the San Francisco 49ers win this Sunday. And it&#39;s just, it&#39;s such a logical thing to say, if I&#39;m gonna go to that game, why don&#39;t I just have coupons, programs, unique content related to that game? And why don&#39;t I send it out?</p><p>[00:10:27] Why don&#39;t I brand that? Why don&#39;t I, you know Levi&#39;s Stadium is in Silicon Valley. Intel&#39;s all over it. Why wouldn&#39;t they create programs or something specific to that event? How hard is it to do that?</p><p>[00:10:39] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> So we&#39;re making it very easy for the brand or the retailer to create this campaign, right?</p><p>[00:10:44] So starting from a one click minting, right? So you just upload the content that you want. The NFT is being minted very easily. We can distribute that across different channel. And we make it easy so that a hundred percent of consumers are able to claim it. Right. [00:11:00] So I don&#39;t know if some of you have have been trying to claim in nft it&#39;s quite complex because you need to set up crypto wallet and keys.</p><p>[00:11:06] So here we just do one click claim</p><p>[00:11:08] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> never tried to claim an NFT for </p><p>[00:11:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> because of that complexity.</p><p>[00:11:13] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> here.</p><p>[00:11:14] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Exactly. So here, that&#39;s what we looked at because when we talked to brands and retailers say, Hey, I want to engage a hundred percent of the customers. I don&#39;t want to talk to the crypto enthusiast, so, we&#39;re making it very easy. It could be a QR code on a big dashboard. It could be a, a text message, anything. And in one click with a social media id, you&#39;re able to get the nft either arrive in the wallet, you might not even know it&#39;s blockchain. Just look like a coupon</p><p>[00:11:40] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Why would I care?</p><p>[00:11:41] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> You won&#39;t care.</p><p>[00:11:41] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> a consumer, why would I care?</p><p>[00:11:42] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> You don&#39;t care. Right. And, and we&#39;re able to update that dynamically. So we provide them with the platform to build these use cases. Right. And then based on what they want to do how they want to engage a consumer. We give them the ability to remotely update that token and provide different experiences while getting all the analytics [00:12:00] from these experiences from the blockchain back to their existing marketing tool.</p><p>[00:12:04] Right? So back to the AB testing. How can I compare that versus my web two marketing campaign? What is the clickthrough rate? How are people engaging? Are they taking the offer? Are they, are they transferring it or not? So what is working, what is not working? So this analytics is really important for them, and we provide that to them as part of the platform.</p><p>[00:12:23] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> so in that scenario, fully built out, when would I get that nft? When I walk in the stadium, do I scan a barcode? Does it come to me via text? Do I have to give, how do I, how do I actually start that whole process</p><p>[00:12:34] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> imagine you arrive in the stadium. There is a big jumbotron, there&#39;s a big QR code. You scan that QR code on the jumbotron.</p><p>[00:12:42] Then one click access. You log in with your social media id. It could be Instagram, Facebook, gmail, outlook series.</p><p>[00:12:50] You get the NFT to write in the wallet, the wallet gets automatically created. You don&#39;t even know you are in the blockchain. So you have that token and it will be a branded wallet that is made [00:13:00] available to the brand.</p><p>[00:13:01] And that could also be made available as part of the existing app. So we have a way to integrate with any existing mobile application from from the customer, right? So the onboarding is seamless.</p><p>[00:13:13] Like a web two experience, right? Because we want to have everybody on board. We don&#39;t want to lose anybody, right?</p><p>[00:13:18] So we&#39;re not only talking to the crypto enthusiast there. </p><p>[00:13:21] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> and the verification is in the social media login or the id Okay.</p><p>[00:13:26] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> media login. And then what&#39;s interesting is that suddenly you can see from your crm, Hey, I have all this person who logged in, I have their social media. And now you have a direct relationship with.</p><p>[00:13:38] So you can further engage them, right? So you can engage em during the event. After the event, they can receive an additional NFT that is memorabilia of that event that they attended, which could be a collectible. We would have value because that was an important event. There could be a video of the event, try to add, right?</p><p>[00:13:55] And then they have the possibility to upsell you and engage for further events, right? It&#39;s [00:14:00] really, we&#39;re talking from a switch from CRM to orm Ownership Relationship management. Where?</p><p>[00:14:06] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> om, yeah. Ownership</p><p>[00:14:07] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> owner, relationship </p><p>[00:14:09] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Owner relationship Management </p><p>[00:14:10] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> that one?</p><p>[00:14:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I can&#39;t say that I have, that&#39;s a new term on me. I&#39;m, I&#39;m paying attention here. I&#39;m, I&#39;m learning.</p><p>[00:14:16] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> got a new </p><p>[00:14:17] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> new</p><p>[00:14:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. ORM.</p><p>[00:14:18] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> in the future. Brands are going to need to have a direct relationship with the wallet of consumers. Right. In the past you had a connect with the emails, but more, we&#39;re missing more. Many of our emails today, not everybody&#39;s reading</p><p>[00:14:32] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> well by design,</p><p>[00:14:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Right. Yeah. By design. Yeah.</p><p>[00:14:35] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> just so you know, I am doing that on purpose, my friend, right?</p><p>[00:14:39] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> So in the future, so having a connection to the wallet of consumer is going to be very important, right. The direct consumers. Without the platform in the middle, right? Having first party data in that direct interaction with your customers and also getting them the ability to choose what they share with you and how they engage with you.</p><p>[00:14:57] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I have [00:15:00] garbage, 95, 1 thirty4@yahoo.com that I give to retailers because they have proven to me they are not trustworthy with not spamming me. So you&#39;re telling me, I, I, now I&#39;m gonna give access to a wallet, so, so I can&#39;t get rid of them. That&#39;s, I guess from a consumer that&#39;s a concern.</p><p>[00:15:17] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Yeah. But you will, you will accept to claim that NFT or that digital token because there is a utility in it, right?</p><p>[00:15:25] If I&#39;m a retailer and I&#39;m just minting and distributed nft, you need to provide goodies, right? So if you&#39;re not providing value to that consumer, and with the roadmap of features that provide benefits to them, they&#39;re not going to be interested to engage with you. Right. So that&#39;s super important.</p><p>[00:15:42] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So okay, interesting </p><p>[00:15:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. </p><p>[00:15:44] So from the consumer&#39;s perspective on this, if I go through, I&#39;m engaging with a retailer.</p><p>[00:15:50] I&#39;ve, I&#39;ve done this. I, I&#39;m not a crypto enthusiast, so I, I&#39;m, I&#39;m thrilled that all, I don&#39;t have to know anything about that, right. In order to engage in this manner I&#39;m curious what, so what happens [00:16:00] as that same consumer goes to another retailer, Do they know that they have this crypto wallet that this digital wallet that&#39;s been created, are they taking that with them?</p><p>[00:16:09] Does that sit with the re that retailer they got it from, or how, how does that part of this work for the consumer?</p><p>[00:16:15] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Yes. So typically what we provide, we give the ability for the retailer to mint and distribute these tokens very easily to any consumer. And when you click on that link that you receive either on social media or via text message or via email, right? Or in a jumbotron on a QR code that you see on a product, right? One click, you have a wallet that gets automatically created.</p><p>[00:16:39] This wallet is a branded wallet, right? So it&#39;ll be a retailer branded wallet, and it gives the ability for the retailer to engage you through that wallet, right? So it&#39;s like a a direct connection between you as a retailer and the, and the consumer. Right? As a consumer, if I&#39;m a crypto knowledgeable person or I already [00:17:00] have a wallet, I could potentially transfer that to another wallet where I have all my NFT or tokens, right?</p><p>[00:17:05] But another retailers would not know that a retailer send me that token, right? So there&#39;s no sharing right of this data.</p><p>[00:17:13] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So how many wallets would I have? Hundreds.</p><p>[00:17:17] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> You could have multiples. You may have you may have a issue of the brand. You love the retailer. You may have that, that wallet for that retailers like you have different loyalty card today, right? In your wallet. So you could have different different NFT wallet with different experience at the retailers are providing</p><p>[00:17:31] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> so NFT wallet by store or a brand or Oh, okay.</p><p>[00:17:36] Interesting.</p><p>[00:17:37] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> The key is for the, the retailer really to provide utility to keep you engaged, right?</p><p>[00:17:42] There needs to be a benefit for me to come back, being part of a community, getting coupon discount invitation tokens points that I can exchange. So this is really the, the key for a retailer to engage consumers. Right?</p><p>[00:17:55] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> how far off do you see mainline adoption? You know, maybe 30, 40% of [00:18:00] retailers doing something like this.</p><p>[00:18:01] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> So I think in this year we&#39;re going to see definitely a lot of movement in that space. You probably have heard about Starbucks.</p><p>[00:18:09] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right</p><p>[00:18:10] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> starbucks have an amazing web two loyalty program and they decided to revamp that and basically add the web three layers to provide new experience to their consumer.</p><p>[00:18:20] Program called Starbuck all this is going to be launched this year, and everybody&#39;s looking at that. There&#39;s still some secrecy here on that, but I think it&#39;s going to be a lighthouse. For many retailers and many B2C brands many of the, the brands that we&#39;re talking to, they are really looking at creating token based loyalty programs, right?</p><p>[00:18:38] Airlines hotels. So it&#39;s happening across the ball in the B2C space, right? Because. It can allow you to create new experiences that are not possible in web two today. And it also provide an additional layer of security. Again, the transferability of these tokens make it very interesting in terms of new use cases as well.</p><p>[00:18:58] So</p><p>[00:18:59] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Okay. [00:19:00]</p><p>[00:19:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right. Interesting.</p><p>[00:19:00] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> It&#39;s a pretty, pretty aggressive prediction. We&#39;ll see..</p><p>[00:19:03] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:19:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Okay.</p><p>[00:19:05] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> be watching that</p><p>[00:19:06] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> But we need as Satya Nadella was saying few days back, we need a chat GPT moment in in web three and we think that&#39;s</p><p>[00:19:15] right. </p><p>[00:19:15] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> that&#39;s a pretty, that&#39;s a pretty high bar to get over though, to</p><p>[00:19:18] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> And I think the use case, the use case that we&#39;re saying where is a lot of interest, is really around loyalty, around the experience that you can provide, right?</p><p>[00:19:25] So how do I engage consumer di differently? How can I get first party data, first party consumer engagement? There&#39;s a lot of interesting things we&#39;re discovering every day. I&#39;m, I&#39;m discovering new ways of using the technology, so every day. So there&#39;s a lot of use cases that are being brainstormed right now, so it&#39;s a fantastic space to be in.</p><p>[00:19:44] So, </p><p>[00:19:44] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Sounds good. Where am I gonna bump into your technology?</p><p>[00:19:48] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Cool.</p><p>[00:19:49] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Which, any, any examples today that I can use?</p><p>[00:19:52] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Yeah, you can use it for we did recently campaign an NFT marketing campaign for a major retail bank in Asia called [00:20:00] Access Bank. And what they wanted to do is to target younger audience, gen Z millennial, so they maintain thousands of NFTs.</p><p>[00:20:08] And these NFT gave you the ability to enter into contest. And win the tickets for World Cup. Right. So the more you reshare the token and talk about it on social media, you could increase your chance of winning the tickets, right?</p><p>[00:20:21] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Thanks. Thanks for the warning on that one.</p><p>[00:20:23] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> And they were able to see clickthrough rates that were much better than the existing web two marketing campaign.</p><p>[00:20:30] And very interestingly, the quality of data that they got back to their CRM was very interesting because they were able now to engage directly with this consumers younger audience directly to try to convert them as customers. So that was a very interesting NFT marketing acquisition use case. The other use case that we&#39;re seeing is, are on the loyalty space, so brands that want to re reward consumer with experiences.</p><p>[00:20:54] So again, the, the token gated access is very exciting around that.</p><p>[00:20:57] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Hmm. Okay.</p><p>[00:20:58] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> yeah.</p><p>[00:20:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Interesting. Wow. [00:21:00] I guess definitely something we&#39;re gonna have to be watching out for Jeff.</p><p>[00:21:02] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah. Boy. Oh boy.</p><p>[00:21:03] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> And there&#39;s lot of use case. One that I didn&#39;t talk about as well is the digital passport certificate. We&#39;re seeing a lot of retailers looking at this either in the fashion or in white goods.</p><p>[00:21:13] So a token being a digital passport certificate of your product where you can have your warranty proof of purchase. You could have all the maintenance if a white goods, for example if it&#39;s a fashion nft, you could potentially wear it in the metaverse in the game where some people are spending a couple of hours per day.</p><p>[00:21:32] So there&#39;s also very interesting use cases there. So</p><p>[00:21:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hmm. I, I guess the, the. Last question I have for you on that though, I just triggers from, as you were describing that, is there a particular segment or segments within retail that you think are more inclined to be the early adopters here?</p><p>[00:21:48] You know, what you do, you expect to see it more in, fashion versus luxury goods versus home goods and, and so on. Are, are there leading segments that you expect to see this this year?</p><p>[00:21:58] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Yes. So we&#39;re [00:22:00] seeing a lot of traction in luxury in fashion with retailers that are also produce their own product rights. So, not Pure retailers, but designers and retailers because this token can have multiple properties, right?</p><p>[00:22:12] It could tell the story about the brand. Who created this where did it come from? Was it responsibility stores or made, right? What is the, the story? It becomes like a proof of ownership, proof of authenticity. It could be a token that I transferred to someone.</p><p>[00:22:27] When I&#39;m reselling it and to the brand is like super important because you can then engage with the secondary market customers.</p><p>[00:22:34] So for these type of retailers, fashion and luxury, it&#39;s a token that you can use from cradle to recycling for the full life cycle. You have very interesting use cases that are being explored by by those brands, </p><p>[00:22:49] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hmm, interesting.</p><p>[00:22:53] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> My first nrf, I worried about point of sale devices, </p><p>[00:22:58] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Yes. </p><p>[00:22:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> and here you are now waiting [00:23:00] for what, which retailer is gonna go dive into Web three</p><p>[00:23:03] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> point of sale devices and merchandising. And in 22 years we&#39;ve come from that, which was cutting edge technology at the time to where we&#39;re talking about this and some of the other things we&#39;ve talked about in the last two or three days. Really just an amazing acceleration of what we&#39;re talking about.</p><p>[00:23:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Absolutely. Absolutely.</p><p>[00:23:21] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:23:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, max, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a really illuminating discussion for me. I&#39;m actually kind of excited to see where this is going. I think there&#39;s, you&#39;ve described a lot of interesting use cases and scenarios that would let retailers do new levels of engagement.</p><p>[00:23:36] I think, so this is gonna be really fascinating to watch.</p><p>[00:23:39] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Yeah. Thank you. Thanks Jeff. Thanks Ricardo. So very excited. So for what&#39;s coming up,</p><p>[00:23:44] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Our pleasure</p><p>[00:23:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thank you. </p><p>[00:23:45] <strong>Maxence Cacheux:</strong> Thank you.</p><h3>[00:23:46] Show Recap</h3><p>[00:23:46] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Welcome back everyone. So are you as excited as us to watch how retailers and brands will use Web three and blockchain to transform their [00:24:00] customer experience? It&#39;s truly more than meets the eye.</p><p>[00:24:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hey, wait a minute. I thought that was my line. I thought I&#39;m the one who&#39;s supposed to make all the eighties pop culture references.</p><p>[00:24:08] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> As soon as I said it, I knew. Oh, at least you&#39;re a good influence, Ricardo.</p><p>[00:24:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hundred percent. A hundred percent . So I have to say I came away learning a lot more about the challenges retailers are facing, implementing Web three and blockchain from listening to what max told us. But most importantly, now we&#39;ve all got an easy button for this thanks to zblocks.</p><p>[00:24:30] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Absolutely. </p><p>[00:24:32] Well, Ricardo, as amazing as this episode was, I can&#39;t wait to hear what you and Jeff come up with next. Who do we have to look forward in the next show?</p><p>[00:24:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, Jeff and I have yet another super interesting person to talk to coming up. Next time, we are diving into what I&#39;ll call a new take on micro fulfillment that you might not have expected. So believe me, it&#39;s the one that nobody wants to miss.</p><p>[00:24:56] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> super, but now it&#39;s time to wrap this [00:25:00] episode. </p><h3>[00:25:00] Show Closing</h3><p>[00:25:00] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don&#39;t miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today, take a look at our show notes and handy links for more deets.</p><p>[00:25:24] I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden.</p><p>[00:25:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter, at, Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter, at Retail Razor, on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:25:43] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:25:44] ​</p><p>[00:25:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time. This is the retail Razor Show.​[00:26:00]</p> 936b73a5-b453-440d-b4c8-56a2c6dacf34 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 24 Feb 2023 12:05:00 +0000 1564 no full S2E10b #NRFLive SPECIAL - Last Mile Delivery Experiences with FarEye S2E10b #NRFLive SPECIAL - Last Mile Delivery Experiences with FarEye 10 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E10b #NRFLive SPECIAL - Last Mile Delivery Experiences with FarEye When you hear, “last mile logistics”, what do you think of? This episode continues our special podcast cross-over series, #NRFLive, with the This Week In Innovation podcast. In Part 2 of the series, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Jeff Roster speak with the CEO and CMO of last mile logistics provider FarEye to learn how they are helping retailers provide the most flexible, efficient, and sustainable delivery experience to their customers while keeping costs down! You’ll also hear some interesting consumer trends on delivery expectations that may surprise you! Jeff and Ricardo recorded this session live, and in-person with Kushal Nahata, CEO, and Judd Marcello, CMO, of FarEye during the NRF 2023 Big Show. Special thanks to our sponsor Avanade for making this series possible by providing an amazing recording space in their NRF lounge. Listen, or watch on YouTube, to see how much Jeff and Ricardo learn from the FarEye team! And regular cohost Casey Golden also joins Ricardo for a quick recap and introduction. News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E10b Last Mile Delivery Experiences with FarEye [00:00:00] Show Intro [00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: [00:00:19] Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 part two of the Retail Razor Show. This is the second of our multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 Show in January. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:00:35] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show, retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And for this special bonus, welcome N R F fans to our hot take hashtag N R F Live mini series. [00:00:55] Ricardo Belmar: So Casey, just like our last episode, this is a [00:01:00] special podcast crossover event with Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast. We recorded this series live at in-person at the N R F Show in the fabulous lounge space our good friends at Avanade graciously allowed us to use. [00:01:15] Casey Golden: Yes. A special shout out to our friends and sponsors at Avanade for giving you and Jeff such a great space to set up and record. These are not easy areas to find. [00:01:26] Ricardo Belmar: Oh yeah, ab absolutely, absolutely. Especially at the Javit Center. . So, so let's get right to it then. So, Casey, when I say Last Mile logistics to you, what do you think of? [00:01:36] Casey Golden: delivered to my door in two hours with a smile. [00:01:40] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Well then this episode is really going to fascinate you hopefully as much as it will our listeners, Jeff and I had the pleasure of interviewing Kushal Nahata, the C E O of FarEye, and Judd Marcello FarEye's, C M O, and wow, did we learn a lot about how retailers can make their last mile [00:02:00] logistics not only more efficient, cost effective and more sustainable, but also do it while giving their customers a much better, and dare I say, personalized delivery experience. [00:02:11] Casey Golden: Very cool. I'm digging it. And now I want to know how FarEye is doing all of that. it's a pretty tall order and let's face it, this is pretty much table stakes for any e-commerce operation. [00:02:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I, I, I agree. And I'll just say that if you're trying to balance between getting your delivery costs down with giving your customers what they want, this is an interview you want to take notes from. I don't wanna give away too much, but be on the lookout for some interesting trends on what consumers want more than fast delivery from their e-commerce orders. [00:02:47] Casey Golden: All right, now I'm getting a bit anxious. You know how much I love a good e-commerce discussion. Let's have it already. [00:02:54] Ricardo Belmar: I'm with you. I'm with you. So let's jump in and listen to our interview with Kushal and Judd. [00:02:58] [00:03:00] [00:03:03] FarEye Interview [00:03:03] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome everyone. [00:03:05] I'm Ricardo Belmar and I'm here with Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast, and we are continuing our NRF 2023 series with two special guests, Kushal Nahata, the C E O of FarEye. Welcome, Kushal. [00:03:18] Kushal Nahata: welcome. Hi everyone. [00:03:20] Ricardo Belmar: And Judd Marcello, FarEye's CMO. [00:03:22] Judd Marcello: Thanks for having us. Happy to be here. [00:03:24] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you guys. Thank you both for being here. So Jeff, why don't we just jump right in? [00:03:27] Jeff Roster: Sounds good. [00:03:28] Ricardo Belmar: Sound good to you? All right, so Kushal, Judd, why don't you give us just a couple quick sentences so we're all familiar with what FarEye does. [00:03:35] Kushal Nahata: Yeah. So look we, we are a last mile delivery platform. We essentially help all, [00:03:40] of us as consumers get the products delivered to our doorstep at the time we need, with the choices we want to make. [00:03:48] And we do that by enabling all the brands, retailers, and logistic companies to be efficient and do deliveries the way consumers need and want it.[00:04:00] [00:04:00] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Excellent. All right, so we've got four questions for you that we're really interested in hearing about. So start off, let's talk about e-commerce. Of course. You know, obviously we're. More e-commerce spending happening. Retailers have been ramping up their capabilities around fulfillment, delivering e-commerce. [00:04:17] So with that influx in e-commerce spending, how are retailers reinventing their approach to delivering a better experience all the way to consumers doorsteps. [00:04:26] Kushal Nahata: So maybe I'll go first. Look, COVID was the time when generally the e-commerce took off for every single retailer because consumers couldn't move out, they can't go to these stores. [00:04:38] So everything happened online and one of the biggest challenge was the delivery network and capability didn't existed in the way retailers desired for it, and it was a sudden peak. So what we've seen retailers really innovating is going for a hybrid model. [00:04:56] And by hybrid, what I mean is a part of it [00:05:00] is their own fleet, which gives them more control, gives them directly voice of the customer how and what they need it. [00:05:07] And at the same time, they're partnering with third party delivery networks and which is not limited to let's say, top two or top three delivery service providers, but they're working with regional, with local delivery service providers as well. Now, how this helps is, it gives them scale, it gives them control, [00:05:26] And it also helps them optimize the cost because the local regional players are sometimes more efficient from a cost perspective, but then the challenge is they can't scale nationally. [00:05:35] So if you build that as a network, it becomes a super strategic competitive advantage for your brand. And that's what, if you see most of the top retailers have done in the last five to 10 years. [00:05:48] Judd Marcello: And I think, you know, in addition to what Kushal said, if you're a retailer and you're a prioritizing that innovation in your, in your logistics, in your delivery logistics, in your operations, creating efficiencies, Then that enables you to [00:06:00] then focus on the customer experience. [00:06:01] Cause that's the other area of innovation. And when you think about deliveries for consumer deliveries, the consumer now has so much control dictating what they want, where they wanna receive it, when they wanna receive it. You know, they've been fed the idea of next day delivery, same day delivery now. So now the consumer expectations are increasingly high. [00:06:21] And I think if you're a retailer today, if you're focused on making the delivery experience, From order to where they're on the website and they click the buy button to when that package lands on their, their front doorstep. If you make that seamless for the consumer, if you make it easy and it's convenient for them, and they have a sense of control in that, that is one way to win that consumer and ultimately win them for the long term. [00:06:42] Jeff Roster: So what exactly are you a platform that that gig economy folks can plug in ups, all that. And your, your ultimate customer is the retailer who's using you as a platform to figure out that last mile. [00:06:56] Kushal Nahata: Yeah. [00:06:57] So you need to understand that as a platform [00:07:00] to manage and scale deliveries. It could be through your own fleet where you are running some part of your fleet on your own, or it could be a logistic company. [00:07:09] Who has thousands of fleets of their own. It could be third party delivery network, which is what you said the gig workers and all are connected to the platform. So one, and then there is the orchestration. When the order comes, what's the best way to deliver that order with a super delightful experience to the consumer. [00:07:28] Judd Marcello: Mm-hmm. [00:07:28] Jeff Roster: Wow. So you're making that decision whether it's going out on a Uber driver or it's going out on UPS carrier or, or some other strategy, some other retailer owned, owned mechanism [00:07:40] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. And actually our journey starts a step before. So when you and I as consumers go onto the e-commerce platforms at the website, we help them, brands, show the right delivery options to the consumers. [00:07:52] In terms of when you're scrolling a product, when can you get it delivered? And then also, so first is giving those choices to the consumers [00:08:00] so that they find enough options to place the order. Then choosing the right delivery provider, and then providing the live tracking and experience. If you want to change the delivery, if you wanna change the time, you can do that. [00:08:15] And at the end, monitoring the entire journey from an operations perspective, that was it delivered on time and with a desired experience and with the cost that was planned for it or not. [00:08:28] Jeff Roster: Wow. [00:08:28] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, so so you really have components on the consumer side that address all the pieces the consumer wants, which is what you just described here, that all the communication points for that originate from the what they perceive as the retailer, right? [00:08:43] Telling them it's shipped, when it's coming, how long it's gonna take, if there's a delay, et cetera. But you've also got behind the scenes for the retailer's benefit. You're optimizing this process. You're always trying to find the lowest cost method, I'll say right to, to get that done. [00:08:57] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. And look, [00:09:00] probably a decade ago, like each, each retailer or each store had its own experience. When you walk into the store, the colors, the way shelves are placed, the way products are placed. Now, the same thing you need to look at from an online perspective as well, that each brand needs to design that delivery journey, which is a part of its identity itself. [00:09:19] What are the options do I want to give to my consumer? How will they track and in respective of who's delivering? It's a branded delivery experience, which is promised by the retailer. [00:09:32] Jeff Roster: Wow. [00:09:33] Judd Marcello: And it's also, and one of the other things to throw in there too, it's not just marrying the consumer side and the logistics side in a way. [00:09:40] If you can get that right and you're in a position where you can innovate, it's also, it's how, what options you give the customer in order to receive their goods. So when you think about fulfillment and you think about innovation, like drone becoming more important, right? There are you, you can do drop off lockers if you're within a city. [00:09:56] So you create more optionality for the consumer to make sure they [00:10:00] can access that product. So delivery doesn't necessarily need to be to their front door, it could be to a space that's convenient for them on their way home from work. So you know that innovation. Then once you're starting to get the logistics piece worked out, and then you, you understand what your capabilities are, you can layer in that kind of like customer experience, innovation into the offering. [00:10:18] Jeff Roster: So you're the platform, the hub, you don't care whether that end deliverable is. Truck, a drone or a flying car in a few years, you, you don't, you don't care. [00:10:28] Whatever the evolution of, of that, that that vehicle or it's a robot or Wow. [00:10:33] Judd Marcello: Interesting. [00:10:34] Ricardo Belmar: You, you could plug [00:10:34] Kushal Nahata: we say it is, it's, it's definitely important what you deliver, but it's more important how you deliver [00:10:41] Judd Marcello: Yeah. [00:10:42] Kushal Nahata: Because as consumers, we are now hooked to the experience. How it's getting delivered to me. So brands really investing and improving their delivery experiene. And that's why last mile is super complex because one is the mode which is which type of vehicle is delivering, [00:11:00] but also if you go from where you're getting it delivered, it can be delivered from a store. It could be a fulfillment center, it could be a micro fulfillment which lot of companies are investing in, or it could be a distribution center as well. So you can have multiple points from where the products can be delivered. You can have multiple ways through which product can travel. But eventually what you want to optimize for is a delightful delivery experience at an affordable or a lesser cost. [00:11:29] Jeff Roster: Wow. [00:11:30] Ricardo Belmar: Wow. Well, so you've kind of, I think, almost answered the next question I was gonna ask you already, because, but let's maybe go in a little more detail because everything, you just kind of described Kushal, but I, I think it speaks really strongly to how, from the retailer's perspective, you're giving a much more efficient and optimized process versus the alternative, which would be that they have to do all of this themselves. [00:11:49] Kushal Nahata: right. [00:11:50] Ricardo Belmar: Because you, you're giving them essentially this multi-sided platform that connects all the areas they need from consumer, retailer to whoever is doing the logistics. And do, [00:12:00] do, I mean, for example, do, do other third party logistics providers also plug in to you in order to get access to those retailers as well. [00:12:08] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. So look, the way we were trying to solve the problem when we started as FarEye was, how do we democratize a delightful delivery experience at an affordable cost for every single retailer? It shouldn't be limited to, let's say, top one or top two retailers because it'll not be an offline only, never be an online. [00:12:27] It'll be an omnichannel the way we see and then we can, we can debate which category, how much percentage is online, how much percentage is offline. But as consumers, we want all options. We wanna get into the store, we wanna buy it from our website as well. We wanna get it today, we wanna get it tomorrow. Then sometimes we want it schedule delivery, which could be one week later. [00:12:50] Or we would say, look, it's a furniture, or let's say it's a large appliance and I need to be at home to receive that product. [00:12:57] So it can be only delivered between [00:13:00] three to 5:00 PM because that's the time I'll be at home. So now this is the options we all look, look for. And now just look it from a retailer's perspective, how much complex it is, and if you then decode the number of carriers in any single country. [00:13:17] Like if we just talk about America, each city has few hundreds of local carrier. [00:13:24] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm, wow. [00:13:25] Jeff Roster: Each city? [00:13:26] Judd Marcello: Yeah, [00:13:26] Jeff Roster: city. Because I mean, is each gig driver and individual driver, or is that part of. [00:13:33] Kushal Nahata: It's a gig drivers. Then you have small DSPs, which are serving in small neighborhoods. They're five to 10 drivers. [00:13:39] These are small entrepreneurs, and you want to create employment. You want to give them an opportunity. The problem is they're not connected to the retailers, so building a platform where they're connected gives them more business and it gives access to the brands and retailers to be able to do affordable deliveries [00:14:00] across the country. [00:14:02] Ricardo Belmar: Wow. [00:14:03] Judd Marcello: I think the other thing too, when it comes to, we're talking about a platform now where you can plug in other vendors, and it it, one of, one of the benefits of that is it's ultimately visibility and the thing that you really need visibility of to be able to address all the complexities in the last mile, like Kushal talked about. [00:14:18] The one consumer that has, you know, five or six demands in their individual delivery. And you have to hand that, handle that across scale. It's data, and you have to be able to have that le, that level of data visible to you in real time. So then ultimately you can optimize your entire operations through that. [00:14:35] And that, that data visibility piece is, is the biggest component. This is software. So everybody, everybody, it's all run on data and be able to understand your kind of universe of delivery data and to be able to optimize that goes a long way to servicing the customer, but also probably the most important thing, stat, I'll throw a stat at you. [00:14:53] 53% of all delivery costs exist within the last mile. So the last mile is in, not only is it [00:15:00] complex, 53%, so the last mile is complex, but it's also expensive. So the more you can do to decrease complexity and decrease cost, the better it is for your business. [00:15:09] Ricardo Belmar: And and that 53%, I'm sure that's the biggest single piece the whole. [00:15:13] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. [00:15:14] And like at NRF, a lot of retailers come down to our booth today. And I think two, three different top patterns. If I say one, we work with one or two carriers, it's getting expensive. Everyone is increasing rates. December itself a lot of those top carriers have increased their rates, which is a public news. [00:15:34] We want to reduce the risk, but at the same time, we want to have control because if we can't track, if we can't promise a delivery experience, we will lose the customer. So you wanna reduce the cost by an ability to work with multiple carriers, but at the same time, you wanna have more control. And that's where I think the platform or a software plays a [00:16:00] critical role where you can not only orchestrate the right carrier, but you can track and then you use performance as a way to allocate more business. [00:16:09] So it's somewhere a self incentivized model that you do deliveries on time, you'll get more business. If I do late, I'll get lesser business. So it automatically corrects. And I think some part of it around efficiency and around sustainability also ties in because if you try to look at it, look sustainability and cost, I don't think they are kind of on opposite sides. [00:16:35] I think they're primary on the same sides. If you're a super efficient company, Like if you produce what is getting a hundred percent consumed, you are a sustainable company in one way. [00:16:47] If you are able to have minimum number of kilometers to deliver to the consumer you are in sustainable company, but you're not just sustainable, but you're profitable as well because you're spending less [00:17:00] in terms of fuel. [00:17:01] You are having needs for lesser number of drivers. You need lesser number of vehicles to get products delivered as well. So, feel efficiencies and sustainability are fundamentally [00:17:10] sim connected problem. Specifically when you try to look at from a delivery and last mile perspective, like another pattern which we are seeing, retailers have started giving options to consumers that you can get it delivered same day, but here's a carbon friendly or a more sustainable delivery as well. And we don't need all products same day. But there was no incentivization for us to wait for another day or so, and, we want control. We want, as consumers control with us and we wanna make an informed decision. [00:17:41] So this just small option of a carbon friendly delivery with a small green color. We seeing consumers go and just click it there because they feel we are okay. And they also feel confident because they are making the choice. It's not really mandated to them. You're not taking away a [00:18:00] same day delivery choice from them. [00:18:01] But you're saying it's, it's again, like we all want to be more sustainable. We want to be informed and we wanna make our own decisions. So I think that's where the technology really plays a critical role where you're able to combine it and give it to the consumer's hand to make those choices. [00:18:17] Ricardo Belmar: And do you think it's trending more in that direction on the consumer side, that consumers want to click on that sustainable option [00:18:23] Kushal Nahata: It's is [00:18:23] Judd Marcello: absolutely [00:18:24] Ricardo Belmar: day delivery? [00:18:25] Kushal Nahata: So couple of options, like a lot of big retailers, they started where you are ordering, let's say, each day. They started saying we'll combine all your orders and deliver, let's say, on a specific day in a week. And consumers are okay with that because for them also, it's easier to get all the packets or all the stuff together. [00:18:43] Then other is if you want fast, you can get it, but you are okay to wait. And that's also helping. And somewhere they're also incentivizing back the extra money to the consumer where you're saying, we'll give you a gift coupon of $1 if you wait for two days. So [00:19:00] you're getting sustainable, you're getting some money back and you don't need it today. [00:19:05] So you are actually happy that ways as well. And they're saying, look, I'm a more sustainable consumer and I'm more informed in that respect. [00:19:13] Jeff Roster: Wow. Who holds those orders? If somebody wanted to consolidate three or four different orders, are you holding that merchandise in some warehouse or the retailer or how, you know, how, how would you orchestrate that? [00:19:25] Kushal Nahata: Yeah, and that's a great question. And that's where a lot of these micro fulfillments [00:19:29] Jeff Roster: question. You could tell I'm a logistics guy. I don't wanna own that inventory. [00:19:33] Kushal Nahata: a hundred percent. And that's where a lot of these micro fulfillment centers and dynamic planning is now started in the systems. [00:19:39] Jeff Roster: Oh, I see [00:19:40] Kushal Nahata: where based on the delivery date, you're setting up a pickup time and you know the efficiency of your network, you know the delivery time of your network. [00:19:48] And that's where I feel like logistics has really changed in last couple of years. It's become a hardcore data play now, like at any stream, you need to be able to [00:20:00] plan, you know exactly how much time it takes to move it from point A to point B. And what are the options you have now once you have that data that decisioning is taken care by ai or by optimization platforms to really get those things together and not making you hold inventory for a long term? [00:20:19] Judd Marcello: Hmm. That's, you know, it's one of the things that Kushal likes to say is that any company, any retailer or e-commerce company that considers themselves customer centric really needs to be a logistics and delivery company today. [00:20:30] You know, because, because there is, there's so much of, of what we do that is based on that, what they do is based on deliveries. You have to optimize that for all the reasons that we've been talking about. [00:20:39] Jeff Roster: Very cool. Very interesting. [00:20:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So, let's talk about the returns process because obviously, and I think we're all gonna hear a lot about this during nrf, is, is that the return situation [00:20:49] it is so dramatically increased. I, I think you, you clearly must be uniquely positioned to help retailers with that whole returns logistics process. [00:20:57] Judd Marcello: Yeah, [00:20:58] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. So look, [00:21:00] there's one perspective which I have, and recently we've seen a lot of companies move towards that, where I would say the free returns it was never free. [00:21:08] Judd Marcello: Yeah. [00:21:09] Kushal Nahata: someone paying for it [00:21:10] Judd Marcello: so many days [00:21:11] Kushal Nahata: while we were exploiting it. [00:21:13] Jeff Roster: the the most expensive thing in the, in the world's a free lunch. There is no free lunch. Dad told me that 40 years ago. It's still true to this day. Nothing is as expensive as a free lunch. [00:21:24] Kushal Nahata: Hundred percent. And so lots of these companies are moving away from free returns to you pay a fee, at least a delivery or a shipment fee. And this is just to make each one of us a little more responsible for what we are buying unless there's a product fault. [00:21:40] Judd Marcello: sure. [00:21:40] Kushal Nahata: So that's one part which we are seeing. But then the other is really optimizing the returns. [00:21:45] See there are certain product types specifically, I would say in furniture and white goods, where the cost of getting the product back from consumer to the warehouse, doing the quality check and putting it [00:22:00] back for a sale is more than the price of the product [00:22:03] Judd Marcello: itself. It's so, it's so funny you mentioned that over the holidays spending some time with family. My brother-in-law bought, he has a pool out in the back of his house, bought a fire pit probably about four by four. Fire pit. It came dented. They called the company. The company said, we'll get another one out to you this week and you can keep the dented one because, and it was an expensive product. [00:22:22] I mean, we're talking, you know, hundreds of dollars and they. It, it's, we don't want it. It's gonna be too much of a hassle. You keep it. And they're like, what do we do with it? We said, they said, we don't care. We'll just get you a new one, [00:22:32] Kushal Nahata: So collectively, if you look at it, right, the cost of moving the product back from consumer to the warehouse, then adding the entire process cost to get it back to the supply chain. [00:22:44] And then it could be that you wanna sell it again. Or the lot of companies which have started the refurbished platforms as well, where they've rebranded and they're kind of selling for less for some of these products. I think the same example Judd said maybe it's dented or maybe it's not a hundred percent the same, [00:23:00] but you get it at a super cheap price as well. [00:23:02] So that's one side of it. But also logistically, how do you really optimize? And the, the interesting part is it's dynamic, so it's not static. Like you can't predict these 50 products or these 50 orders will be returned. You can do a certain ratio, but you don't know which products, which consumers would actually do the return. [00:23:23] And that's where we see last mile actually super dynamic as well, both from a forward and a reverse journey. And by doing a lot of these real time dynamic optimization, you are able to reduce the cost. A lot of times the vehicles are coming back empty, so you can do a lot of these returns in those empty returns as well when the vehicle is trying to come back. [00:23:45] Or you can plan one week, two weeks forward based on your forward journey and use the same trips or same vehicle. To do the returns as well. That helps you reduce the cost. You partner with the e-commerce platform to launch what is called [00:24:00] as a re-commerce and make that products available at lesser price. [00:24:04] So you're kind of a, making it more sustainable because you're not just throwing away the products or you're not giving it free. Like the example Judd said, like, because in that case, all of us would just go for free, and as you said, there's nothing. Call is free lunch ever. It's one of the most expensive part of the thing. [00:24:22] And then charging the consumer as well, I feel is maybe it's just a small basic fee, but just makes it more intelligent and more known to, if you're ordering something, we really need it, or we just trying to just shop around and maybe return back. [00:24:39] Jeff Roster: Yeah. You know what's so interesting about that? Oh God, it was probably seven or eight years ago where I first had a real conversation with an executive of one of the big companies out there that was really passionate about returns. Never spent 10 seconds thinking about it. And from that kind of anecdotal conversation in a bar to today the amount of conversations around it returns how expensive [00:25:00] returns are and how in some ways there's responsibility for the consumer to be maybe a little more judicious about returns, and then the counter is retailers and manufacturers have to be very, very serious about sizing and all the, I mean, so it's not just one side or the other, it's, it's this problem that everybody owns. But I think there's technology solutions for that, and I think we're sort of in the process of seeing that. [00:25:24] But I mean, I've probably, in the last three months I've heard more discussion about. we can no longer do free returns. It's just not sustainable. And which is an interesting argument on the sustainability side. So you're not, your position is not a takeaway from a consumer, but do you understand the cost of doing this. right. I, I, I'm just, any way to keep something from coming back in is fantastic from my perspective. [00:25:46] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. [00:25:47] And I think you made a great point. It's not just the consumer, it's all the brands and the retailer side as well. So, and we've seen a lot of our customers who use the returns as well. So one part of a solution is it gives you insights [00:26:00] why the products were returned, and then you can bucketize and see the top buckets and you'll find interest. [00:26:06] So one of the, with one of the customers, the top most reason, [00:26:10] The image of the product shown online versus what this received as a product was different. Now these are things which is part of the control which business. So you fig if you want to reduce the returns, see collectively, and we can have sub-segments in retail, but it's about 30 to 35% of overall retail is online and one of the three orders. [00:26:36] It's kind of return cross categories. So if you look at it, there's almost a starting double digit return orders or return revenue, which is at risk of the total gmv which a business is having and which is lot of, so I'm talking about 10 to 15% of a gmv, which is flowing back to the retailer, which is a lot of money if you try to [00:27:00] look at it. [00:27:00] Now, if you a, make it more selective for the consumer by giving some of those options. But as a brand, if you figure out these are the top three reasons why consumers are returning my products or based on specific SKU specific regions, and just use that data to optimize, I think we've seen huge value in overall returns. [00:27:20] Also reducing by brands, improving the way they are making promises to the end consumers. And then also on the size, as you said, the sizes are not exactly. [00:27:30] Jeff Roster: sometimes they're not even close and, and I'm, I'll say that as a is a man, I mean it, the, the, the range is, insane and that, so that needs to get fixed, that need that, that's on everyone. [00:27:40] And I think hopefully, I think what's really interesting is I never, ever would've called returns as a trend two years ago, three years ago today when, you know, cuz we're, Ricardo and I are gonna, are being asked constantly. What do you think the big trends are? Better management of re of returns. I wouldn't say it's the number one trend, but it's, it's definitely in my top. [00:27:58] It's near the top [00:27:58] Ricardo Belmar: near the top. Yeah. [00:27:59] Jeff Roster: the [00:28:00] cost is, I mean, it, it hits every, it hits everything. It's a, it's a revenue sink, it's a sustainability issue. Bring 'em all on. Let's fix this problem. [00:28:09] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. Look, the top trends, at least we are seeing at Fareye, one is definitely optimizing the cost of delivery. That's like 59% of the retailers say that's their number one goal for 2023. And that obviously links to the returns part of the things as well, because that's the overall cost. [00:28:25] The other we are seeing is moving from pure speed to a committed delivery promise. So I think that's, that's an evolution we had as a, a overall community where it's not about delivering, deliver to me as fast as you can, but make a promise and deliver within that promise. I think that is the great progress I would see as a community. [00:28:49] And the third is more towards sustainability. Which kind of ties in, I don't see all of these as separate. I think they're connected. [00:28:55] Ricardo Belmar: All, connected. [00:28:56] Kushal Nahata: And the fourth one is what you said as well, which is [00:29:00] managing returns well, both from reducing it, and then also what do you do with the products which are returned. [00:29:05] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:29:05] Jeff Roster: Good stuff. [00:29:06] Judd Marcello: It's it's, it's inter, you know, Jeff, earlier on in the conversation, you, you suggested our, our CU primary customer is a retailer. You know, and as somebody, you know, I'm a B2B marketer today, but I used to be a B2C marketer, and I think the mindset that we have is our primary customer is really the end consumer. [00:29:21] You know, if, if we're, if we're focused on the end consumer and building a proposition that will make things better for them and ultimately make them repeat customers, then our, our, our, our customer, the retailer, is gonna wanna do more work with us and ultimately, you know, deliver a better experience, delivery experience for their consumer. [00:29:36] That's the way we have to think about it. Consumer first [00:29:38] Ricardo Belmar: you're, you're really driving that brand loyalty for the retailer, right. [00:29:41] Judd Marcello: That's right. [00:29:42] Ricardo Belmar: the decision you're providing and kind of my take away from what Kushal you were saying is really it's that the promise they're making to the customer is becoming more valuable than the speed. [00:29:53] Judd Marcello: Yeah, [00:29:54] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. And some of the I would say industries within retail as well, if you look at, [00:30:00] let's say furniture or let's say white gloves, which weren't really as advanced as parcel deliveries, but now they, as consumers, we saying it doesn't matter. [00:30:10] We want the same experience. We want to track where the order is. We want to be at able to reschedule if we want to do that. And so a lot of. [00:30:18] Furniture big and bulky companies as well. We are seeing the same trend where they're trying to digitalize their supply chain, get realtime visibility, and then start optimizing. [00:30:29] Ricardo Belmar: Good stuff. [00:30:30] Jeff Roster: Good stuff. [00:30:32] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Judd, Kushal, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a, a fascinating discussion. I think I come away with a, a lot of learnings here on about last Mile Logistics [00:30:42] Jeff Roster: Five, five years ago. I, there, there wasn't last mile. I mean, we talked about it a little bit, but maybe the last mile in the store, but never, I mean, the amount of innovation, of course this week in innovation, we love innovation. [00:30:54] It. It's insane how much is happening in this, in this last mile. And it's, [00:31:00] it's, it's great. It's great to cover it and I wish you you guys the best of luck in, in being more efficient more sustainable, helping retailers sort of figure out this whole craziness. And I tell you, just reporting the, the numbers that you're seeing might be enough to, for, for us as consumers to say, wow, we need to really maybe start to think differently. [00:31:15] So, so the best of luck to you. [00:31:17] Judd Marcello: Yeah. Thanks. [00:31:18] Kushal Nahata: Thank you so much. Thanks for having [00:31:19] Judd Marcello: us. Thank you very much. [00:31:20] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you both. [00:31:21] Jeff Roster: Bye. [00:31:22] [00:31:27] Show Close [00:31:27] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone. So did you catch that nugget about consumer preference for fulfilling a delivery promise versus speed of delivery? I know that's one of my main takeaways. [00:31:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, like I said, lots of amazing info from FarEye in this interview, and as Jeff said in the recording, it wasn't that many years ago that we barely talked about last mile logistics. And now look at all the great points Kushal and Judd made about lowering costs, being more sustainable. How to not only leverage your consumer preferences, but [00:32:00] doing it in a cost effective manner while, while still providing all the conveniences those consumers want. [00:32:05] Casey Golden: And when you think about all the consumer preferences, Kushal and Judd mentioned from keeping a delivery promise to having the flexibility to change that delivery promise once the order's already in progress, to just show how varied these delivery promises and expectations can be. From product type to product type. [00:32:26] When you think about it, we all know that getting a piece of furniture delivered is completely different than getting a new Prada bag. [00:32:35] Ricardo Belmar: A hundred percent. I certainly came away knowing a lot more about the finer details of Last Mile Logistics, and I, I have to say, FarEye is really doing something unique with their platform that's worth paying attention to. [00:32:47] Casey Golden: Absolutely. [00:32:49] Well, Ricardo, I think that's a wrap for part two of our N R F Live series. I can't wait to see what's coming up next in part three. [00:32:57] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Jeff and I have even more [00:33:00] super interesting people to talk about coming up, including micro fulfillment and another one of your favorite topics, Casey Web three. [00:33:07] Casey Golden: Well, now you're just teasing me. Let's wrap up this episode. [00:33:10] Show Outro [00:33:10] [00:33:15] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today. Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets. [00:33:33] I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. [00:33:35] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at Retail Razor on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:33:51] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:33:53] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there has never been a better time to be in retail [00:34:00] if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the retail Razor Show. When you hear, “last mile logistics” in retail, what do you think of? This episode continues our special podcast cross-over series, #NRFLive, with the This Week In Innovation podcast. In Part 2 of the series, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Jeff Roster speak with the CEO and CMO of last mile logistics provider FarEye to learn how they are helping retailers provide the most flexible, efficient, and sustainable delivery experience to their customers while keeping costs down! You’ll also hear some interesting consumer trends on delivery expectations that may surprise you!


Jeff and Ricardo recorded this session live, and in-person with Kushal Nahata, CEO, and Judd Marcello, CMO, of FarEye during the NRF 2023 Big Show. Special thanks to our sponsor Avanade for making this series possible by providing an amazing recording space in their NRF lounge.


Listen, or watch on YouTube, to see how much Jeff and Ricardo learn from the FarEye team! And regular cohost Casey Golden also joins Ricardo for a quick recap and introduction.


News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

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Host → Ricardo Belmar,

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Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey



TRANSCRIPT


S2E10b Last Mile Delivery Experiences with FarEye

[00:00:00] Show Intro

[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar:

[00:00:19] Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 part two of the Retail Razor Show. This is the second of our multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 Show in January. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:00:35] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show, retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And for this special bonus, welcome N R F fans to our hot take hashtag N R F Live mini series.

[00:00:55] Ricardo Belmar: So Casey, just like our last episode, this is a [00:01:00] special podcast crossover event with Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast. We recorded this series live at in-person at the N R F Show in the fabulous lounge space our good friends at Avanade graciously allowed us to use.

[00:01:15] Casey Golden: Yes. A special shout out to our friends and sponsors at Avanade for giving you and Jeff such a great space to set up and record. These are not easy areas to find.

[00:01:26] Ricardo Belmar: Oh yeah, ab absolutely, absolutely. Especially at the Javit Center. . So, so let's get right to it then. So, Casey, when I say Last Mile logistics to you, what do you think of?

[00:01:36] Casey Golden: delivered to my door in two hours with a smile.

[00:01:40] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Well then this episode is really going to fascinate you hopefully as much as it will our listeners, Jeff and I had the pleasure of interviewing Kushal Nahata, the C E O of FarEye, and Judd Marcello FarEye's, C M O, and wow, did we learn a lot about how retailers can make their last mile [00:02:00] logistics not only more efficient, cost effective and more sustainable, but also do it while giving their customers a much better, and dare I say, personalized delivery experience.

[00:02:11] Casey Golden: Very cool. I'm digging it. And now I want to know how FarEye is doing all of that. it's a pretty tall order and let's face it, this is pretty much table stakes for any e-commerce operation.

[00:02:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I, I, I agree. And I'll just say that if you're trying to balance between getting your delivery costs down with giving your customers what they want, this is an interview you want to take notes from. I don't wanna give away too much, but be on the lookout for some interesting trends on what consumers want more than fast delivery from their e-commerce orders.

[00:02:47] Casey Golden: All right, now I'm getting a bit anxious. You know how much I love a good e-commerce discussion. Let's have it already.

[00:02:54] Ricardo Belmar: I'm with you. I'm with you. So let's jump in and listen to our interview with Kushal and Judd.

[00:02:58] [00:03:00]

[00:03:03] FarEye Interview

[00:03:03] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome everyone.

[00:03:05] I'm Ricardo Belmar and I'm here with Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast, and we are continuing our NRF 2023 series with two special guests, Kushal Nahata, the C E O of FarEye. Welcome, Kushal.

[00:03:18] Kushal Nahata: welcome. Hi everyone.

[00:03:20] Ricardo Belmar: And Judd Marcello, FarEye's CMO.

[00:03:22] Judd Marcello: Thanks for having us. Happy to be here.

[00:03:24] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you guys. Thank you both for being here. So Jeff, why don't we just jump right in?

[00:03:27] Jeff Roster: Sounds good.

[00:03:28] Ricardo Belmar: Sound good to you? All right, so Kushal, Judd, why don't you give us just a couple quick sentences so we're all familiar with what FarEye does.

[00:03:35] Kushal Nahata: Yeah. So look we, we are a last mile delivery platform. We essentially help all,

[00:03:40] of us as consumers get the products delivered to our doorstep at the time we need, with the choices we want to make.

[00:03:48] And we do that by enabling all the brands, retailers, and logistic companies to be efficient and do deliveries the way consumers need and want it.[00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Excellent. All right, so we've got four questions for you that we're really interested in hearing about. So start off, let's talk about e-commerce. Of course. You know, obviously we're. More e-commerce spending happening. Retailers have been ramping up their capabilities around fulfillment, delivering e-commerce.

[00:04:17] So with that influx in e-commerce spending, how are retailers reinventing their approach to delivering a better experience all the way to consumers doorsteps.

[00:04:26] Kushal Nahata: So maybe I'll go first. Look, COVID was the time when generally the e-commerce took off for every single retailer because consumers couldn't move out, they can't go to these stores.

[00:04:38] So everything happened online and one of the biggest challenge was the delivery network and capability didn't existed in the way retailers desired for it, and it was a sudden peak. So what we've seen retailers really innovating is going for a hybrid model.

[00:04:56] And by hybrid, what I mean is a part of it [00:05:00] is their own fleet, which gives them more control, gives them directly voice of the customer how and what they need it.

[00:05:07] And at the same time, they're partnering with third party delivery networks and which is not limited to let's say, top two or top three delivery service providers, but they're working with regional, with local delivery service providers as well. Now, how this helps is, it gives them scale, it gives them control,

[00:05:26] And it also helps them optimize the cost because the local regional players are sometimes more efficient from a cost perspective, but then the challenge is they can't scale nationally.

[00:05:35] So if you build that as a network, it becomes a super strategic competitive advantage for your brand. And that's what, if you see most of the top retailers have done in the last five to 10 years.

[00:05:48] Judd Marcello: And I think, you know, in addition to what Kushal said, if you're a retailer and you're a prioritizing that innovation in your, in your logistics, in your delivery logistics, in your operations, creating efficiencies, Then that enables you to [00:06:00] then focus on the customer experience.

[00:06:01] Cause that's the other area of innovation. And when you think about deliveries for consumer deliveries, the consumer now has so much control dictating what they want, where they wanna receive it, when they wanna receive it. You know, they've been fed the idea of next day delivery, same day delivery now. So now the consumer expectations are increasingly high.

[00:06:21] And I think if you're a retailer today, if you're focused on making the delivery experience, From order to where they're on the website and they click the buy button to when that package lands on their, their front doorstep. If you make that seamless for the consumer, if you make it easy and it's convenient for them, and they have a sense of control in that, that is one way to win that consumer and ultimately win them for the long term.

[00:06:42] Jeff Roster: So what exactly are you a platform that that gig economy folks can plug in ups, all that. And your, your ultimate customer is the retailer who's using you as a platform to figure out that last mile.

[00:06:56] Kushal Nahata: Yeah.

[00:06:57] So you need to understand that as a platform [00:07:00] to manage and scale deliveries. It could be through your own fleet where you are running some part of your fleet on your own, or it could be a logistic company.

[00:07:09] Who has thousands of fleets of their own. It could be third party delivery network, which is what you said the gig workers and all are connected to the platform. So one, and then there is the orchestration. When the order comes, what's the best way to deliver that order with a super delightful experience to the consumer.

[00:07:28] Judd Marcello: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:28] Jeff Roster: Wow. So you're making that decision whether it's going out on a Uber driver or it's going out on UPS carrier or, or some other strategy, some other retailer owned, owned mechanism 

[00:07:40] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. And actually our journey starts a step before. So when you and I as consumers go onto the e-commerce platforms at the website, we help them, brands, show the right delivery options to the consumers.

[00:07:52] In terms of when you're scrolling a product, when can you get it delivered? And then also, so first is giving those choices to the consumers [00:08:00] so that they find enough options to place the order. Then choosing the right delivery provider, and then providing the live tracking and experience. If you want to change the delivery, if you wanna change the time, you can do that.

[00:08:15] And at the end, monitoring the entire journey from an operations perspective, that was it delivered on time and with a desired experience and with the cost that was planned for it or not.

[00:08:28] Jeff Roster: Wow.

[00:08:28] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, so so you really have components on the consumer side that address all the pieces the consumer wants, which is what you just described here, that all the communication points for that originate from the what they perceive as the retailer, right?

[00:08:43] Telling them it's shipped, when it's coming, how long it's gonna take, if there's a delay, et cetera. But you've also got behind the scenes for the retailer's benefit. You're optimizing this process. You're always trying to find the lowest cost method, I'll say right to, to get that done.

[00:08:57] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. And look, [00:09:00] probably a decade ago, like each, each retailer or each store had its own experience. When you walk into the store, the colors, the way shelves are placed, the way products are placed. Now, the same thing you need to look at from an online perspective as well, that each brand needs to design that delivery journey, which is a part of its identity itself.

[00:09:19] What are the options do I want to give to my consumer? How will they track and in respective of who's delivering? It's a branded delivery experience, which is promised by the retailer.

[00:09:32] Jeff Roster: Wow.

[00:09:33] Judd Marcello: And it's also, and one of the other things to throw in there too, it's not just marrying the consumer side and the logistics side in a way.

[00:09:40] If you can get that right and you're in a position where you can innovate, it's also, it's how, what options you give the customer in order to receive their goods. So when you think about fulfillment and you think about innovation, like drone becoming more important, right? There are you, you can do drop off lockers if you're within a city.

[00:09:56] So you create more optionality for the consumer to make sure they [00:10:00] can access that product. So delivery doesn't necessarily need to be to their front door, it could be to a space that's convenient for them on their way home from work. So you know that innovation. Then once you're starting to get the logistics piece worked out, and then you, you understand what your capabilities are, you can layer in that kind of like customer experience, innovation into the offering.

[00:10:18] Jeff Roster: So you're the platform, the hub, you don't care whether that end deliverable is. Truck, a drone or a flying car in a few years, you, you don't, you don't care.

[00:10:28] Whatever the evolution of, of that, that that vehicle or it's a robot or Wow.

[00:10:33] Judd Marcello: Interesting.

[00:10:34] Ricardo Belmar: You, you could plug

[00:10:34] Kushal Nahata: we say it is, it's, it's definitely important what you deliver, but it's more important how you deliver 

[00:10:41] Judd Marcello: Yeah. 

[00:10:42] Kushal Nahata: Because as consumers, we are now hooked to the experience. How it's getting delivered to me. So brands really investing and improving their delivery experiene. And that's why last mile is super complex because one is the mode which is which type of vehicle is delivering, [00:11:00] but also if you go from where you're getting it delivered, it can be delivered from a store. It could be a fulfillment center, it could be a micro fulfillment which lot of companies are investing in, or it could be a distribution center as well. So you can have multiple points from where the products can be delivered. You can have multiple ways through which product can travel. But eventually what you want to optimize for is a delightful delivery experience at an affordable or a lesser cost.

[00:11:29] Jeff Roster: Wow.

[00:11:30] Ricardo Belmar: Wow. Well, so you've kind of, I think, almost answered the next question I was gonna ask you already, because, but let's maybe go in a little more detail because everything, you just kind of described Kushal, but I, I think it speaks really strongly to how, from the retailer's perspective, you're giving a much more efficient and optimized process versus the alternative, which would be that they have to do all of this themselves.

[00:11:49] Kushal Nahata: right. 

[00:11:50] Ricardo Belmar: Because you, you're giving them essentially this multi-sided platform that connects all the areas they need from consumer, retailer to whoever is doing the logistics. And do, [00:12:00] do, I mean, for example, do, do other third party logistics providers also plug in to you in order to get access to those retailers as well.

[00:12:08] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. So look, the way we were trying to solve the problem when we started as FarEye was, how do we democratize a delightful delivery experience at an affordable cost for every single retailer? It shouldn't be limited to, let's say, top one or top two retailers because it'll not be an offline only, never be an online.

[00:12:27] It'll be an omnichannel the way we see and then we can, we can debate which category, how much percentage is online, how much percentage is offline. But as consumers, we want all options. We wanna get into the store, we wanna buy it from our website as well. We wanna get it today, we wanna get it tomorrow. Then sometimes we want it schedule delivery, which could be one week later.

[00:12:50] Or we would say, look, it's a furniture, or let's say it's a large appliance and I need to be at home to receive that product.

[00:12:57] So it can be only delivered between [00:13:00] three to 5:00 PM because that's the time I'll be at home. So now this is the options we all look, look for. And now just look it from a retailer's perspective, how much complex it is, and if you then decode the number of carriers in any single country.

[00:13:17] Like if we just talk about America, each city has few hundreds of local carrier.

[00:13:24] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm, wow.

[00:13:25] Jeff Roster: Each city?

[00:13:26] Judd Marcello: Yeah,

[00:13:26] Jeff Roster: city. Because I mean, is each gig driver and individual driver, or is that part of.

[00:13:33] Kushal Nahata: It's a gig drivers. Then you have small DSPs, which are serving in small neighborhoods. They're five to 10 drivers.

[00:13:39] These are small entrepreneurs, and you want to create employment. You want to give them an opportunity. The problem is they're not connected to the retailers, so building a platform where they're connected gives them more business and it gives access to the brands and retailers to be able to do affordable deliveries [00:14:00] across the country.

[00:14:02] Ricardo Belmar: Wow.

[00:14:03] Judd Marcello: I think the other thing too, when it comes to, we're talking about a platform now where you can plug in other vendors, and it it, one of, one of the benefits of that is it's ultimately visibility and the thing that you really need visibility of to be able to address all the complexities in the last mile, like Kushal talked about.

[00:14:18] The one consumer that has, you know, five or six demands in their individual delivery. And you have to hand that, handle that across scale. It's data, and you have to be able to have that le, that level of data visible to you in real time. So then ultimately you can optimize your entire operations through that.

[00:14:35] And that, that data visibility piece is, is the biggest component. This is software. So everybody, everybody, it's all run on data and be able to understand your kind of universe of delivery data and to be able to optimize that goes a long way to servicing the customer, but also probably the most important thing, stat, I'll throw a stat at you.

[00:14:53] 53% of all delivery costs exist within the last mile. So the last mile is in, not only is it [00:15:00] complex, 53%, so the last mile is complex, but it's also expensive. So the more you can do to decrease complexity and decrease cost, the better it is for your business. 

[00:15:09] Ricardo Belmar: And and that 53%, I'm sure that's the biggest single piece the whole. 

[00:15:13] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely.

[00:15:14] And like at NRF, a lot of retailers come down to our booth today. And I think two, three different top patterns. If I say one, we work with one or two carriers, it's getting expensive. Everyone is increasing rates. December itself a lot of those top carriers have increased their rates, which is a public news.

[00:15:34] We want to reduce the risk, but at the same time, we want to have control because if we can't track, if we can't promise a delivery experience, we will lose the customer. So you wanna reduce the cost by an ability to work with multiple carriers, but at the same time, you wanna have more control. And that's where I think the platform or a software plays a [00:16:00] critical role where you can not only orchestrate the right carrier, but you can track and then you use performance as a way to allocate more business. 

[00:16:09] So it's somewhere a self incentivized model that you do deliveries on time, you'll get more business. If I do late, I'll get lesser business. So it automatically corrects. And I think some part of it around efficiency and around sustainability also ties in because if you try to look at it, look sustainability and cost, I don't think they are kind of on opposite sides.

[00:16:35] I think they're primary on the same sides. If you're a super efficient company, Like if you produce what is getting a hundred percent consumed, you are a sustainable company in one way.

[00:16:47] If you are able to have minimum number of kilometers to deliver to the consumer you are in sustainable company, but you're not just sustainable, but you're profitable as well because you're spending less [00:17:00] in terms of fuel.

[00:17:01] You are having needs for lesser number of drivers. You need lesser number of vehicles to get products delivered as well. So, feel efficiencies and sustainability are fundamentally

[00:17:10] sim connected problem. Specifically when you try to look at from a delivery and last mile perspective, like another pattern which we are seeing, retailers have started giving options to consumers that you can get it delivered same day, but here's a carbon friendly or a more sustainable delivery as well. And we don't need all products same day. But there was no incentivization for us to wait for another day or so, and, we want control. We want, as consumers control with us and we wanna make an informed decision.

[00:17:41] So this just small option of a carbon friendly delivery with a small green color. We seeing consumers go and just click it there because they feel we are okay. And they also feel confident because they are making the choice. It's not really mandated to them. You're not taking away a [00:18:00] same day delivery choice from them.

[00:18:01] But you're saying it's, it's again, like we all want to be more sustainable. We want to be informed and we wanna make our own decisions. So I think that's where the technology really plays a critical role where you're able to combine it and give it to the consumer's hand to make those choices.

[00:18:17] Ricardo Belmar: And do you think it's trending more in that direction on the consumer side, that consumers want to click on that sustainable option

[00:18:23] Kushal Nahata: It's is

[00:18:23] Judd Marcello: absolutely

[00:18:24] Ricardo Belmar: day delivery?

[00:18:25] Kushal Nahata: So couple of options, like a lot of big retailers, they started where you are ordering, let's say, each day. They started saying we'll combine all your orders and deliver, let's say, on a specific day in a week. And consumers are okay with that because for them also, it's easier to get all the packets or all the stuff together.

[00:18:43] Then other is if you want fast, you can get it, but you are okay to wait. And that's also helping. And somewhere they're also incentivizing back the extra money to the consumer where you're saying, we'll give you a gift coupon of $1 if you wait for two days. So [00:19:00] you're getting sustainable, you're getting some money back and you don't need it today.

[00:19:05] So you are actually happy that ways as well. And they're saying, look, I'm a more sustainable consumer and I'm more informed in that respect.

[00:19:13] Jeff Roster: Wow. Who holds those orders? If somebody wanted to consolidate three or four different orders, are you holding that merchandise in some warehouse or the retailer or how, you know, how, how would you orchestrate that?

[00:19:25] Kushal Nahata: Yeah, and that's a great question. And that's where a lot of these micro fulfillments

[00:19:29] Jeff Roster: question. You could tell I'm a logistics guy. I don't wanna own that inventory.

[00:19:33] Kushal Nahata: a hundred percent. And that's where a lot of these micro fulfillment centers and dynamic planning is now started in the systems.

[00:19:39] Jeff Roster: Oh, I see

[00:19:40] Kushal Nahata: where based on the delivery date, you're setting up a pickup time and you know the efficiency of your network, you know the delivery time of your network.

[00:19:48] And that's where I feel like logistics has really changed in last couple of years. It's become a hardcore data play now, like at any stream, you need to be able to [00:20:00] plan, you know exactly how much time it takes to move it from point A to point B. And what are the options you have now once you have that data that decisioning is taken care by ai or by optimization platforms to really get those things together and not making you hold inventory for a long term?

[00:20:19] Judd Marcello: Hmm. That's, you know, it's one of the things that Kushal likes to say is that any company, any retailer or e-commerce company that considers themselves customer centric really needs to be a logistics and delivery company today.

[00:20:30] You know, because, because there is, there's so much of, of what we do that is based on that, what they do is based on deliveries. You have to optimize that for all the reasons that we've been talking about.

[00:20:39] Jeff Roster: Very cool. Very interesting.

[00:20:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So, let's talk about the returns process because obviously, and I think we're all gonna hear a lot about this during nrf, is, is that the return situation

[00:20:49] it is so dramatically increased. I, I think you, you clearly must be uniquely positioned to help retailers with that whole returns logistics process.

[00:20:57] Judd Marcello: Yeah,

[00:20:58] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. So look, [00:21:00] there's one perspective which I have, and recently we've seen a lot of companies move towards that, where I would say the free returns it was never free.

[00:21:08] Judd Marcello: Yeah.

[00:21:09] Kushal Nahata: someone paying for it

[00:21:10] Judd Marcello: so many days

[00:21:11] Kushal Nahata: while we were exploiting it.

[00:21:13] Jeff Roster: the the most expensive thing in the, in the world's a free lunch. There is no free lunch. Dad told me that 40 years ago. It's still true to this day. Nothing is as expensive as a free lunch.

[00:21:24] Kushal Nahata: Hundred percent. And so lots of these companies are moving away from free returns to you pay a fee, at least a delivery or a shipment fee. And this is just to make each one of us a little more responsible for what we are buying unless there's a product fault.

[00:21:40] Judd Marcello: sure.

[00:21:40] Kushal Nahata: So that's one part which we are seeing. But then the other is really optimizing the returns.

[00:21:45] See there are certain product types specifically, I would say in furniture and white goods, where the cost of getting the product back from consumer to the warehouse, doing the quality check and putting it [00:22:00] back for a sale is more than the price of the product 

[00:22:03] Judd Marcello: itself. It's so, it's so funny you mentioned that over the holidays spending some time with family. My brother-in-law bought, he has a pool out in the back of his house, bought a fire pit probably about four by four. Fire pit. It came dented. They called the company. The company said, we'll get another one out to you this week and you can keep the dented one because, and it was an expensive product.

[00:22:22] I mean, we're talking, you know, hundreds of dollars and they. It, it's, we don't want it. It's gonna be too much of a hassle. You keep it. And they're like, what do we do with it? We said, they said, we don't care. We'll just get you a new one,

[00:22:32] Kushal Nahata: So collectively, if you look at it, right, the cost of moving the product back from consumer to the warehouse, then adding the entire process cost to get it back to the supply chain.

[00:22:44] And then it could be that you wanna sell it again. Or the lot of companies which have started the refurbished platforms as well, where they've rebranded and they're kind of selling for less for some of these products. I think the same example Judd said maybe it's dented or maybe it's not a hundred percent the same, [00:23:00] but you get it at a super cheap price as well.

[00:23:02] So that's one side of it. But also logistically, how do you really optimize? And the, the interesting part is it's dynamic, so it's not static. Like you can't predict these 50 products or these 50 orders will be returned. You can do a certain ratio, but you don't know which products, which consumers would actually do the return.

[00:23:23] And that's where we see last mile actually super dynamic as well, both from a forward and a reverse journey. And by doing a lot of these real time dynamic optimization, you are able to reduce the cost. A lot of times the vehicles are coming back empty, so you can do a lot of these returns in those empty returns as well when the vehicle is trying to come back.

[00:23:45] Or you can plan one week, two weeks forward based on your forward journey and use the same trips or same vehicle. To do the returns as well. That helps you reduce the cost. You partner with the e-commerce platform to launch what is called [00:24:00] as a re-commerce and make that products available at lesser price.

[00:24:04] So you're kind of a, making it more sustainable because you're not just throwing away the products or you're not giving it free. Like the example Judd said, like, because in that case, all of us would just go for free, and as you said, there's nothing. Call is free lunch ever. It's one of the most expensive part of the thing.

[00:24:22] And then charging the consumer as well, I feel is maybe it's just a small basic fee, but just makes it more intelligent and more known to, if you're ordering something, we really need it, or we just trying to just shop around and maybe return back.

[00:24:39] Jeff Roster: Yeah. You know what's so interesting about that? Oh God, it was probably seven or eight years ago where I first had a real conversation with an executive of one of the big companies out there that was really passionate about returns. Never spent 10 seconds thinking about it. And from that kind of anecdotal conversation in a bar to today the amount of conversations around it returns how expensive [00:25:00] returns are and how in some ways there's responsibility for the consumer to be maybe a little more judicious about returns, and then the counter is retailers and manufacturers have to be very, very serious about sizing and all the, I mean, so it's not just one side or the other, it's, it's this problem that everybody owns. But I think there's technology solutions for that, and I think we're sort of in the process of seeing that.

[00:25:24] But I mean, I've probably, in the last three months I've heard more discussion about. we can no longer do free returns. It's just not sustainable. And which is an interesting argument on the sustainability side. So you're not, your position is not a takeaway from a consumer, but do you understand the cost of doing this. right. I, I, I'm just, any way to keep something from coming back in is fantastic from my perspective.

[00:25:46] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely.

[00:25:47] And I think you made a great point. It's not just the consumer, it's all the brands and the retailer side as well. So, and we've seen a lot of our customers who use the returns as well. So one part of a solution is it gives you insights [00:26:00] why the products were returned, and then you can bucketize and see the top buckets and you'll find interest.

[00:26:06] So one of the, with one of the customers, the top most reason,

[00:26:10] The image of the product shown online versus what this received as a product was different. Now these are things which is part of the control which business. So you fig if you want to reduce the returns, see collectively, and we can have sub-segments in retail, but it's about 30 to 35% of overall retail is online and one of the three orders.

[00:26:36] It's kind of return cross categories. So if you look at it, there's almost a starting double digit return orders or return revenue, which is at risk of the total gmv which a business is having and which is lot of, so I'm talking about 10 to 15% of a gmv, which is flowing back to the retailer, which is a lot of money if you try to [00:27:00] look at it.

[00:27:00] Now, if you a, make it more selective for the consumer by giving some of those options. But as a brand, if you figure out these are the top three reasons why consumers are returning my products or based on specific SKU specific regions, and just use that data to optimize, I think we've seen huge value in overall returns.

[00:27:20] Also reducing by brands, improving the way they are making promises to the end consumers. And then also on the size, as you said, the sizes are not exactly. 

[00:27:30] Jeff Roster: sometimes they're not even close and, and I'm, I'll say that as a is a man, I mean it, the, the, the range is, insane and that, so that needs to get fixed, that need that, that's on everyone.

[00:27:40] And I think hopefully, I think what's really interesting is I never, ever would've called returns as a trend two years ago, three years ago today when, you know, cuz we're, Ricardo and I are gonna, are being asked constantly. What do you think the big trends are? Better management of re of returns. I wouldn't say it's the number one trend, but it's, it's definitely in my top.

[00:27:58] It's near the top

[00:27:58] Ricardo Belmar: near the top. Yeah.

[00:27:59] Jeff Roster: the [00:28:00] cost is, I mean, it, it hits every, it hits everything. It's a, it's a revenue sink, it's a sustainability issue. Bring 'em all on. Let's fix this problem.

[00:28:09] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. Look, the top trends, at least we are seeing at Fareye, one is definitely optimizing the cost of delivery. That's like 59% of the retailers say that's their number one goal for 2023. And that obviously links to the returns part of the things as well, because that's the overall cost.

[00:28:25] The other we are seeing is moving from pure speed to a committed delivery promise. So I think that's, that's an evolution we had as a, a overall community where it's not about delivering, deliver to me as fast as you can, but make a promise and deliver within that promise. I think that is the great progress I would see as a community.

[00:28:49] And the third is more towards sustainability. Which kind of ties in, I don't see all of these as separate. I think they're connected. 

[00:28:55] Ricardo Belmar: All, connected.

[00:28:56] Kushal Nahata: And the fourth one is what you said as well, which is [00:29:00]managing returns well, both from reducing it, and then also what do you do with the products which are returned.

[00:29:05] Ricardo Belmar: Right.

[00:29:05] Jeff Roster: Good stuff.

[00:29:06] Judd Marcello: It's it's, it's inter, you know, Jeff, earlier on in the conversation, you, you suggested our, our CU primary customer is a retailer. You know, and as somebody, you know, I'm a B2B marketer today, but I used to be a B2C marketer, and I think the mindset that we have is our primary customer is really the end consumer.

[00:29:21] You know, if, if we're, if we're focused on the end consumer and building a proposition that will make things better for them and ultimately make them repeat customers, then our, our, our, our customer, the retailer, is gonna wanna do more work with us and ultimately, you know, deliver a better experience, delivery experience for their consumer.

[00:29:36] That's the way we have to think about it. Consumer first

[00:29:38] Ricardo Belmar: you're, you're really driving that brand loyalty for the retailer, right.

[00:29:41] Judd Marcello: That's right.

[00:29:42] Ricardo Belmar: the decision you're providing and kind of my take away from what Kushal you were saying is really it's that the promise they're making to the customer is becoming more valuable than the speed.

[00:29:53] Judd Marcello: Yeah, 

[00:29:54] Kushal Nahata: Absolutely. And some of the I would say industries within retail as well, if you look at, [00:30:00] let's say furniture or let's say white gloves, which weren't really as advanced as parcel deliveries, but now they, as consumers, we saying it doesn't matter.

[00:30:10] We want the same experience. We want to track where the order is. We want to be at able to reschedule if we want to do that. And so a lot of.

[00:30:18] Furniture big and bulky companies as well. We are seeing the same trend where they're trying to digitalize their supply chain, get realtime visibility, and then start optimizing.

[00:30:29] Ricardo Belmar: Good stuff.

[00:30:30] Jeff Roster: Good stuff.

[00:30:32] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Judd, Kushal, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a, a fascinating discussion. I think I come away with a, a lot of learnings here on about last Mile Logistics 

[00:30:42] Jeff Roster: Five, five years ago. I, there, there wasn't last mile. I mean, we talked about it a little bit, but maybe the last mile in the store, but never, I mean, the amount of innovation, of course this week in innovation, we love innovation.

[00:30:54] It. It's insane how much is happening in this, in this last mile. And it's, [00:31:00] it's, it's great. It's great to cover it and I wish you you guys the best of luck in, in being more efficient more sustainable, helping retailers sort of figure out this whole craziness. And I tell you, just reporting the, the numbers that you're seeing might be enough to, for, for us as consumers to say, wow, we need to really maybe start to think differently.

[00:31:15] So, so the best of luck to you.

[00:31:17] Judd Marcello: Yeah. Thanks.

[00:31:18] Kushal Nahata: Thank you so much. Thanks for having

[00:31:19] Judd Marcello: us. Thank you very much. 

[00:31:20] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you both.

[00:31:21] Jeff Roster: Bye.

[00:31:22] ​

[00:31:27] Show Close

[00:31:27] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone. So did you catch that nugget about consumer preference for fulfilling a delivery promise versus speed of delivery? I know that's one of my main takeaways.

[00:31:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, like I said, lots of amazing info from FarEye in this interview, and as Jeff said in the recording, it wasn't that many years ago that we barely talked about last mile logistics. And now look at all the great points Kushal and Judd made about lowering costs, being more sustainable. How to not only leverage your consumer preferences, but [00:32:00] doing it in a cost effective manner while, while still providing all the conveniences those consumers want.

[00:32:05] Casey Golden: And when you think about all the consumer preferences, Kushal and Judd mentioned from keeping a delivery promise to having the flexibility to change that delivery promise once the order's already in progress, to just show how varied these delivery promises and expectations can be. From product type to product type.

[00:32:26] When you think about it, we all know that getting a piece of furniture delivered is completely different than getting a new Prada bag.

[00:32:35] Ricardo Belmar: A hundred percent. I certainly came away knowing a lot more about the finer details of Last Mile Logistics, and I, I have to say, FarEye is really doing something unique with their platform that's worth paying attention to.

[00:32:47] Casey Golden: Absolutely. 

[00:32:49] Well, Ricardo, I think that's a wrap for part two of our N R F Live series. I can't wait to see what's coming up next in part three.

[00:32:57] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Jeff and I have even more [00:33:00] super interesting people to talk about coming up, including micro fulfillment and another one of your favorite topics, Casey Web three.

[00:33:07] Casey Golden: Well, now you're just teasing me. Let's wrap up this episode. 

[00:33:10] Show Outro

[00:33:10] ​

[00:33:15] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today. Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets.

[00:33:33] I'm your co-host, Casey Golden.

[00:33:35] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at Retail Razor on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:33:51] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:33:53] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there has never been a better time to be in retail [00:34:00] if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the retail Razor Show.

]]> <p>When you hear, “last mile logistics” in retail, what do you think of? This episode continues our special podcast cross-over series, #NRFLive, with the This Week In Innovation podcast. In Part 2 of the series, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Jeff Roster speak with the CEO and CMO of last mile logistics provider FarEye to learn how they are helping retailers provide the most flexible, efficient, and sustainable delivery experience to their customers while keeping costs down! You’ll also hear some interesting consumer trends on delivery expectations that may surprise you!</p><p><br></p><p>Jeff and Ricardo recorded this session live, and in-person with Kushal Nahata, CEO, and Judd Marcello, CMO, of FarEye during the NRF 2023 Big Show. Special thanks to our sponsor Avanade for making this series possible by providing an amazing recording space in their NRF lounge.</p><p><br></p><p>Listen, or watch on YouTube, to see how much Jeff and Ricardo learn from the FarEye team! And regular cohost Casey Golden also joins Ricardo for a quick recap and introduction.</p><p><br></p><p>News alert! We’ve moved up to #18 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review &amp; be mentioned in future episodes! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, </em>and<em> Overclocked, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><br></p><p><strong>S2E10b Last Mile Delivery Experiences with FarEye</strong></p><h3>[00:00:00] Show Intro</h3><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong></p><p>[00:00:19] Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 part two of the Retail Razor Show. This is the second of our multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 Show in January. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:00:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show, retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And for this special bonus, welcome N R F fans to our hot take hashtag N R F Live mini series.</p><p>[00:00:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So Casey, just like our last episode, this is a [00:01:00] special podcast crossover event with Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast. We recorded this series live at in-person at the N R F Show in the fabulous lounge space our good friends at Avanade graciously allowed us to use.</p><p>[00:01:15] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yes. A special shout out to our friends and sponsors at Avanade for giving you and Jeff such a great space to set up and record. These are not easy areas to find.</p><p>[00:01:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh yeah, ab absolutely, absolutely. Especially at the Javit Center. . So, so let&#39;s get right to it then. So, Casey, when I say Last Mile logistics to you, what do you think of?</p><p>[00:01:36] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> delivered to my door in two hours with a smile.</p><p>[00:01:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right. Well then this episode is really going to fascinate you hopefully as much as it will our listeners, Jeff and I had the pleasure of interviewing Kushal Nahata, the C E O of FarEye, and Judd Marcello FarEye&#39;s, C M O, and wow, did we learn a lot about how retailers can make their last mile [00:02:00] logistics not only more efficient, cost effective and more sustainable, but also do it while giving their customers a much better, and dare I say, personalized delivery experience.</p><p>[00:02:11] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Very cool. I&#39;m digging it. And now I want to know how FarEye is doing all of that. it&#39;s a pretty tall order and let&#39;s face it, this is pretty much table stakes for any e-commerce operation.</p><p>[00:02:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I, I, I agree. And I&#39;ll just say that if you&#39;re trying to balance between getting your delivery costs down with giving your customers what they want, this is an interview you want to take notes from. I don&#39;t wanna give away too much, but be on the lookout for some interesting trends on what consumers want more than fast delivery from their e-commerce orders.</p><p>[00:02:47] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> All right, now I&#39;m getting a bit anxious. You know how much I love a good e-commerce discussion. Let&#39;s have it already.</p><p>[00:02:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I&#39;m with you. I&#39;m with you. So let&#39;s jump in and listen to our interview with Kushal and Judd.</p><p>[00:02:58] [00:03:00]</p><h3>[00:03:03] FarEye Interview</h3><p>[00:03:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Welcome everyone.</p><p>[00:03:05] I&#39;m Ricardo Belmar and I&#39;m here with Jeff Roster, host of This Week in Innovation podcast, and we are continuing our NRF 2023 series with two special guests, Kushal Nahata, the C E O of FarEye. Welcome, Kushal.</p><p>[00:03:18] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> welcome. Hi everyone.</p><p>[00:03:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And Judd Marcello, FarEye&#39;s CMO.</p><p>[00:03:22] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> Thanks for having us. Happy to be here.</p><p>[00:03:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thank you guys. Thank you both for being here. So Jeff, why don&#39;t we just jump right in?</p><p>[00:03:27] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Sounds good.</p><p>[00:03:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Sound good to you? All right, so Kushal, Judd, why don&#39;t you give us just a couple quick sentences so we&#39;re all familiar with what FarEye does.</p><p>[00:03:35] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Yeah. So look we, we are a last mile delivery platform. We essentially help all,</p><p>[00:03:40] of us as consumers get the products delivered to our doorstep at the time we need, with the choices we want to make.</p><p>[00:03:48] And we do that by enabling all the brands, retailers, and logistic companies to be efficient and do deliveries the way consumers need and want it.[00:04:00]</p><p>[00:04:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. Excellent. All right, so we&#39;ve got four questions for you that we&#39;re really interested in hearing about. So start off, let&#39;s talk about e-commerce. Of course. You know, obviously we&#39;re. More e-commerce spending happening. Retailers have been ramping up their capabilities around fulfillment, delivering e-commerce.</p><p>[00:04:17] So with that influx in e-commerce spending, how are retailers reinventing their approach to delivering a better experience all the way to consumers doorsteps.</p><p>[00:04:26] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> So maybe I&#39;ll go first. Look, COVID was the time when generally the e-commerce took off for every single retailer because consumers couldn&#39;t move out, they can&#39;t go to these stores.</p><p>[00:04:38] So everything happened online and one of the biggest challenge was the delivery network and capability didn&#39;t existed in the way retailers desired for it, and it was a sudden peak. So what we&#39;ve seen retailers really innovating is going for a hybrid model.</p><p>[00:04:56] And by hybrid, what I mean is a part of it [00:05:00] is their own fleet, which gives them more control, gives them directly voice of the customer how and what they need it.</p><p>[00:05:07] And at the same time, they&#39;re partnering with third party delivery networks and which is not limited to let&#39;s say, top two or top three delivery service providers, but they&#39;re working with regional, with local delivery service providers as well. Now, how this helps is, it gives them scale, it gives them control,</p><p>[00:05:26] And it also helps them optimize the cost because the local regional players are sometimes more efficient from a cost perspective, but then the challenge is they can&#39;t scale nationally.</p><p>[00:05:35] So if you build that as a network, it becomes a super strategic competitive advantage for your brand. And that&#39;s what, if you see most of the top retailers have done in the last five to 10 years.</p><p>[00:05:48] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> And I think, you know, in addition to what Kushal said, if you&#39;re a retailer and you&#39;re a prioritizing that innovation in your, in your logistics, in your delivery logistics, in your operations, creating efficiencies, Then that enables you to [00:06:00] then focus on the customer experience.</p><p>[00:06:01] Cause that&#39;s the other area of innovation. And when you think about deliveries for consumer deliveries, the consumer now has so much control dictating what they want, where they wanna receive it, when they wanna receive it. You know, they&#39;ve been fed the idea of next day delivery, same day delivery now. So now the consumer expectations are increasingly high.</p><p>[00:06:21] And I think if you&#39;re a retailer today, if you&#39;re focused on making the delivery experience, From order to where they&#39;re on the website and they click the buy button to when that package lands on their, their front doorstep. If you make that seamless for the consumer, if you make it easy and it&#39;s convenient for them, and they have a sense of control in that, that is one way to win that consumer and ultimately win them for the long term.</p><p>[00:06:42] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So what exactly are you a platform that that gig economy folks can plug in ups, all that. And your, your ultimate customer is the retailer who&#39;s using you as a platform to figure out that last mile.</p><p>[00:06:56] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:06:57] So you need to understand that as a platform [00:07:00] to manage and scale deliveries. It could be through your own fleet where you are running some part of your fleet on your own, or it could be a logistic company.</p><p>[00:07:09] Who has thousands of fleets of their own. It could be third party delivery network, which is what you said the gig workers and all are connected to the platform. So one, and then there is the orchestration. When the order comes, what&#39;s the best way to deliver that order with a super delightful experience to the consumer.</p><p>[00:07:28] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> Mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:07:28] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Wow. So you&#39;re making that decision whether it&#39;s going out on a Uber driver or it&#39;s going out on UPS carrier or, or some other strategy, some other retailer owned, owned mechanism </p><p>[00:07:40] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Absolutely. And actually our journey starts a step before. So when you and I as consumers go onto the e-commerce platforms at the website, we help them, brands, show the right delivery options to the consumers.</p><p>[00:07:52] In terms of when you&#39;re scrolling a product, when can you get it delivered? And then also, so first is giving those choices to the consumers [00:08:00] so that they find enough options to place the order. Then choosing the right delivery provider, and then providing the live tracking and experience. If you want to change the delivery, if you wanna change the time, you can do that.</p><p>[00:08:15] And at the end, monitoring the entire journey from an operations perspective, that was it delivered on time and with a desired experience and with the cost that was planned for it or not.</p><p>[00:08:28] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Wow.</p><p>[00:08:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh, so so you really have components on the consumer side that address all the pieces the consumer wants, which is what you just described here, that all the communication points for that originate from the what they perceive as the retailer, right?</p><p>[00:08:43] Telling them it&#39;s shipped, when it&#39;s coming, how long it&#39;s gonna take, if there&#39;s a delay, et cetera. But you&#39;ve also got behind the scenes for the retailer&#39;s benefit. You&#39;re optimizing this process. You&#39;re always trying to find the lowest cost method, I&#39;ll say right to, to get that done.</p><p>[00:08:57] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Absolutely. And look, [00:09:00] probably a decade ago, like each, each retailer or each store had its own experience. When you walk into the store, the colors, the way shelves are placed, the way products are placed. Now, the same thing you need to look at from an online perspective as well, that each brand needs to design that delivery journey, which is a part of its identity itself.</p><p>[00:09:19] What are the options do I want to give to my consumer? How will they track and in respective of who&#39;s delivering? It&#39;s a branded delivery experience, which is promised by the retailer.</p><p>[00:09:32] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Wow.</p><p>[00:09:33] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> And it&#39;s also, and one of the other things to throw in there too, it&#39;s not just marrying the consumer side and the logistics side in a way.</p><p>[00:09:40] If you can get that right and you&#39;re in a position where you can innovate, it&#39;s also, it&#39;s how, what options you give the customer in order to receive their goods. So when you think about fulfillment and you think about innovation, like drone becoming more important, right? There are you, you can do drop off lockers if you&#39;re within a city.</p><p>[00:09:56] So you create more optionality for the consumer to make sure they [00:10:00] can access that product. So delivery doesn&#39;t necessarily need to be to their front door, it could be to a space that&#39;s convenient for them on their way home from work. So you know that innovation. Then once you&#39;re starting to get the logistics piece worked out, and then you, you understand what your capabilities are, you can layer in that kind of like customer experience, innovation into the offering.</p><p>[00:10:18] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So you&#39;re the platform, the hub, you don&#39;t care whether that end deliverable is. Truck, a drone or a flying car in a few years, you, you don&#39;t, you don&#39;t care.</p><p>[00:10:28] Whatever the evolution of, of that, that that vehicle or it&#39;s a robot or Wow.</p><p>[00:10:33] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> Interesting.</p><p>[00:10:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You, you could plug</p><p>[00:10:34] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> we say it is, it&#39;s, it&#39;s definitely important what you deliver, but it&#39;s more important how you deliver </p><p>[00:10:41] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:10:42] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Because as consumers, we are now hooked to the experience. How it&#39;s getting delivered to me. So brands really investing and improving their delivery experiene. And that&#39;s why last mile is super complex because one is the mode which is which type of vehicle is delivering, [00:11:00] but also if you go from where you&#39;re getting it delivered, it can be delivered from a store. It could be a fulfillment center, it could be a micro fulfillment which lot of companies are investing in, or it could be a distribution center as well. So you can have multiple points from where the products can be delivered. You can have multiple ways through which product can travel. But eventually what you want to optimize for is a delightful delivery experience at an affordable or a lesser cost.</p><p>[00:11:29] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Wow.</p><p>[00:11:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Wow. Well, so you&#39;ve kind of, I think, almost answered the next question I was gonna ask you already, because, but let&#39;s maybe go in a little more detail because everything, you just kind of described Kushal, but I, I think it speaks really strongly to how, from the retailer&#39;s perspective, you&#39;re giving a much more efficient and optimized process versus the alternative, which would be that they have to do all of this themselves.</p><p>[00:11:49] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> right. </p><p>[00:11:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Because you, you&#39;re giving them essentially this multi-sided platform that connects all the areas they need from consumer, retailer to whoever is doing the logistics. And do, [00:12:00] do, I mean, for example, do, do other third party logistics providers also plug in to you in order to get access to those retailers as well.</p><p>[00:12:08] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Absolutely. So look, the way we were trying to solve the problem when we started as FarEye was, how do we democratize a delightful delivery experience at an affordable cost for every single retailer? It shouldn&#39;t be limited to, let&#39;s say, top one or top two retailers because it&#39;ll not be an offline only, never be an online.</p><p>[00:12:27] It&#39;ll be an omnichannel the way we see and then we can, we can debate which category, how much percentage is online, how much percentage is offline. But as consumers, we want all options. We wanna get into the store, we wanna buy it from our website as well. We wanna get it today, we wanna get it tomorrow. Then sometimes we want it schedule delivery, which could be one week later.</p><p>[00:12:50] Or we would say, look, it&#39;s a furniture, or let&#39;s say it&#39;s a large appliance and I need to be at home to receive that product.</p><p>[00:12:57] So it can be only delivered between [00:13:00] three to 5:00 PM because that&#39;s the time I&#39;ll be at home. So now this is the options we all look, look for. And now just look it from a retailer&#39;s perspective, how much complex it is, and if you then decode the number of carriers in any single country.</p><p>[00:13:17] Like if we just talk about America, each city has few hundreds of local carrier.</p><p>[00:13:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hmm, wow.</p><p>[00:13:25] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Each city?</p><p>[00:13:26] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:13:26] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> city. Because I mean, is each gig driver and individual driver, or is that part of.</p><p>[00:13:33] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> It&#39;s a gig drivers. Then you have small DSPs, which are serving in small neighborhoods. They&#39;re five to 10 drivers.</p><p>[00:13:39] These are small entrepreneurs, and you want to create employment. You want to give them an opportunity. The problem is they&#39;re not connected to the retailers, so building a platform where they&#39;re connected gives them more business and it gives access to the brands and retailers to be able to do affordable deliveries [00:14:00] across the country.</p><p>[00:14:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Wow.</p><p>[00:14:03] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> I think the other thing too, when it comes to, we&#39;re talking about a platform now where you can plug in other vendors, and it it, one of, one of the benefits of that is it&#39;s ultimately visibility and the thing that you really need visibility of to be able to address all the complexities in the last mile, like Kushal talked about.</p><p>[00:14:18] The one consumer that has, you know, five or six demands in their individual delivery. And you have to hand that, handle that across scale. It&#39;s data, and you have to be able to have that le, that level of data visible to you in real time. So then ultimately you can optimize your entire operations through that.</p><p>[00:14:35] And that, that data visibility piece is, is the biggest component. This is software. So everybody, everybody, it&#39;s all run on data and be able to understand your kind of universe of delivery data and to be able to optimize that goes a long way to servicing the customer, but also probably the most important thing, stat, I&#39;ll throw a stat at you.</p><p>[00:14:53] 53% of all delivery costs exist within the last mile. So the last mile is in, not only is it [00:15:00] complex, 53%, so the last mile is complex, but it&#39;s also expensive. So the more you can do to decrease complexity and decrease cost, the better it is for your business. </p><p>[00:15:09] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And and that 53%, I&#39;m sure that&#39;s the biggest single piece the whole. </p><p>[00:15:13] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Absolutely.</p><p>[00:15:14] And like at NRF, a lot of retailers come down to our booth today. And I think two, three different top patterns. If I say one, we work with one or two carriers, it&#39;s getting expensive. Everyone is increasing rates. December itself a lot of those top carriers have increased their rates, which is a public news.</p><p>[00:15:34] We want to reduce the risk, but at the same time, we want to have control because if we can&#39;t track, if we can&#39;t promise a delivery experience, we will lose the customer. So you wanna reduce the cost by an ability to work with multiple carriers, but at the same time, you wanna have more control. And that&#39;s where I think the platform or a software plays a [00:16:00] critical role where you can not only orchestrate the right carrier, but you can track and then you use performance as a way to allocate more business. </p><p>[00:16:09] So it&#39;s somewhere a self incentivized model that you do deliveries on time, you&#39;ll get more business. If I do late, I&#39;ll get lesser business. So it automatically corrects. And I think some part of it around efficiency and around sustainability also ties in because if you try to look at it, look sustainability and cost, I don&#39;t think they are kind of on opposite sides.</p><p>[00:16:35] I think they&#39;re primary on the same sides. If you&#39;re a super efficient company, Like if you produce what is getting a hundred percent consumed, you are a sustainable company in one way.</p><p>[00:16:47] If you are able to have minimum number of kilometers to deliver to the consumer you are in sustainable company, but you&#39;re not just sustainable, but you&#39;re profitable as well because you&#39;re spending less [00:17:00] in terms of fuel.</p><p>[00:17:01] You are having needs for lesser number of drivers. You need lesser number of vehicles to get products delivered as well. So, feel efficiencies and sustainability are fundamentally</p><p>[00:17:10] sim connected problem. Specifically when you try to look at from a delivery and last mile perspective, like another pattern which we are seeing, retailers have started giving options to consumers that you can get it delivered same day, but here&#39;s a carbon friendly or a more sustainable delivery as well. And we don&#39;t need all products same day. But there was no incentivization for us to wait for another day or so, and, we want control. We want, as consumers control with us and we wanna make an informed decision.</p><p>[00:17:41] So this just small option of a carbon friendly delivery with a small green color. We seeing consumers go and just click it there because they feel we are okay. And they also feel confident because they are making the choice. It&#39;s not really mandated to them. You&#39;re not taking away a [00:18:00] same day delivery choice from them.</p><p>[00:18:01] But you&#39;re saying it&#39;s, it&#39;s again, like we all want to be more sustainable. We want to be informed and we wanna make our own decisions. So I think that&#39;s where the technology really plays a critical role where you&#39;re able to combine it and give it to the consumer&#39;s hand to make those choices.</p><p>[00:18:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And do you think it&#39;s trending more in that direction on the consumer side, that consumers want to click on that sustainable option</p><p>[00:18:23] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> It&#39;s is</p><p>[00:18:23] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> absolutely</p><p>[00:18:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> day delivery?</p><p>[00:18:25] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> So couple of options, like a lot of big retailers, they started where you are ordering, let&#39;s say, each day. They started saying we&#39;ll combine all your orders and deliver, let&#39;s say, on a specific day in a week. And consumers are okay with that because for them also, it&#39;s easier to get all the packets or all the stuff together.</p><p>[00:18:43] Then other is if you want fast, you can get it, but you are okay to wait. And that&#39;s also helping. And somewhere they&#39;re also incentivizing back the extra money to the consumer where you&#39;re saying, we&#39;ll give you a gift coupon of $1 if you wait for two days. So [00:19:00] you&#39;re getting sustainable, you&#39;re getting some money back and you don&#39;t need it today.</p><p>[00:19:05] So you are actually happy that ways as well. And they&#39;re saying, look, I&#39;m a more sustainable consumer and I&#39;m more informed in that respect.</p><p>[00:19:13] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Wow. Who holds those orders? If somebody wanted to consolidate three or four different orders, are you holding that merchandise in some warehouse or the retailer or how, you know, how, how would you orchestrate that?</p><p>[00:19:25] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Yeah, and that&#39;s a great question. And that&#39;s where a lot of these micro fulfillments</p><p>[00:19:29] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> question. You could tell I&#39;m a logistics guy. I don&#39;t wanna own that inventory.</p><p>[00:19:33] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> a hundred percent. And that&#39;s where a lot of these micro fulfillment centers and dynamic planning is now started in the systems.</p><p>[00:19:39] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Oh, I see</p><p>[00:19:40] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> where based on the delivery date, you&#39;re setting up a pickup time and you know the efficiency of your network, you know the delivery time of your network.</p><p>[00:19:48] And that&#39;s where I feel like logistics has really changed in last couple of years. It&#39;s become a hardcore data play now, like at any stream, you need to be able to [00:20:00] plan, you know exactly how much time it takes to move it from point A to point B. And what are the options you have now once you have that data that decisioning is taken care by ai or by optimization platforms to really get those things together and not making you hold inventory for a long term?</p><p>[00:20:19] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> Hmm. That&#39;s, you know, it&#39;s one of the things that Kushal likes to say is that any company, any retailer or e-commerce company that considers themselves customer centric really needs to be a logistics and delivery company today.</p><p>[00:20:30] You know, because, because there is, there&#39;s so much of, of what we do that is based on that, what they do is based on deliveries. You have to optimize that for all the reasons that we&#39;ve been talking about.</p><p>[00:20:39] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Very cool. Very interesting.</p><p>[00:20:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. So, let&#39;s talk about the returns process because obviously, and I think we&#39;re all gonna hear a lot about this during nrf, is, is that the return situation</p><p>[00:20:49] it is so dramatically increased. I, I think you, you clearly must be uniquely positioned to help retailers with that whole returns logistics process.</p><p>[00:20:57] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:20:58] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Absolutely. So look, [00:21:00] there&#39;s one perspective which I have, and recently we&#39;ve seen a lot of companies move towards that, where I would say the free returns it was never free.</p><p>[00:21:08] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:21:09] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> someone paying for it</p><p>[00:21:10] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> so many days</p><p>[00:21:11] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> while we were exploiting it.</p><p>[00:21:13] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> the the most expensive thing in the, in the world&#39;s a free lunch. There is no free lunch. Dad told me that 40 years ago. It&#39;s still true to this day. Nothing is as expensive as a free lunch.</p><p>[00:21:24] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Hundred percent. And so lots of these companies are moving away from free returns to you pay a fee, at least a delivery or a shipment fee. And this is just to make each one of us a little more responsible for what we are buying unless there&#39;s a product fault.</p><p>[00:21:40] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> sure.</p><p>[00:21:40] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> So that&#39;s one part which we are seeing. But then the other is really optimizing the returns.</p><p>[00:21:45] See there are certain product types specifically, I would say in furniture and white goods, where the cost of getting the product back from consumer to the warehouse, doing the quality check and putting it [00:22:00] back for a sale is more than the price of the product </p><p>[00:22:03] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> itself. It&#39;s so, it&#39;s so funny you mentioned that over the holidays spending some time with family. My brother-in-law bought, he has a pool out in the back of his house, bought a fire pit probably about four by four. Fire pit. It came dented. They called the company. The company said, we&#39;ll get another one out to you this week and you can keep the dented one because, and it was an expensive product.</p><p>[00:22:22] I mean, we&#39;re talking, you know, hundreds of dollars and they. It, it&#39;s, we don&#39;t want it. It&#39;s gonna be too much of a hassle. You keep it. And they&#39;re like, what do we do with it? We said, they said, we don&#39;t care. We&#39;ll just get you a new one,</p><p>[00:22:32] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> So collectively, if you look at it, right, the cost of moving the product back from consumer to the warehouse, then adding the entire process cost to get it back to the supply chain.</p><p>[00:22:44] And then it could be that you wanna sell it again. Or the lot of companies which have started the refurbished platforms as well, where they&#39;ve rebranded and they&#39;re kind of selling for less for some of these products. I think the same example Judd said maybe it&#39;s dented or maybe it&#39;s not a hundred percent the same, [00:23:00] but you get it at a super cheap price as well.</p><p>[00:23:02] So that&#39;s one side of it. But also logistically, how do you really optimize? And the, the interesting part is it&#39;s dynamic, so it&#39;s not static. Like you can&#39;t predict these 50 products or these 50 orders will be returned. You can do a certain ratio, but you don&#39;t know which products, which consumers would actually do the return.</p><p>[00:23:23] And that&#39;s where we see last mile actually super dynamic as well, both from a forward and a reverse journey. And by doing a lot of these real time dynamic optimization, you are able to reduce the cost. A lot of times the vehicles are coming back empty, so you can do a lot of these returns in those empty returns as well when the vehicle is trying to come back.</p><p>[00:23:45] Or you can plan one week, two weeks forward based on your forward journey and use the same trips or same vehicle. To do the returns as well. That helps you reduce the cost. You partner with the e-commerce platform to launch what is called [00:24:00] as a re-commerce and make that products available at lesser price.</p><p>[00:24:04] So you&#39;re kind of a, making it more sustainable because you&#39;re not just throwing away the products or you&#39;re not giving it free. Like the example Judd said, like, because in that case, all of us would just go for free, and as you said, there&#39;s nothing. Call is free lunch ever. It&#39;s one of the most expensive part of the thing.</p><p>[00:24:22] And then charging the consumer as well, I feel is maybe it&#39;s just a small basic fee, but just makes it more intelligent and more known to, if you&#39;re ordering something, we really need it, or we just trying to just shop around and maybe return back.</p><p>[00:24:39] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah. You know what&#39;s so interesting about that? Oh God, it was probably seven or eight years ago where I first had a real conversation with an executive of one of the big companies out there that was really passionate about returns. Never spent 10 seconds thinking about it. And from that kind of anecdotal conversation in a bar to today the amount of conversations around it returns how expensive [00:25:00] returns are and how in some ways there&#39;s responsibility for the consumer to be maybe a little more judicious about returns, and then the counter is retailers and manufacturers have to be very, very serious about sizing and all the, I mean, so it&#39;s not just one side or the other, it&#39;s, it&#39;s this problem that everybody owns. But I think there&#39;s technology solutions for that, and I think we&#39;re sort of in the process of seeing that.</p><p>[00:25:24] But I mean, I&#39;ve probably, in the last three months I&#39;ve heard more discussion about. we can no longer do free returns. It&#39;s just not sustainable. And which is an interesting argument on the sustainability side. So you&#39;re not, your position is not a takeaway from a consumer, but do you understand the cost of doing this. right. I, I, I&#39;m just, any way to keep something from coming back in is fantastic from my perspective.</p><p>[00:25:46] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Absolutely.</p><p>[00:25:47] And I think you made a great point. It&#39;s not just the consumer, it&#39;s all the brands and the retailer side as well. So, and we&#39;ve seen a lot of our customers who use the returns as well. So one part of a solution is it gives you insights [00:26:00] why the products were returned, and then you can bucketize and see the top buckets and you&#39;ll find interest.</p><p>[00:26:06] So one of the, with one of the customers, the top most reason,</p><p>[00:26:10] The image of the product shown online versus what this received as a product was different. Now these are things which is part of the control which business. So you fig if you want to reduce the returns, see collectively, and we can have sub-segments in retail, but it&#39;s about 30 to 35% of overall retail is online and one of the three orders.</p><p>[00:26:36] It&#39;s kind of return cross categories. So if you look at it, there&#39;s almost a starting double digit return orders or return revenue, which is at risk of the total gmv which a business is having and which is lot of, so I&#39;m talking about 10 to 15% of a gmv, which is flowing back to the retailer, which is a lot of money if you try to [00:27:00] look at it.</p><p>[00:27:00] Now, if you a, make it more selective for the consumer by giving some of those options. But as a brand, if you figure out these are the top three reasons why consumers are returning my products or based on specific SKU specific regions, and just use that data to optimize, I think we&#39;ve seen huge value in overall returns.</p><p>[00:27:20] Also reducing by brands, improving the way they are making promises to the end consumers. And then also on the size, as you said, the sizes are not exactly. </p><p>[00:27:30] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> sometimes they&#39;re not even close and, and I&#39;m, I&#39;ll say that as a is a man, I mean it, the, the, the range is, insane and that, so that needs to get fixed, that need that, that&#39;s on everyone.</p><p>[00:27:40] And I think hopefully, I think what&#39;s really interesting is I never, ever would&#39;ve called returns as a trend two years ago, three years ago today when, you know, cuz we&#39;re, Ricardo and I are gonna, are being asked constantly. What do you think the big trends are? Better management of re of returns. I wouldn&#39;t say it&#39;s the number one trend, but it&#39;s, it&#39;s definitely in my top.</p><p>[00:27:58] It&#39;s near the top</p><p>[00:27:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> near the top. Yeah.</p><p>[00:27:59] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> the [00:28:00] cost is, I mean, it, it hits every, it hits everything. It&#39;s a, it&#39;s a revenue sink, it&#39;s a sustainability issue. Bring &#39;em all on. Let&#39;s fix this problem.</p><p>[00:28:09] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Absolutely. Look, the top trends, at least we are seeing at Fareye, one is definitely optimizing the cost of delivery. That&#39;s like 59% of the retailers say that&#39;s their number one goal for 2023. And that obviously links to the returns part of the things as well, because that&#39;s the overall cost.</p><p>[00:28:25] The other we are seeing is moving from pure speed to a committed delivery promise. So I think that&#39;s, that&#39;s an evolution we had as a, a overall community where it&#39;s not about delivering, deliver to me as fast as you can, but make a promise and deliver within that promise. I think that is the great progress I would see as a community.</p><p>[00:28:49] And the third is more towards sustainability. Which kind of ties in, I don&#39;t see all of these as separate. I think they&#39;re connected. </p><p>[00:28:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All, connected.</p><p>[00:28:56] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> And the fourth one is what you said as well, which is [00:29:00]managing returns well, both from reducing it, and then also what do you do with the products which are returned.</p><p>[00:29:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right.</p><p>[00:29:05] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Good stuff.</p><p>[00:29:06] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> It&#39;s it&#39;s, it&#39;s inter, you know, Jeff, earlier on in the conversation, you, you suggested our, our CU primary customer is a retailer. You know, and as somebody, you know, I&#39;m a B2B marketer today, but I used to be a B2C marketer, and I think the mindset that we have is our primary customer is really the end consumer.</p><p>[00:29:21] You know, if, if we&#39;re, if we&#39;re focused on the end consumer and building a proposition that will make things better for them and ultimately make them repeat customers, then our, our, our, our customer, the retailer, is gonna wanna do more work with us and ultimately, you know, deliver a better experience, delivery experience for their consumer.</p><p>[00:29:36] That&#39;s the way we have to think about it. Consumer first</p><p>[00:29:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> you&#39;re, you&#39;re really driving that brand loyalty for the retailer, right.</p><p>[00:29:41] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> That&#39;s right.</p><p>[00:29:42] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> the decision you&#39;re providing and kind of my take away from what Kushal you were saying is really it&#39;s that the promise they&#39;re making to the customer is becoming more valuable than the speed.</p><p>[00:29:53] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> Yeah, </p><p>[00:29:54] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Absolutely. And some of the I would say industries within retail as well, if you look at, [00:30:00] let&#39;s say furniture or let&#39;s say white gloves, which weren&#39;t really as advanced as parcel deliveries, but now they, as consumers, we saying it doesn&#39;t matter.</p><p>[00:30:10] We want the same experience. We want to track where the order is. We want to be at able to reschedule if we want to do that. And so a lot of.</p><p>[00:30:18] Furniture big and bulky companies as well. We are seeing the same trend where they&#39;re trying to digitalize their supply chain, get realtime visibility, and then start optimizing.</p><p>[00:30:29] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Good stuff.</p><p>[00:30:30] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Good stuff.</p><p>[00:30:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, Judd, Kushal, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a, a fascinating discussion. I think I come away with a, a lot of learnings here on about last Mile Logistics </p><p>[00:30:42] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Five, five years ago. I, there, there wasn&#39;t last mile. I mean, we talked about it a little bit, but maybe the last mile in the store, but never, I mean, the amount of innovation, of course this week in innovation, we love innovation.</p><p>[00:30:54] It. It&#39;s insane how much is happening in this, in this last mile. And it&#39;s, [00:31:00] it&#39;s, it&#39;s great. It&#39;s great to cover it and I wish you you guys the best of luck in, in being more efficient more sustainable, helping retailers sort of figure out this whole craziness. And I tell you, just reporting the, the numbers that you&#39;re seeing might be enough to, for, for us as consumers to say, wow, we need to really maybe start to think differently.</p><p>[00:31:15] So, so the best of luck to you.</p><p>[00:31:17] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> Yeah. Thanks.</p><p>[00:31:18] <strong>Kushal Nahata:</strong> Thank you so much. Thanks for having</p><p>[00:31:19] <strong>Judd Marcello:</strong> us. Thank you very much. </p><p>[00:31:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thank you both.</p><p>[00:31:21] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Bye.</p><p>[00:31:22] ​</p><h3>[00:31:27] Show Close</h3><p>[00:31:27] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Welcome back everyone. So did you catch that nugget about consumer preference for fulfilling a delivery promise versus speed of delivery? I know that&#39;s one of my main takeaways.</p><p>[00:31:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, like I said, lots of amazing info from FarEye in this interview, and as Jeff said in the recording, it wasn&#39;t that many years ago that we barely talked about last mile logistics. And now look at all the great points Kushal and Judd made about lowering costs, being more sustainable. How to not only leverage your consumer preferences, but [00:32:00] doing it in a cost effective manner while, while still providing all the conveniences those consumers want.</p><p>[00:32:05] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And when you think about all the consumer preferences, Kushal and Judd mentioned from keeping a delivery promise to having the flexibility to change that delivery promise once the order&#39;s already in progress, to just show how varied these delivery promises and expectations can be. From product type to product type.</p><p>[00:32:26] When you think about it, we all know that getting a piece of furniture delivered is completely different than getting a new Prada bag.</p><p>[00:32:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> A hundred percent. I certainly came away knowing a lot more about the finer details of Last Mile Logistics, and I, I have to say, FarEye is really doing something unique with their platform that&#39;s worth paying attention to.</p><p>[00:32:47] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Absolutely. </p><p>[00:32:49] Well, Ricardo, I think that&#39;s a wrap for part two of our N R F Live series. I can&#39;t wait to see what&#39;s coming up next in part three.</p><p>[00:32:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Jeff and I have even more [00:33:00] super interesting people to talk about coming up, including micro fulfillment and another one of your favorite topics, Casey Web three.</p><p>[00:33:07] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, now you&#39;re just teasing me. Let&#39;s wrap up this episode. </p><h3>[00:33:10] Show Outro</h3><p>[00:33:10] ​</p><p>[00:33:15] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don&#39;t miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today. Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets.</p><p>[00:33:33] I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden.</p><p>[00:33:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> If you&#39;d like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at Retail Razor on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:33:51] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:33:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there has never been a better time to be in retail [00:34:00] if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the retail Razor Show.</p> f622ff4d-a7ae-49a7-9bae-f7724b6db946 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Thu, 23 Feb 2023 12:05:00 +0000 2052 no full S2E10a #NRFLive SPECIAL - #TRI Friends Fireside Chat on #NRF2023 S2E10a #NRFLive SPECIAL - #TRI Friends Fireside Chat on #NRF2023 10 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E10a #NRFLive SPECIAL - #TRI Friends Fireside Chat on #NRF2023 In honor of the NRF Big Show we’re kicking off a special podcast cross-over series, #NRFLive, with Jeff Roster’s show This Week In Innovation. This episode is a very special, intimately authentic conversation between four top retail influencers, recorded live, and in-person during the NRF show. Jeff and host, Ricardo Belmar, join retail legends, Vicki Cantrell, CEO of Vendors in Partnership, LLC, and Ron Thurston, author of Retail Pride and host of the Retail in America podcast and tour. Together our four retail friends chat about the VIP Awards ceremony, RetailROI’s Super Saturday event, what they expect to see during NRF, the impact of innovation in retail, & the latest retail tech buzzwords. Plus, they reach an important conclusion about why retail is, after all, all about the people. Listen, or watch on YouTube, and join our four friends for the kind of discussion that can only happen when you’re recording live, and in-person in a setting like the NRF Big Show! News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show was a finalist for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during the NRF Big Show 2023! News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E10a NRFLive - TRI Friends Fireside Chat [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Show Intro [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 of the Retail Razor Show. This is the first of a multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 show from January 13th to 18th, otherwise known as N R F Week. And I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:00:37] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome, retail Razor Show listeners, retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And for this special bonus, welcome N R F fans to our hot take, hashtag N R F Live mini series. [00:00:59] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Casey, [00:01:00] this is an incredible treat for listeners and viewers. Just like our last episode, our top 10 trends and predictions for 2023, the recordings in this miniseries all happen live and in person. While you know about 35,000 or so of our closest retail friends swarmed New York City, [00:01:16] Casey Golden: I just loved recording face-to-face when we're just not, these two little squares from the shoulders up on a Zoom screen. [00:01:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So let's set the stage here for this series. Lot lot's happening. Cuz not only is this a special live and in-person recording series, but it's also a podcast crossover event. [00:01:35] Casey Golden: Wait really? [00:01:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yes, really we are crossing over with our fellow Retail Avenger, Jeff Roster and his This Week in Innovation podcast. [00:01:45] Here's what'll happen. So this episode kicks off our hashtag N R F Live series with what may be my absolute favorite podcast recording of our entire run so far. [00:01:55] Casey Golden: all time fave like that's saying a lot. I mean, I [00:02:00] adore Jeff, but this is an all time fave. [00:02:03] Ricardo Belmar: Yes, yes. Really of, of, of all time. Well, at least until the next one, but no [00:02:10] Casey Golden: All right. Well, with that kind of buildup you'll have to explain a little more so, spill. [00:02:15] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Okay. So late last year Jeff and I were talking about our N R F plans, comparing how many places we, we overlapped and realized it would be a great opportunity to do a series of interviews of super interesting people at N R F. Friends we don't often see in person and just talk trends. Talk about what's hot at the show, what's coming next in retail. [00:02:37] So the crossover was born. And we thought, we'll, we'll jointly host these interviews and then we'll just release them all across both the Retail Razor Show and This Week in Innovation [00:02:45] Casey Golden: Very cool. I'm digging this [00:02:48] Ricardo Belmar: But wait, there's more [00:02:50] Casey Golden: in your best announcement voice [00:02:52] Ricardo Belmar: I'm trying to build up some suspense here [00:02:54] Casey Golden: We're already on the edge of our seat. [00:02:56] Ricardo Belmar: So, so not only is this our first crossover series, but [00:03:00] it's also our first sponsored podcast. [00:03:03] Casey Golden: Ah, look at our podcast. It's adulting [00:03:06] Ricardo Belmar: exactly, exactly. We didn't realize just how popular we we've become. So while Jeff and I were making plans around who we tried to interview during N R F, there was one important thing we realized. We actually need a really solid place to sit down and record during N R F, because let's face it, the Javit Center isn't the most conducive to podcast recording [00:03:26] Casey Golden: It's not the most conducive for much. So I mean, I don't think we could do this while sitting in front of Starbucks either. [00:03:34] Ricardo Belmar: Right. E Exactly, exactly. But fortunately for us, our, our good friends of the show and avid podcast supporters at Avanade made us a really nice offer to use some space in their lounge area on the fourth floor, just above the expo hall. So fans of our show may have seen a preview photo of this setup on LinkedIn during N R F as we posted a few behind the scenes pics courtesy of the, the marketing team at Avanade [00:03:56] Casey Golden: Oh, big shout out to the marketing team at Avanade [00:04:00] for their support and for providing such an amazing space. I wish I could have been there for all of these. [00:04:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, we, we definitely missed you for those. And, and for this episode's recording, we were also fortunate to take advantage of another great spot in one of the conference rooms at the Microsoft Times Square office. Right after this year's retail ROI Super Saturday event had concluded right at the same location. [00:04:22] So extra fortunate. We happened to run into two very special friends of the show who've been on before. They agreed to sit down with Jeff and me to have an open conversation about our first two days at N r. About what we expected to find, what we might uncover during the show. And to be fair, Jeff and I pitched this as a quick 15 minute recording to them to convince them to do it. [00:04:42] And of course that turned into a nearly 50 minutes session because guess what happens when you have four retail friends get together? I haven't seen each other in person in so long. [00:04:51] Casey Golden: Yeah, we just don't stop. I'm thinking it would be very much like a friends' TV show reunion episode. You just [00:05:00] keep going and going because there is just so much happening in the industry right now [00:05:05] Ricardo Belmar: You, you said it. You said it. So, so we'll be hearing our, our conversation this episode with none other than retail legend, Vicki Cantrell currently c e o at vendors in partnership and organizer of the V I P awards event during N R F plus, Ron Thurston, author of the bestselling book, Retail Pride and Host of the Retail in America Podcast and tour. [00:05:25] And of course, to top it all off, since we're all RETHINK Retail, top retail influencers for 2023 just announced at the N R F show. [00:05:34] Casey Golden: Absolutely incredible and I'm so honored to be on the list this year and included, a big congrats all around to everyone for making the cut and sharing their perspective. [00:05:47] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and fun fact, this might even surprise some listeners and viewers, but Ron and I met in person for the first time at this n r F show. [00:05:56] You know, absolute, it's a like a pandemic story, right? I mean, as after all [00:06:00] these years that we've known each other. But this was the first time we actually met face to face in person. [00:06:06] Casey Golden: Wow. I didn't realize that. I actually met Ron during the pandemic in Dominican Republic. [00:06:12] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. [00:06:15] Casey Golden: It's just, that is just an amazing little fun fact. You know, we forget how, how often we work with people that we've actually never been i r l with. [00:06:28] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. And you, and you'll hear us talk about that in the recording too, cuz we all had stories that had happened to us just in those first couple of days. [00:06:35] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean how could we build up this episode any more than we already have? So let's get to it and not keep everyone waiting. [00:06:44] Ricardo Belmar: Yes, I totally agree. [00:06:47] Casey Golden: Ah, I wanna point out one more thing. [00:06:50] Ricardo Belmar: Y you didn't just do that, did you? [00:06:52] Casey Golden: I did. But first I wanna point out that you've said multiple viewer multiple times now. And I [00:07:00] know we told our listeners they could see us on video and episode one of the season, but we've had some tech technical issues plaguing us all season long. . This is actually the first one we've released this season with video. [00:07:16] Ricardo Belmar: Good point. Good catch. Casey. Yes, yes. We actually do have video this time. And honestly we have our, our great friends at Rethink Retail. To thank for that Gabriela Bock, one of the producers at Rethink was gracious enough to record our conversation on video. And while what, if you're watching the video, you have to pay attention to just how small a conference room that was. [00:07:38] I don't know how she managed to stay with us for, for almost the entire time. Carefully walking around the room with video gear and it, it was just an amazing effort. You know, we, we had also told her it was gonna be 15 minutes and she thought, oh great. This is, this will be fun to do and sure enough turns into 50. [00:07:55] So, you know what, what an amazing effort and thanks so much to, to Gabriella and RETHINK for, for doing that for us.[00:08:00] [00:08:00] Casey Golden: Well talk about commitment and just incredible continued support. And if you're a careful viewer, you'll also catch another familiar rethink retail face in the background, taking photos. I won't give away who it is yet, but when we come back, we'll let you in on the scoop. [00:08:17] Ricardo Belmar: Okay, well, a, after this incredibly long intro that we've managed now, maybe our longest yet let's dive in and listen to what Jeff, Vicki, Ron, and myself had to say about the v i p awards, Retail ROI, N R F in general, and just the state of retail today and, and what we expect to, to happen this year. [00:08:35] And, and you'll see why this is quickly my, my favorite podcast we've ever done. [00:08:39] Casey Golden: Amazing. [00:08:39] [00:08:44] #NRFLive - TRI Friends Fireside Chat [00:08:44] Ricardo Belmar: Hey everybody. I'm here with Jeff Roster and co-host of this weekend innovation, and you guessed it. This is part of our crossover series between our two podcasts. How you doing, Jeff? [00:08:55] Jeff Roster: I am doing fantastic. Ricardo, how about yourself [00:08:58] Ricardo Belmar: I'm doing wonderful. [00:09:00] And part of that I would say is true for you too because we are live and in person at the N R F show, which we haven't been in quite some time. [00:09:08] three years. [00:09:09] Jeff Roster: Well, actually I was here. I was here last [00:09:12] Ricardo Belmar: you get bonus points for last year. You get bonus points for last [00:09:16] Jeff Roster: year, okay. The re the Startup community came strong last year [00:09:18] Ricardo Belmar: That's true. That's very true. You can, we'll, we'll leave that one there and then on that one there. And we are joined by two incredibly wonderful people in the retail industry. [00:09:28] Vicki Cantrell, how you doing? Vicki? And Ron Thurston. [00:09:33] Ron Thurston: Hi everyone. Happy to be here. [00:09:35] Ricardo Belmar: So we thought we would just kind of kick things off by talking a little bit about the first couple of events that have started N r F week this year starting with Vicki, with your event. Last night as of when we were recording this, the vendors in partnership awards ceremony. [00:09:49] Why don't you give us a, a quick recap of some of the highlights. [00:09:52] Vicki Cantrell: Oh, I'd love to. It was really an amazing night. Um, we, uh, I started this thing three years ago [00:10:00] and last night I think we kind of crossed a threshold because the message that I have dreamed about is really taking hold. [00:10:07] And it's about how we do business, not who does business with who. And really about problem solving, not solution selling, and. The things that really resonated with me last night and the things that people come up and say to me have to do with the fact that I say that, you know, people buy from people, they don't buy from companies. [00:10:30] Um, the gratitude that people had when they had to kind of put together their nominations and they realize. They took a breath and said how far they've come and they were able to recognize their teams. These are all the relationship aspects, um, that flowed through the night. Aside from that, it was a beautiful night, beautiful venue. [00:10:51] So much love in the room. We sold out. [00:10:54] Jeff Roster: congratulations. [00:10:55] Thank you. [00:10:56] Ricardo Belmar: a big achievement. Yeah. [00:10:57] Jeff Roster: I kind of liked it when I could move around a little bit. [00:10:59] Vicki Cantrell: I know [00:11:00] you do. [00:11:00] Jeff Roster: so you know, [00:11:02] Ron Thurston: there were people here today are [00:11:03] Jeff Roster: quite as easy moving around this, time, [00:11:07] Vicki Cantrell: but uh, yeah, so, uh, we're really thrilled with the evening and, uh, a lot of great buzz and I just believe, I always thought I was pushing a rock uphill to take away this, this aspect of buyer, seller. [00:11:21] Yeah. But you know, it's that rock is moving. And so I'm thrilled. [00:11:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I, I, I like the way you put it because I really feel like your event, uh, so nicely demonstrate that it is a relationship. [00:11:35] It's not just buyer seller. Right. Right. It's a partnership between what we're all collectively trying to [00:11:40] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah. Yeah. Everybody in the room is equals and that's what makes this the most special party. And, and people are not tired. You know, they're, this is their celebration. This is the celebration for the people that actually run this show and, uh, are gonna go through a grueling four [00:12:00] or five days that's gonna make or break their year. [00:12:03] Right. And why not. Let's celebrate for what they bring to the industry and what they allow us all to do. [00:12:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. I'm well said. Well said. Ron, what's your impression so far at like, I, I guess I would call this day two of nrf, [00:12:18] Jeff Roster: It's day two for us. I don't know about anybody [00:12:20] Vicki Cantrell: for sure. [00:12:21] Ron Thurston: a good one [00:12:21] Ricardo Belmar: for everybody, but for us, [00:12:22] Ron Thurston: you know, I had the, I had the, I've known Vicki for I think 15 years, so we go way back Tor Tory Birch years. [00:12:30] Um, and Vicky was generous enough last year to invite me to give out an award to retailer's favorite and this year I was nominated. So it was great to just be there and to be, even though I'm not a vendor, I feel like I know so many of the vendors. I've been a retailer, I have so many friends in the room. [00:12:48] It's just a joy. It's a joy to be there. And, and you're right, I think it's early. Everyone dresses up. Yes. You know, by Tuesday I have this feeling, you know, we'll, I'll be wearing jeans and [00:12:58] Vicki Cantrell: Right. It's sneakers. [00:13:00] Hundred [00:13:00] Ron Thurston: don't care anymore. But, um, it's a beautiful. Beautiful. [00:13:05] Vicki Cantrell: my feet are already cooked, but, and I'm only on day one and this is a, this I have not factored in, so I, I gotta, [00:13:12] Ricardo Belmar: We're, we're all still learning [00:13:13] Jeff Roster: No sensible shoes then, [00:13:15] huh? [00:13:15] Vicki Cantrell: I have some [00:13:18] Ricardo Belmar: you, you can't get enough sensible shoes, I [00:13:20] Vicki Cantrell: That's true. [00:13:20] Ricardo Belmar: Takeaway I have from that Yeah. No. No matter how much you try. So we're also all here on day two at one of my other favorite events of the week. RetailROI's Super Saturday. Uh, I was excited to be able to hosted this event at the Microsoft office in Times Square. [00:13:37] Um, Jeff, I think you wanna, sh you had some stats you'd like to share maybe on how we did [00:13:42] Jeff Roster: Well, [00:13:43] very well. [00:13:46] Ricardo Belmar: that's, [00:13:46] Jeff Roster: that's analyst speak for, Hmm. I think we were well over $320,000. It's, it was the, [00:13:52] Vicki Cantrell: the [00:13:53] closer to three [00:13:54] Jeff Roster: Three 50. It was the second biggest year revenue wise. Um, the other [00:14:00] observations, uh, crazy energy. So I would agree with, um, you know, as, as, as somebody that was at, uh, Vicki's event, the energy was off the charts. That was the big speculation, um, that I was testing. You know, the, in the, the run up to N RF series I was doing is, what do you expect? [00:14:14] You know, and we were talking about make sure you have, you know, masks and, and all this and be sensitive to who people, you know, whatever. And that's, that's all that advice is all still. But, uh, I think, I think people are ready to rock and roll and the energy's off [00:14:27] Ricardo Belmar: The energy's there, right. [00:14:28] Jeff Roster: they're definitely wanna be sensitive if people are still have, have whatever issues, but, uh, solid energy. [00:14:33] We kind of got a sense of that. Maybe Wednesday, Thursday you could just start, I could start seeing the emails confirmed for, uh, v I p and definitely, definitely today for sure. This is day two and tons of energy. People wanna, you know, re reconnect. Um, I dunno about you guys, but, um, I've bumped into at least 10 people that I've known virtually [00:14:58] Right. For years now, who I [00:15:00] believe I have a legitimate relationship and I'm like, [00:15:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, no, that, that's [00:15:05] Vicki Cantrell: that's so true. [00:15:06] Ricardo Belmar: so, right Ron, Ron and I have now, I don't know, known each other I, [00:15:11] Ron Thurston: couple years. [00:15:12] Couple years now. Yeah. [00:15:13] Ricardo Belmar: we, this was the first day we finally got to meet in person. [00:15:15] Ron Thurston: true. It's really true. [00:15:17] Vicki Cantrell: So I'm shocked because as, as well as Zoom does things, people look different in person, [00:15:25] And like somebody walked in who I've had probably 15 zooms with and choose about a foot taller than I expected. She walked in and I thought, and so you don't recognize, you know, it's, it's really something. There's gonna be a lot of that this, this [00:15:40] Ron Thurston: there will be [00:15:41] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah. [00:15:42] Ricardo Belmar: no, no doubt. No doubt. [00:15:45] So what's [00:15:47] everyone thinking now that we've, we've kind of had a taste of the energy after a couple of events. The, the full-blown show starts tomorrow. So what is everyone thinking? The vibe is gonna be on the show floor. [00:15:59] Ron Thurston: Mm-hmm.[00:16:00] [00:16:01] Vicki Cantrell: I would say that, um, because of this energy and, and what I'm hearing just in a few conversations of today and yesterday is, uh, and people are actually saying that, you know, the pandemic, so we're ready to get back out there. [00:16:16] They're using this kind of language and this is solution providers, and for them that means get back out there. I wanna go to events, I wanna pick and choose different types of events. I. You know, more involved in different types of things. And today we heard about two different vendors who are now heavily involved and didn't know anything about roi. [00:16:38] So when you, when you think about a little bit, right? You said that, oh yes, but, but you know, you just, because they are now. Wanting to be involved in new things, new ways, get back out there. I would say the watch phrase is get back out there and that's what we're gonna see on the floor that people are gonna be looking to [00:17:00] like, am I up to date on technology? [00:17:02] Let me stop at all these booths to really feel like I'm connected again. Yeah, that's what I think. [00:17:08] Ron Thurston: And I think because there's been so much conversation about all the new ideas and all the new technology, yeah. [00:17:14] You actually need to touch and feel it. Yeah. Similar to shopping in a retail store, I think I'm excited to go down, you know, innovation. Lane and what are all these brands bringing? What are, what's happening? What are some big new ideas? Yeah, and you know, a lot of retailers, and I'm sure we'll speak about the Rethink retail bash coming up, but the minute I posted of, you know, hey, rethink retail is having this, the amount of responses that I received of like, I'd love to go, I'd love to go. [00:17:41] Yes. The willingness and desire to reconnect is powerful. [00:17:46] Ricardo Belmar: Powerful, yeah. Yeah, that's [00:17:47] right. That's right. So, well since you brought up the, the rethink retail that we're, I think we're all going to be at, uh, Monday night. What, what other, so day one, official day one, I'll call it right. For NRF Sunday [00:18:00] tomorrow. [00:18:00] That's on day two. Um, anything else anyone is excited to be going to, of the remaining [00:18:07] Vicki Cantrell: I'm sorry, but I can't not talk about rock and roll retail. I, I mean Yep. [00:18:14] Ricardo Belmar: I'm with you on that one. [00:18:15] Vicki Cantrell: That's, that's the other thing where retailers are so embedded in different fun areas of life. Yeah. Okay. Yes. They do charity work. [00:18:24] They go on trips. Mm-hmm. , they play music. They make a band, they [00:18:29] Ron Thurston: and it [00:18:30] Ricardo Belmar: comes together [00:18:30] Vicki Cantrell: together here, and it all comes together here. [00:18:32] Ron Thurston: Wow. So fun. [00:18:34] Ricardo Belmar: for that one too. That's another, another Monday, late evening. Oh my god. Activity. [00:18:39] Vicki Cantrell: Yes. And then of course the Retail Retailer Insiders [00:18:43] Ron Thurston: was just gonna say that one too. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be my first year attending that. [00:18:47] It'll be fun. You ready? Get ready. That's, that's all 9:00 PM on a Sunday night. A lot of [00:18:51] Jeff Roster: tie at that one. That's a little more raucous for sure. Um, very good. Um, lot of people, um, you know, so it's, the [00:19:00] energy is clearly here. [00:19:01] There's no doubt about it. The um, As ugly and hideous as Covid was, it clearly was a stimulant to, to innovation. I mean, we tracked that on this week. I think you did it on retail razor too. The, the, you know, I mean the number of BOPIS uh, setups were just off the charts, right? We now realize low code's, a real unique strategic advantage, uh, be able to move faster, more nimbler. [00:19:20] And so I think what we're gonna see is. I don't wanna say an explosion of innovation, cuz I would argue, I mean I've been tracking it for 20 years. It's, it's, I, I, I don't think things just explode, but they accelerate and the ability to innovate. And the fact that startups three or four or five years ago really weren't even, I mean, Vicky, when you were there, I mean you were just starting to bring the startups in. [00:19:42] They were always there. They were. I mean, I live in Silicon Valley. We've been doing startups really since Hewlett and Packard got together in 1938. So we're not new to startup. , but all of a sudden the industry has said, this is this giant opportunity to, to um, showcase this in this innovation has always been [00:20:00] going on. [00:20:00] That's why, you know, the big companies have, are, have been, uh, making acquisitions, but now we're, we're featuring these people and this is the, I mean, the heart of of businesses. These and some young entrepreneurs, a lot, not so young entrepreneurs, but that energy and they're being featured now and it's just. [00:20:19] And it's just gonna be, I think it's gonna be a celebration of innovation, is maybe the way I'm gonna [00:20:24] Vicki Cantrell: it, Jeff, you know, I also wanna say something about innovation. That that overused word. Okay. And because when you say innovation, everybody thinks tech innovation. Mm-hmm. . Okay. But what the last few years have shown us is that innovation is across the board, innovation on how you speak to each other, innovation on how you. [00:20:45] teams work together. Innovation on how you approach something. By the way, you wouldn't, low-code wouldn't have such a, a presence if there was an innovation in how you do things, not just the tech. [00:21:00] And so people have really changed how they do business and that requires innovation of thought and innovation of mm-hmm. [00:21:10] how you use your people. [00:21:11] Ron Thurston: and Agreed. [00:21:12] Vicki Cantrell: You know, because retailers have to be like super agile. [00:21:16] Ron Thurston: Yeah. And, and it's only as effective as the adoption normally, which has to happen in a store. [00:21:23] Vicki Cantrell: Oh boy. Isn't that the truth? [00:21:24] Ron Thurston: That's the truth. [00:21:25] Vicki Cantrell: That's it, [00:21:26] Ron Thurston: there's so much [00:21:27] new, there's a lot of, I'll say this, there's a lot of people who develop technology that have never worked in retail. And so there's Yes. I know it's a bold statement, you know, just gonna say it, know, [00:21:40] Jeff Roster: We've got story. We got a whole podcast where, where we could talk, tell stories. Central office. No, it's not a central office. It's called a store. Please change that on your slide deck. I catch a lot of that. And you still see it at this store [00:21:53] Ron Thurston: You do. I mean, it's the 50% want to quit their job working in retail stat. I [00:21:58] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, right. Yeah. [00:21:59] Ron Thurston: it's those, [00:22:00] and so I think there's this whole concept again of what does the store need. [00:22:05] Ask the store. Right, right. Before you go and develop technology. Right. And there are, um, there's a solution that will be in the innovation aisle this year called Reflex, and they're doing on demand staffing. Yes. And so this is an actual need that is. In integral to the success of our industry. Yeah. To say that we need on-demand gig economy, style retail workforce, right? [00:22:29] Because the workforce is demanding it. They're demanding flexibility. So here's someone that's innovating this idea. Yes. And coming up with new technology. So don't just create something because you think it's a good idea. ask the people who need this technology and how they'll use it. So why I'm such a big Yoobic fan who were, you know, also nominated last night. [00:22:50] Yeah. They, they really listen to what the stores need. Yep. Stores and restaurants need, and it's, that's why the adoption's so high. [00:22:59] Jeff Roster: I'll [00:23:00] tell you a little secret. Um, there's a bunch of CIOs that the first question they ask a tech vendor is, tell me what you think of my store? [00:23:07] Ron Thurston: That's a great question. [00:23:08] Vicki Cantrell: Yes. [00:23:08] Jeff Roster: want, you want to know [00:23:09] Ron Thurston: who [00:23:09] Jeff Roster: many vendors could wash out right up there? [00:23:11] Vicki Cantrell: Yep. [00:23:11] Jeff Roster: A [00:23:11] lot. A lot.. [00:23:12] Ricardo Belmar: So these people [00:23:13] Vicki Cantrell: have so basic, [00:23:14] hundreds, [00:23:14] Jeff Roster: if not thousands of dollars to maybe fly travel, prepare for a meeting, and they did not go to the physical store [00:23:22] Vicki Cantrell: mm-hmm. [00:23:22] Jeff Roster: and make some observations. [00:23:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:23:24] Jeff Roster: and, and it's just like, you know, it's just like a crocodile, just ready to pounce cuz the, you know, the cio Just first question, tell me what you think and, and it's not a trick question. No, I was in your store. It seemed busy, it seemed cluttered, it seemed really good. I liked the lighting. I did, I, it, it's easy, [00:23:41] Ron Thurston: Yeah. [00:23:41] Jeff Roster: you got to, you're telling me you're gonna try to do and you don't know their business and that's the point you're making and that's valuable [00:23:48] Ron Thurston: really valuable. I, I asked that question often of management candidates, you know, and my office was right here in Times Square. There were six intermix stores in the city. Tell me the story you're in. Yeah. And [00:24:00] the the question could end. Yeah. You know, very quickly. Yeah. And so you're right. [00:24:04] Yeah. It's like, do your homework, learn what's necessary, learn what's important, and then help. Right. You know, help us be better because of it. [00:24:14] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think that question is so powerful as to your point, RO I've used that myself being on the vendor side in a meeting with a group of retail executives, or I've asked them, well, More from a wanting to learn perspective. I said, well, tell me about your store. Tell me the last time you were in a store and what you thought were the biggest challenges. [00:24:33] And I was always surprised. Half the time I asked that question, I couldn't get an answer because I was, had a room full of people who couldn't remember the last time they had walked to their own stores. So I think that's one, to me, it was one of the most simplest basic things that everybody in the industry can do is just, you know, Go visit the store. [00:24:50] Yes. [00:24:51] See what's going on. Ask the people that are there, [00:24:53] what's [00:24:54] Vicki Cantrell: wrong. So simple. Right. [00:24:55] So simple. so simple. [00:24:56] Ron Thurston: simple. You know, [00:24:57] Ricardo Belmar: know? Well, we, we heard some examples today, right? [00:24:59] Vicki Cantrell: [00:25:00] Right. Sharon Sessions from From [00:25:01] Ricardo Belmar: Sharon. Yeah, true. From the Undercover, undercover [00:25:04] Vicki Cantrell: Boss [00:25:04] Get to the source. It's that simple. , [00:25:08] Ron Thurston: and [00:25:08] maybe it's not in New York City, you know, go, you know, as I have traveled across the country this year, I, I would be confident to say a lot of those stores in the, the heartland of this country have never been visited by an executive can guarantee it. [00:25:24] Yes. And so maybe get out of la, New York. Right. And go visits the flagship store, the low volume. Yeah. Not just flag low volume, you know. [00:25:34] And look for those opportunities Yeah. That are available just by asking questions. [00:25:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:25:40] Vicki Cantrell: Yep. [00:25:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think there'll be a lot of those questions hopefully be asked over the next few. [00:25:45] days. [00:25:45] Ron Thurston: Yeah, [00:25:46] so too. [00:25:47] Jeff Roster: So what do you think the big buzzwords for the show are gonna be? [00:25:51] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, that's a great question, Jeff. [00:25:53] You know, every nrf I I come to, it seems in recent years though, always start with, I'm sure this is the year every vendor's gonna [00:26:00] talk about ai. Mm-hmm. I, I still kind of chuckle a little bit. I forget which year it was, when it seemed like every time I turn around the expo floor, there was a booth with a robot in it and then, and now I want to kind of walk through and say, where did all the robots go? Yeah. [00:26:11] Jeff Roster: they're working, they're in the stores. Apparently working. I guess maybe, [00:26:14] Ricardo Belmar: I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I, I'm actually kind of interested to see what the buzzy words are going to be this time. You know, we we're kind of coming out of a year where the first half of the year, the big buzz was all about Metaverse. [00:26:27] Mm-hmm. . I don't, I don't expect that to be the one. I think there'll be some, I mean, I, I still expect to see some web three discussion maybe. [00:26:34] Ron Thurston: Mm-hmm. [00:26:34] Ricardo Belmar: I think there's definitely gonna be a lot of, [00:26:36] maybe new applications. I'll, I'll put it that way, to ai you know, certainly things talking about pricing, I think that's a. [00:26:44] Vicki Cantrell: seems to be a lot of conversation around pricing. [00:26:46] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. [00:26:48] Ricardo Belmar: I expect to hear a lot about returns management. Yeah. Just given where we're at, you know, that being a, a solution [00:26:54] Jeff Roster: I agree a hundred percent. [00:26:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Um, yeah. [00:26:57] Jeff Roster: just because it's so [00:27:00] unsexy. but it's, you know, returns are where profits go to die. [00:27:05] And yet, if we're gonna talk about being sustainable, I mean the, probably the least sustainable process on the planet is returns. [00:27:11] Ron Thurston: Agreed. [00:27:11] Ricardo Belmar: Right, [00:27:11] Jeff Roster: Just [00:27:12] you ship you ship thing 8,000 miles or however you process it, you got it out. and it's coming back and it's coming back in a far be worse condition than it left. [00:27:21] And it is a mess. And you're touching it again and every time you touch, you're hanging another dollar on that thing. Yeah. So if we can figure out how, and, and there were some great conversations today, like, you know, maybe we need to deselect some customers and I, you know, if we're gonna be serious about being sustainable. [00:27:37] Yeah. Why are you returning so much? Is it an issue with sizing? Which it clearly is. technology. Uh, solutions. They're, they're starting to become some, you know, AI models and, and 3D models and all that stuff. I mean, there's a lot of things that we can look at, but if somehow we can say, how do we, you know, how do we not return 50% or 60% of stuff? [00:27:57] That's a huge [00:27:59] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's A huge one. [00:28:00] Yeah. [00:28:00] Jeff Roster: Um, so I love that. So, re returns, I, I'm, How might debate with you a little bit on Metaverse. We'll have to settle up afterwards, but I'm much more of a fan of immersive commerce, which our friend Michael Zakour has, has [00:28:11] Vicki Cantrell: that. Yeah. So we [00:28:12] Jeff Roster: can, we can talk about, uh, we can talk about augmented reality and not talk about, you know, getting [00:28:17] Ricardo Belmar: virtual [00:28:18] Jeff Roster: you know, [00:28:18] Ricardo Belmar: part. Well, I'll, I'll tell you. I, I will. Concede one point on, on [00:28:23] Jeff Roster: one [00:28:23] I'm getting one, [00:28:24] Ricardo Belmar: oh, you'll get one today. . Ask me again at the end, at the end [00:28:27] Jeff Roster: I will [00:28:27] Ricardo Belmar: You'll, I know you will, I know you'll keep, you'll hold me to that [00:28:30] I, I would say the, the one, because I know there are sessions about this, so that, that's why I'm gonna bring it up. And I've already talked to some folks about it and I know I see it with our customers, with the partners I work with. One really strong use case for Metaverse is digital. Um, especially with, uh, the consumer goods brands that we work with there, there's lots and lots of interest in that because you can just have, if you're building the digital twin, right, you have your entire operations modeled that you can play around with. [00:28:58] Come up with new operations, [00:29:00] new products, without ever having to touch anything physical and incur the cost for that. And you'll know upfront, now I built it in that digital twin. Now I know what the outcome's gonna be before I build version So I think. [00:29:10] Ron Thurston: that's [00:29:11] Ricardo Belmar: In my mind the most valid use case today, [00:29:14] today. [00:29:15] Cuz I know you're looking at me, Jeff, and, and you're thinking there's more to it than that. [00:29:18] Jeff Roster: Oh, I'm waiting. I'm, [00:29:18] Ricardo Belmar: I know, I know. You're, you're finding, I know you're waiting the pounce on me for that one, but I'm gonna say that's today's use case for metaverse. All the other ones I think, I don't know if it's this year. [00:29:28] I think they'll come. I'll, I'll agree with you on that one. It it's coming, but I don't know that it's, this year. [00:29:32] Vicki Cantrell: This has, this is in that same category of how much you have to pay attention. You have to be paying attention. But c, come where we are economically and where we are, it's going to be, I'm going to pay attention and I'm, but I'm also understand that no bright, shiny objects. [00:29:51] Right. Okay. And that's where it is still, you know, it's still that, [00:29:55] Ricardo Belmar: but you get some of the [00:29:56] core core pieces. [00:29:57] I think that to me is the, the key for some of these. And that's why I [00:30:00] keep bringing up the digital twin [00:30:01] Vicki Cantrell: Well, just like ai, [00:30:02] the same core pieces, [00:30:02] you need [00:30:03] Ricardo Belmar: pieces, right? [00:30:04] Vicki Cantrell: You [00:30:04] Ricardo Belmar: need that [00:30:04] fundamental [00:30:05] Jeff Roster: And that's why [00:30:06] Ricardo Belmar: so you can build on, that's [00:30:07] Jeff Roster: why immersive commerce is a superior word to Metaverse cuz you can get those pieces and you can kind of loop it. Cuz we, as analysts, we have to have something to hang that framework on. Cause we gotta study, we gotta survey it, we gotta forecast it. [00:30:19] You ain't forecasting Metaverse? Cause that's nonsense. [00:30:21] Vicki Cantrell: Right? Right. [00:30:22] Jeff Roster: Right? Um, [00:30:22] oh, it's, uh, $22 trillion. Okay. I picked what, it's ridiculous. What's that based on? But immersive commerce, you can break out ai, well you can break out AI's foundation, you can break out virtual reality, augmented reality, all these components. [00:30:34] And now you can build [00:30:35] a, you can build a deal. And I think that's probably a far better way for us to talk about it. And there's absolutely zero energy, pro or con around that [00:30:44] Vicki Cantrell: Right. [00:30:45] Jeff Roster: And, uh, you know, unfortunately, I think the guy out in my, part of the, the, you know, states maybe kind of mucked up that word just won't say who [00:30:53] Ricardo Belmar: just a little low, [00:30:54] Jeff Roster: but, um, but no, I, so, so, we'll, so we'll have to, we'll have to, we'll have to square up, but I'm, I'm thinking [00:31:00] augmented reality, um, we've had it, we've had it in aviation for 20 years. [00:31:03] Ricardo Belmar: Uh, yeah. [00:31:03] Jeff Roster: I, trained in simulator, so pieces are not there. And I'll tell you the other thing that's the most interesting about this thing is not so much what Nike's doing in whatever the virtual reality world I think the best example is what Alta Cosmetics doing. [00:31:18] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:31:18] Jeff Roster: Um, [00:31:19] and [00:31:19] and they've got with Roblox and they've got a lot of young girls with moms playing in what sure sounds like a metaverse thing. So now you're taking it away from the boys playing world at war, and now you've gone, you know, a far bigger thing and there's clearly value there. [00:31:34] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah. And so [00:31:35] Jeff Roster: that, that's when I heard that story. And it's actually even a better to share, but. [00:31:42] that's telling me, okay, now we've, now [00:31:45] Vicki Cantrell: something [00:31:46] Ron Thurston: Yeah, and Altas such a great story because in every way, in every way, because it's accessible. You see it in, you know, the hundreds of locations, you see it all over the country. [00:31:56] You have a very in-store touch feel, experience it as [00:32:00] you want. You have a metaverse digital immersive version of it, and I think that's, that's what great retail is. It's that incredibly immersive way to think about it. However you choose to experience it, [00:32:13] Jeff Roster: go. That's the point where you're not taking this entire heavy vision and you're just taking out the pieces. I mean, you look at like the smart mirrors that they're doing, where they're actually, they've actually invested in a, in an AI startup to be able to analyze skin. It's sort of started off as almost as a medical, uh, strategy. [00:32:29] To determine skin cancers and all of a sudden, hey, well you know what, if we analyze skin, then we can better, you know, this is obviously not my area of expertise, but uh, I paid for a lot of this stuff with a daughter and a wife, , [00:32:39] I mean, that's heavy duty technology to involved in that business. And the other thing why I, I just love having Ulta on, on the pod is they have an investment firm [00:32:51] Vicki Cantrell: Yes. [00:32:51] Jeff Roster: Okay. We're not talking about Walmart or Amazon now, we're talking and, and they're not small retailer. I mean, they're over $8 billion. So they're high, you know, they're not high. They're a [00:33:00] major tier one player, but they've set up an investment firm, so, they can go invest in the startup community for, for technologies that are appropriate to their business. [00:33:07] And they've already made some acquisitions. And now, so, you know, the problem I've always had is an analyst using Walmart. And now Amazon is an example. Everyone says, oh, you know, you're giving permission to people not to pay attention. Oh, I'm not Walmart, I'm not Amazon. you're $2 billion retailer. [00:33:22] You're a $4 billion, you do this. Or if, if you don't understand, somebody else [00:33:27] is [00:33:27] Vicki Cantrell: right. [00:33:27] Jeff Roster: And that's, you know, we're in the business of being in business and so, innovation, how you look at it. That needs to be in a mindset. Now, I'm not saying spend top dollar, but I am saying start thinking about your business differently. [00:33:40] And most importantly, and this goes back to a bus ride, I don't know you remember in Honduras where we talked, started talking about the era of an intentional innovation. [00:33:47] Vicki Cantrell: Uh, that [00:33:48] absolutely right. [00:33:49] Absolutely [00:33:49] Jeff Roster: You know, that was mid, that was more than a few moons ago, uh, I remember you and I were sitting there just kind of going back and forth and I was just expressing my frustration that the fact that retailers never, ever wanted [00:34:00] to talk about the mistakes they made from a technology perspective is, as an analyst. [00:34:03] That was so difficult because that's how we learned. Well, and then you said, you know, Appropriately no one wanted to, you know, seem like they failed. And then, you know, being a Gartner and having colleagues in my direct practice that were in other verticals, when I would share that with them, they'd say, are you crazy? [00:34:18] Our greatest successes in manufacturing were failures in theory. I mean, the 3M example of, uh, of um, uh, yellow, uh, stick notes [00:34:27] that was post-its Yeah. [00:34:28] it. That was like a failed glue experiment that, uh, that a guy that was in a choir wanted to be able to have some kind of a glue that he would stick so he could have his notes for, for singing and, oh, that glue that didn't work was perfect. We're, we're one of the few industries that don't celebrate, or at least didn't celebrate our failures. And that I think needs to change. And so if I can get [00:34:50] retail, senior retail leadership to say, you guys have to push the envelope and you have to be okay. [00:34:56] Break the bank by failing, but fail fast, which is in Silicon [00:35:00] Valley. [00:35:00] We live by [00:35:00] Vicki Cantrell: right? Yeah. [00:35:01] Jeff Roster: Fail fast. [00:35:02] Ron Thurston: Yep, [00:35:02] Vicki Cantrell: you know, it's different now. The mindset is different now. Before there was a fear of that because it always touched the customer, and the customer was delicate. Now, today's customer very different. Today's customer lives, breathes and sleeps and eats with. [00:35:21] Just [00:35:21] mess in, in, in every retail experience, in every restaurant. [00:35:27] You know, life, schools, education, politics, they live in a mess. Okay? So they are going to, and they don't make decisions about where they shop and who they shop with based on whether it was a perf. Perfect [00:35:41] experience, right? [00:35:43] They make it for different reasons. So again, you know, hate to beat a dead horse after 40 years of beating a dead horse, [00:35:51] It starts with the customer and it's not about the customer who's walking in your store. It's about understand the human, what is happening to this [00:36:00] human these days? What is their life like? What is their family like? Understand them. And then apply your brand to it. Not here's my brand. Where do I find a person who will like [00:36:11] that? [00:36:11] Ron Thurston: could not agree more? [00:36:12] Vicki Cantrell: It's never been that way, but nobody, it just, it takes a long time to get that. And now the consumer, as they always do, is forcing. Mm-hmm. that so they are messier. So the retailer can be messier and be forgiven. And when the retailer says I was messy, I'm sorry. [00:36:34] have at it. That's great. [00:36:35] Jeff Roster: Isn't that a better customer experience though? I'll, I'll, I'll [00:36:37] Vicki Cantrell: go. It is. [00:36:38] Jeff Roster: if I, as a, if I as a retailer make a mistake, but then I fix it. Isn't that better? [00:36:43] Vicki Cantrell: Yes. [00:36:44] Jeff Roster: To that customer. Cuz then they, that's one that's, they perceive value in that they perceived honesty cuz it is in fact being honest. [00:36:50] Ron Thurston: Right, right. [00:36:51] Jeff Roster: And you have a, you have a better, I think you have a better experience [00:36:54] Ron Thurston: You do. It's authenticity and I, I would say the customer appreciates it. But so does the store team. The store [00:37:00] team knows when you've done maybe not the right thing. So if the company comes, senior leadership comes back and said, you know what we. [00:37:08] We did make the right decision. We didn't spend money where we should have, and this is what we're gonna do differently. What that creates is retention for the store teams, which is probably another R word, along with [00:37:19] the recession word, which I think will also come up this week. Um, I think employee, employee retention. [00:37:25] I know I'm host, I'm, I'm doing, um, um, a panel tomorrow on that. I think this idea of what do brands need to do to hire, retain, and attract great talent. Yeah. It's, it's another 40 year like dead horse. To your point, Vicky , that you and I have been having this conversation also for many years, but it's, it's actually never been more important. [00:37:48] Yeah. And it's really hard to say that in 2023, it's critical. It's it, it will make or break the future of any brand not retaining their talent. [00:37:59] Vicki Cantrell: It's funny how it has [00:38:00] to do with people [00:38:00] still all still after [00:38:02] Ron Thurston: still. It always comes back too. Yeah. Yeah. Which It's really good, but it's really, but it's messy. [00:38:08] I love Vicky's word because managing humans is messy. Yeah. And it's hard, and which is also why I believe. Many people don't want to talk about it because it's really hard. Yeah, yeah. And it's emotional and there's, that emotion is bigger than ever. So that [00:38:26] the ability to lead people in an inspiring way has never been harder. [00:38:31] Yeah. [00:38:32] Jeff Roster: Yeah. You know what I like about that phrase, messy is, you know, one of the, one of the Metaverse technologies or uh, one of the [00:38:41] Ricardo Belmar: Immersive [00:38:41] immersive commerce [00:38:42] Vicki Cantrell: technologies [00:38:42] Jeff Roster: technologies is live streaming. And now it's a done deal. It's a done deal in China. [00:38:45] It's a done deals Asia PAC, and we just think we're now beginning to experiment with My only worry about that is if we try to over, over produce the live streams and I'll, the example I'll point to is B N H photo, [00:38:59] Ricardo Belmar: [00:39:00] Mm-hmm. [00:39:01] So [00:39:01] Jeff Roster: n h photo, A lot of this equipment is from B&H Photo [00:39:05] Vicki Cantrell: right. I'm sure [00:39:05] Jeff Roster: look around. And so for, for folks who dunno who that is, it's just literally the best, uh, camera shop in the planet, I would argue. [00:39:13] Um, and it's, people are passionate. They're, the salespeople are exactly everyone you would want them to be [00:39:19] Passionate about the product, use the product for our photographers. And so when you go in, you have this amazing experience. Well, I used to, you know, cause I live in California and there there's only one store and it's in right here in Manhattan. [00:39:31] Um, you used to have to call in. , which was okay. And then they started doing text chat, which is actually okay, cuz then they could send links. Well, somebody said, why don't we just put a ca, we're a camera store, put a camera in there, . And the first one I did was like two years or whenever it was. And it was not [00:39:47] a good, I mean it was a good experience, but it was not a fancy, I mean, it was like, This is not a great stream, but the content was crazy and I'm like, this is fantastic. [00:39:57] The guy's showing me this and he's, he's pulling out a [00:40:00] $3,000 camera lens and a 10,000, uh, Kathy, I put that one back. Okay. I didn't buy that one. . And then he brought over a cheaper way and I'm like, I'm like, this is crazy. And then, you know, Michael Zakour comes into your, your, uh, clubhouse and then he starts talking about what's happening in an Asia Pac. [00:40:14] And I said, oh, that's novel idea. Why don't we look east? And then I go, wow, okay. So my only worry about that is if we try to make it too, If we over produce it, I think was the word I was looking for. And just, just let it be authentic. Let it be [00:40:28] Vicki Cantrell: authentic, messy, let it be. Yes. [00:40:31] Jeff Roster: you were the one Vicky at, when you were at Tori Birch, I think you were talking about, were at, at some conference you were talking about like a, a fashion show or something you did where you had nutty response, I mean, crazy responses, right? [00:40:44] Vicki Cantrell: Yes, because we, we did this test where we had such brand advocates. [00:40:49] Okay. [00:40:50] And it was. Path. I can't remember the name of it. But anyway, we went out to our customers and we made them part of the process novel. [00:40:59] Here, [00:41:00] here's here's four buttons. Which one do you like? Okay. And they feel so in the know. Yeah. Look, people again, when I, I, I just bang that drum about, it's about people. It's about people, and it's about community. They belong to a community. People wanna belong. That's what they want. Right? Whatever it is, two people, 10 people, 5,000 people, and they became part of an insider community by being asked their opinion. It was extremely powerful. Yeah. And so, Yeah. [00:41:33] Jeff Roster: I've never, I've never forgotten that story. [00:41:35] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah. [00:41:35] Yeah. It's just [00:41:36] Ricardo Belmar: and just [00:41:37] so I'll add on to that with one interesting point from one of the sessions today, from the, uh, the gmu consumer study that, that, uh, Gotham has been on the show many times. [00:41:45] Uh, [00:41:47] Preview. [00:41:47] Jeff Roster: I haven't him on my show yet. [00:41:48] How [00:41:49] Ricardo Belmar: I don't, well, I don't know [00:41:50] Jeff Roster: oh man, [00:41:51] here [00:41:51] Vicki Cantrell: I can, I [00:41:52] Ricardo Belmar: can yeah, maybe Vicki can pull some strings for you, Jeff, and get 'em on your. But he's, he's [00:41:56] kind of been a [00:41:57] Vicki Cantrell: me. Maybe that would help.[00:42:00] [00:42:00] Ron Thurston: Wow. [00:42:00] Ricardo Belmar: be it. But he, [00:42:02] Jeff Roster: is is full contact [00:42:03] Ron Thurston: likes me too. He gives my book to his students. He likes [00:42:06] Ricardo Belmar: me too! [00:42:06] That's right. [00:42:06] Yeah. . Here you go. So I think you, you've missed the boat on that one. [00:42:10] somehow, Jeff. [00:42:11] Jeff Roster: Yeah. Yeah. [00:42:12] Ricardo Belmar: So, but he did mention, uh, he had one of those points, if you remember, on, on the data he previewed about, [00:42:18] Consumer pain points about having a, a, a store associate that wasn't helpful. It just wasn't around right when they wanted them to be. [00:42:25] Right. That one's, and the reason I bring that one up is because, you know, you, you've been saying this now for, for half of our recorded time, Vicki, about the, that messy connection. Mm-hmm. . Right. And I think, Ron, you may remember, we've talked about this before, with that store associate being the live streamer, because they're the one that has the connection with the customers that shop at that store, which is exactly Jeff's story with B and h. Right? Because you, you know that store , you are a passionate fan of that store. So how could they not get you to buy something through a live stream showing you what it is, what the [00:43:00] product is, when you can't be there in the store to physically touch it? [00:43:03] So I think that, [00:43:03] that, to me [00:43:04] Vicki Cantrell: it doesn't have to be overproduced [00:43:05] Ricardo Belmar: No. [00:43:06] It [00:43:06] just has to be [00:43:06] Jeff Roster: that's, the [00:43:07] Vicki Cantrell: because it's people working with people. [00:43:09] Jeff Roster: and that's the key. And that's, I'm, I'm, I'm, you've gotta tweet out that term messy. If not, I'm stealing it because we need to make that, yeah. The standard. Don't screw this up. Right. Don't overproduce, sorry. Digital media folks, don't overproduce this. [00:43:26] Vicki Cantrell: Perfect Is the enemy of the good? Yes. good. [00:43:29] Jeff Roster: Make it clean, make it authentic. Make it honest. [00:43:33] Ricardo Belmar: And I think the best proof point, and we were all talking about this before. The mics were on, about how many people have we run into on the second day that we're here, that we all felt like we're talking to them for about 10, 15 minutes. [00:43:43] And so suddenly you realize this is the first time we're meeting in person , because we've only ever seen each other on Zoom calls and teams calls, and all these we're always just bit of square on [00:43:52] a screen [00:43:52] But we've done this for so long, now we feel like we have this existing connection [00:43:56] Ron Thurston: it's true. [00:43:57] Ricardo Belmar: And, now we're in person. [00:43:58] But you know, like [00:44:00] Ron, we, we hadn't met in person before. [00:44:01] Ron Thurston: until Last night. Last night. Mm-hmm. . [00:44:03] Ricardo Belmar: So that's, to me is the proof point, right? Yeah. you know, that kind of a, I'll call it sounds negative, but I don't mean it to be low production value livestream because it's authentic and [00:44:15] Vicki Cantrell: Right. [00:44:15] Ricardo Belmar: It's messy [00:44:16] Right, [00:44:16] Vicki Cantrell: right. That's why there's such tremendous buzz. Now that you say that, that's what what I'm thinking, it's a combination of seeing the people you've known forever and being so thrilled. [00:44:25] Mm-hmm. to see that person. And at the same exact time, seeing a bunch of people that you've never seen in real life, only digitally. So you have this like, uh, information overload. [00:44:38] Ron Thurston: right? Yes, it's true. [00:44:39] Vicki Cantrell: I have a, a statement I used to say like, when we were trying to implement systems quickly and let's get it done, I used to say, don't worry, be crappy. [00:44:48] Mm-hmm. . Okay, and so . So now we could say, don't worry, be crappy because it's authentic. [00:44:55] Ron Thurston: That's true. [00:44:56] And [00:44:56] Vicki Cantrell: add the authentic word. Yeah. [00:44:58] Ron Thurston: Authentics a [00:44:58] good word for sure. It's, [00:44:59] [00:45:00] Yeah. [00:45:00] I think the challenge though, with some of that, that I've seen is it's just sometimes one more thing for the store to do. Yeah. So I actually think part of the conversation this week I'd like to hear is, what are you taking out? [00:45:13] Yes. Not what are you adding to? [00:45:15] Because it's, they've been asked to do BOPIS. They've been asked to actually do more returns from web. They've been asked sometimes then to livestream. They've been asked to chat from the website. Mm-hmm. , they've been asked to do many different things in stores. Yeah. What are you taking away so that the store can be that much better? [00:45:32] What can you handle maybe in the office? How do you use staffing in a different way? How do. Hire people just to do livestream. Yeah. You know, so there's a lot of different ways, but adding more because you're in love with the new technology and the store's. Like what the hell? [00:45:48] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah. Sharon made such a good point about that today. [00:45:50] Ron Thurston: She did. She [00:45:51] said [00:45:51] Vicki Cantrell: you just don't realize that you're, that you're kind of piling on. Okay. [00:45:56] And you know, when's relative when you get to, um, [00:46:00] economic hard times and people are being laid off this, one of my least favorite sayings in the world is do more with less. Okay. And I've always said, no, that's not what you transitioned to. [00:46:13] you, do less with less is what you do because there's always something to give up that does not hurt you. You just aren't thinking, you're not having innovation of thought. Okay. You're not looking at those things, those ham theory things that say, oh, why do you do that? Because I've always done it. So do less with less. [00:46:32] Mm-hmm. [00:46:33] Ron Thurston: Mm-hmm. . And if [00:46:33] you have less, maybe your budget is different in 2023. Right. What are your most important priorities Exactly. That are great for your team and great for your customer. And maybe you can't have everything you always dreamed of. Mm-hmm. , maybe this is not the year for it. [00:46:47] Right. And that's okay. , it's okay. Yeah. But you should still come to an NRF show, learn what's happening. To your point, Jeff. Mm-hmm. don't be one of those brands that didn't pay attention and we're seeing the news, those that are not making it right. They didn't [00:47:00] pay attention. So pay attention, but maybe you don't execute everything in 2023. [00:47:05] Right. And I think it's a thought process that I'm not sure all retailers do. I think they come here sometimes looking for that, all the ideas, and then want to execute all of them. You know, [00:47:17] Jeff Roster: Ron, you're the only voice in this industry for the store associate. I, I'm trying to think of, right. [00:47:22] Is there anybody out there that would've just said what you just said, ? And the answer is no. I never would've said it because it it, I mean, I'm not a, I, I mean, I grew up in a store. I, well, I grew up with a World War II combat veteran father who, who would say you will absolutely do more with less. Because I did during the Great Depression, but he's not the most scalable person, so you're the only voice that's really even speaking to that. [00:47:45] And how important is that? What can you take off the plate? Because it's just, it's crazy. [00:47:50] Ron Thurston: crazy. And it, it doesn't always mean that you want to do less. Sometimes you need to do more or just, but I think it's, it, it's that point earlier. [00:48:00] Listen, learn. What does the customer asking for? What does the team need? [00:48:04] And then make a decision based on what you've heard, not the other way around. Right? Don't come to a conference call or to a, a big video call and say, guess what? I went to NRF and we're going into the Metaverse and you have, please don't say it, it's 300 stores on the call going. Okay. I can't even be on this call right now because I need to go ring some customers up, you know? [00:48:25] So I think there's this sometimes like misconception. Yeah. Um, and thank you for saying that, Jeff. I just [00:48:31] think [00:48:32] Jeff Roster: I just, it's just, you're such an important voice out there and you're the only voice out there. [00:48:36] Ron Thurston: Okay. Yeah. [00:48:38] And which is odd to me, you know, as someone just because I, I came from stores, but if 80% of your revenue. [00:48:45] You know, comes from the store. 80% of the conversation should be about stores, in my opinion. Yeah. And it's not, it's not always the sexiest part, and it's the hardest [00:48:54] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:48:55] Jeff Roster: know [00:48:55] what? I have never [00:48:56] thought of that [00:48:57] Vicki Cantrell: before. Yeah, [00:48:58] Ron Thurston: yeah. [00:48:58] Jeff Roster: Because I am willing to [00:49:00] bet in technology, 60 to 70% of the conversations around e-commerce. [00:49:05] Because it's all technology driven. [00:49:07] Ron Thurston: right? Yeah. I heck, [00:49:08] Jeff Roster: don't know how we would analyze [00:49:09] that. Yeah. But I, it's gotta be that case. I've never thought about it in that regards [00:49:12] Ron Thurston: before and most of those people don't come from stores. Right. So I think that there's this sometimes, you know, and I do believe in this, and sure, Vicky would back me up. [00:49:23] Sometimes there's a lack of knowledge about the store because if you don't come from the store, you're uncomfortable in the environment. Yes. You actually don't know what questions to ask [00:49:31] Vicki Cantrell: And you think it's easier than it, than it is. [00:49:33] Ron Thurston: That's exactly right. Right. So I would host often, you know, executive teams, or I would say to the office here in Times Square, I'm gonna be in Madison Avenue every Tuesday morning at nine. [00:49:43] before you come in, meet me at the store to 150 people in the office, right? I'll be there every day. I will answer all of your questions. I will walk you through the store. Uh, you don't have to do anything except listen to the team and I'll lead the conversation. I could buyers, planners, finance [00:50:00] it, everybody. [00:50:01] My, my own store team would come and listen and learn, but I did all the work for them cuz what happens? [00:50:08] people go into stores, they don't actually know what questions [00:50:10] Vicki Cantrell: Not a clue. [00:50:11] Ron Thurston: Right? They [00:50:11] don't know. It's a way like, how's your business? Well read the flash. Like, you don't need me to do that. So I think that there's this almost fear, there's a fear of the store. [00:50:22] Yeah. [00:50:22] Mm-hmm. that I'm personally trying to break down. [00:50:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:50:26] Jeff Roster: Yeah. [00:50:26] Well, you know what's funny about that? So I, I really, a once I left my dad's operation and went off to college, um, I really was never in the store spot. I was in distribution and what do we have every year in distribution? We had a thing called inventory. And guess what we used to get to get, oh, we got all the people from the front office coming to. [00:50:43] Ron Thurston: help us [00:50:44] Jeff Roster: and guess what we did about three days after -Unfix or fix all the help. So I, I was just thinking that, you know, I could really relate to [00:50:53] that. The last thing [00:50:54] you wanna see is, hey, we're from the upfront office, [00:50:56] Ron Thurston: we're here to [00:50:56] help. [00:50:57] No, they, they're very proud that they work in stores on black Friday. [00:51:00] They're exactly, they're very proud of [00:51:01] Vicki Cantrell: Yes. [00:51:01] Ron Thurston: Holding down the [00:51:02] Jeff Roster: turmoil. [00:51:05] Ron Thurston: No, it's true. [00:51:05] Yeah. [00:51:06] Jeff Roster: Let's [00:51:07] put people, uh, in a high stress environment where everyone's on edge. [00:51:11] Oh, it's funny. [00:51:12] Ron Thurston: Yeah. [00:51:12] Jeff Roster: So funny. [00:51:14] Oh, yay. [00:51:15] Yayy. [00:51:15] Ricardo Belmar: Well, [00:51:15] I, I'm gonna throw out one last thing for us to get some opinions on because maybe the, the final piece that I think we are going to hear more about, because the couple of conferences I've been to last year, this came up, uh, and it's been an, a pattern in a trend, and that's retailers doing more B2B kind of services than just selling to consumers to, because it goes right, you know, it's a high margin. Helps with the revenue might not be a lot, certainly not in the kind of com transactional volume you get from your stores, but taking things that you're good at as a retailer, bundling them up, selling it to other retailers. I'm seeing a lot of that. I, I think I, I have to believe we're gonna hear and see a good amount of, of noise about and buzz about that at N R [00:52:00] NRF this week. [00:52:00] Ron Thurston: Hmm. [00:52:01] Vicki Cantrell: I think that, uh, there's a couple themes there that, that play into that. Okay. First of all, it's, this is the best industry in the world and the most resilient, and the most creative, and the most agile because you are dealing with that customer and every day is different. For a retailer, every day is different. [00:52:21] I don't know how else to say it. It's the truth, right? So since every day is different for, uh, a retailer, okay. In this world, nobody is doing anything by themselves. You can't be successful by yourself. This is why I talk about partnerships, right? Because what we've seen is the tech world coming together, spot solutions. [00:52:47] Let me add on to this. I can help you. , look at the partner networks. They've grown and grown and grown like crazy. Right? Right. And and same thing with people thinking more partnership oriented. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . [00:53:00] I've just gotten to the point where no one can do it alone. Yeah. And they shouldn't. Yeah. And I think that is at crux of this is, yeah, look, if I can't build it, let's go find it. [00:53:11] Let's work together. So [00:53:13] Ron Thurston: yeah, I would agree with that. [00:53:15] Jeff Roster: Well, I've always said, I think technology and retail is much more expensive than it needs to be because everything is competitive advantage, so we can't share anything. [00:53:22] So everything has to be custom developed. You don't see that in other [00:53:25] Vicki Cantrell: Nope. Yeah, [00:53:25] Jeff Roster: in manufacturing, they're all, I mean, the CEOs are all [00:53:28] engineers. You're right. [00:53:29] I mean, they just, they just like, okay, if, if we all design a better drill rig, let's just compete on who can get the, you know, raw materials to market. [00:53:37] Let's not compete on, Hey, I've got a, you know, A unique drill thing. I mean, it's just, it's crazy. When I, when I used to try to explain how retail operated inside my Gartner colleagues in other verticals, it was like they would look at us like, you are out of your mind, you're out of your minds. [00:53:55] Ron Thurston: Um, wow. [00:53:56] Jeff Roster: and I get why we are, I mean, in some ways because we, I mean [00:54:00] we are the, the, we saw it in March and April of 2020 how thin the line of civilization is, it's one, it's one grocery, uh, supply chain. And if that supply chain would've crumbled, if, if the truckers would've said, Hey, listen, everyone's cutting and running and we're gonna cut and run too, we'd be, we'd be having a different conversation right now. [00:54:20] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah, [00:54:21] Jeff Roster: Um, but, you know, let's just. Let's just maybe compete on doing better business and not necessarily on, I've designed conveyor some ways, you know, super unique. We'd be a better industry if we would would do that. We'd be, we'd be buying technology at a cheaper rate [00:54:37] Vicki Cantrell: Yes, sure. Yes, yes. [00:54:38] Ron Thurston: And I would argue that we're much more similar than we are different, of course, in many ways. And I think that's also often missed, that everyone thinks that their business is so special. Yeah. And, and they're not, you may you sell something different. [00:54:52] Yeah. But the core of actually how this industry operates is not that different. And I do think we have to be more open to learn. Open to [00:55:00] listen, open to, you're right. Maybe it's, I, I buy it instead of developing it. Right. I don't hire someone or you do it in a popup and I learn how to do it uniquely. But I do think we, we. [00:55:12] There's something, I don't know, Jeff, if you agree, there's something that we feel in this industry for every brand I've worked for, that no one does it as well as we do. [00:55:21] we're the best at it. And therefore I'm not gonna share my secrets. Exactly. And I, I'd like to like break that down a little. [00:55:27] Jeff Roster: They're not secrets though, that's the thing. It's, it's like, you know, it's like, what is it? Um, uh, the emperor has no clothes. I mean, come on. It's, it's [00:55:35] software. The people that benefit from that. And it's a bit heresy cuz these are some of my clients, but it's the consultancies who. Get, get, have gotten away with, you know, mass customization. And so if we could just absorb technology, and by the way, a lot of software companies say, listen, just accept code at base and you know, you, you'll drive the cost down. [00:55:53] We'll be able to refresh what, and, you know, so it's, it's that whole mind shift [00:55:57] Vicki Cantrell: Look, remember, people are always gonna protect their [00:56:00] turf. [00:56:00] Jeff Roster: Hundred percent. [00:56:01] Vicki Cantrell: And when you think, not, not just from a brand perspective, but think about the infrastructure that's inside retail, where you have the heads of departments, okay? and, and when we tried to break down those silos okay. And get the communities to work together, cuz they have to do that to, to, have a great business. [00:56:21] It's, people are very protective about their, whatever it knowledge, [00:56:26] their, their unique knowledge, their power, their salary, their, [00:56:30] you know, it's, it just goes to your core. And again, when you understand the person, you can deal with it in a, in a better way, but, You know, where that comes from is the protection of not what's mine. [00:56:44] And, and then I've seen where each person thinks about it differently. A marketer's gonna be extremely protective. [00:56:51] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. [00:56:51] Vicki Cantrell: a digital person is much more open and free about, so, , how you were raised in the industry is really [00:57:00] affects how you react and how you are seeing all the groups together. [00:57:05] They all have, CIOs have a very different personality. I'm not saying anything up or down, I'm just saying they all have a different [00:57:11] Ricardo Belmar: personal, different [00:57:12] Jeff Roster: That's right, [00:57:13] That's fair [00:57:13] Vicki Cantrell: They all totally valid and why and reason of how they grew up in the industry and now they're all. . Everybody has to work together. So it's, you're getting to the core of humanity. [00:57:26] Ron Thurston: Hmm. Wow. That's deep. . It is [00:57:32] Jeff Roster: and only only day two . [00:57:33] Ron Thurston: That's true. [00:57:34] Ricardo Belmar: And we're just getting started. Yeah. [00:57:36] Jeff Roster: But we're we're just getting started. [00:57:38] Ricardo Belmar: That is probably a good place to wrap it up. What do you think, Jeff? [00:57:41] Jeff Roster: Fantastic [00:57:41] I think so [00:57:42] kick [00:57:42] off I think so. Some of us have a San Francisco 49ers game to go watch [00:57:46] Vicki Cantrell: along. Yes. .Some of us have to go to the next thing. . [00:57:50] Ron Thurston: That's Yes, we [00:57:50] Ricardo Belmar: right. There's a lot of [00:57:51] next things. for the next few days, [00:57:54] Well, [00:57:54] Vicky, Ron, thanks so much for joining Jeff, [00:57:57] and myself to kick off this series. I can't think of two better [00:58:00] people we could have asked to join us for a great retail conversation. [00:58:03] Jeff Roster: yeah [00:58:03] Vicki Cantrell: This was very fun. [00:58:04] Jeff Roster: We need [00:58:04] Ron Thurston: there, yeah, [00:58:05] Jeff Roster: like a little mini Ron podcast studio that we could tow [00:58:09] Ron Thurston: tell [00:58:09] Ricardo Belmar: right? That's [00:58:10] right. [00:58:10] Jeff Roster: Little foot wide Airstream. That would [00:58:12] Ricardo Belmar: the mini air stream to go [00:58:14] Ron Thurston: It's, it's more glamorous than this little conference room, that's for sure [00:58:17] Jeff Roster: tell you gosh, Ron, you [00:58:20] I can't see an Airstream. I, every Airstream I see, I think of you. And there's an Airstream dealership in Morgan Hill too. And I, every time I go by that, I go, Ron over there, good good job, man. [00:58:30] Ron Thurston: Thank you. Just Thank you [00:58:32] . Thank you Thank you very much. [00:58:34] Jeff Roster: well done [00:58:36] Ron Thurston: thank you, Ricardo. [00:58:36] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you. Thanks everybody. Jeff, until the next one. [00:58:39] Jeff Roster: Yeah, day three. [00:58:40] Ricardo Belmar: Let's [00:58:40] day three. Let's [00:58:40] go. [00:58:41] [00:58:48] Show Close [00:58:48] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone. Damn, you didn't oversell that intro. Ricardo. Killer discussion. I didn't even notice how long it was. It just had [00:59:00] me wanting more and wishing I was in the room. [00:59:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, well, like I said, it, it's definitely getting my vote right now for best episode we've ever done. I mean, there, there, there's something to be said for capturing these kind of conversations in person, in a really small room among friends, and just a completely open discussion. [00:59:18] Casey Golden: Well, I hope our listeners and viewers enjoyed that. I know I did. I really wish I had been there, but next time. [00:59:26] Ricardo Belmar: Next time. Yep. And I'm, I'm sure this will not be the last time that you see this group get together for a chat. You can count on that and we'll, we'll, we'll bring them back for, for more in the future. [00:59:36] Casey Golden: So for those of you paying attention, if you caught our other Rethink Retail friend in the background, well, if you've guessed it, Julia, Raymond . You'd be right. Julia was watching through the glass outside the conference room, taking a few pics. I bet she didn't expect you guys would be there so long either. [00:59:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's so true. [01:00:00] That is so true. I'm sure she didn't think it would be quite that long. . Well, Casey, I think this wraps us up for the first part of our N R F Live mini-series. [01:00:09] Casey Golden: Indeed it does. Stay tuned everyone for the rest of the series and be sure to catch the fun not only on the podcast, but also This Week in I nnovation hosted by Jeff Roster. Ricardo, that's a wrap. [01:00:23] If you enjoyed the show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today? Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets. [01:00:46] I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. [01:00:48] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about us and stay connected, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter, at Retail Razor, on LinkedIn, [01:01:00] and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. [01:01:02] I'm your host Ricardo Belmar. [01:01:05] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [01:01:06] [01:01:06] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. In honor of the NRF Big Show we’re kicking off a special podcast cross-over series, #NRFLive, with Jeff Roster’s show This Week In Innovation. This episode is a very special, intimately authentic conversation between four top retail influencers, recorded live, and in-person during the NRF show.


Jeff and host, Ricardo Belmar, join retail legends, Vicki Cantrell, CEO of Vendors in Partnership, LLC, and Ron Thurston, author of Retail Pride and host of the Retail in America podcast and tour. Together our four retail friends chat about the VIP Awards ceremony, RetailROI’s Super Saturday event, what they expect to see during NRF, the impact of innovation in retail, & the latest retail tech buzzwords. Plus, they reach an important conclusion about why retail is, after all, all about the people.


Listen, or watch on YouTube, and join our four friends for the kind of discussion that can only happen when you’re recording live, and in-person in a setting like the NRF Big Show!


News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show was a finalist for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during the NRF Big Show 2023!


News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey



TRANSCRIPT

S2E10a #NRFLive SPECIAL - #TRI Friends Fireside Chat


[00:00:00] Show Intro

[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 of the Retail Razor Show. This is the first of a multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 show from January 13th to 18th, otherwise known as N R F Week. And I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:00:37] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome, retail Razor Show listeners, retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And for this special bonus, welcome N R F fans to our hot take, hashtag N R F Live mini series.

[00:00:59] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Casey, [00:01:00] this is an incredible treat for listeners and viewers. Just like our last episode, our top 10 trends and predictions for 2023, the recordings in this miniseries all happen live and in person. While you know about 35,000 or so of our closest retail friends swarmed New York City,

[00:01:16] Casey Golden: I just loved recording face-to-face when we're just not, these two little squares from the shoulders up on a Zoom screen.

[00:01:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So let's set the stage here for this series. Lot lot's happening. Cuz not only is this a special live and in-person recording series, but it's also a podcast crossover event.

[00:01:35] Casey Golden: Wait really?

[00:01:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yes, really we are crossing over with our fellow Retail Avenger, Jeff Roster and his This Week in Innovation podcast.

[00:01:45] Here's what'll happen. So this episode kicks off our hashtag N R F Live series with what may be my absolute favorite podcast recording of our entire run so far.

[00:01:55] Casey Golden: all time fave like that's saying a lot. I mean, I [00:02:00] adore Jeff, but this is an all time fave.

[00:02:03] Ricardo Belmar: Yes, yes. Really of, of, of all time. Well, at least until the next one, but no

[00:02:10] Casey Golden: All right. Well, with that kind of buildup you'll have to explain a little more so, spill.

[00:02:15] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Okay. So late last year Jeff and I were talking about our N R F plans, comparing how many places we, we overlapped and realized it would be a great opportunity to do a series of interviews of super interesting people at N R F. Friends we don't often see in person and just talk trends. Talk about what's hot at the show, what's coming next in retail.

[00:02:37] So the crossover was born. And we thought, we'll, we'll jointly host these interviews and then we'll just release them all across both the Retail Razor Show and This Week in Innovation

[00:02:45] Casey Golden: Very cool. I'm digging this

[00:02:48] Ricardo Belmar: But wait, there's more

[00:02:50] Casey Golden: in your best announcement voice

[00:02:52] Ricardo Belmar: I'm trying to build up some suspense here

[00:02:54] Casey Golden: We're already on the edge of our seat. 

[00:02:56] Ricardo Belmar: So, so not only is this our first crossover series, but [00:03:00] it's also our first sponsored podcast.

[00:03:03] Casey Golden: Ah, look at our podcast. It's adulting

[00:03:06] Ricardo Belmar: exactly, exactly. We didn't realize just how popular we we've become. So while Jeff and I were making plans around who we tried to interview during N R F, there was one important thing we realized. We actually need a really solid place to sit down and record during N R F, because let's face it, the Javit Center isn't the most conducive to podcast recording

[00:03:26] Casey Golden: It's not the most conducive for much. So I mean, I don't think we could do this while sitting in front of Starbucks either.

[00:03:34] Ricardo Belmar: Right. E Exactly, exactly. But fortunately for us, our, our good friends of the show and avid podcast supporters at Avanade made us a really nice offer to use some space in their lounge area on the fourth floor, just above the expo hall. So fans of our show may have seen a preview photo of this setup on LinkedIn during N R F as we posted a few behind the scenes pics courtesy of the, the marketing team at Avanade

[00:03:56] Casey Golden: Oh, big shout out to the marketing team at Avanade [00:04:00] for their support and for providing such an amazing space. I wish I could have been there for all of these.

[00:04:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, we, we definitely missed you for those. And, and for this episode's recording, we were also fortunate to take advantage of another great spot in one of the conference rooms at the Microsoft Times Square office. Right after this year's retail ROI Super Saturday event had concluded right at the same location.

[00:04:22] So extra fortunate. We happened to run into two very special friends of the show who've been on before. They agreed to sit down with Jeff and me to have an open conversation about our first two days at N r. About what we expected to find, what we might uncover during the show. And to be fair, Jeff and I pitched this as a quick 15 minute recording to them to convince them to do it.

[00:04:42] And of course that turned into a nearly 50 minutes session because guess what happens when you have four retail friends get together? I haven't seen each other in person in so long.

[00:04:51] Casey Golden: Yeah, we just don't stop. I'm thinking it would be very much like a friends' TV show reunion episode. You just [00:05:00] keep going and going because there is just so much happening in the industry right now

[00:05:05] Ricardo Belmar: You, you said it. You said it. So, so we'll be hearing our, our conversation this episode with none other than retail legend, Vicki Cantrell currently c e o at vendors in partnership and organizer of the V I P awards event during N R F plus, Ron Thurston, author of the bestselling book, Retail Pride and Host of the Retail in America Podcast and tour.

[00:05:25] And of course, to top it all off, since we're all RETHINK Retail, top retail influencers for 2023 just announced at the N R F show.

[00:05:34] Casey Golden: Absolutely incredible and I'm so honored to be on the list this year and included, a big congrats all around to everyone for making the cut and sharing their perspective.

[00:05:47] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and fun fact, this might even surprise some listeners and viewers, but Ron and I met in person for the first time at this n r F show.

[00:05:56] You know, absolute, it's a like a pandemic story, right? I mean, as after all [00:06:00] these years that we've known each other. But this was the first time we actually met face to face in person.

[00:06:06] Casey Golden: Wow. I didn't realize that. I actually met Ron during the pandemic in Dominican Republic.

[00:06:12] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right.

[00:06:15] Casey Golden: It's just, that is just an amazing little fun fact. You know, we forget how, how often we work with people that we've actually never been i r l with. 

[00:06:28] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. And you, and you'll hear us talk about that in the recording too, cuz we all had stories that had happened to us just in those first couple of days.

[00:06:35] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean how could we build up this episode any more than we already have? So let's get to it and not keep everyone waiting.

[00:06:44] Ricardo Belmar: Yes, I totally agree.

[00:06:47] Casey Golden: Ah, I wanna point out one more thing.

[00:06:50] Ricardo Belmar: Y you didn't just do that, did you?

[00:06:52] Casey Golden: I did. But first I wanna point out that you've said multiple viewer multiple times now. And I [00:07:00] know we told our listeners they could see us on video and episode one of the season, but we've had some tech technical issues plaguing us all season long. . This is actually the first one we've released this season with video.

[00:07:16] Ricardo Belmar: Good point. Good catch. Casey. Yes, yes. We actually do have video this time. And honestly we have our, our great friends at Rethink Retail. To thank for that Gabriela Bock, one of the producers at Rethink was gracious enough to record our conversation on video. And while what, if you're watching the video, you have to pay attention to just how small a conference room that was.

[00:07:38] I don't know how she managed to stay with us for, for almost the entire time. Carefully walking around the room with video gear and it, it was just an amazing effort. You know, we, we had also told her it was gonna be 15 minutes and she thought, oh great. This is, this will be fun to do and sure enough turns into 50.

[00:07:55] So, you know what, what an amazing effort and thanks so much to, to Gabriella and RETHINK for, for doing that for us.[00:08:00]

[00:08:00] Casey Golden: Well talk about commitment and just incredible continued support. And if you're a careful viewer, you'll also catch another familiar rethink retail face in the background, taking photos. I won't give away who it is yet, but when we come back, we'll let you in on the scoop.

[00:08:17] Ricardo Belmar: Okay, well, a, after this incredibly long intro that we've managed now, maybe our longest yet let's dive in and listen to what Jeff, Vicki, Ron, and myself had to say about the v i p awards, Retail ROI, N R F in general, and just the state of retail today and, and what we expect to, to happen this year.

[00:08:35] And, and you'll see why this is quickly my, my favorite podcast we've ever done.

[00:08:39] Casey Golden: Amazing.

[00:08:39]

[00:08:44] #NRFLive - TRI Friends Fireside Chat

[00:08:44] Ricardo Belmar: Hey everybody. I'm here with Jeff Roster and co-host of this weekend innovation, and you guessed it. This is part of our crossover series between our two podcasts. How you doing, Jeff?

[00:08:55] Jeff Roster: I am doing fantastic. Ricardo, how about yourself

[00:08:58] Ricardo Belmar: I'm doing wonderful. [00:09:00] And part of that I would say is true for you too because we are live and in person at the N R F show, which we haven't been in quite some time.

[00:09:08] three years. 

[00:09:09] Jeff Roster: Well, actually I was here. I was here last

[00:09:12] Ricardo Belmar: you get bonus points for last year. You get bonus points for last

[00:09:16] Jeff Roster: year, okay. The re the Startup community came strong last year

[00:09:18] Ricardo Belmar: That's true. That's very true. You can, we'll, we'll leave that one there and then on that one there. And we are joined by two incredibly wonderful people in the retail industry.

[00:09:28] Vicki Cantrell, how you doing? Vicki? And Ron Thurston.

[00:09:33] Ron Thurston: Hi everyone. Happy to be here.

[00:09:35] Ricardo Belmar: So we thought we would just kind of kick things off by talking a little bit about the first couple of events that have started N r F week this year starting with Vicki, with your event. Last night as of when we were recording this, the vendors in partnership awards ceremony.

[00:09:49] Why don't you give us a, a quick recap of some of the highlights.

[00:09:52] Vicki Cantrell: Oh, I'd love to. It was really an amazing night. Um, we, uh, I started this thing three years ago [00:10:00] and last night I think we kind of crossed a threshold because the message that I have dreamed about is really taking hold.

[00:10:07] And it's about how we do business, not who does business with who. And really about problem solving, not solution selling, and. The things that really resonated with me last night and the things that people come up and say to me have to do with the fact that I say that, you know, people buy from people, they don't buy from companies.

[00:10:30] Um, the gratitude that people had when they had to kind of put together their nominations and they realize. They took a breath and said how far they've come and they were able to recognize their teams. These are all the relationship aspects, um, that flowed through the night. Aside from that, it was a beautiful night, beautiful venue.

[00:10:51] So much love in the room. We sold out. 

[00:10:54] Jeff Roster: congratulations. 

[00:10:55] Thank you.

[00:10:56] Ricardo Belmar: a big achievement. Yeah.

[00:10:57] Jeff Roster: I kind of liked it when I could move around a little bit. 

[00:10:59] Vicki Cantrell: I know [00:11:00] you do.

[00:11:00] Jeff Roster: so you know,

[00:11:02] Ron Thurston: there were people here today are

[00:11:03] Jeff Roster: quite as easy moving around this, time,

[00:11:07] Vicki Cantrell: but uh, yeah, so, uh, we're really thrilled with the evening and, uh, a lot of great buzz and I just believe, I always thought I was pushing a rock uphill to take away this, this aspect of buyer, seller.

[00:11:21] Yeah. But you know, it's that rock is moving. And so I'm thrilled.

[00:11:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I, I, I like the way you put it because I really feel like your event, uh, so nicely demonstrate that it is a relationship.

[00:11:35] It's not just buyer seller. Right. Right. It's a partnership between what we're all collectively trying to 

[00:11:40] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah. Yeah. Everybody in the room is equals and that's what makes this the most special party. And, and people are not tired. You know, they're, this is their celebration. This is the celebration for the people that actually run this show and, uh, are gonna go through a grueling four [00:12:00] or five days that's gonna make or break their year.

[00:12:03] Right. And why not. Let's celebrate for what they bring to the industry and what they allow us all to do.

[00:12:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. I'm well said. Well said. Ron, what's your impression so far at like, I, I guess I would call this day two of nrf,

[00:12:18] Jeff Roster: It's day two for us. I don't know about anybody

[00:12:20] Vicki Cantrell: for sure.

[00:12:21] Ron Thurston: a good one

[00:12:21] Ricardo Belmar: for everybody, but for us,

[00:12:22] Ron Thurston: you know, I had the, I had the, I've known Vicki for I think 15 years, so we go way back Tor Tory Birch years.

[00:12:30] Um, and Vicky was generous enough last year to invite me to give out an award to retailer's favorite and this year I was nominated. So it was great to just be there and to be, even though I'm not a vendor, I feel like I know so many of the vendors. I've been a retailer, I have so many friends in the room.

[00:12:48] It's just a joy. It's a joy to be there. And, and you're right, I think it's early. Everyone dresses up. Yes. You know, by Tuesday I have this feeling, you know, we'll, I'll be wearing jeans and

[00:12:58] Vicki Cantrell: Right. It's sneakers. [00:13:00] Hundred

[00:13:00] Ron Thurston: don't care anymore. But, um, it's a beautiful. Beautiful. 

[00:13:05] Vicki Cantrell: my feet are already cooked, but, and I'm only on day one and this is a, this I have not factored in, so I, I gotta,

[00:13:12] Ricardo Belmar: We're, we're all still learning

[00:13:13] Jeff Roster: No sensible shoes then,

[00:13:15] huh?

[00:13:15] Vicki Cantrell: I have some

[00:13:18] Ricardo Belmar: you, you can't get enough sensible shoes, I

[00:13:20] Vicki Cantrell: That's true. 

[00:13:20] Ricardo Belmar: Takeaway I have from that Yeah. No. No matter how much you try. So we're also all here on day two at one of my other favorite events of the week. RetailROI's Super Saturday. Uh, I was excited to be able to hosted this event at the Microsoft office in Times Square.

[00:13:37] Um, Jeff, I think you wanna, sh you had some stats you'd like to share maybe on how we did

[00:13:42] Jeff Roster: Well,

[00:13:43] very well.

[00:13:46] Ricardo Belmar: that's,

[00:13:46] Jeff Roster: that's analyst speak for, Hmm. I think we were well over $320,000. It's, it was the,

[00:13:52] Vicki Cantrell: the

[00:13:53] closer to three 

[00:13:54] Jeff Roster: Three 50. It was the second biggest year revenue wise. Um, the other [00:14:00] observations, uh, crazy energy. So I would agree with, um, you know, as, as, as somebody that was at, uh, Vicki's event, the energy was off the charts. That was the big speculation, um, that I was testing. You know, the, in the, the run up to N RF series I was doing is, what do you expect?

[00:14:14] You know, and we were talking about make sure you have, you know, masks and, and all this and be sensitive to who people, you know, whatever. And that's, that's all that advice is all still. But, uh, I think, I think people are ready to rock and roll and the energy's off

[00:14:27] Ricardo Belmar: The energy's there, right.

[00:14:28] Jeff Roster: they're definitely wanna be sensitive if people are still have, have whatever issues, but, uh, solid energy.

[00:14:33] We kind of got a sense of that. Maybe Wednesday, Thursday you could just start, I could start seeing the emails confirmed for, uh, v I p and definitely, definitely today for sure. This is day two and tons of energy. People wanna, you know, re reconnect. Um, I dunno about you guys, but, um, I've bumped into at least 10 people that I've known virtually

[00:14:58] Right. For years now, who I [00:15:00] believe I have a legitimate relationship and I'm like,

[00:15:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, no, that, that's

[00:15:05] Vicki Cantrell: that's so true.

[00:15:06] Ricardo Belmar: so, right Ron, Ron and I have now, I don't know, known each other I,

[00:15:11] Ron Thurston: couple years.

[00:15:12] Couple years now. Yeah.

[00:15:13] Ricardo Belmar: we, this was the first day we finally got to meet in person.

[00:15:15] Ron Thurston: true. It's really true. 

[00:15:17] Vicki Cantrell: So I'm shocked because as, as well as Zoom does things, people look different in person,

[00:15:25] And like somebody walked in who I've had probably 15 zooms with and choose about a foot taller than I expected. She walked in and I thought, and so you don't recognize, you know, it's, it's really something. There's gonna be a lot of that this, this

[00:15:40] Ron Thurston: there will be

[00:15:41] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah.

[00:15:42] Ricardo Belmar: no, no doubt. No doubt.

[00:15:45] So what's

[00:15:47] everyone thinking now that we've, we've kind of had a taste of the energy after a couple of events. The, the full-blown show starts tomorrow. So what is everyone thinking? The vibe is gonna be on the show floor.

[00:15:59] Ron Thurston: Mm-hmm.[00:16:00]

[00:16:01] Vicki Cantrell: I would say that, um, because of this energy and, and what I'm hearing just in a few conversations of today and yesterday is, uh, and people are actually saying that, you know, the pandemic, so we're ready to get back out there.

[00:16:16] They're using this kind of language and this is solution providers, and for them that means get back out there. I wanna go to events, I wanna pick and choose different types of events. I. You know, more involved in different types of things. And today we heard about two different vendors who are now heavily involved and didn't know anything about roi.

[00:16:38] So when you, when you think about a little bit, right? You said that, oh yes, but, but you know, you just, because they are now. Wanting to be involved in new things, new ways, get back out there. I would say the watch phrase is get back out there and that's what we're gonna see on the floor that people are gonna be looking to [00:17:00] like, am I up to date on technology?

[00:17:02] Let me stop at all these booths to really feel like I'm connected again. Yeah, that's what I think. 

[00:17:08] Ron Thurston: And I think because there's been so much conversation about all the new ideas and all the new technology, yeah.

[00:17:14] You actually need to touch and feel it. Yeah. Similar to shopping in a retail store, I think I'm excited to go down, you know, innovation. Lane and what are all these brands bringing? What are, what's happening? What are some big new ideas? Yeah, and you know, a lot of retailers, and I'm sure we'll speak about the Rethink retail bash coming up, but the minute I posted of, you know, hey, rethink retail is having this, the amount of responses that I received of like, I'd love to go, I'd love to go.

[00:17:41] Yes. The willingness and desire to reconnect is powerful.

[00:17:46] Ricardo Belmar: Powerful, yeah. Yeah, that's

[00:17:47] right. That's right. So, well since you brought up the, the rethink retail that we're, I think we're all going to be at, uh, Monday night. What, what other, so day one, official day one, I'll call it right. For NRF Sunday [00:18:00] tomorrow.

[00:18:00] That's on day two. Um, anything else anyone is excited to be going to, of the remaining

[00:18:07] Vicki Cantrell: I'm sorry, but I can't not talk about rock and roll retail. I, I mean Yep.

[00:18:14] Ricardo Belmar: I'm with you on that one.

[00:18:15] Vicki Cantrell: That's, that's the other thing where retailers are so embedded in different fun areas of life. Yeah. Okay. Yes. They do charity work.

[00:18:24] They go on trips. Mm-hmm. , they play music. They make a band, they

[00:18:29] Ron Thurston: and it

[00:18:30] Ricardo Belmar: comes together

[00:18:30] Vicki Cantrell: together here, and it all comes together here.

[00:18:32] Ron Thurston: Wow. So fun.

[00:18:34] Ricardo Belmar: for that one too. That's another, another Monday, late evening. Oh my god. Activity.

[00:18:39] Vicki Cantrell: Yes. And then of course the Retail Retailer Insiders

[00:18:43] Ron Thurston: was just gonna say that one too. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be my first year attending that.

[00:18:47] It'll be fun. You ready? Get ready. That's, that's all 9:00 PM on a Sunday night. A lot of

[00:18:51] Jeff Roster: tie at that one. That's a little more raucous for sure. Um, very good. Um, lot of people, um, you know, so it's, the [00:19:00] energy is clearly here.

[00:19:01] There's no doubt about it. The um, As ugly and hideous as Covid was, it clearly was a stimulant to, to innovation. I mean, we tracked that on this week. I think you did it on retail razor too. The, the, you know, I mean the number of BOPIS uh, setups were just off the charts, right? We now realize low code's, a real unique strategic advantage, uh, be able to move faster, more nimbler.

[00:19:20] And so I think what we're gonna see is. I don't wanna say an explosion of innovation, cuz I would argue, I mean I've been tracking it for 20 years. It's, it's, I, I, I don't think things just explode, but they accelerate and the ability to innovate. And the fact that startups three or four or five years ago really weren't even, I mean, Vicky, when you were there, I mean you were just starting to bring the startups in.

[00:19:42] They were always there. They were. I mean, I live in Silicon Valley. We've been doing startups really since Hewlett and Packard got together in 1938. So we're not new to startup. , but all of a sudden the industry has said, this is this giant opportunity to, to um, showcase this in this innovation has always been [00:20:00] going on.

[00:20:00] That's why, you know, the big companies have, are, have been, uh, making acquisitions, but now we're, we're featuring these people and this is the, I mean, the heart of of businesses. These and some young entrepreneurs, a lot, not so young entrepreneurs, but that energy and they're being featured now and it's just.

[00:20:19] And it's just gonna be, I think it's gonna be a celebration of innovation, is maybe the way I'm gonna 

[00:20:24] Vicki Cantrell: it, Jeff, you know, I also wanna say something about innovation. That that overused word. Okay. And because when you say innovation, everybody thinks tech innovation. Mm-hmm. . Okay. But what the last few years have shown us is that innovation is across the board, innovation on how you speak to each other, innovation on how you.

[00:20:45] teams work together. Innovation on how you approach something. By the way, you wouldn't, low-code wouldn't have such a, a presence if there was an innovation in how you do things, not just the tech. [00:21:00] And so people have really changed how they do business and that requires innovation of thought and innovation of mm-hmm.

[00:21:10] how you use your people.

[00:21:11] Ron Thurston: and Agreed.

[00:21:12] Vicki Cantrell: You know, because retailers have to be like super agile.

[00:21:16] Ron Thurston: Yeah. And, and it's only as effective as the adoption normally, which has to happen in a store.

[00:21:23] Vicki Cantrell: Oh boy. Isn't that the truth? 

[00:21:24] Ron Thurston: That's the truth.

[00:21:25] Vicki Cantrell: That's it, 

[00:21:26] Ron Thurston: there's so much 

[00:21:27] new, there's a lot of, I'll say this, there's a lot of people who develop technology that have never worked in retail. And so there's Yes. I know it's a bold statement, you know, just gonna say it, know, 

[00:21:40] Jeff Roster: We've got story. We got a whole podcast where, where we could talk, tell stories. Central office. No, it's not a central office. It's called a store. Please change that on your slide deck. I catch a lot of that. And you still see it at this store

[00:21:53] Ron Thurston: You do. I mean, it's the 50% want to quit their job working in retail stat. I

[00:21:58] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, right. Yeah.

[00:21:59] Ron Thurston: it's those, [00:22:00] and so I think there's this whole concept again of what does the store need.

[00:22:05] Ask the store. Right, right. Before you go and develop technology. Right. And there are, um, there's a solution that will be in the innovation aisle this year called Reflex, and they're doing on demand staffing. Yes. And so this is an actual need that is. In integral to the success of our industry. Yeah. To say that we need on-demand gig economy, style retail workforce, right?

[00:22:29] Because the workforce is demanding it. They're demanding flexibility. So here's someone that's innovating this idea. Yes. And coming up with new technology. So don't just create something because you think it's a good idea. ask the people who need this technology and how they'll use it. So why I'm such a big Yoobic fan who were, you know, also nominated last night.

[00:22:50] Yeah. They, they really listen to what the stores need. Yep. Stores and restaurants need, and it's, that's why the adoption's so high.

[00:22:59] Jeff Roster: I'll [00:23:00] tell you a little secret. Um, there's a bunch of CIOs that the first question they ask a tech vendor is, tell me what you think of my store? 

[00:23:07] Ron Thurston: That's a great question. 

[00:23:08] Vicki Cantrell: Yes. 

[00:23:08] Jeff Roster: want, you want to know

[00:23:09] Ron Thurston: who

[00:23:09] Jeff Roster: many vendors could wash out right up there? 

[00:23:11] Vicki Cantrell: Yep. 

[00:23:11] Jeff Roster: A

[00:23:11] lot. A lot.. 

[00:23:12] Ricardo Belmar: So these people 

[00:23:13] Vicki Cantrell: have so basic,

[00:23:14] hundreds, 

[00:23:14] Jeff Roster: if not thousands of dollars to maybe fly travel, prepare for a meeting, and they did not go to the physical store 

[00:23:22] Vicki Cantrell: mm-hmm.

[00:23:22] Jeff Roster: and make some observations.

[00:23:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:23:24] Jeff Roster: and, and it's just like, you know, it's just like a crocodile, just ready to pounce cuz the, you know, the cio Just first question, tell me what you think and, and it's not a trick question. No, I was in your store. It seemed busy, it seemed cluttered, it seemed really good. I liked the lighting. I did, I, it, it's easy,

[00:23:41] Ron Thurston: Yeah.

[00:23:41] Jeff Roster: you got to, you're telling me you're gonna try to do and you don't know their business and that's the point you're making and that's valuable 

[00:23:48] Ron Thurston: really valuable. I, I asked that question often of management candidates, you know, and my office was right here in Times Square. There were six intermix stores in the city. Tell me the story you're in. Yeah. And [00:24:00] the the question could end. Yeah. You know, very quickly. Yeah. And so you're right.

[00:24:04] Yeah. It's like, do your homework, learn what's necessary, learn what's important, and then help. Right. You know, help us be better because of it.

[00:24:14] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think that question is so powerful as to your point, RO I've used that myself being on the vendor side in a meeting with a group of retail executives, or I've asked them, well, More from a wanting to learn perspective. I said, well, tell me about your store. Tell me the last time you were in a store and what you thought were the biggest challenges.

[00:24:33] And I was always surprised. Half the time I asked that question, I couldn't get an answer because I was, had a room full of people who couldn't remember the last time they had walked to their own stores. So I think that's one, to me, it was one of the most simplest basic things that everybody in the industry can do is just, you know, Go visit the store.

[00:24:50] Yes.

[00:24:51] See what's going on. Ask the people that are there,

[00:24:53] what's 

[00:24:54] Vicki Cantrell: wrong. So simple. Right.

[00:24:55] So simple. so simple. 

[00:24:56] Ron Thurston: simple. You know,

[00:24:57] Ricardo Belmar: know? Well, we, we heard some examples today, right?

[00:24:59] Vicki Cantrell: [00:25:00] Right. Sharon Sessions from From

[00:25:01] Ricardo Belmar: Sharon. Yeah, true. From the Undercover, undercover 

[00:25:04] Vicki Cantrell: Boss

[00:25:04] Get to the source. It's that simple. , 

[00:25:08] Ron Thurston: and

[00:25:08] maybe it's not in New York City, you know, go, you know, as I have traveled across the country this year, I, I would be confident to say a lot of those stores in the, the heartland of this country have never been visited by an executive can guarantee it.

[00:25:24] Yes. And so maybe get out of la, New York. Right. And go visits the flagship store, the low volume. Yeah. Not just flag low volume, you know. 

[00:25:34] And look for those opportunities Yeah. That are available just by asking questions. 

[00:25:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:25:40] Vicki Cantrell: Yep.

[00:25:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think there'll be a lot of those questions hopefully be asked over the next few.

[00:25:45] days.

[00:25:45] Ron Thurston: Yeah,

[00:25:46] so too.

[00:25:47] Jeff Roster: So what do you think the big buzzwords for the show are gonna be? 

[00:25:51] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, that's a great question, Jeff.

[00:25:53] You know, every nrf I I come to, it seems in recent years though, always start with, I'm sure this is the year every vendor's gonna [00:26:00] talk about ai. Mm-hmm. I, I still kind of chuckle a little bit. I forget which year it was, when it seemed like every time I turn around the expo floor, there was a booth with a robot in it and then, and now I want to kind of walk through and say, where did all the robots go? Yeah.

[00:26:11] Jeff Roster: they're working, they're in the stores. Apparently working. I guess maybe,

[00:26:14] Ricardo Belmar: I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I, I'm actually kind of interested to see what the buzzy words are going to be this time. You know, we we're kind of coming out of a year where the first half of the year, the big buzz was all about Metaverse.

[00:26:27] Mm-hmm. . I don't, I don't expect that to be the one. I think there'll be some, I mean, I, I still expect to see some web three discussion maybe.

[00:26:34] Ron Thurston: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:34] Ricardo Belmar: I think there's definitely gonna be a lot of, 

[00:26:36] maybe new applications. I'll, I'll put it that way, to ai you know, certainly things talking about pricing, I think that's a.

[00:26:44] Vicki Cantrell: seems to be a lot of conversation around pricing.

[00:26:46] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

[00:26:48] Ricardo Belmar: I expect to hear a lot about returns management. Yeah. Just given where we're at, you know, that being a, a solution

[00:26:54] Jeff Roster: I agree a hundred percent. 

[00:26:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Um, yeah.

[00:26:57] Jeff Roster: just because it's so [00:27:00] unsexy. but it's, you know, returns are where profits go to die.

[00:27:05] And yet, if we're gonna talk about being sustainable, I mean the, probably the least sustainable process on the planet is returns.

[00:27:11] Ron Thurston: Agreed. 

[00:27:11] Ricardo Belmar: Right, 

[00:27:11] Jeff Roster: Just

[00:27:12] you ship you ship thing 8,000 miles or however you process it, you got it out. and it's coming back and it's coming back in a far be worse condition than it left.

[00:27:21] And it is a mess. And you're touching it again and every time you touch, you're hanging another dollar on that thing. Yeah. So if we can figure out how, and, and there were some great conversations today, like, you know, maybe we need to deselect some customers and I, you know, if we're gonna be serious about being sustainable.

[00:27:37] Yeah. Why are you returning so much? Is it an issue with sizing? Which it clearly is. technology. Uh, solutions. They're, they're starting to become some, you know, AI models and, and 3D models and all that stuff. I mean, there's a lot of things that we can look at, but if somehow we can say, how do we, you know, how do we not return 50% or 60% of stuff?

[00:27:57] That's a huge 

[00:27:59] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's A huge one. [00:28:00] Yeah. 

[00:28:00] Jeff Roster: Um, so I love that. So, re returns, I, I'm, How might debate with you a little bit on Metaverse. We'll have to settle up afterwards, but I'm much more of a fan of immersive commerce, which our friend Michael Zakour has, has 

[00:28:11] Vicki Cantrell: that. Yeah. So we

[00:28:12] Jeff Roster: can, we can talk about, uh, we can talk about augmented reality and not talk about, you know, getting

[00:28:17] Ricardo Belmar: virtual

[00:28:18] Jeff Roster: you know, 

[00:28:18] Ricardo Belmar: part. Well, I'll, I'll tell you. I, I will. Concede one point on, on 

[00:28:23] Jeff Roster: one 

[00:28:23] I'm getting one, 

[00:28:24] Ricardo Belmar: oh, you'll get one today. . Ask me again at the end, at the end 

[00:28:27] Jeff Roster: I will 

[00:28:27] Ricardo Belmar: You'll, I know you will, I know you'll keep, you'll hold me to that

[00:28:30] I, I would say the, the one, because I know there are sessions about this, so that, that's why I'm gonna bring it up. And I've already talked to some folks about it and I know I see it with our customers, with the partners I work with. One really strong use case for Metaverse is digital. Um, especially with, uh, the consumer goods brands that we work with there, there's lots and lots of interest in that because you can just have, if you're building the digital twin, right, you have your entire operations modeled that you can play around with.

[00:28:58] Come up with new operations, [00:29:00] new products, without ever having to touch anything physical and incur the cost for that. And you'll know upfront, now I built it in that digital twin. Now I know what the outcome's gonna be before I build version So I think.

[00:29:10] Ron Thurston: that's

[00:29:11] Ricardo Belmar: In my mind the most valid use case today,

[00:29:14] today.

[00:29:15] Cuz I know you're looking at me, Jeff, and, and you're thinking there's more to it than that.

[00:29:18] Jeff Roster: Oh, I'm waiting. I'm,

[00:29:18] Ricardo Belmar: I know, I know. You're, you're finding, I know you're waiting the pounce on me for that one, but I'm gonna say that's today's use case for metaverse. All the other ones I think, I don't know if it's this year.

[00:29:28] I think they'll come. I'll, I'll agree with you on that one. It it's coming, but I don't know that it's, this year.

[00:29:32] Vicki Cantrell: This has, this is in that same category of how much you have to pay attention. You have to be paying attention. But c, come where we are economically and where we are, it's going to be, I'm going to pay attention and I'm, but I'm also understand that no bright, shiny objects.

[00:29:51] Right. Okay. And that's where it is still, you know, it's still that,

[00:29:55] Ricardo Belmar: but you get some of the

[00:29:56] core core pieces.

[00:29:57] I think that to me is the, the key for some of these. And that's why I [00:30:00] keep bringing up the digital twin

[00:30:01] Vicki Cantrell: Well, just like ai, 

[00:30:02] the same core pieces,

[00:30:02] you need 

[00:30:03] Ricardo Belmar: pieces, right? 

[00:30:04] Vicki Cantrell: You 

[00:30:04] Ricardo Belmar: need that

[00:30:04] fundamental

[00:30:05] Jeff Roster: And that's why 

[00:30:06] Ricardo Belmar: so you can build on, that's 

[00:30:07] Jeff Roster: why immersive commerce is a superior word to Metaverse cuz you can get those pieces and you can kind of loop it. Cuz we, as analysts, we have to have something to hang that framework on. Cause we gotta study, we gotta survey it, we gotta forecast it.

[00:30:19] You ain't forecasting Metaverse? Cause that's nonsense. 

[00:30:21] Vicki Cantrell: Right? Right. 

[00:30:22] Jeff Roster: Right? Um,

[00:30:22] oh, it's, uh, $22 trillion. Okay. I picked what, it's ridiculous. What's that based on? But immersive commerce, you can break out ai, well you can break out AI's foundation, you can break out virtual reality, augmented reality, all these components.

[00:30:34] And now you can build

[00:30:35] a, you can build a deal. And I think that's probably a far better way for us to talk about it. And there's absolutely zero energy, pro or con around that 

[00:30:44] Vicki Cantrell: Right.

[00:30:45] Jeff Roster: And, uh, you know, unfortunately, I think the guy out in my, part of the, the, you know, states maybe kind of mucked up that word just won't say who

[00:30:53] Ricardo Belmar: just a little low,

[00:30:54] Jeff Roster: but, um, but no, I, so, so, we'll, so we'll have to, we'll have to, we'll have to square up, but I'm, I'm thinking [00:31:00] augmented reality, um, we've had it, we've had it in aviation for 20 years. 

[00:31:03] Ricardo Belmar: Uh, yeah. 

[00:31:03] Jeff Roster: I, trained in simulator, so pieces are not there. And I'll tell you the other thing that's the most interesting about this thing is not so much what Nike's doing in whatever the virtual reality world I think the best example is what Alta Cosmetics doing.

[00:31:18] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:31:18] Jeff Roster: Um,

[00:31:19] and

[00:31:19] and they've got with Roblox and they've got a lot of young girls with moms playing in what sure sounds like a metaverse thing. So now you're taking it away from the boys playing world at war, and now you've gone, you know, a far bigger thing and there's clearly value there.

[00:31:34] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah. And so

[00:31:35] Jeff Roster: that, that's when I heard that story. And it's actually even a better to share, but.

[00:31:42] that's telling me, okay, now we've, now 

[00:31:45] Vicki Cantrell: something 

[00:31:46] Ron Thurston: Yeah, and Altas such a great story because in every way, in every way, because it's accessible. You see it in, you know, the hundreds of locations, you see it all over the country.

[00:31:56] You have a very in-store touch feel, experience it as [00:32:00] you want. You have a metaverse digital immersive version of it, and I think that's, that's what great retail is. It's that incredibly immersive way to think about it. However you choose to experience it, 

[00:32:13] Jeff Roster: go. That's the point where you're not taking this entire heavy vision and you're just taking out the pieces. I mean, you look at like the smart mirrors that they're doing, where they're actually, they've actually invested in a, in an AI startup to be able to analyze skin. It's sort of started off as almost as a medical, uh, strategy.

[00:32:29] To determine skin cancers and all of a sudden, hey, well you know what, if we analyze skin, then we can better, you know, this is obviously not my area of expertise, but uh, I paid for a lot of this stuff with a daughter and a wife, , 

[00:32:39] I mean, that's heavy duty technology to involved in that business. And the other thing why I, I just love having Ulta on, on the pod is they have an investment firm 

[00:32:51] Vicki Cantrell: Yes.

[00:32:51] Jeff Roster: Okay. We're not talking about Walmart or Amazon now, we're talking and, and they're not small retailer. I mean, they're over $8 billion. So they're high, you know, they're not high. They're a [00:33:00] major tier one player, but they've set up an investment firm, so, they can go invest in the startup community for, for technologies that are appropriate to their business.

[00:33:07] And they've already made some acquisitions. And now, so, you know, the problem I've always had is an analyst using Walmart. And now Amazon is an example. Everyone says, oh, you know, you're giving permission to people not to pay attention. Oh, I'm not Walmart, I'm not Amazon. you're $2 billion retailer.

[00:33:22] You're a $4 billion, you do this. Or if, if you don't understand, somebody else 

[00:33:27] is 

[00:33:27] Vicki Cantrell: right. 

[00:33:27] Jeff Roster: And that's, you know, we're in the business of being in business and so, innovation, how you look at it. That needs to be in a mindset. Now, I'm not saying spend top dollar, but I am saying start thinking about your business differently.

[00:33:40] And most importantly, and this goes back to a bus ride, I don't know you remember in Honduras where we talked, started talking about the era of an intentional innovation.

[00:33:47] Vicki Cantrell: Uh, that

[00:33:48] absolutely right.

[00:33:49] Absolutely 

[00:33:49] Jeff Roster: You know, that was mid, that was more than a few moons ago, uh, I remember you and I were sitting there just kind of going back and forth and I was just expressing my frustration that the fact that retailers never, ever wanted [00:34:00] to talk about the mistakes they made from a technology perspective is, as an analyst.

[00:34:03] That was so difficult because that's how we learned. Well, and then you said, you know, Appropriately no one wanted to, you know, seem like they failed. And then, you know, being a Gartner and having colleagues in my direct practice that were in other verticals, when I would share that with them, they'd say, are you crazy?

[00:34:18] Our greatest successes in manufacturing were failures in theory. I mean, the 3M example of, uh, of um, uh, yellow, uh, stick notes

[00:34:27] that was post-its Yeah.

[00:34:28] it. That was like a failed glue experiment that, uh, that a guy that was in a choir wanted to be able to have some kind of a glue that he would stick so he could have his notes for, for singing and, oh, that glue that didn't work was perfect. We're, we're one of the few industries that don't celebrate, or at least didn't celebrate our failures. And that I think needs to change. And so if I can get 

[00:34:50] retail, senior retail leadership to say, you guys have to push the envelope and you have to be okay.

[00:34:56] Break the bank by failing, but fail fast, which is in Silicon [00:35:00] Valley.

[00:35:00] We live by

[00:35:00] Vicki Cantrell: right? Yeah.

[00:35:01] Jeff Roster: Fail fast.

[00:35:02] Ron Thurston: Yep, 

[00:35:02] Vicki Cantrell: you know, it's different now. The mindset is different now. Before there was a fear of that because it always touched the customer, and the customer was delicate. Now, today's customer very different. Today's customer lives, breathes and sleeps and eats with.

[00:35:21] Just

[00:35:21] mess in, in, in every retail experience, in every restaurant.

[00:35:27] You know, life, schools, education, politics, they live in a mess. Okay? So they are going to, and they don't make decisions about where they shop and who they shop with based on whether it was a perf. Perfect 

[00:35:41] experience, right? 

[00:35:43] They make it for different reasons. So again, you know, hate to beat a dead horse after 40 years of beating a dead horse,

[00:35:51] It starts with the customer and it's not about the customer who's walking in your store. It's about understand the human, what is happening to this [00:36:00] human these days? What is their life like? What is their family like? Understand them. And then apply your brand to it. Not here's my brand. Where do I find a person who will like 

[00:36:11] that?

[00:36:11] Ron Thurston: could not agree more?

[00:36:12] Vicki Cantrell: It's never been that way, but nobody, it just, it takes a long time to get that. And now the consumer, as they always do, is forcing. Mm-hmm. that so they are messier. So the retailer can be messier and be forgiven. And when the retailer says I was messy, I'm sorry.

[00:36:34] have at it. That's great. 

[00:36:35] Jeff Roster: Isn't that a better customer experience though? I'll, I'll, I'll

[00:36:37] Vicki Cantrell: go. It is. 

[00:36:38] Jeff Roster: if I, as a, if I as a retailer make a mistake, but then I fix it. Isn't that better?

[00:36:43] Vicki Cantrell: Yes.

[00:36:44] Jeff Roster: To that customer. Cuz then they, that's one that's, they perceive value in that they perceived honesty cuz it is in fact being honest. 

[00:36:50] Ron Thurston: Right, right.

[00:36:51] Jeff Roster: And you have a, you have a better, I think you have a better experience

[00:36:54] Ron Thurston: You do. It's authenticity and I, I would say the customer appreciates it. But so does the store team. The store [00:37:00] team knows when you've done maybe not the right thing. So if the company comes, senior leadership comes back and said, you know what we.

[00:37:08] We did make the right decision. We didn't spend money where we should have, and this is what we're gonna do differently. What that creates is retention for the store teams, which is probably another R word, along with

[00:37:19] the recession word, which I think will also come up this week. Um, I think employee, employee retention.

[00:37:25] I know I'm host, I'm, I'm doing, um, um, a panel tomorrow on that. I think this idea of what do brands need to do to hire, retain, and attract great talent. Yeah. It's, it's another 40 year like dead horse. To your point, Vicky , that you and I have been having this conversation also for many years, but it's, it's actually never been more important.

[00:37:48] Yeah. And it's really hard to say that in 2023, it's critical. It's it, it will make or break the future of any brand not retaining their talent.

[00:37:59] Vicki Cantrell: It's funny how it has [00:38:00] to do with people 

[00:38:00] still all still after

[00:38:02] Ron Thurston: still. It always comes back too. Yeah. Yeah. Which It's really good, but it's really, but it's messy.

[00:38:08] I love Vicky's word because managing humans is messy. Yeah. And it's hard, and which is also why I believe. Many people don't want to talk about it because it's really hard. Yeah, yeah. And it's emotional and there's, that emotion is bigger than ever. So that

[00:38:26] the ability to lead people in an inspiring way has never been harder.

[00:38:31] Yeah. 

[00:38:32] Jeff Roster: Yeah. You know what I like about that phrase, messy is, you know, one of the, one of the Metaverse technologies or uh, one of the 

[00:38:41] Ricardo Belmar: Immersive

[00:38:41] immersive commerce

[00:38:42] Vicki Cantrell: technologies

[00:38:42] Jeff Roster: technologies is live streaming. And now it's a done deal. It's a done deal in China.

[00:38:45] It's a done deals Asia PAC, and we just think we're now beginning to experiment with My only worry about that is if we try to over, over produce the live streams and I'll, the example I'll point to is B N H photo,

[00:38:59] Ricardo Belmar: [00:39:00] Mm-hmm.

[00:39:01] So 

[00:39:01] Jeff Roster: n h photo, A lot of this equipment is from B&H Photo 

[00:39:05] Vicki Cantrell: right. I'm sure

[00:39:05] Jeff Roster: look around. And so for, for folks who dunno who that is, it's just literally the best, uh, camera shop in the planet, I would argue.

[00:39:13] Um, and it's, people are passionate. They're, the salespeople are exactly everyone you would want them to be

[00:39:19] Passionate about the product, use the product for our photographers. And so when you go in, you have this amazing experience. Well, I used to, you know, cause I live in California and there there's only one store and it's in right here in Manhattan.

[00:39:31] Um, you used to have to call in. , which was okay. And then they started doing text chat, which is actually okay, cuz then they could send links. Well, somebody said, why don't we just put a ca, we're a camera store, put a camera in there, . And the first one I did was like two years or whenever it was. And it was not 

[00:39:47] a good, I mean it was a good experience, but it was not a fancy, I mean, it was like, This is not a great stream, but the content was crazy and I'm like, this is fantastic.

[00:39:57] The guy's showing me this and he's, he's pulling out a [00:40:00] $3,000 camera lens and a 10,000, uh, Kathy, I put that one back. Okay. I didn't buy that one. . And then he brought over a cheaper way and I'm like, I'm like, this is crazy. And then, you know, Michael Zakour comes into your, your, uh, clubhouse and then he starts talking about what's happening in an Asia Pac.

[00:40:14] And I said, oh, that's novel idea. Why don't we look east? And then I go, wow, okay. So my only worry about that is if we try to make it too, If we over produce it, I think was the word I was looking for. And just, just let it be authentic. Let it be

[00:40:28] Vicki Cantrell: authentic, messy, let it be. Yes.

[00:40:31] Jeff Roster: you were the one Vicky at, when you were at Tori Birch, I think you were talking about, were at, at some conference you were talking about like a, a fashion show or something you did where you had nutty response, I mean, crazy responses, right? 

[00:40:44] Vicki Cantrell: Yes, because we, we did this test where we had such brand advocates. 

[00:40:49] Okay. 

[00:40:50] And it was. Path. I can't remember the name of it. But anyway, we went out to our customers and we made them part of the process novel.

[00:40:59] Here, [00:41:00] here's here's four buttons. Which one do you like? Okay. And they feel so in the know. Yeah. Look, people again, when I, I, I just bang that drum about, it's about people. It's about people, and it's about community. They belong to a community. People wanna belong. That's what they want. Right? Whatever it is, two people, 10 people, 5,000 people, and they became part of an insider community by being asked their opinion. It was extremely powerful. Yeah. And so, Yeah.

[00:41:33] Jeff Roster: I've never, I've never forgotten that story. 

[00:41:35] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah. 

[00:41:35] Yeah. It's just 

[00:41:36] Ricardo Belmar: and just

[00:41:37] so I'll add on to that with one interesting point from one of the sessions today, from the, uh, the gmu consumer study that, that, uh, Gotham has been on the show many times.

[00:41:45] Uh,

[00:41:47] Preview.

[00:41:47] Jeff Roster: I haven't him on my show yet.

[00:41:48] How 

[00:41:49] Ricardo Belmar: I don't, well, I don't know 

[00:41:50] Jeff Roster: oh man,

[00:41:51] here

[00:41:51] Vicki Cantrell: I can, I 

[00:41:52] Ricardo Belmar: can yeah, maybe Vicki can pull some strings for you, Jeff, and get 'em on your. But he's, he's

[00:41:56] kind of been a 

[00:41:57] Vicki Cantrell: me. Maybe that would help.[00:42:00]

[00:42:00] Ron Thurston: Wow.

[00:42:00] Ricardo Belmar: be it. But he, 

[00:42:02] Jeff Roster: is is full contact 

[00:42:03] Ron Thurston: likes me too. He gives my book to his students. He likes 

[00:42:06] Ricardo Belmar: me too! 

[00:42:06] That's right.

[00:42:06] Yeah. . Here you go. So I think you, you've missed the boat on that one.

[00:42:10] somehow, Jeff. 

[00:42:11] Jeff Roster: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:42:12] Ricardo Belmar: So, but he did mention, uh, he had one of those points, if you remember, on, on the data he previewed about,

[00:42:18] Consumer pain points about having a, a, a store associate that wasn't helpful. It just wasn't around right when they wanted them to be.

[00:42:25] Right. That one's, and the reason I bring that one up is because, you know, you, you've been saying this now for, for half of our recorded time, Vicki, about the, that messy connection. Mm-hmm. . Right. And I think, Ron, you may remember, we've talked about this before, with that store associate being the live streamer, because they're the one that has the connection with the customers that shop at that store, which is exactly Jeff's story with B and h. Right? Because you, you know that store , you are a passionate fan of that store. So how could they not get you to buy something through a live stream showing you what it is, what the [00:43:00] product is, when you can't be there in the store to physically touch it?

[00:43:03] So I think that,

[00:43:03] that, to me 

[00:43:04] Vicki Cantrell: it doesn't have to be overproduced

[00:43:05] Ricardo Belmar: No. 

[00:43:06] It

[00:43:06] just has to be 

[00:43:06] Jeff Roster: that's, the

[00:43:07] Vicki Cantrell: because it's people working with people.

[00:43:09] Jeff Roster: and that's the key. And that's, I'm, I'm, I'm, you've gotta tweet out that term messy. If not, I'm stealing it because we need to make that, yeah. The standard. Don't screw this up. Right. Don't overproduce, sorry. Digital media folks, don't overproduce this.

[00:43:26] Vicki Cantrell: Perfect Is the enemy of the good? Yes. good.

[00:43:29] Jeff Roster: Make it clean, make it authentic. Make it honest.

[00:43:33] Ricardo Belmar: And I think the best proof point, and we were all talking about this before. The mics were on, about how many people have we run into on the second day that we're here, that we all felt like we're talking to them for about 10, 15 minutes.

[00:43:43] And so suddenly you realize this is the first time we're meeting in person , because we've only ever seen each other on Zoom calls and teams calls, and all these we're always just bit of square on

[00:43:52] a screen

[00:43:52] But we've done this for so long, now we feel like we have this existing connection 

[00:43:56] Ron Thurston: it's true.

[00:43:57] Ricardo Belmar: And, now we're in person.

[00:43:58] But you know, like [00:44:00] Ron, we, we hadn't met in person before.

[00:44:01] Ron Thurston: until Last night. Last night. Mm-hmm. . 

[00:44:03] Ricardo Belmar: So that's, to me is the proof point, right? Yeah. you know, that kind of a, I'll call it sounds negative, but I don't mean it to be low production value livestream because it's authentic and 

[00:44:15] Vicki Cantrell: Right.

[00:44:15] Ricardo Belmar: It's messy 

[00:44:16] Right, 

[00:44:16] Vicki Cantrell: right. That's why there's such tremendous buzz. Now that you say that, that's what what I'm thinking, it's a combination of seeing the people you've known forever and being so thrilled.

[00:44:25] Mm-hmm. to see that person. And at the same exact time, seeing a bunch of people that you've never seen in real life, only digitally. So you have this like, uh, information overload. 

[00:44:38] Ron Thurston: right? Yes, it's true.

[00:44:39] Vicki Cantrell: I have a, a statement I used to say like, when we were trying to implement systems quickly and let's get it done, I used to say, don't worry, be crappy.

[00:44:48] Mm-hmm. . Okay, and so . So now we could say, don't worry, be crappy because it's authentic.

[00:44:55] Ron Thurston: That's true.

[00:44:56] And

[00:44:56] Vicki Cantrell: add the authentic word. Yeah. 

[00:44:58] Ron Thurston: Authentics a

[00:44:58] good word for sure. It's,

[00:44:59] [00:45:00] Yeah.

[00:45:00] I think the challenge though, with some of that, that I've seen is it's just sometimes one more thing for the store to do. Yeah. So I actually think part of the conversation this week I'd like to hear is, what are you taking out?

[00:45:13] Yes. Not what are you adding to?

[00:45:15] Because it's, they've been asked to do BOPIS. They've been asked to actually do more returns from web. They've been asked sometimes then to livestream. They've been asked to chat from the website. Mm-hmm. , they've been asked to do many different things in stores. Yeah. What are you taking away so that the store can be that much better?

[00:45:32] What can you handle maybe in the office? How do you use staffing in a different way? How do. Hire people just to do livestream. Yeah. You know, so there's a lot of different ways, but adding more because you're in love with the new technology and the store's. Like what the hell?

[00:45:48] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah. Sharon made such a good point about that today.

[00:45:50] Ron Thurston: She did. She 

[00:45:51] said

[00:45:51] Vicki Cantrell: you just don't realize that you're, that you're kind of piling on. Okay. 

[00:45:56] And you know, when's relative when you get to, um, [00:46:00] economic hard times and people are being laid off this, one of my least favorite sayings in the world is do more with less. Okay. And I've always said, no, that's not what you transitioned to.

[00:46:13] you, do less with less is what you do because there's always something to give up that does not hurt you. You just aren't thinking, you're not having innovation of thought. Okay. You're not looking at those things, those ham theory things that say, oh, why do you do that? Because I've always done it. So do less with less.

[00:46:32] Mm-hmm.

[00:46:33] Ron Thurston: Mm-hmm. . And if

[00:46:33] you have less, maybe your budget is different in 2023. Right. What are your most important priorities Exactly. That are great for your team and great for your customer. And maybe you can't have everything you always dreamed of. Mm-hmm. , maybe this is not the year for it.

[00:46:47] Right. And that's okay. , it's okay. Yeah. But you should still come to an NRF show, learn what's happening. To your point, Jeff. Mm-hmm. don't be one of those brands that didn't pay attention and we're seeing the news, those that are not making it right. They didn't [00:47:00] pay attention. So pay attention, but maybe you don't execute everything in 2023.

[00:47:05] Right. And I think it's a thought process that I'm not sure all retailers do. I think they come here sometimes looking for that, all the ideas, and then want to execute all of them. You know, 

[00:47:17] Jeff Roster: Ron, you're the only voice in this industry for the store associate. I, I'm trying to think of, right.

[00:47:22] Is there anybody out there that would've just said what you just said, ? And the answer is no. I never would've said it because it it, I mean, I'm not a, I, I mean, I grew up in a store. I, well, I grew up with a World War II combat veteran father who, who would say you will absolutely do more with less. Because I did during the Great Depression, but he's not the most scalable person, so you're the only voice that's really even speaking to that.

[00:47:45] And how important is that? What can you take off the plate? Because it's just, it's crazy. 

[00:47:50] Ron Thurston: crazy. And it, it doesn't always mean that you want to do less. Sometimes you need to do more or just, but I think it's, it, it's that point earlier. [00:48:00] Listen, learn. What does the customer asking for? What does the team need?

[00:48:04] And then make a decision based on what you've heard, not the other way around. Right? Don't come to a conference call or to a, a big video call and say, guess what? I went to NRF and we're going into the Metaverse and you have, please don't say it, it's 300 stores on the call going. Okay. I can't even be on this call right now because I need to go ring some customers up, you know?

[00:48:25] So I think there's this sometimes like misconception. Yeah. Um, and thank you for saying that, Jeff. I just 

[00:48:31] think 

[00:48:32] Jeff Roster: I just, it's just, you're such an important voice out there and you're the only voice out there. 

[00:48:36] Ron Thurston: Okay. Yeah.

[00:48:38] And which is odd to me, you know, as someone just because I, I came from stores, but if 80% of your revenue.

[00:48:45] You know, comes from the store. 80% of the conversation should be about stores, in my opinion. Yeah. And it's not, it's not always the sexiest part, and it's the hardest 

[00:48:54] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:48:55] Jeff Roster: know 

[00:48:55] what? I have never

[00:48:56] thought of that

[00:48:57] Vicki Cantrell: before. Yeah, 

[00:48:58] Ron Thurston: yeah.

[00:48:58] Jeff Roster: Because I am willing to [00:49:00] bet in technology, 60 to 70% of the conversations around e-commerce.

[00:49:05] Because it's all technology driven.

[00:49:07] Ron Thurston: right? Yeah. I heck,

[00:49:08] Jeff Roster: don't know how we would analyze 

[00:49:09] that. Yeah. But I, it's gotta be that case. I've never thought about it in that regards

[00:49:12] Ron Thurston: before and most of those people don't come from stores. Right. So I think that there's this sometimes, you know, and I do believe in this, and sure, Vicky would back me up.

[00:49:23] Sometimes there's a lack of knowledge about the store because if you don't come from the store, you're uncomfortable in the environment. Yes. You actually don't know what questions to ask

[00:49:31] Vicki Cantrell: And you think it's easier than it, than it is. 

[00:49:33] Ron Thurston: That's exactly right. Right. So I would host often, you know, executive teams, or I would say to the office here in Times Square, I'm gonna be in Madison Avenue every Tuesday morning at nine.

[00:49:43] before you come in, meet me at the store to 150 people in the office, right? I'll be there every day. I will answer all of your questions. I will walk you through the store. Uh, you don't have to do anything except listen to the team and I'll lead the conversation. I could buyers, planners, finance [00:50:00] it, everybody.

[00:50:01] My, my own store team would come and listen and learn, but I did all the work for them cuz what happens?

[00:50:08] people go into stores, they don't actually know what questions

[00:50:10] Vicki Cantrell: Not a clue. 

[00:50:11] Ron Thurston: Right? They

[00:50:11] don't know. It's a way like, how's your business? Well read the flash. Like, you don't need me to do that. So I think that there's this almost fear, there's a fear of the store.

[00:50:22] Yeah. 

[00:50:22] Mm-hmm. that I'm personally trying to break down. 

[00:50:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:50:26] Jeff Roster: Yeah.

[00:50:26] Well, you know what's funny about that? So I, I really, a once I left my dad's operation and went off to college, um, I really was never in the store spot. I was in distribution and what do we have every year in distribution? We had a thing called inventory. And guess what we used to get to get, oh, we got all the people from the front office coming to.

[00:50:43] Ron Thurston: help us 

[00:50:44] Jeff Roster: and guess what we did about three days after -Unfix or fix all the help. So I, I was just thinking that, you know, I could really relate to

[00:50:53] that. The last thing

[00:50:54] you wanna see is, hey, we're from the upfront office, 

[00:50:56] Ron Thurston: we're here to

[00:50:56] help. 

[00:50:57] No, they, they're very proud that they work in stores on black Friday. [00:51:00] They're exactly, they're very proud of

[00:51:01] Vicki Cantrell: Yes.

[00:51:01] Ron Thurston: Holding down the

[00:51:02] Jeff Roster: turmoil. 

[00:51:05] Ron Thurston: No, it's true.

[00:51:05] Yeah.

[00:51:06] Jeff Roster: Let's

[00:51:07] put people, uh, in a high stress environment where everyone's on edge.

[00:51:11] Oh, it's funny. 

[00:51:12] Ron Thurston: Yeah.

[00:51:12] Jeff Roster: So funny.

[00:51:14] Oh, yay.

[00:51:15] Yayy. 

[00:51:15] Ricardo Belmar: Well,

[00:51:15] I, I'm gonna throw out one last thing for us to get some opinions on because maybe the, the final piece that I think we are going to hear more about, because the couple of conferences I've been to last year, this came up, uh, and it's been an, a pattern in a trend, and that's retailers doing more B2B kind of services than just selling to consumers to, because it goes right, you know, it's a high margin. Helps with the revenue might not be a lot, certainly not in the kind of com transactional volume you get from your stores, but taking things that you're good at as a retailer, bundling them up, selling it to other retailers. I'm seeing a lot of that. I, I think I, I have to believe we're gonna hear and see a good amount of, of noise about and buzz about that at N R [00:52:00] NRF this week.

[00:52:00] Ron Thurston: Hmm.

[00:52:01] Vicki Cantrell: I think that, uh, there's a couple themes there that, that play into that. Okay. First of all, it's, this is the best industry in the world and the most resilient, and the most creative, and the most agile because you are dealing with that customer and every day is different. For a retailer, every day is different.

[00:52:21] I don't know how else to say it. It's the truth, right? So since every day is different for, uh, a retailer, okay. In this world, nobody is doing anything by themselves. You can't be successful by yourself. This is why I talk about partnerships, right? Because what we've seen is the tech world coming together, spot solutions.

[00:52:47] Let me add on to this. I can help you. , look at the partner networks. They've grown and grown and grown like crazy. Right? Right. And and same thing with people thinking more partnership oriented. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . [00:53:00] I've just gotten to the point where no one can do it alone. Yeah. And they shouldn't. Yeah. And I think that is at crux of this is, yeah, look, if I can't build it, let's go find it.

[00:53:11] Let's work together. So

[00:53:13] Ron Thurston: yeah, I would agree with that.

[00:53:15] Jeff Roster: Well, I've always said, I think technology and retail is much more expensive than it needs to be because everything is competitive advantage, so we can't share anything.

[00:53:22] So everything has to be custom developed. You don't see that in other 

[00:53:25] Vicki Cantrell: Nope. Yeah, 

[00:53:25] Jeff Roster: in manufacturing, they're all, I mean, the CEOs are all 

[00:53:28] engineers. You're right. 

[00:53:29] I mean, they just, they just like, okay, if, if we all design a better drill rig, let's just compete on who can get the, you know, raw materials to market.

[00:53:37] Let's not compete on, Hey, I've got a, you know, A unique drill thing. I mean, it's just, it's crazy. When I, when I used to try to explain how retail operated inside my Gartner colleagues in other verticals, it was like they would look at us like, you are out of your mind, you're out of your minds. 

[00:53:55] Ron Thurston: Um, wow.

[00:53:56] Jeff Roster: and I get why we are, I mean, in some ways because we, I mean [00:54:00] we are the, the, we saw it in March and April of 2020 how thin the line of civilization is, it's one, it's one grocery, uh, supply chain. And if that supply chain would've crumbled, if, if the truckers would've said, Hey, listen, everyone's cutting and running and we're gonna cut and run too, we'd be, we'd be having a different conversation right now.

[00:54:20] Vicki Cantrell: Yeah, 

[00:54:21] Jeff Roster: Um, but, you know, let's just. Let's just maybe compete on doing better business and not necessarily on, I've designed conveyor some ways, you know, super unique. We'd be a better industry if we would would do that. We'd be, we'd be buying technology at a cheaper rate

[00:54:37] Vicki Cantrell: Yes, sure. Yes, yes.

[00:54:38] Ron Thurston: And I would argue that we're much more similar than we are different, of course, in many ways. And I think that's also often missed, that everyone thinks that their business is so special. Yeah. And, and they're not, you may you sell something different.

[00:54:52] Yeah. But the core of actually how this industry operates is not that different. And I do think we have to be more open to learn. Open to [00:55:00] listen, open to, you're right. Maybe it's, I, I buy it instead of developing it. Right. I don't hire someone or you do it in a popup and I learn how to do it uniquely. But I do think we, we.

[00:55:12] There's something, I don't know, Jeff, if you agree, there's something that we feel in this industry for every brand I've worked for, that no one does it as well as we do. 

[00:55:21] we're the best at it. And therefore I'm not gonna share my secrets. Exactly. And I, I'd like to like break that down a little.

[00:55:27] Jeff Roster: They're not secrets though, that's the thing. It's, it's like, you know, it's like, what is it? Um, uh, the emperor has no clothes. I mean, come on. It's, it's

[00:55:35] software. The people that benefit from that. And it's a bit heresy cuz these are some of my clients, but it's the consultancies who. Get, get, have gotten away with, you know, mass customization. And so if we could just absorb technology, and by the way, a lot of software companies say, listen, just accept code at base and you know, you, you'll drive the cost down.

[00:55:53] We'll be able to refresh what, and, you know, so it's, it's that whole mind shift

[00:55:57] Vicki Cantrell: Look, remember, people are always gonna protect their [00:56:00] turf.

[00:56:00] Jeff Roster: Hundred percent. 

[00:56:01] Vicki Cantrell: And when you think, not, not just from a brand perspective, but think about the infrastructure that's inside retail, where you have the heads of departments, okay? and, and when we tried to break down those silos okay. And get the communities to work together, cuz they have to do that to, to, have a great business.

[00:56:21] It's, people are very protective about their, whatever it knowledge, 

[00:56:26] their, their unique knowledge, their power, their salary, their, 

[00:56:30] you know, it's, it just goes to your core. And again, when you understand the person, you can deal with it in a, in a better way, but, You know, where that comes from is the protection of not what's mine.

[00:56:44] And, and then I've seen where each person thinks about it differently. A marketer's gonna be extremely protective.

[00:56:51] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. 

[00:56:51] Vicki Cantrell: a digital person is much more open and free about, so, , how you were raised in the industry is really [00:57:00] affects how you react and how you are seeing all the groups together.

[00:57:05] They all have, CIOs have a very different personality. I'm not saying anything up or down, I'm just saying they all have a different

[00:57:11] Ricardo Belmar: personal, different 

[00:57:12] Jeff Roster: That's right,

[00:57:13] That's fair 

[00:57:13] Vicki Cantrell: They all totally valid and why and reason of how they grew up in the industry and now they're all. . Everybody has to work together. So it's, you're getting to the core of humanity.

[00:57:26] Ron Thurston: Hmm. Wow. That's deep. . It is

[00:57:32] Jeff Roster: and only only day two . 

[00:57:33] Ron Thurston: That's true. 

[00:57:34] Ricardo Belmar: And we're just getting started. Yeah. 

[00:57:36] Jeff Roster: But we're we're just getting started.

[00:57:38] Ricardo Belmar: That is probably a good place to wrap it up. What do you think, Jeff? 

[00:57:41] Jeff Roster: Fantastic

[00:57:41] I think so 

[00:57:42] kick 

[00:57:42] off I think so. Some of us have a San Francisco 49ers game to go watch 

[00:57:46] Vicki Cantrell: along. Yes. .Some of us have to go to the next thing. . 

[00:57:50] Ron Thurston: That's Yes, we 

[00:57:50] Ricardo Belmar: right. There's a lot of

[00:57:51] next things. for the next few days,

[00:57:54] Well,

[00:57:54] Vicky, Ron, thanks so much for joining Jeff,

[00:57:57] and myself to kick off this series. I can't think of two better [00:58:00] people we could have asked to join us for a great retail conversation.

[00:58:03] Jeff Roster: yeah

[00:58:03] Vicki Cantrell: This was very fun. 

[00:58:04] Jeff Roster: We need 

[00:58:04] Ron Thurston: there, yeah,

[00:58:05] Jeff Roster: like a little mini Ron podcast studio that we could tow 

[00:58:09] Ron Thurston: tell 

[00:58:09] Ricardo Belmar: right? That's 

[00:58:10] right. 

[00:58:10] Jeff Roster: Little foot wide Airstream. That would 

[00:58:12] Ricardo Belmar: the mini air stream to go

[00:58:14] Ron Thurston: It's, it's more glamorous than this little conference room, that's for sure 

[00:58:17] Jeff Roster: tell you gosh, Ron, you 

[00:58:20] I can't see an Airstream. I, every Airstream I see, I think of you. And there's an Airstream dealership in Morgan Hill too. And I, every time I go by that, I go, Ron over there, good good job, man.

[00:58:30] Ron Thurston: Thank you. Just Thank you

[00:58:32] . Thank you Thank you very much. 

[00:58:34] Jeff Roster: well done 

[00:58:36] Ron Thurston: thank you, Ricardo.

[00:58:36] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you. Thanks everybody. Jeff, until the next one. 

[00:58:39] Jeff Roster: Yeah, day three. 

[00:58:40] Ricardo Belmar: Let's

[00:58:40] day three. Let's 

[00:58:40] go.

[00:58:41] ​

[00:58:48] Show Close

[00:58:48] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone. Damn, you didn't oversell that intro. Ricardo. Killer discussion. I didn't even notice how long it was. It just had [00:59:00] me wanting more and wishing I was in the room.

[00:59:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, well, like I said, it, it's definitely getting my vote right now for best episode we've ever done. I mean, there, there, there's something to be said for capturing these kind of conversations in person, in a really small room among friends, and just a completely open discussion.

[00:59:18] Casey Golden: Well, I hope our listeners and viewers enjoyed that. I know I did. I really wish I had been there, but next time.

[00:59:26] Ricardo Belmar: Next time. Yep. And I'm, I'm sure this will not be the last time that you see this group get together for a chat. You can count on that and we'll, we'll, we'll bring them back for, for more in the future.

[00:59:36] Casey Golden: So for those of you paying attention, if you caught our other Rethink Retail friend in the background, well, if you've guessed it, Julia, Raymond . You'd be right. Julia was watching through the glass outside the conference room, taking a few pics. I bet she didn't expect you guys would be there so long either.

[00:59:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's so true. [01:00:00] That is so true. I'm sure she didn't think it would be quite that long. . Well, Casey, I think this wraps us up for the first part of our N R F Live mini-series.

[01:00:09] Casey Golden: Indeed it does. Stay tuned everyone for the rest of the series and be sure to catch the fun not only on the podcast, but also This Week in I nnovation hosted by Jeff Roster. Ricardo, that's a wrap.

[01:00:23] If you enjoyed the show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today? Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets.

[01:00:46] I'm your co-host, Casey Golden.

[01:00:48] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about us and stay connected, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter, at Retail Razor, on LinkedIn, [01:01:00] and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. 

[01:01:02] I'm your host Ricardo Belmar.

[01:01:05] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[01:01:06] ​

[01:01:06] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. 

]]> <p>In honor of the NRF Big Show we’re kicking off a special podcast cross-over series, #NRFLive, with Jeff Roster’s show This Week In Innovation. This episode is a very special, intimately authentic conversation between four top retail influencers, recorded live, and in-person during the NRF show.</p><p><br></p><p>Jeff and host, Ricardo Belmar, join retail legends, Vicki Cantrell, CEO of Vendors in Partnership, LLC, and Ron Thurston, author of Retail Pride and host of the Retail in America podcast and tour. Together our four retail friends chat about the VIP Awards ceremony, RetailROI’s Super Saturday event, what they expect to see during NRF, the impact of innovation in retail, &amp; the latest retail tech buzzwords. Plus, they reach an important conclusion about why retail is, after all, all about the people.</p><p><br></p><p>Listen, or watch on YouTube, and join our four friends for the kind of discussion that can only happen when you’re recording live, and in-person in a setting like the NRF Big Show!</p><p><br></p><p>News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show was a finalist for <a href="https://bit.ly/VIPretail" rel="nofollow">The Retail Voice Award</a> at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during the NRF Big Show 2023!</p><p><br></p><p>News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #18 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review &amp; be mentioned in future episodes! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, </em>and<em> Overclocked, </em>from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>S2E10a #NRFLive SPECIAL - #TRI Friends Fireside Chat</strong></p><p><br></p><h3>[00:00:00] Show Intro</h3><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello and welcome to a special season two episode 10 of the Retail Razor Show. This is the first of a multi-part series recorded live and in person at the N R F 2023 show from January 13th to 18th, otherwise known as N R F Week. And I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:00:37] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome, retail Razor Show listeners, retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. And for this special bonus, welcome N R F fans to our hot take, hashtag N R F Live mini series.</p><p>[00:00:59] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, Casey, [00:01:00] this is an incredible treat for listeners and viewers. Just like our last episode, our top 10 trends and predictions for 2023, the recordings in this miniseries all happen live and in person. While you know about 35,000 or so of our closest retail friends swarmed New York City,</p><p>[00:01:16] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I just loved recording face-to-face when we&#39;re just not, these two little squares from the shoulders up on a Zoom screen.</p><p>[00:01:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So let&#39;s set the stage here for this series. Lot lot&#39;s happening. Cuz not only is this a special live and in-person recording series, but it&#39;s also a podcast crossover event.</p><p>[00:01:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Wait really?</p><p>[00:01:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yes, really we are crossing over with our fellow Retail Avenger, Jeff Roster and his This Week in Innovation podcast.</p><p>[00:01:45] Here&#39;s what&#39;ll happen. So this episode kicks off our hashtag N R F Live series with what may be my absolute favorite podcast recording of our entire run so far.</p><p>[00:01:55] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> all time fave like that&#39;s saying a lot. I mean, I [00:02:00] adore Jeff, but this is an all time fave.</p><p>[00:02:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yes, yes. Really of, of, of all time. Well, at least until the next one, but no</p><p>[00:02:10] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> All right. Well, with that kind of buildup you&#39;ll have to explain a little more so, spill.</p><p>[00:02:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. Okay. So late last year Jeff and I were talking about our N R F plans, comparing how many places we, we overlapped and realized it would be a great opportunity to do a series of interviews of super interesting people at N R F. Friends we don&#39;t often see in person and just talk trends. Talk about what&#39;s hot at the show, what&#39;s coming next in retail.</p><p>[00:02:37] So the crossover was born. And we thought, we&#39;ll, we&#39;ll jointly host these interviews and then we&#39;ll just release them all across both the Retail Razor Show and This Week in Innovation</p><p>[00:02:45] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Very cool. I&#39;m digging this</p><p>[00:02:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> But wait, there&#39;s more</p><p>[00:02:50] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> in your best announcement voice</p><p>[00:02:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I&#39;m trying to build up some suspense here</p><p>[00:02:54] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We&#39;re already on the edge of our seat. </p><p>[00:02:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So, so not only is this our first crossover series, but [00:03:00] it&#39;s also our first sponsored podcast.</p><p>[00:03:03] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Ah, look at our podcast. It&#39;s adulting</p><p>[00:03:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> exactly, exactly. We didn&#39;t realize just how popular we we&#39;ve become. So while Jeff and I were making plans around who we tried to interview during N R F, there was one important thing we realized. We actually need a really solid place to sit down and record during N R F, because let&#39;s face it, the Javit Center isn&#39;t the most conducive to podcast recording</p><p>[00:03:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It&#39;s not the most conducive for much. So I mean, I don&#39;t think we could do this while sitting in front of Starbucks either.</p><p>[00:03:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. E Exactly, exactly. But fortunately for us, our, our good friends of the show and avid podcast supporters at Avanade made us a really nice offer to use some space in their lounge area on the fourth floor, just above the expo hall. So fans of our show may have seen a preview photo of this setup on LinkedIn during N R F as we posted a few behind the scenes pics courtesy of the, the marketing team at Avanade</p><p>[00:03:56] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Oh, big shout out to the marketing team at Avanade [00:04:00] for their support and for providing such an amazing space. I wish I could have been there for all of these.</p><p>[00:04:07] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, we, we definitely missed you for those. And, and for this episode&#39;s recording, we were also fortunate to take advantage of another great spot in one of the conference rooms at the Microsoft Times Square office. Right after this year&#39;s retail ROI Super Saturday event had concluded right at the same location.</p><p>[00:04:22] So extra fortunate. We happened to run into two very special friends of the show who&#39;ve been on before. They agreed to sit down with Jeff and me to have an open conversation about our first two days at N r. About what we expected to find, what we might uncover during the show. And to be fair, Jeff and I pitched this as a quick 15 minute recording to them to convince them to do it.</p><p>[00:04:42] And of course that turned into a nearly 50 minutes session because guess what happens when you have four retail friends get together? I haven&#39;t seen each other in person in so long.</p><p>[00:04:51] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, we just don&#39;t stop. I&#39;m thinking it would be very much like a friends&#39; TV show reunion episode. You just [00:05:00] keep going and going because there is just so much happening in the industry right now</p><p>[00:05:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You, you said it. You said it. So, so we&#39;ll be hearing our, our conversation this episode with none other than retail legend, Vicki Cantrell currently c e o at vendors in partnership and organizer of the V I P awards event during N R F plus, Ron Thurston, author of the bestselling book, Retail Pride and Host of the Retail in America Podcast and tour.</p><p>[00:05:25] And of course, to top it all off, since we&#39;re all RETHINK Retail, top retail influencers for 2023 just announced at the N R F show.</p><p>[00:05:34] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Absolutely incredible and I&#39;m so honored to be on the list this year and included, a big congrats all around to everyone for making the cut and sharing their perspective.</p><p>[00:05:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and fun fact, this might even surprise some listeners and viewers, but Ron and I met in person for the first time at this n r F show.</p><p>[00:05:56] You know, absolute, it&#39;s a like a pandemic story, right? I mean, as after all [00:06:00] these years that we&#39;ve known each other. But this was the first time we actually met face to face in person.</p><p>[00:06:06] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Wow. I didn&#39;t realize that. I actually met Ron during the pandemic in Dominican Republic.</p><p>[00:06:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. That&#39;s right.</p><p>[00:06:15] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It&#39;s just, that is just an amazing little fun fact. You know, we forget how, how often we work with people that we&#39;ve actually never been i r l with. </p><p>[00:06:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. And you, and you&#39;ll hear us talk about that in the recording too, cuz we all had stories that had happened to us just in those first couple of days.</p><p>[00:06:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I mean how could we build up this episode any more than we already have? So let&#39;s get to it and not keep everyone waiting.</p><p>[00:06:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yes, I totally agree.</p><p>[00:06:47] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Ah, I wanna point out one more thing.</p><p>[00:06:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Y you didn&#39;t just do that, did you?</p><p>[00:06:52] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I did. But first I wanna point out that you&#39;ve said multiple viewer multiple times now. And I [00:07:00] know we told our listeners they could see us on video and episode one of the season, but we&#39;ve had some tech technical issues plaguing us all season long. . This is actually the first one we&#39;ve released this season with video.</p><p>[00:07:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Good point. Good catch. Casey. Yes, yes. We actually do have video this time. And honestly we have our, our great friends at Rethink Retail. To thank for that Gabriela Bock, one of the producers at Rethink was gracious enough to record our conversation on video. And while what, if you&#39;re watching the video, you have to pay attention to just how small a conference room that was.</p><p>[00:07:38] I don&#39;t know how she managed to stay with us for, for almost the entire time. Carefully walking around the room with video gear and it, it was just an amazing effort. You know, we, we had also told her it was gonna be 15 minutes and she thought, oh great. This is, this will be fun to do and sure enough turns into 50.</p><p>[00:07:55] So, you know what, what an amazing effort and thanks so much to, to Gabriella and RETHINK for, for doing that for us.[00:08:00]</p><p>[00:08:00] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well talk about commitment and just incredible continued support. And if you&#39;re a careful viewer, you&#39;ll also catch another familiar rethink retail face in the background, taking photos. I won&#39;t give away who it is yet, but when we come back, we&#39;ll let you in on the scoop.</p><p>[00:08:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay, well, a, after this incredibly long intro that we&#39;ve managed now, maybe our longest yet let&#39;s dive in and listen to what Jeff, Vicki, Ron, and myself had to say about the v i p awards, Retail ROI, N R F in general, and just the state of retail today and, and what we expect to, to happen this year.</p><p>[00:08:35] And, and you&#39;ll see why this is quickly my, my favorite podcast we&#39;ve ever done.</p><p>[00:08:39] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Amazing.</p><p>[00:08:39]</p><h3>[00:08:44] #NRFLive - TRI Friends Fireside Chat</h3><p>[00:08:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hey everybody. I&#39;m here with Jeff Roster and co-host of this weekend innovation, and you guessed it. This is part of our crossover series between our two podcasts. How you doing, Jeff?</p><p>[00:08:55] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I am doing fantastic. Ricardo, how about yourself</p><p>[00:08:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I&#39;m doing wonderful. [00:09:00] And part of that I would say is true for you too because we are live and in person at the N R F show, which we haven&#39;t been in quite some time.</p><p>[00:09:08] three years. </p><p>[00:09:09] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Well, actually I was here. I was here last</p><p>[00:09:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> you get bonus points for last year. You get bonus points for last</p><p>[00:09:16] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> year, okay. The re the Startup community came strong last year</p><p>[00:09:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s true. That&#39;s very true. You can, we&#39;ll, we&#39;ll leave that one there and then on that one there. And we are joined by two incredibly wonderful people in the retail industry.</p><p>[00:09:28] Vicki Cantrell, how you doing? Vicki? And Ron Thurston.</p><p>[00:09:33] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Hi everyone. Happy to be here.</p><p>[00:09:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So we thought we would just kind of kick things off by talking a little bit about the first couple of events that have started N r F week this year starting with Vicki, with your event. Last night as of when we were recording this, the vendors in partnership awards ceremony.</p><p>[00:09:49] Why don&#39;t you give us a, a quick recap of some of the highlights.</p><p>[00:09:52] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Oh, I&#39;d love to. It was really an amazing night. Um, we, uh, I started this thing three years ago [00:10:00] and last night I think we kind of crossed a threshold because the message that I have dreamed about is really taking hold.</p><p>[00:10:07] And it&#39;s about how we do business, not who does business with who. And really about problem solving, not solution selling, and. The things that really resonated with me last night and the things that people come up and say to me have to do with the fact that I say that, you know, people buy from people, they don&#39;t buy from companies.</p><p>[00:10:30] Um, the gratitude that people had when they had to kind of put together their nominations and they realize. They took a breath and said how far they&#39;ve come and they were able to recognize their teams. These are all the relationship aspects, um, that flowed through the night. Aside from that, it was a beautiful night, beautiful venue.</p><p>[00:10:51] So much love in the room. We sold out. </p><p>[00:10:54] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> congratulations. </p><p>[00:10:55] Thank you.</p><p>[00:10:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> a big achievement. Yeah.</p><p>[00:10:57] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I kind of liked it when I could move around a little bit. </p><p>[00:10:59] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> I know [00:11:00] you do.</p><p>[00:11:00] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> so you know,</p><p>[00:11:02] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> there were people here today are</p><p>[00:11:03] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> quite as easy moving around this, time,</p><p>[00:11:07] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> but uh, yeah, so, uh, we&#39;re really thrilled with the evening and, uh, a lot of great buzz and I just believe, I always thought I was pushing a rock uphill to take away this, this aspect of buyer, seller.</p><p>[00:11:21] Yeah. But you know, it&#39;s that rock is moving. And so I&#39;m thrilled.</p><p>[00:11:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I, I, I, I like the way you put it because I really feel like your event, uh, so nicely demonstrate that it is a relationship.</p><p>[00:11:35] It&#39;s not just buyer seller. Right. Right. It&#39;s a partnership between what we&#39;re all collectively trying to </p><p>[00:11:40] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. Everybody in the room is equals and that&#39;s what makes this the most special party. And, and people are not tired. You know, they&#39;re, this is their celebration. This is the celebration for the people that actually run this show and, uh, are gonna go through a grueling four [00:12:00] or five days that&#39;s gonna make or break their year.</p><p>[00:12:03] Right. And why not. Let&#39;s celebrate for what they bring to the industry and what they allow us all to do.</p><p>[00:12:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. I&#39;m well said. Well said. Ron, what&#39;s your impression so far at like, I, I guess I would call this day two of nrf,</p><p>[00:12:18] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> It&#39;s day two for us. I don&#39;t know about anybody</p><p>[00:12:20] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> for sure.</p><p>[00:12:21] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> a good one</p><p>[00:12:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> for everybody, but for us,</p><p>[00:12:22] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> you know, I had the, I had the, I&#39;ve known Vicki for I think 15 years, so we go way back Tor Tory Birch years.</p><p>[00:12:30] Um, and Vicky was generous enough last year to invite me to give out an award to retailer&#39;s favorite and this year I was nominated. So it was great to just be there and to be, even though I&#39;m not a vendor, I feel like I know so many of the vendors. I&#39;ve been a retailer, I have so many friends in the room.</p><p>[00:12:48] It&#39;s just a joy. It&#39;s a joy to be there. And, and you&#39;re right, I think it&#39;s early. Everyone dresses up. Yes. You know, by Tuesday I have this feeling, you know, we&#39;ll, I&#39;ll be wearing jeans and</p><p>[00:12:58] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Right. It&#39;s sneakers. [00:13:00] Hundred</p><p>[00:13:00] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> don&#39;t care anymore. But, um, it&#39;s a beautiful. Beautiful. </p><p>[00:13:05] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> my feet are already cooked, but, and I&#39;m only on day one and this is a, this I have not factored in, so I, I gotta,</p><p>[00:13:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> We&#39;re, we&#39;re all still learning</p><p>[00:13:13] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> No sensible shoes then,</p><p>[00:13:15] huh?</p><p>[00:13:15] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> I have some</p><p>[00:13:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> you, you can&#39;t get enough sensible shoes, I</p><p>[00:13:20] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> That&#39;s true. </p><p>[00:13:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Takeaway I have from that Yeah. No. No matter how much you try. So we&#39;re also all here on day two at one of my other favorite events of the week. RetailROI&#39;s Super Saturday. Uh, I was excited to be able to hosted this event at the Microsoft office in Times Square.</p><p>[00:13:37] Um, Jeff, I think you wanna, sh you had some stats you&#39;d like to share maybe on how we did</p><p>[00:13:42] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Well,</p><p>[00:13:43] very well.</p><p>[00:13:46] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> that&#39;s,</p><p>[00:13:46] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> that&#39;s analyst speak for, Hmm. I think we were well over $320,000. It&#39;s, it was the,</p><p>[00:13:52] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> the</p><p>[00:13:53] closer to three </p><p>[00:13:54] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Three 50. It was the second biggest year revenue wise. Um, the other [00:14:00] observations, uh, crazy energy. So I would agree with, um, you know, as, as, as somebody that was at, uh, Vicki&#39;s event, the energy was off the charts. That was the big speculation, um, that I was testing. You know, the, in the, the run up to N RF series I was doing is, what do you expect?</p><p>[00:14:14] You know, and we were talking about make sure you have, you know, masks and, and all this and be sensitive to who people, you know, whatever. And that&#39;s, that&#39;s all that advice is all still. But, uh, I think, I think people are ready to rock and roll and the energy&#39;s off</p><p>[00:14:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> The energy&#39;s there, right.</p><p>[00:14:28] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> they&#39;re definitely wanna be sensitive if people are still have, have whatever issues, but, uh, solid energy.</p><p>[00:14:33] We kind of got a sense of that. Maybe Wednesday, Thursday you could just start, I could start seeing the emails confirmed for, uh, v I p and definitely, definitely today for sure. This is day two and tons of energy. People wanna, you know, re reconnect. Um, I dunno about you guys, but, um, I&#39;ve bumped into at least 10 people that I&#39;ve known virtually</p><p>[00:14:58] Right. For years now, who I [00:15:00] believe I have a legitimate relationship and I&#39;m like,</p><p>[00:15:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, no, that, that&#39;s</p><p>[00:15:05] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> that&#39;s so true.</p><p>[00:15:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> so, right Ron, Ron and I have now, I don&#39;t know, known each other I,</p><p>[00:15:11] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> couple years.</p><p>[00:15:12] Couple years now. Yeah.</p><p>[00:15:13] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> we, this was the first day we finally got to meet in person.</p><p>[00:15:15] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> true. It&#39;s really true. </p><p>[00:15:17] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> So I&#39;m shocked because as, as well as Zoom does things, people look different in person,</p><p>[00:15:25] And like somebody walked in who I&#39;ve had probably 15 zooms with and choose about a foot taller than I expected. She walked in and I thought, and so you don&#39;t recognize, you know, it&#39;s, it&#39;s really something. There&#39;s gonna be a lot of that this, this</p><p>[00:15:40] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> there will be</p><p>[00:15:41] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:15:42] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> no, no doubt. No doubt.</p><p>[00:15:45] So what&#39;s</p><p>[00:15:47] everyone thinking now that we&#39;ve, we&#39;ve kind of had a taste of the energy after a couple of events. The, the full-blown show starts tomorrow. So what is everyone thinking? The vibe is gonna be on the show floor.</p><p>[00:15:59] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Mm-hmm.[00:16:00]</p><p>[00:16:01] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> I would say that, um, because of this energy and, and what I&#39;m hearing just in a few conversations of today and yesterday is, uh, and people are actually saying that, you know, the pandemic, so we&#39;re ready to get back out there.</p><p>[00:16:16] They&#39;re using this kind of language and this is solution providers, and for them that means get back out there. I wanna go to events, I wanna pick and choose different types of events. I. You know, more involved in different types of things. And today we heard about two different vendors who are now heavily involved and didn&#39;t know anything about roi.</p><p>[00:16:38] So when you, when you think about a little bit, right? You said that, oh yes, but, but you know, you just, because they are now. Wanting to be involved in new things, new ways, get back out there. I would say the watch phrase is get back out there and that&#39;s what we&#39;re gonna see on the floor that people are gonna be looking to [00:17:00] like, am I up to date on technology?</p><p>[00:17:02] Let me stop at all these booths to really feel like I&#39;m connected again. Yeah, that&#39;s what I think. </p><p>[00:17:08] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> And I think because there&#39;s been so much conversation about all the new ideas and all the new technology, yeah.</p><p>[00:17:14] You actually need to touch and feel it. Yeah. Similar to shopping in a retail store, I think I&#39;m excited to go down, you know, innovation. Lane and what are all these brands bringing? What are, what&#39;s happening? What are some big new ideas? Yeah, and you know, a lot of retailers, and I&#39;m sure we&#39;ll speak about the Rethink retail bash coming up, but the minute I posted of, you know, hey, rethink retail is having this, the amount of responses that I received of like, I&#39;d love to go, I&#39;d love to go.</p><p>[00:17:41] Yes. The willingness and desire to reconnect is powerful.</p><p>[00:17:46] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Powerful, yeah. Yeah, that&#39;s</p><p>[00:17:47] right. That&#39;s right. So, well since you brought up the, the rethink retail that we&#39;re, I think we&#39;re all going to be at, uh, Monday night. What, what other, so day one, official day one, I&#39;ll call it right. For NRF Sunday [00:18:00] tomorrow.</p><p>[00:18:00] That&#39;s on day two. Um, anything else anyone is excited to be going to, of the remaining</p><p>[00:18:07] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> I&#39;m sorry, but I can&#39;t not talk about rock and roll retail. I, I mean Yep.</p><p>[00:18:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I&#39;m with you on that one.</p><p>[00:18:15] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> That&#39;s, that&#39;s the other thing where retailers are so embedded in different fun areas of life. Yeah. Okay. Yes. They do charity work.</p><p>[00:18:24] They go on trips. Mm-hmm. , they play music. They make a band, they</p><p>[00:18:29] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> and it</p><p>[00:18:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> comes together</p><p>[00:18:30] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> together here, and it all comes together here.</p><p>[00:18:32] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Wow. So fun.</p><p>[00:18:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> for that one too. That&#39;s another, another Monday, late evening. Oh my god. Activity.</p><p>[00:18:39] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yes. And then of course the Retail Retailer Insiders</p><p>[00:18:43] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> was just gonna say that one too. Yeah. Yeah. It&#39;ll be my first year attending that.</p><p>[00:18:47] It&#39;ll be fun. You ready? Get ready. That&#39;s, that&#39;s all 9:00 PM on a Sunday night. A lot of</p><p>[00:18:51] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> tie at that one. That&#39;s a little more raucous for sure. Um, very good. Um, lot of people, um, you know, so it&#39;s, the [00:19:00] energy is clearly here.</p><p>[00:19:01] There&#39;s no doubt about it. The um, As ugly and hideous as Covid was, it clearly was a stimulant to, to innovation. I mean, we tracked that on this week. I think you did it on retail razor too. The, the, you know, I mean the number of BOPIS uh, setups were just off the charts, right? We now realize low code&#39;s, a real unique strategic advantage, uh, be able to move faster, more nimbler.</p><p>[00:19:20] And so I think what we&#39;re gonna see is. I don&#39;t wanna say an explosion of innovation, cuz I would argue, I mean I&#39;ve been tracking it for 20 years. It&#39;s, it&#39;s, I, I, I don&#39;t think things just explode, but they accelerate and the ability to innovate. And the fact that startups three or four or five years ago really weren&#39;t even, I mean, Vicky, when you were there, I mean you were just starting to bring the startups in.</p><p>[00:19:42] They were always there. They were. I mean, I live in Silicon Valley. We&#39;ve been doing startups really since Hewlett and Packard got together in 1938. So we&#39;re not new to startup. , but all of a sudden the industry has said, this is this giant opportunity to, to um, showcase this in this innovation has always been [00:20:00] going on.</p><p>[00:20:00] That&#39;s why, you know, the big companies have, are, have been, uh, making acquisitions, but now we&#39;re, we&#39;re featuring these people and this is the, I mean, the heart of of businesses. These and some young entrepreneurs, a lot, not so young entrepreneurs, but that energy and they&#39;re being featured now and it&#39;s just.</p><p>[00:20:19] And it&#39;s just gonna be, I think it&#39;s gonna be a celebration of innovation, is maybe the way I&#39;m gonna </p><p>[00:20:24] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> it, Jeff, you know, I also wanna say something about innovation. That that overused word. Okay. And because when you say innovation, everybody thinks tech innovation. Mm-hmm. . Okay. But what the last few years have shown us is that innovation is across the board, innovation on how you speak to each other, innovation on how you.</p><p>[00:20:45] teams work together. Innovation on how you approach something. By the way, you wouldn&#39;t, low-code wouldn&#39;t have such a, a presence if there was an innovation in how you do things, not just the tech. [00:21:00] And so people have really changed how they do business and that requires innovation of thought and innovation of mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:21:10] how you use your people.</p><p>[00:21:11] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> and Agreed.</p><p>[00:21:12] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> You know, because retailers have to be like super agile.</p><p>[00:21:16] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah. And, and it&#39;s only as effective as the adoption normally, which has to happen in a store.</p><p>[00:21:23] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Oh boy. Isn&#39;t that the truth? </p><p>[00:21:24] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> That&#39;s the truth.</p><p>[00:21:25] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> That&#39;s it, </p><p>[00:21:26] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> there&#39;s so much </p><p>[00:21:27] new, there&#39;s a lot of, I&#39;ll say this, there&#39;s a lot of people who develop technology that have never worked in retail. And so there&#39;s Yes. I know it&#39;s a bold statement, you know, just gonna say it, know, </p><p>[00:21:40] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> We&#39;ve got story. We got a whole podcast where, where we could talk, tell stories. Central office. No, it&#39;s not a central office. It&#39;s called a store. Please change that on your slide deck. I catch a lot of that. And you still see it at this store</p><p>[00:21:53] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> You do. I mean, it&#39;s the 50% want to quit their job working in retail stat. I</p><p>[00:21:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh, right. Yeah.</p><p>[00:21:59] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> it&#39;s those, [00:22:00] and so I think there&#39;s this whole concept again of what does the store need.</p><p>[00:22:05] Ask the store. Right, right. Before you go and develop technology. Right. And there are, um, there&#39;s a solution that will be in the innovation aisle this year called Reflex, and they&#39;re doing on demand staffing. Yes. And so this is an actual need that is. In integral to the success of our industry. Yeah. To say that we need on-demand gig economy, style retail workforce, right?</p><p>[00:22:29] Because the workforce is demanding it. They&#39;re demanding flexibility. So here&#39;s someone that&#39;s innovating this idea. Yes. And coming up with new technology. So don&#39;t just create something because you think it&#39;s a good idea. ask the people who need this technology and how they&#39;ll use it. So why I&#39;m such a big Yoobic fan who were, you know, also nominated last night.</p><p>[00:22:50] Yeah. They, they really listen to what the stores need. Yep. Stores and restaurants need, and it&#39;s, that&#39;s why the adoption&#39;s so high.</p><p>[00:22:59] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I&#39;ll [00:23:00] tell you a little secret. Um, there&#39;s a bunch of CIOs that the first question they ask a tech vendor is, tell me what you think of my store? </p><p>[00:23:07] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> That&#39;s a great question. </p><p>[00:23:08] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yes. </p><p>[00:23:08] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> want, you want to know</p><p>[00:23:09] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> who</p><p>[00:23:09] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> many vendors could wash out right up there? </p><p>[00:23:11] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yep. </p><p>[00:23:11] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> A</p><p>[00:23:11] lot. A lot.. </p><p>[00:23:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So these people </p><p>[00:23:13] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> have so basic,</p><p>[00:23:14] hundreds, </p><p>[00:23:14] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> if not thousands of dollars to maybe fly travel, prepare for a meeting, and they did not go to the physical store </p><p>[00:23:22] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:23:22] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> and make some observations.</p><p>[00:23:23] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:23:24] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> and, and it&#39;s just like, you know, it&#39;s just like a crocodile, just ready to pounce cuz the, you know, the cio Just first question, tell me what you think and, and it&#39;s not a trick question. No, I was in your store. It seemed busy, it seemed cluttered, it seemed really good. I liked the lighting. I did, I, it, it&#39;s easy,</p><p>[00:23:41] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:23:41] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> you got to, you&#39;re telling me you&#39;re gonna try to do and you don&#39;t know their business and that&#39;s the point you&#39;re making and that&#39;s valuable </p><p>[00:23:48] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> really valuable. I, I asked that question often of management candidates, you know, and my office was right here in Times Square. There were six intermix stores in the city. Tell me the story you&#39;re in. Yeah. And [00:24:00] the the question could end. Yeah. You know, very quickly. Yeah. And so you&#39;re right.</p><p>[00:24:04] Yeah. It&#39;s like, do your homework, learn what&#39;s necessary, learn what&#39;s important, and then help. Right. You know, help us be better because of it.</p><p>[00:24:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think that question is so powerful as to your point, RO I&#39;ve used that myself being on the vendor side in a meeting with a group of retail executives, or I&#39;ve asked them, well, More from a wanting to learn perspective. I said, well, tell me about your store. Tell me the last time you were in a store and what you thought were the biggest challenges.</p><p>[00:24:33] And I was always surprised. Half the time I asked that question, I couldn&#39;t get an answer because I was, had a room full of people who couldn&#39;t remember the last time they had walked to their own stores. So I think that&#39;s one, to me, it was one of the most simplest basic things that everybody in the industry can do is just, you know, Go visit the store.</p><p>[00:24:50] Yes.</p><p>[00:24:51] See what&#39;s going on. Ask the people that are there,</p><p>[00:24:53] what&#39;s </p><p>[00:24:54] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> wrong. So simple. Right.</p><p>[00:24:55] So simple. so simple. </p><p>[00:24:56] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> simple. You know,</p><p>[00:24:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> know? Well, we, we heard some examples today, right?</p><p>[00:24:59] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> [00:25:00] Right. Sharon Sessions from From</p><p>[00:25:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Sharon. Yeah, true. From the Undercover, undercover </p><p>[00:25:04] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Boss</p><p>[00:25:04] Get to the source. It&#39;s that simple. , </p><p>[00:25:08] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> and</p><p>[00:25:08] maybe it&#39;s not in New York City, you know, go, you know, as I have traveled across the country this year, I, I would be confident to say a lot of those stores in the, the heartland of this country have never been visited by an executive can guarantee it.</p><p>[00:25:24] Yes. And so maybe get out of la, New York. Right. And go visits the flagship store, the low volume. Yeah. Not just flag low volume, you know. </p><p>[00:25:34] And look for those opportunities Yeah. That are available just by asking questions. </p><p>[00:25:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:25:40] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yep.</p><p>[00:25:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I think there&#39;ll be a lot of those questions hopefully be asked over the next few.</p><p>[00:25:45] days.</p><p>[00:25:45] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:25:46] so too.</p><p>[00:25:47] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So what do you think the big buzzwords for the show are gonna be? </p><p>[00:25:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh, that&#39;s a great question, Jeff.</p><p>[00:25:53] You know, every nrf I I come to, it seems in recent years though, always start with, I&#39;m sure this is the year every vendor&#39;s gonna [00:26:00] talk about ai. Mm-hmm. I, I still kind of chuckle a little bit. I forget which year it was, when it seemed like every time I turn around the expo floor, there was a booth with a robot in it and then, and now I want to kind of walk through and say, where did all the robots go? Yeah.</p><p>[00:26:11] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> they&#39;re working, they&#39;re in the stores. Apparently working. I guess maybe,</p><p>[00:26:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I don&#39;t know. I don&#39;t know. I mean, I, I&#39;m actually kind of interested to see what the buzzy words are going to be this time. You know, we we&#39;re kind of coming out of a year where the first half of the year, the big buzz was all about Metaverse.</p><p>[00:26:27] Mm-hmm. . I don&#39;t, I don&#39;t expect that to be the one. I think there&#39;ll be some, I mean, I, I still expect to see some web three discussion maybe.</p><p>[00:26:34] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:26:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I think there&#39;s definitely gonna be a lot of, </p><p>[00:26:36] maybe new applications. I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll put it that way, to ai you know, certainly things talking about pricing, I think that&#39;s a.</p><p>[00:26:44] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> seems to be a lot of conversation around pricing.</p><p>[00:26:46] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.</p><p>[00:26:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I expect to hear a lot about returns management. Yeah. Just given where we&#39;re at, you know, that being a, a solution</p><p>[00:26:54] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I agree a hundred percent. </p><p>[00:26:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Um, yeah.</p><p>[00:26:57] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> just because it&#39;s so [00:27:00] unsexy. but it&#39;s, you know, returns are where profits go to die.</p><p>[00:27:05] And yet, if we&#39;re gonna talk about being sustainable, I mean the, probably the least sustainable process on the planet is returns.</p><p>[00:27:11] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Agreed. </p><p>[00:27:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right, </p><p>[00:27:11] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Just</p><p>[00:27:12] you ship you ship thing 8,000 miles or however you process it, you got it out. and it&#39;s coming back and it&#39;s coming back in a far be worse condition than it left.</p><p>[00:27:21] And it is a mess. And you&#39;re touching it again and every time you touch, you&#39;re hanging another dollar on that thing. Yeah. So if we can figure out how, and, and there were some great conversations today, like, you know, maybe we need to deselect some customers and I, you know, if we&#39;re gonna be serious about being sustainable.</p><p>[00:27:37] Yeah. Why are you returning so much? Is it an issue with sizing? Which it clearly is. technology. Uh, solutions. They&#39;re, they&#39;re starting to become some, you know, AI models and, and 3D models and all that stuff. I mean, there&#39;s a lot of things that we can look at, but if somehow we can say, how do we, you know, how do we not return 50% or 60% of stuff?</p><p>[00:27:57] That&#39;s a huge </p><p>[00:27:59] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. That&#39;s A huge one. [00:28:00] Yeah. </p><p>[00:28:00] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Um, so I love that. So, re returns, I, I&#39;m, How might debate with you a little bit on Metaverse. We&#39;ll have to settle up afterwards, but I&#39;m much more of a fan of immersive commerce, which our friend Michael Zakour has, has </p><p>[00:28:11] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> that. Yeah. So we</p><p>[00:28:12] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> can, we can talk about, uh, we can talk about augmented reality and not talk about, you know, getting</p><p>[00:28:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> virtual</p><p>[00:28:18] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> you know, </p><p>[00:28:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> part. Well, I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll tell you. I, I will. Concede one point on, on </p><p>[00:28:23] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> one </p><p>[00:28:23] I&#39;m getting one, </p><p>[00:28:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> oh, you&#39;ll get one today. . Ask me again at the end, at the end </p><p>[00:28:27] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I will </p><p>[00:28:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You&#39;ll, I know you will, I know you&#39;ll keep, you&#39;ll hold me to that</p><p>[00:28:30] I, I would say the, the one, because I know there are sessions about this, so that, that&#39;s why I&#39;m gonna bring it up. And I&#39;ve already talked to some folks about it and I know I see it with our customers, with the partners I work with. One really strong use case for Metaverse is digital. Um, especially with, uh, the consumer goods brands that we work with there, there&#39;s lots and lots of interest in that because you can just have, if you&#39;re building the digital twin, right, you have your entire operations modeled that you can play around with.</p><p>[00:28:58] Come up with new operations, [00:29:00] new products, without ever having to touch anything physical and incur the cost for that. And you&#39;ll know upfront, now I built it in that digital twin. Now I know what the outcome&#39;s gonna be before I build version So I think.</p><p>[00:29:10] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> that&#39;s</p><p>[00:29:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> In my mind the most valid use case today,</p><p>[00:29:14] today.</p><p>[00:29:15] Cuz I know you&#39;re looking at me, Jeff, and, and you&#39;re thinking there&#39;s more to it than that.</p><p>[00:29:18] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Oh, I&#39;m waiting. I&#39;m,</p><p>[00:29:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I know, I know. You&#39;re, you&#39;re finding, I know you&#39;re waiting the pounce on me for that one, but I&#39;m gonna say that&#39;s today&#39;s use case for metaverse. All the other ones I think, I don&#39;t know if it&#39;s this year.</p><p>[00:29:28] I think they&#39;ll come. I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll agree with you on that one. It it&#39;s coming, but I don&#39;t know that it&#39;s, this year.</p><p>[00:29:32] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> This has, this is in that same category of how much you have to pay attention. You have to be paying attention. But c, come where we are economically and where we are, it&#39;s going to be, I&#39;m going to pay attention and I&#39;m, but I&#39;m also understand that no bright, shiny objects.</p><p>[00:29:51] Right. Okay. And that&#39;s where it is still, you know, it&#39;s still that,</p><p>[00:29:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> but you get some of the</p><p>[00:29:56] core core pieces.</p><p>[00:29:57] I think that to me is the, the key for some of these. And that&#39;s why I [00:30:00] keep bringing up the digital twin</p><p>[00:30:01] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Well, just like ai, </p><p>[00:30:02] the same core pieces,</p><p>[00:30:02] you need </p><p>[00:30:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> pieces, right? </p><p>[00:30:04] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> You </p><p>[00:30:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> need that</p><p>[00:30:04] fundamental</p><p>[00:30:05] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> And that&#39;s why </p><p>[00:30:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> so you can build on, that&#39;s </p><p>[00:30:07] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> why immersive commerce is a superior word to Metaverse cuz you can get those pieces and you can kind of loop it. Cuz we, as analysts, we have to have something to hang that framework on. Cause we gotta study, we gotta survey it, we gotta forecast it.</p><p>[00:30:19] You ain&#39;t forecasting Metaverse? Cause that&#39;s nonsense. </p><p>[00:30:21] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Right? Right. </p><p>[00:30:22] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Right? Um,</p><p>[00:30:22] oh, it&#39;s, uh, $22 trillion. Okay. I picked what, it&#39;s ridiculous. What&#39;s that based on? But immersive commerce, you can break out ai, well you can break out AI&#39;s foundation, you can break out virtual reality, augmented reality, all these components.</p><p>[00:30:34] And now you can build</p><p>[00:30:35] a, you can build a deal. And I think that&#39;s probably a far better way for us to talk about it. And there&#39;s absolutely zero energy, pro or con around that </p><p>[00:30:44] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Right.</p><p>[00:30:45] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> And, uh, you know, unfortunately, I think the guy out in my, part of the, the, you know, states maybe kind of mucked up that word just won&#39;t say who</p><p>[00:30:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> just a little low,</p><p>[00:30:54] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> but, um, but no, I, so, so, we&#39;ll, so we&#39;ll have to, we&#39;ll have to, we&#39;ll have to square up, but I&#39;m, I&#39;m thinking [00:31:00] augmented reality, um, we&#39;ve had it, we&#39;ve had it in aviation for 20 years. </p><p>[00:31:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Uh, yeah. </p><p>[00:31:03] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I, trained in simulator, so pieces are not there. And I&#39;ll tell you the other thing that&#39;s the most interesting about this thing is not so much what Nike&#39;s doing in whatever the virtual reality world I think the best example is what Alta Cosmetics doing.</p><p>[00:31:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:31:18] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Um,</p><p>[00:31:19] and</p><p>[00:31:19] and they&#39;ve got with Roblox and they&#39;ve got a lot of young girls with moms playing in what sure sounds like a metaverse thing. So now you&#39;re taking it away from the boys playing world at war, and now you&#39;ve gone, you know, a far bigger thing and there&#39;s clearly value there.</p><p>[00:31:34] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yeah. And so</p><p>[00:31:35] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> that, that&#39;s when I heard that story. And it&#39;s actually even a better to share, but.</p><p>[00:31:42] that&#39;s telling me, okay, now we&#39;ve, now </p><p>[00:31:45] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> something </p><p>[00:31:46] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah, and Altas such a great story because in every way, in every way, because it&#39;s accessible. You see it in, you know, the hundreds of locations, you see it all over the country.</p><p>[00:31:56] You have a very in-store touch feel, experience it as [00:32:00] you want. You have a metaverse digital immersive version of it, and I think that&#39;s, that&#39;s what great retail is. It&#39;s that incredibly immersive way to think about it. However you choose to experience it, </p><p>[00:32:13] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> go. That&#39;s the point where you&#39;re not taking this entire heavy vision and you&#39;re just taking out the pieces. I mean, you look at like the smart mirrors that they&#39;re doing, where they&#39;re actually, they&#39;ve actually invested in a, in an AI startup to be able to analyze skin. It&#39;s sort of started off as almost as a medical, uh, strategy.</p><p>[00:32:29] To determine skin cancers and all of a sudden, hey, well you know what, if we analyze skin, then we can better, you know, this is obviously not my area of expertise, but uh, I paid for a lot of this stuff with a daughter and a wife, , </p><p>[00:32:39] I mean, that&#39;s heavy duty technology to involved in that business. And the other thing why I, I just love having Ulta on, on the pod is they have an investment firm </p><p>[00:32:51] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yes.</p><p>[00:32:51] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Okay. We&#39;re not talking about Walmart or Amazon now, we&#39;re talking and, and they&#39;re not small retailer. I mean, they&#39;re over $8 billion. So they&#39;re high, you know, they&#39;re not high. They&#39;re a [00:33:00] major tier one player, but they&#39;ve set up an investment firm, so, they can go invest in the startup community for, for technologies that are appropriate to their business.</p><p>[00:33:07] And they&#39;ve already made some acquisitions. And now, so, you know, the problem I&#39;ve always had is an analyst using Walmart. And now Amazon is an example. Everyone says, oh, you know, you&#39;re giving permission to people not to pay attention. Oh, I&#39;m not Walmart, I&#39;m not Amazon. you&#39;re $2 billion retailer.</p><p>[00:33:22] You&#39;re a $4 billion, you do this. Or if, if you don&#39;t understand, somebody else </p><p>[00:33:27] is </p><p>[00:33:27] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> right. </p><p>[00:33:27] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> And that&#39;s, you know, we&#39;re in the business of being in business and so, innovation, how you look at it. That needs to be in a mindset. Now, I&#39;m not saying spend top dollar, but I am saying start thinking about your business differently.</p><p>[00:33:40] And most importantly, and this goes back to a bus ride, I don&#39;t know you remember in Honduras where we talked, started talking about the era of an intentional innovation.</p><p>[00:33:47] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Uh, that</p><p>[00:33:48] absolutely right.</p><p>[00:33:49] Absolutely </p><p>[00:33:49] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> You know, that was mid, that was more than a few moons ago, uh, I remember you and I were sitting there just kind of going back and forth and I was just expressing my frustration that the fact that retailers never, ever wanted [00:34:00] to talk about the mistakes they made from a technology perspective is, as an analyst.</p><p>[00:34:03] That was so difficult because that&#39;s how we learned. Well, and then you said, you know, Appropriately no one wanted to, you know, seem like they failed. And then, you know, being a Gartner and having colleagues in my direct practice that were in other verticals, when I would share that with them, they&#39;d say, are you crazy?</p><p>[00:34:18] Our greatest successes in manufacturing were failures in theory. I mean, the 3M example of, uh, of um, uh, yellow, uh, stick notes</p><p>[00:34:27] that was post-its Yeah.</p><p>[00:34:28] it. That was like a failed glue experiment that, uh, that a guy that was in a choir wanted to be able to have some kind of a glue that he would stick so he could have his notes for, for singing and, oh, that glue that didn&#39;t work was perfect. We&#39;re, we&#39;re one of the few industries that don&#39;t celebrate, or at least didn&#39;t celebrate our failures. And that I think needs to change. And so if I can get </p><p>[00:34:50] retail, senior retail leadership to say, you guys have to push the envelope and you have to be okay.</p><p>[00:34:56] Break the bank by failing, but fail fast, which is in Silicon [00:35:00] Valley.</p><p>[00:35:00] We live by</p><p>[00:35:00] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> right? Yeah.</p><p>[00:35:01] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Fail fast.</p><p>[00:35:02] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yep, </p><p>[00:35:02] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> you know, it&#39;s different now. The mindset is different now. Before there was a fear of that because it always touched the customer, and the customer was delicate. Now, today&#39;s customer very different. Today&#39;s customer lives, breathes and sleeps and eats with.</p><p>[00:35:21] Just</p><p>[00:35:21] mess in, in, in every retail experience, in every restaurant.</p><p>[00:35:27] You know, life, schools, education, politics, they live in a mess. Okay? So they are going to, and they don&#39;t make decisions about where they shop and who they shop with based on whether it was a perf. Perfect </p><p>[00:35:41] experience, right? </p><p>[00:35:43] They make it for different reasons. So again, you know, hate to beat a dead horse after 40 years of beating a dead horse,</p><p>[00:35:51] It starts with the customer and it&#39;s not about the customer who&#39;s walking in your store. It&#39;s about understand the human, what is happening to this [00:36:00] human these days? What is their life like? What is their family like? Understand them. And then apply your brand to it. Not here&#39;s my brand. Where do I find a person who will like </p><p>[00:36:11] that?</p><p>[00:36:11] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> could not agree more?</p><p>[00:36:12] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> It&#39;s never been that way, but nobody, it just, it takes a long time to get that. And now the consumer, as they always do, is forcing. Mm-hmm. that so they are messier. So the retailer can be messier and be forgiven. And when the retailer says I was messy, I&#39;m sorry.</p><p>[00:36:34] have at it. That&#39;s great. </p><p>[00:36:35] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Isn&#39;t that a better customer experience though? I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll</p><p>[00:36:37] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> go. It is. </p><p>[00:36:38] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> if I, as a, if I as a retailer make a mistake, but then I fix it. Isn&#39;t that better?</p><p>[00:36:43] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yes.</p><p>[00:36:44] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> To that customer. Cuz then they, that&#39;s one that&#39;s, they perceive value in that they perceived honesty cuz it is in fact being honest. </p><p>[00:36:50] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Right, right.</p><p>[00:36:51] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> And you have a, you have a better, I think you have a better experience</p><p>[00:36:54] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> You do. It&#39;s authenticity and I, I would say the customer appreciates it. But so does the store team. The store [00:37:00] team knows when you&#39;ve done maybe not the right thing. So if the company comes, senior leadership comes back and said, you know what we.</p><p>[00:37:08] We did make the right decision. We didn&#39;t spend money where we should have, and this is what we&#39;re gonna do differently. What that creates is retention for the store teams, which is probably another R word, along with</p><p>[00:37:19] the recession word, which I think will also come up this week. Um, I think employee, employee retention.</p><p>[00:37:25] I know I&#39;m host, I&#39;m, I&#39;m doing, um, um, a panel tomorrow on that. I think this idea of what do brands need to do to hire, retain, and attract great talent. Yeah. It&#39;s, it&#39;s another 40 year like dead horse. To your point, Vicky , that you and I have been having this conversation also for many years, but it&#39;s, it&#39;s actually never been more important.</p><p>[00:37:48] Yeah. And it&#39;s really hard to say that in 2023, it&#39;s critical. It&#39;s it, it will make or break the future of any brand not retaining their talent.</p><p>[00:37:59] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> It&#39;s funny how it has [00:38:00] to do with people </p><p>[00:38:00] still all still after</p><p>[00:38:02] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> still. It always comes back too. Yeah. Yeah. Which It&#39;s really good, but it&#39;s really, but it&#39;s messy.</p><p>[00:38:08] I love Vicky&#39;s word because managing humans is messy. Yeah. And it&#39;s hard, and which is also why I believe. Many people don&#39;t want to talk about it because it&#39;s really hard. Yeah, yeah. And it&#39;s emotional and there&#39;s, that emotion is bigger than ever. So that</p><p>[00:38:26] the ability to lead people in an inspiring way has never been harder.</p><p>[00:38:31] Yeah. </p><p>[00:38:32] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah. You know what I like about that phrase, messy is, you know, one of the, one of the Metaverse technologies or uh, one of the </p><p>[00:38:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Immersive</p><p>[00:38:41] immersive commerce</p><p>[00:38:42] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> technologies</p><p>[00:38:42] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> technologies is live streaming. And now it&#39;s a done deal. It&#39;s a done deal in China.</p><p>[00:38:45] It&#39;s a done deals Asia PAC, and we just think we&#39;re now beginning to experiment with My only worry about that is if we try to over, over produce the live streams and I&#39;ll, the example I&#39;ll point to is B N H photo,</p><p>[00:38:59] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> [00:39:00] Mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:39:01] So </p><p>[00:39:01] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> n h photo, A lot of this equipment is from B&amp;H Photo </p><p>[00:39:05] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> right. I&#39;m sure</p><p>[00:39:05] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> look around. And so for, for folks who dunno who that is, it&#39;s just literally the best, uh, camera shop in the planet, I would argue.</p><p>[00:39:13] Um, and it&#39;s, people are passionate. They&#39;re, the salespeople are exactly everyone you would want them to be</p><p>[00:39:19] Passionate about the product, use the product for our photographers. And so when you go in, you have this amazing experience. Well, I used to, you know, cause I live in California and there there&#39;s only one store and it&#39;s in right here in Manhattan.</p><p>[00:39:31] Um, you used to have to call in. , which was okay. And then they started doing text chat, which is actually okay, cuz then they could send links. Well, somebody said, why don&#39;t we just put a ca, we&#39;re a camera store, put a camera in there, . And the first one I did was like two years or whenever it was. And it was not </p><p>[00:39:47] a good, I mean it was a good experience, but it was not a fancy, I mean, it was like, This is not a great stream, but the content was crazy and I&#39;m like, this is fantastic.</p><p>[00:39:57] The guy&#39;s showing me this and he&#39;s, he&#39;s pulling out a [00:40:00] $3,000 camera lens and a 10,000, uh, Kathy, I put that one back. Okay. I didn&#39;t buy that one. . And then he brought over a cheaper way and I&#39;m like, I&#39;m like, this is crazy. And then, you know, Michael Zakour comes into your, your, uh, clubhouse and then he starts talking about what&#39;s happening in an Asia Pac.</p><p>[00:40:14] And I said, oh, that&#39;s novel idea. Why don&#39;t we look east? And then I go, wow, okay. So my only worry about that is if we try to make it too, If we over produce it, I think was the word I was looking for. And just, just let it be authentic. Let it be</p><p>[00:40:28] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> authentic, messy, let it be. Yes.</p><p>[00:40:31] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> you were the one Vicky at, when you were at Tori Birch, I think you were talking about, were at, at some conference you were talking about like a, a fashion show or something you did where you had nutty response, I mean, crazy responses, right? </p><p>[00:40:44] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yes, because we, we did this test where we had such brand advocates. </p><p>[00:40:49] Okay. </p><p>[00:40:50] And it was. Path. I can&#39;t remember the name of it. But anyway, we went out to our customers and we made them part of the process novel.</p><p>[00:40:59] Here, [00:41:00] here&#39;s here&#39;s four buttons. Which one do you like? Okay. And they feel so in the know. Yeah. Look, people again, when I, I, I just bang that drum about, it&#39;s about people. It&#39;s about people, and it&#39;s about community. They belong to a community. People wanna belong. That&#39;s what they want. Right? Whatever it is, two people, 10 people, 5,000 people, and they became part of an insider community by being asked their opinion. It was extremely powerful. Yeah. And so, Yeah.</p><p>[00:41:33] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I&#39;ve never, I&#39;ve never forgotten that story. </p><p>[00:41:35] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:41:35] Yeah. It&#39;s just </p><p>[00:41:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> and just</p><p>[00:41:37] so I&#39;ll add on to that with one interesting point from one of the sessions today, from the, uh, the gmu consumer study that, that, uh, Gotham has been on the show many times.</p><p>[00:41:45] Uh,</p><p>[00:41:47] Preview.</p><p>[00:41:47] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I haven&#39;t him on my show yet.</p><p>[00:41:48] How </p><p>[00:41:49] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I don&#39;t, well, I don&#39;t know </p><p>[00:41:50] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> oh man,</p><p>[00:41:51] here</p><p>[00:41:51] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> I can, I </p><p>[00:41:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> can yeah, maybe Vicki can pull some strings for you, Jeff, and get &#39;em on your. But he&#39;s, he&#39;s</p><p>[00:41:56] kind of been a </p><p>[00:41:57] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> me. Maybe that would help.[00:42:00]</p><p>[00:42:00] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Wow.</p><p>[00:42:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> be it. But he, </p><p>[00:42:02] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> is is full contact </p><p>[00:42:03] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> likes me too. He gives my book to his students. He likes </p><p>[00:42:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> me too! </p><p>[00:42:06] That&#39;s right.</p><p>[00:42:06] Yeah. . Here you go. So I think you, you&#39;ve missed the boat on that one.</p><p>[00:42:10] somehow, Jeff. </p><p>[00:42:11] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. </p><p>[00:42:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So, but he did mention, uh, he had one of those points, if you remember, on, on the data he previewed about,</p><p>[00:42:18] Consumer pain points about having a, a, a store associate that wasn&#39;t helpful. It just wasn&#39;t around right when they wanted them to be.</p><p>[00:42:25] Right. That one&#39;s, and the reason I bring that one up is because, you know, you, you&#39;ve been saying this now for, for half of our recorded time, Vicki, about the, that messy connection. Mm-hmm. . Right. And I think, Ron, you may remember, we&#39;ve talked about this before, with that store associate being the live streamer, because they&#39;re the one that has the connection with the customers that shop at that store, which is exactly Jeff&#39;s story with B and h. Right? Because you, you know that store , you are a passionate fan of that store. So how could they not get you to buy something through a live stream showing you what it is, what the [00:43:00] product is, when you can&#39;t be there in the store to physically touch it?</p><p>[00:43:03] So I think that,</p><p>[00:43:03] that, to me </p><p>[00:43:04] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> it doesn&#39;t have to be overproduced</p><p>[00:43:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> No. </p><p>[00:43:06] It</p><p>[00:43:06] just has to be </p><p>[00:43:06] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> that&#39;s, the</p><p>[00:43:07] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> because it&#39;s people working with people.</p><p>[00:43:09] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> and that&#39;s the key. And that&#39;s, I&#39;m, I&#39;m, I&#39;m, you&#39;ve gotta tweet out that term messy. If not, I&#39;m stealing it because we need to make that, yeah. The standard. Don&#39;t screw this up. Right. Don&#39;t overproduce, sorry. Digital media folks, don&#39;t overproduce this.</p><p>[00:43:26] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Perfect Is the enemy of the good? Yes. good.</p><p>[00:43:29] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Make it clean, make it authentic. Make it honest.</p><p>[00:43:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And I think the best proof point, and we were all talking about this before. The mics were on, about how many people have we run into on the second day that we&#39;re here, that we all felt like we&#39;re talking to them for about 10, 15 minutes.</p><p>[00:43:43] And so suddenly you realize this is the first time we&#39;re meeting in person , because we&#39;ve only ever seen each other on Zoom calls and teams calls, and all these we&#39;re always just bit of square on</p><p>[00:43:52] a screen</p><p>[00:43:52] But we&#39;ve done this for so long, now we feel like we have this existing connection </p><p>[00:43:56] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> it&#39;s true.</p><p>[00:43:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And, now we&#39;re in person.</p><p>[00:43:58] But you know, like [00:44:00] Ron, we, we hadn&#39;t met in person before.</p><p>[00:44:01] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> until Last night. Last night. Mm-hmm. . </p><p>[00:44:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So that&#39;s, to me is the proof point, right? Yeah. you know, that kind of a, I&#39;ll call it sounds negative, but I don&#39;t mean it to be low production value livestream because it&#39;s authentic and </p><p>[00:44:15] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Right.</p><p>[00:44:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It&#39;s messy </p><p>[00:44:16] Right, </p><p>[00:44:16] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> right. That&#39;s why there&#39;s such tremendous buzz. Now that you say that, that&#39;s what what I&#39;m thinking, it&#39;s a combination of seeing the people you&#39;ve known forever and being so thrilled.</p><p>[00:44:25] Mm-hmm. to see that person. And at the same exact time, seeing a bunch of people that you&#39;ve never seen in real life, only digitally. So you have this like, uh, information overload. </p><p>[00:44:38] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> right? Yes, it&#39;s true.</p><p>[00:44:39] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> I have a, a statement I used to say like, when we were trying to implement systems quickly and let&#39;s get it done, I used to say, don&#39;t worry, be crappy.</p><p>[00:44:48] Mm-hmm. . Okay, and so . So now we could say, don&#39;t worry, be crappy because it&#39;s authentic.</p><p>[00:44:55] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> That&#39;s true.</p><p>[00:44:56] And</p><p>[00:44:56] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> add the authentic word. Yeah. </p><p>[00:44:58] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Authentics a</p><p>[00:44:58] good word for sure. It&#39;s,</p><p>[00:44:59] [00:45:00] Yeah.</p><p>[00:45:00] I think the challenge though, with some of that, that I&#39;ve seen is it&#39;s just sometimes one more thing for the store to do. Yeah. So I actually think part of the conversation this week I&#39;d like to hear is, what are you taking out?</p><p>[00:45:13] Yes. Not what are you adding to?</p><p>[00:45:15] Because it&#39;s, they&#39;ve been asked to do BOPIS. They&#39;ve been asked to actually do more returns from web. They&#39;ve been asked sometimes then to livestream. They&#39;ve been asked to chat from the website. Mm-hmm. , they&#39;ve been asked to do many different things in stores. Yeah. What are you taking away so that the store can be that much better?</p><p>[00:45:32] What can you handle maybe in the office? How do you use staffing in a different way? How do. Hire people just to do livestream. Yeah. You know, so there&#39;s a lot of different ways, but adding more because you&#39;re in love with the new technology and the store&#39;s. Like what the hell?</p><p>[00:45:48] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yeah. Sharon made such a good point about that today.</p><p>[00:45:50] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> She did. She </p><p>[00:45:51] said</p><p>[00:45:51] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> you just don&#39;t realize that you&#39;re, that you&#39;re kind of piling on. Okay. </p><p>[00:45:56] And you know, when&#39;s relative when you get to, um, [00:46:00] economic hard times and people are being laid off this, one of my least favorite sayings in the world is do more with less. Okay. And I&#39;ve always said, no, that&#39;s not what you transitioned to.</p><p>[00:46:13] you, do less with less is what you do because there&#39;s always something to give up that does not hurt you. You just aren&#39;t thinking, you&#39;re not having innovation of thought. Okay. You&#39;re not looking at those things, those ham theory things that say, oh, why do you do that? Because I&#39;ve always done it. So do less with less.</p><p>[00:46:32] Mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:46:33] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Mm-hmm. . And if</p><p>[00:46:33] you have less, maybe your budget is different in 2023. Right. What are your most important priorities Exactly. That are great for your team and great for your customer. And maybe you can&#39;t have everything you always dreamed of. Mm-hmm. , maybe this is not the year for it.</p><p>[00:46:47] Right. And that&#39;s okay. , it&#39;s okay. Yeah. But you should still come to an NRF show, learn what&#39;s happening. To your point, Jeff. Mm-hmm. don&#39;t be one of those brands that didn&#39;t pay attention and we&#39;re seeing the news, those that are not making it right. They didn&#39;t [00:47:00] pay attention. So pay attention, but maybe you don&#39;t execute everything in 2023.</p><p>[00:47:05] Right. And I think it&#39;s a thought process that I&#39;m not sure all retailers do. I think they come here sometimes looking for that, all the ideas, and then want to execute all of them. You know, </p><p>[00:47:17] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Ron, you&#39;re the only voice in this industry for the store associate. I, I&#39;m trying to think of, right.</p><p>[00:47:22] Is there anybody out there that would&#39;ve just said what you just said, ? And the answer is no. I never would&#39;ve said it because it it, I mean, I&#39;m not a, I, I mean, I grew up in a store. I, well, I grew up with a World War II combat veteran father who, who would say you will absolutely do more with less. Because I did during the Great Depression, but he&#39;s not the most scalable person, so you&#39;re the only voice that&#39;s really even speaking to that.</p><p>[00:47:45] And how important is that? What can you take off the plate? Because it&#39;s just, it&#39;s crazy. </p><p>[00:47:50] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> crazy. And it, it doesn&#39;t always mean that you want to do less. Sometimes you need to do more or just, but I think it&#39;s, it, it&#39;s that point earlier. [00:48:00] Listen, learn. What does the customer asking for? What does the team need?</p><p>[00:48:04] And then make a decision based on what you&#39;ve heard, not the other way around. Right? Don&#39;t come to a conference call or to a, a big video call and say, guess what? I went to NRF and we&#39;re going into the Metaverse and you have, please don&#39;t say it, it&#39;s 300 stores on the call going. Okay. I can&#39;t even be on this call right now because I need to go ring some customers up, you know?</p><p>[00:48:25] So I think there&#39;s this sometimes like misconception. Yeah. Um, and thank you for saying that, Jeff. I just </p><p>[00:48:31] think </p><p>[00:48:32] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I just, it&#39;s just, you&#39;re such an important voice out there and you&#39;re the only voice out there. </p><p>[00:48:36] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Okay. Yeah.</p><p>[00:48:38] And which is odd to me, you know, as someone just because I, I came from stores, but if 80% of your revenue.</p><p>[00:48:45] You know, comes from the store. 80% of the conversation should be about stores, in my opinion. Yeah. And it&#39;s not, it&#39;s not always the sexiest part, and it&#39;s the hardest </p><p>[00:48:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:48:55] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> know </p><p>[00:48:55] what? I have never</p><p>[00:48:56] thought of that</p><p>[00:48:57] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> before. Yeah, </p><p>[00:48:58] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> yeah.</p><p>[00:48:58] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Because I am willing to [00:49:00] bet in technology, 60 to 70% of the conversations around e-commerce.</p><p>[00:49:05] Because it&#39;s all technology driven.</p><p>[00:49:07] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> right? Yeah. I heck,</p><p>[00:49:08] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> don&#39;t know how we would analyze </p><p>[00:49:09] that. Yeah. But I, it&#39;s gotta be that case. I&#39;ve never thought about it in that regards</p><p>[00:49:12] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> before and most of those people don&#39;t come from stores. Right. So I think that there&#39;s this sometimes, you know, and I do believe in this, and sure, Vicky would back me up.</p><p>[00:49:23] Sometimes there&#39;s a lack of knowledge about the store because if you don&#39;t come from the store, you&#39;re uncomfortable in the environment. Yes. You actually don&#39;t know what questions to ask</p><p>[00:49:31] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> And you think it&#39;s easier than it, than it is. </p><p>[00:49:33] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> That&#39;s exactly right. Right. So I would host often, you know, executive teams, or I would say to the office here in Times Square, I&#39;m gonna be in Madison Avenue every Tuesday morning at nine.</p><p>[00:49:43] before you come in, meet me at the store to 150 people in the office, right? I&#39;ll be there every day. I will answer all of your questions. I will walk you through the store. Uh, you don&#39;t have to do anything except listen to the team and I&#39;ll lead the conversation. I could buyers, planners, finance [00:50:00] it, everybody.</p><p>[00:50:01] My, my own store team would come and listen and learn, but I did all the work for them cuz what happens?</p><p>[00:50:08] people go into stores, they don&#39;t actually know what questions</p><p>[00:50:10] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Not a clue. </p><p>[00:50:11] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Right? They</p><p>[00:50:11] don&#39;t know. It&#39;s a way like, how&#39;s your business? Well read the flash. Like, you don&#39;t need me to do that. So I think that there&#39;s this almost fear, there&#39;s a fear of the store.</p><p>[00:50:22] Yeah. </p><p>[00:50:22] Mm-hmm. that I&#39;m personally trying to break down. </p><p>[00:50:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:50:26] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:50:26] Well, you know what&#39;s funny about that? So I, I really, a once I left my dad&#39;s operation and went off to college, um, I really was never in the store spot. I was in distribution and what do we have every year in distribution? We had a thing called inventory. And guess what we used to get to get, oh, we got all the people from the front office coming to.</p><p>[00:50:43] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> help us </p><p>[00:50:44] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> and guess what we did about three days after -Unfix or fix all the help. So I, I was just thinking that, you know, I could really relate to</p><p>[00:50:53] that. The last thing</p><p>[00:50:54] you wanna see is, hey, we&#39;re from the upfront office, </p><p>[00:50:56] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> we&#39;re here to</p><p>[00:50:56] help. </p><p>[00:50:57] No, they, they&#39;re very proud that they work in stores on black Friday. [00:51:00] They&#39;re exactly, they&#39;re very proud of</p><p>[00:51:01] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yes.</p><p>[00:51:01] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Holding down the</p><p>[00:51:02] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> turmoil. </p><p>[00:51:05] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> No, it&#39;s true.</p><p>[00:51:05] Yeah.</p><p>[00:51:06] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Let&#39;s</p><p>[00:51:07] put people, uh, in a high stress environment where everyone&#39;s on edge.</p><p>[00:51:11] Oh, it&#39;s funny. </p><p>[00:51:12] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:51:12] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So funny.</p><p>[00:51:14] Oh, yay.</p><p>[00:51:15] Yayy. </p><p>[00:51:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well,</p><p>[00:51:15] I, I&#39;m gonna throw out one last thing for us to get some opinions on because maybe the, the final piece that I think we are going to hear more about, because the couple of conferences I&#39;ve been to last year, this came up, uh, and it&#39;s been an, a pattern in a trend, and that&#39;s retailers doing more B2B kind of services than just selling to consumers to, because it goes right, you know, it&#39;s a high margin. Helps with the revenue might not be a lot, certainly not in the kind of com transactional volume you get from your stores, but taking things that you&#39;re good at as a retailer, bundling them up, selling it to other retailers. I&#39;m seeing a lot of that. I, I think I, I have to believe we&#39;re gonna hear and see a good amount of, of noise about and buzz about that at N R [00:52:00] NRF this week.</p><p>[00:52:00] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Hmm.</p><p>[00:52:01] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> I think that, uh, there&#39;s a couple themes there that, that play into that. Okay. First of all, it&#39;s, this is the best industry in the world and the most resilient, and the most creative, and the most agile because you are dealing with that customer and every day is different. For a retailer, every day is different.</p><p>[00:52:21] I don&#39;t know how else to say it. It&#39;s the truth, right? So since every day is different for, uh, a retailer, okay. In this world, nobody is doing anything by themselves. You can&#39;t be successful by yourself. This is why I talk about partnerships, right? Because what we&#39;ve seen is the tech world coming together, spot solutions.</p><p>[00:52:47] Let me add on to this. I can help you. , look at the partner networks. They&#39;ve grown and grown and grown like crazy. Right? Right. And and same thing with people thinking more partnership oriented. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . [00:53:00] I&#39;ve just gotten to the point where no one can do it alone. Yeah. And they shouldn&#39;t. Yeah. And I think that is at crux of this is, yeah, look, if I can&#39;t build it, let&#39;s go find it.</p><p>[00:53:11] Let&#39;s work together. So</p><p>[00:53:13] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> yeah, I would agree with that.</p><p>[00:53:15] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Well, I&#39;ve always said, I think technology and retail is much more expensive than it needs to be because everything is competitive advantage, so we can&#39;t share anything.</p><p>[00:53:22] So everything has to be custom developed. You don&#39;t see that in other </p><p>[00:53:25] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Nope. Yeah, </p><p>[00:53:25] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> in manufacturing, they&#39;re all, I mean, the CEOs are all </p><p>[00:53:28] engineers. You&#39;re right. </p><p>[00:53:29] I mean, they just, they just like, okay, if, if we all design a better drill rig, let&#39;s just compete on who can get the, you know, raw materials to market.</p><p>[00:53:37] Let&#39;s not compete on, Hey, I&#39;ve got a, you know, A unique drill thing. I mean, it&#39;s just, it&#39;s crazy. When I, when I used to try to explain how retail operated inside my Gartner colleagues in other verticals, it was like they would look at us like, you are out of your mind, you&#39;re out of your minds. </p><p>[00:53:55] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Um, wow.</p><p>[00:53:56] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> and I get why we are, I mean, in some ways because we, I mean [00:54:00] we are the, the, we saw it in March and April of 2020 how thin the line of civilization is, it&#39;s one, it&#39;s one grocery, uh, supply chain. And if that supply chain would&#39;ve crumbled, if, if the truckers would&#39;ve said, Hey, listen, everyone&#39;s cutting and running and we&#39;re gonna cut and run too, we&#39;d be, we&#39;d be having a different conversation right now.</p><p>[00:54:20] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yeah, </p><p>[00:54:21] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Um, but, you know, let&#39;s just. Let&#39;s just maybe compete on doing better business and not necessarily on, I&#39;ve designed conveyor some ways, you know, super unique. We&#39;d be a better industry if we would would do that. We&#39;d be, we&#39;d be buying technology at a cheaper rate</p><p>[00:54:37] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Yes, sure. Yes, yes.</p><p>[00:54:38] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> And I would argue that we&#39;re much more similar than we are different, of course, in many ways. And I think that&#39;s also often missed, that everyone thinks that their business is so special. Yeah. And, and they&#39;re not, you may you sell something different.</p><p>[00:54:52] Yeah. But the core of actually how this industry operates is not that different. And I do think we have to be more open to learn. Open to [00:55:00] listen, open to, you&#39;re right. Maybe it&#39;s, I, I buy it instead of developing it. Right. I don&#39;t hire someone or you do it in a popup and I learn how to do it uniquely. But I do think we, we.</p><p>[00:55:12] There&#39;s something, I don&#39;t know, Jeff, if you agree, there&#39;s something that we feel in this industry for every brand I&#39;ve worked for, that no one does it as well as we do. </p><p>[00:55:21] we&#39;re the best at it. And therefore I&#39;m not gonna share my secrets. Exactly. And I, I&#39;d like to like break that down a little.</p><p>[00:55:27] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> They&#39;re not secrets though, that&#39;s the thing. It&#39;s, it&#39;s like, you know, it&#39;s like, what is it? Um, uh, the emperor has no clothes. I mean, come on. It&#39;s, it&#39;s</p><p>[00:55:35] software. The people that benefit from that. And it&#39;s a bit heresy cuz these are some of my clients, but it&#39;s the consultancies who. Get, get, have gotten away with, you know, mass customization. And so if we could just absorb technology, and by the way, a lot of software companies say, listen, just accept code at base and you know, you, you&#39;ll drive the cost down.</p><p>[00:55:53] We&#39;ll be able to refresh what, and, you know, so it&#39;s, it&#39;s that whole mind shift</p><p>[00:55:57] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> Look, remember, people are always gonna protect their [00:56:00] turf.</p><p>[00:56:00] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Hundred percent. </p><p>[00:56:01] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> And when you think, not, not just from a brand perspective, but think about the infrastructure that&#39;s inside retail, where you have the heads of departments, okay? and, and when we tried to break down those silos okay. And get the communities to work together, cuz they have to do that to, to, have a great business.</p><p>[00:56:21] It&#39;s, people are very protective about their, whatever it knowledge, </p><p>[00:56:26] their, their unique knowledge, their power, their salary, their, </p><p>[00:56:30] you know, it&#39;s, it just goes to your core. And again, when you understand the person, you can deal with it in a, in a better way, but, You know, where that comes from is the protection of not what&#39;s mine.</p><p>[00:56:44] And, and then I&#39;ve seen where each person thinks about it differently. A marketer&#39;s gonna be extremely protective.</p><p>[00:56:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Mm-hmm. </p><p>[00:56:51] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> a digital person is much more open and free about, so, , how you were raised in the industry is really [00:57:00] affects how you react and how you are seeing all the groups together.</p><p>[00:57:05] They all have, CIOs have a very different personality. I&#39;m not saying anything up or down, I&#39;m just saying they all have a different</p><p>[00:57:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> personal, different </p><p>[00:57:12] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> That&#39;s right,</p><p>[00:57:13] That&#39;s fair </p><p>[00:57:13] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> They all totally valid and why and reason of how they grew up in the industry and now they&#39;re all. . Everybody has to work together. So it&#39;s, you&#39;re getting to the core of humanity.</p><p>[00:57:26] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Hmm. Wow. That&#39;s deep. . It is</p><p>[00:57:32] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> and only only day two . </p><p>[00:57:33] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> That&#39;s true. </p><p>[00:57:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And we&#39;re just getting started. Yeah. </p><p>[00:57:36] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> But we&#39;re we&#39;re just getting started.</p><p>[00:57:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That is probably a good place to wrap it up. What do you think, Jeff? </p><p>[00:57:41] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Fantastic</p><p>[00:57:41] I think so </p><p>[00:57:42] kick </p><p>[00:57:42] off I think so. Some of us have a San Francisco 49ers game to go watch </p><p>[00:57:46] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> along. Yes. .Some of us have to go to the next thing. . </p><p>[00:57:50] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> That&#39;s Yes, we </p><p>[00:57:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right. There&#39;s a lot of</p><p>[00:57:51] next things. for the next few days,</p><p>[00:57:54] Well,</p><p>[00:57:54] Vicky, Ron, thanks so much for joining Jeff,</p><p>[00:57:57] and myself to kick off this series. I can&#39;t think of two better [00:58:00] people we could have asked to join us for a great retail conversation.</p><p>[00:58:03] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> yeah</p><p>[00:58:03] <strong>Vicki Cantrell:</strong> This was very fun. </p><p>[00:58:04] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> We need </p><p>[00:58:04] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> there, yeah,</p><p>[00:58:05] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> like a little mini Ron podcast studio that we could tow </p><p>[00:58:09] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> tell </p><p>[00:58:09] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right? That&#39;s </p><p>[00:58:10] right. </p><p>[00:58:10] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Little foot wide Airstream. That would </p><p>[00:58:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> the mini air stream to go</p><p>[00:58:14] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> It&#39;s, it&#39;s more glamorous than this little conference room, that&#39;s for sure </p><p>[00:58:17] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> tell you gosh, Ron, you </p><p>[00:58:20] I can&#39;t see an Airstream. I, every Airstream I see, I think of you. And there&#39;s an Airstream dealership in Morgan Hill too. And I, every time I go by that, I go, Ron over there, good good job, man.</p><p>[00:58:30] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> Thank you. Just Thank you</p><p>[00:58:32] . Thank you Thank you very much. </p><p>[00:58:34] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> well done </p><p>[00:58:36] <strong>Ron Thurston:</strong> thank you, Ricardo.</p><p>[00:58:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thank you. Thanks everybody. Jeff, until the next one. </p><p>[00:58:39] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah, day three. </p><p>[00:58:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Let&#39;s</p><p>[00:58:40] day three. Let&#39;s </p><p>[00:58:40] go.</p><p>[00:58:41] ​</p><h3>[00:58:48] Show Close</h3><p>[00:58:48] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Welcome back everyone. Damn, you didn&#39;t oversell that intro. Ricardo. Killer discussion. I didn&#39;t even notice how long it was. It just had [00:59:00] me wanting more and wishing I was in the room.</p><p>[00:59:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, well, like I said, it, it&#39;s definitely getting my vote right now for best episode we&#39;ve ever done. I mean, there, there, there&#39;s something to be said for capturing these kind of conversations in person, in a really small room among friends, and just a completely open discussion.</p><p>[00:59:18] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, I hope our listeners and viewers enjoyed that. I know I did. I really wish I had been there, but next time.</p><p>[00:59:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Next time. Yep. And I&#39;m, I&#39;m sure this will not be the last time that you see this group get together for a chat. You can count on that and we&#39;ll, we&#39;ll, we&#39;ll bring them back for, for more in the future.</p><p>[00:59:36] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So for those of you paying attention, if you caught our other Rethink Retail friend in the background, well, if you&#39;ve guessed it, Julia, Raymond . You&#39;d be right. Julia was watching through the glass outside the conference room, taking a few pics. I bet she didn&#39;t expect you guys would be there so long either.</p><p>[00:59:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, that&#39;s so true. [01:00:00] That is so true. I&#39;m sure she didn&#39;t think it would be quite that long. . Well, Casey, I think this wraps us up for the first part of our N R F Live mini-series.</p><p>[01:00:09] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Indeed it does. Stay tuned everyone for the rest of the series and be sure to catch the fun not only on the podcast, but also This Week in I nnovation hosted by Jeff Roster. Ricardo, that&#39;s a wrap.</p><p>[01:00:23] If you enjoyed the show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don&#39;t miss a minute. Wanna know more about what we talked about today? Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets.</p><p>[01:00:46] I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden.</p><p>[01:00:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to learn more about us and stay connected, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter, at Retail Razor, on LinkedIn, [01:01:00] and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content. </p><p>[01:01:02] I&#39;m your host Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[01:01:05] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[01:01:06] ​</p><p>[01:01:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. </p> 1e16b9b3-fd3c-481d-b05f-7c2a510c673d https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 03 Feb 2023 15:51:48 +0000 3687 no full S2E9 - Top 10 Predictions for 2023 S2E9 - Top 10 Predictions for 2023 9 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E9 - Top 10 Predictions for 2023 It’s a new year, and after wrapping up another NRF Big Show, we felt it was time to share our Top 10 Predictions for retail and retail tech in 2023! What will retailers focus on this year? How will consumer shopping and buying habits change? From the evolution of retail media networks and loyalty programs, to web3, the metaverse, and ChatGPT, what technologies make the cut and deserve your attention? Hosts Ricardo and Casey cut through the clutter and give you their top 10 trends for 2023 in this episode. See if their predictions match yours and let us know on LinkedIn! Plus, our new segment, Retail Razor Data Blades returns, with another special data insight from Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating, learned from their 100,000’s of point-of-sale customer survey polls. In this episode learn how aligning with consumer values still plays a critical role in consumer buying decisions! News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show was a finalist for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during the NRF Big Show 2023! News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, Overclocked, and Tech Lore, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S1E9 Top 10 Predictions for 2023 [00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: [00:00:20] Show Intro [00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to season two, episode nine of The Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:00:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome retail show listeners to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. [00:00:38] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Casey, this is the moment many of our fans have been waiting for. [00:00:43] It's time for our top 10 retail predictions for 2023, and as a huge bonus, we are recording live and in person in New York City right after the end of the N R F big show. We're literally sitting face-to-face and we never get to do that for this show. [00:00:59] Casey Golden: never, I [00:01:00] mean, we're always sitting face to face from the shoulders up, [00:01:02] Ricardo Belmar: and a little square on a screen, but, [00:01:06] Casey Golden: I can't think of a better way to wrap up NRF than sharing our hot takes live. [00:01:10] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. We don't often get to do this live and in person. [00:01:13] Retail Razor Data Blades - "How aligning with consumer values still plays a critical role" [00:01:13] Ricardo Belmar: But first, it's time for the newest segment of our show Retail Razor Data Blades, where we talk real world numbers and slice through measurable consumer insights. It's a bit like, show me the math so I understand where this data's coming from and bringing us that slicing and dicing of data is Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating. [00:01:30] TruRating is changing the way retailers track how customers feel against how they spend with an innovative multi-channel feedback solution with an average of 80% response rate from consumers. Georgina will share with us some key data points and offer a bit of insight into what's behind those numbers based on their extensive customer survey data at the point of sale. [00:01:48] Casey Golden: Welcome, Georgina. [00:01:50] Georgina Nelson: Thank you so much for having me! [00:01:52] Casey Golden: So today's Retail Razor Data Blade segment is "how aligning with customer values still plays [00:02:00] a critical role". [00:02:01] Georgina Nelson: So, yeah, to that point, we wanted to really find out what was driving consumers loyalty behavior. As you know, as a time when retailers are, are feeling the, the pinch of inflation as of their shoppers. You know, we can often get to this race to the bottom where prices are slashed in desperation to, to try and win that customer loyalty. [00:02:25] And so we, we asked some simple questions as to what was driving that loyal behavior. Interestingly, we found just over smidgen, over 50%, so 51% of consumers said they were influenced by their loyalty card and by money off vouchers. , but a staggering 77% said what actually drives their behavior and their loyalty is whether their retailers' values resonate with them and they affiliated with it. [00:02:56] And so I think in this modern time of loyalty, [00:03:00] you know, that sends a really clear message for retailers to understand what values do their customers really affiliate with and how can they market those to them and ensure that that's understood and really build that, build that bond with their consumer base. [00:03:17] Casey Golden: Yeah, really backs up the, you know, communicate your brand and your values. Stop talking about price. [00:03:24] Georgina Nelson: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you know, even just recently, we've still seen that over 75% of US consumers. They do want to buy ecologically sound products. They do want to buy organic when those choices are available. And so it's really to retailers, you know, don't scrimp on these initiatives just because times might be toughed because consumers are still are looking for those. [00:03:50] And looking for that stance in values to make their choices. [00:03:54] Casey Golden: Yep. [00:03:55] Ricardo Belmar: Georgina, it seems like for this to really be [00:04:00] beneficial for the retailers that are going to, like your data, is suggesting that they need to lean into this and, and not stop investing. They'd have to really understand how to communicate that to their customers to, to make it really worthwhile and beneficial. [00:04:14] Georgina Nelson: Yeah, I, you know, I think strategies need to be, it's not like a blanket one, one email, one shot in the dark. We really need to have a nuanced understanding of the customer base and what drives that loyalty. And then that needs to be communicated across a website, across product placements, across brand messaging. [00:04:36] And I think what's important is that, you know, all customers are not alike. You know, there's gonna be a mix. And what we see is that mix is more, you know, is obviously very prevalent at a store level. In terms of each store is a snowflake with different customer segmentation and really beginning to understand that at a store level, how you know, and testing and asking [00:05:00] customers now how have your, you know, have they understood the green initiatives which you are pushing? [00:05:07] Do they understand the drive on organic produce in, you know, understanding that awareness and then being able to tailor. Better coms and better marketing is absolutely key. And and we recommend doing that at a granular store level. [00:05:23] Casey Golden: I couldn't agree more. Well, that does it for another edition of Retail Razor Blades. [00:05:28] Georgina Nelson: Does this mean I get to keep the segment intro music every time? I'm on the show. [00:05:34] Ricardo Belmar: I, I think we can arrange that [00:05:36] Georgina Nelson: Thank you so much both. [00:05:38] Casey Golden: Absolute pleasure. [00:05:39] So now let's get right to those predictions. Ricardo, what would you say there are any underlining themes that we'll see across our 10 predictions? [00:05:53] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think there are at least two big themes. One would be the impact of the economy, of course, [00:06:00] that's having on retailer investments and consumer shopping habits, and I think the second is frankly, gen Z. [00:06:05] We'll see how Gen Z's shopping and buying habits are gonna have a bigger impact this year than they have in past years. [00:06:11] Prediction #1 - Private Label take over [00:06:11] Casey Golden: Let's dive into number one. Private label is taking over our shelves. You all know that I love a good brand and I'm a label of label lover, but a lot of products have become brand neutral with the help of the homogenization of marketplaces, like Wayfair and Amazon marketing convenience over the brands that they carry. Many private label brands are actually in our cupboards without even knowing it. [00:06:41] Margin is king, especially during these uncertain economic environments. Retailers need the most control over the product assortment and the bottom line. Finding a lot of Gen Z doesn't have the brand loyalty in CPG that a lot of other generations do. [00:06:58] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, I think that's [00:07:00] probably a key one right there too. Especially after a year of inflation consumers want lower cost options, but everyone still wants high quality. Nobody wants to go down in price and then get something that's just too cheap and not good enough. But I think the big difference that you just pointed out, it's, gen Z doesn't seem to care about brand loyalty, especially not with, with CPGs, might be a slightly different story if we're talking apparel or home goods. But I think at the end of the day, unless you're buying on the high end luxury side of home goods, most people don't care what the brand name is on it. It's just whatever looks good and feels good to them. When it's apparel, it all depends on who we're talking about. [00:07:35] Department stores for sure, probably would love to have a third of their sales or more be their own private labels, but the fact is a lot of 'em haven't traditionally been good enough for most buyers, but Gen Z doesn't seem to care. [00:07:46] Casey Golden: No. I mean, gosh, Shein did like a billion dollars in sales [00:07:49] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, exactly. [00:07:50] Exactly. So , so, so what does that say? So yeah, I think that that's a, that's definitely a, a good number one to kick off the list. [00:07:58] Prediction #2 - Retail Media Network evolution [00:07:58] Ricardo Belmar: So let me take us to number two, [00:08:00] which for me is, is a big one. And everybody knows I love talking about this topic, and that's retail media networks and how they're gonna evolve. [00:08:07] This year it's all gonna be about the, in-store media experience and how that gets combined with all the digital channels to really make a, a good end-to-end media experience that retailers can sell to brands. So, everyone likes to debate this a little bit because it seems like a trend and yes, we all know that Amazon has the majority of the share, but the fact is even if a retailer can get one percent, of this total media network share. [00:08:33] Those are big numbers and, and they're big numbers that come with big margins, so it really is helpful. [00:08:39] for a [00:08:40] retailer, and if, if we look at some relevant context to this, I mean, you've got a lot of things that are going on that make this special. I mean, one, there's all the first party data that retailers are getting from these media networks, and that's huge. [00:08:51] That lets them deliver really strong return on the a on advertising spend, right? Good ROAS for the brands. And one of the things we heard during nrf, that's a [00:09:00] big trend on this that I a hundred percent agree with. You know, you've got a decline in TV advertising in general. We've got cookies going away and, and we've got just in general, right, the digitization of the store. [00:09:10] All this stuff kind of combines to make it super attractive to actually put media bys and advertising at the point at which a customer makes a buying decision. So why would this not increase? [00:09:22] And there's even, I think more from that, I mean, you know, people also like to debate where is the, where are these dollars coming from? [00:09:28] You know, brands look at all these media networks and as a brand say, oh, do I have to spend now on 20 different retail networks in addition to all the other ads spend? I have? Well, well, maybe they do, but the truth is right, they're gonna shift the spend a little bit. So it, the, the answer is, you know, when you ask where do the dollars come from? [00:09:43] Well, pretty much everywhere else, it's not a retail media network. But I think probably the biggest threat is to Facebook or Meta and to Google because it's their ad dollar spend that's gonna go to these retail media networks, Amazon and everybody else. [00:09:54] Casey Golden: 100 Percent. They're already, brands have already and been shifting these [00:10:00] budgets and not by a hundred thousand dollars, but like numbers. [00:10:04] 875,000 for those month [00:10:06] Ricardo Belmar: it's big numbers. It's big numbers. And when you roll in, the more advanced networks, they're gonna have tie-ins to streaming tv. They're gonna have connections into, players like Netflix, Hulu, and everybody that are gonna tie into it. [00:10:18] And it's all comes down to audience data, right? And, and when you start applying this in-store, let's remember that 85 percent of all retail sales still happen in stores. So this isn't just an e-commerce play anymore. This is about doing what, you know, Doug Stephens and others used to talk about the store as, as theater, the store as media. [00:10:36] Well, this is the year that we're really gonna start to see that because of these retail media networks and, and I think the last thing I'll add to it is, The end goal isn't just, I think the media network. The end goal is for the retailer to introduce a collection of B2B services. They can sell to brands or, and even to other retailers. [00:10:54] So, sure, Walmart's the obvious first one to do it because of their size and scale. But that doesn't mean that, Best [00:11:00] Buy, couldn't do it or, or any other large enough retailer couldn't take exactly what they're doing in these services, bundle 'em up and sell 'em as a package. They're gonna have so much more first party customer data. [00:11:11] Every brand wants access to that. [00:11:13] Casey Golden: I agree. And everybody's spent a lot of money over the last decade on creating their audience and all of their customer data. So this is just another monetization strategy that they can go ahead and not put it all just into the individual products that they're selling. [00:11:29] Ricardo Belmar: That's right, that's right. And, and I'll just repeat again, one reason why I think this is such a, a major thing for the year, the margin is better than just selling products to consumers. So while it might not be, you know, it might only be a fraction of your total. Sales volume, it comes with a good margin. [00:11:45] So it just helps the financials for the retailer. [00:11:48] Prediction #3 - Returns management is a top IT investment [00:11:48] Ricardo Belmar: So speaking of things that help the financials for the retailer, let's go on to number three. And I think that's all about returns management becoming a top IT investment. [00:12:00] Particularly powered with AI-based solutions because every retailer has an issue with returns right now. [00:12:05] It's not just because of of growing e-commerce buy, it's because it's just the new habits that consumers have had to buy more than what they need in return, what they don't after they decide. But this has caused massive logistics challenges for retailers. Huge cost impact. And it's one thing to say we just need to get consumers to not return things. [00:12:25] But the fact is you can't just change those buying habits for, for consumers, you need to really look at it and say, well, what can I do to prevent the cause of the return in the first place? So, yes, we all know that this is hardest to do in apparel because we still have issues with fit. There's new fit tech coming around. [00:12:43] We've seen some players in that. More and more of that is gonna be made available until that gets solved it's gonna be a real challenge to, to improve this situation in apparel. But if we look at any other product category, I think the key is retailers investing in solutions that are going to help them understand why the [00:13:00] returns are happening and then make adjustments. [00:13:01] And it might even be in some cases, as simple as your product page description on your e-commerce isn't good enough. And people are buying it by, because without realizing it's not what they want in the first place, [00:13:11] Casey Golden: a hundred percent better images, I'm seeing more 3D images, I'm seeing more videos available on the products. And I think that was pretty much the, one of the main topics that I heard from over the last week has all been about returns. [00:13:26] We need to control our returns, we need to reduce our returns. And I think, you know, we still have to remember, too, every single time that package hits the doorstep and we pick it up, we get a dopamine hit, We really don't need what's in the box. We just wanted that dopamine hit. So there's, you know, there's that, too, [00:13:45] Ricardo Belmar: too there's, that too. [00:13:45] Casey Golden: some consumer buying behavior here that has caused some, a little bit of package addiction. [00:13:50] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. And that has a, a huge sustainability impact. So as we see retailers lean in more into sustainability issues and control than ha controlling that [00:14:00] returns problem is a big, big part of their sustainability process. [00:14:04] So, so that's definitely, I think gonna be a huge, again, huge area of investment is this. [00:14:08] Casey Golden: Yeah. If you're a brand or a retailer and you have a a 35% online return rate, you're not alone [00:14:15] that's right, [00:14:15] Ricardo Belmar: that's right, that's right. And, and that's, you know, at the risk of the new pun intended, but it's just not sustainable to keep having those high return rates. [00:14:23] Casey Golden: Not unless you got a 60% conversion rate. [00:14:26] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Exactly. [00:14:27] Prediction #4 - Store Automation for Frontline Workers [00:14:27] Ricardo Belmar: So I'm gonna move on to number four. Continuing this little mini theme on where the investment dollars are going and technology, let's talk about store automation and how that's going to help frontline workers and store operations. Why? [00:14:40] Because the, that labor shortage retailers have had this past year. It's not going away. It's not going away this year. There's still an issue of you don't have the staff that you want, which means you need that store team to be more efficient in what they're doing, more productive, but you also need to retain them. [00:14:55] And retaining them means you need to make the environment better and and more [00:15:00] interesting, more enjoyable for them. So what are you gonna invest? When you're gonna invest in technology? Is it help get rid of all those mundane tasks that everybody doesn't want to do because they're not complicated, they're just kind of routine and they're tedious. [00:15:12] Find ways to automate and get rid of all, all [00:15:14] Casey Golden: mine. We all wanna walk the aisles and do a price change. [00:15:18] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Which, so, so things like electronic shelf labels comes into play here? I mean, that's not even a new technology, right? It's been around for a while, but because of the cost, no one's had a motivation to put it in. [00:15:29] Now we're starting to see a lot more interest in that because it takes that job away from the store team so they don't have to deal with it and they can do more work in front of a customer. Workforce management, right? More investment in shift management. Let your employees manage their schedules. [00:15:42] That's what every store team employee wants is flexibility in their schedule. Just give it to them. Put the tools in place, let all your store teams work with a mobile device, have the right tools on it. And then there's new things. We, we've talked on this show before about store associates leading your live streaming efforts from the store, especially in [00:16:00] smaller retailers. [00:16:00] There are plenty of associates who are good at this and who probably already have their own livestream effort on YouTube or something on their own time. So why not take advantage of those skills, put those skills to work, which by the way, is gonna make that job more interesting. [00:16:14] Exactly. For those story searches. Yeah. [00:16:15] Casey Golden: it, it makes it a longer job retention because what used to be like, well, I'm gonna do this for a year. It turns into potentially five years and moving actually into your marketing department, [00:16:27] Ricardo Belmar: right? Which gives you a career path. And the whole goal is to make those jobs, not just jobs, but to turn it into a career path so that this is an area and a field that people want to work in now. [00:16:38] And that's is gonna start with this, this new level of investment in these technologies this year. [00:16:42] Casey Golden: I agree. I sure know. I expect people to know about the product when we walk up to them. Can't do that if they, they don't [00:16:50] Ricardo Belmar: it. Absolutely. And they gotta have access to the data and the information or, or they, they're, you can't expect them to know everything as the retailers, so you gotta put the information [00:16:58] Casey Golden: Yeah, it's gotta be fine. [00:16:59] Ricardo Belmar: [00:17:00] Accessible. Exactly. [00:17:02] Prediction #5 - BNPL explodes even more [00:17:02] Casey Golden: B N P L. [00:17:04] Ricardo Belmar: Number five [00:17:05] Casey Golden: Explodes or implodes. We'll see. But this holiday, B N P L got a big boost mostly from Gen Z. Regulators have started to look into this in 2022, but the debt this is causing could potentially, catch up in 2023. But we're seeing that they are expanding their businesses beyond their core, buy now, pay later product by launching new revenue channels, implementing new solutions, or even making new acquisitions. [00:17:41] To become more than just a BNPL, but to be a marketplace, to be managing customer acquisition and getting more brands and products through as a connection point, I think we'll definitely also see more sustainability and wellness for financial literacy and, and [00:18:00] financial wellness tools to increase that engagement and, you know, potentially mitigating some of the regulatory concerns. [00:18:07] But I think we'll, we'll definitely see something here mature as a product and a, and a space in general and could be a better opportunity for more brands to actually be exposed to some new customers and customer acquisition much like a, a marketplace. [00:18:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that, I think that one makes sense. And there's definitely, you know, again, that Gen Z connection o over the holidays for this one. I, I think you're right. We, we kind of predicted that last year. [00:18:36] It didn't totally happen the way we thought it would or as quickly as we thought. So I think it's, it's fair we're kind of shifting in a little bit to this year because it, it's just inevitable at this point. I, I think the more this grows, the more attention it's gonna get, the more of the financial stability issues matter for consumers. So it's gonna get looked at. And I think to their credit, right, the BM p l providers that they know this is coming and that's why they're all [00:19:00] kind of protecting themselves at expanding beyond that core. Like you said, Casey turning into marketplaces, [00:19:05] Casey Golden: they've changed their narratives. [00:19:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:19:06] I mean I think at the end of the day you can kind of say buy now, pay later in of itself probably wasn't an entire business, it was a [00:19:13] Casey Golden: It was [00:19:13] feature. so Right. [00:19:14] Ricardo Belmar: gotta be part of something else and, and that's what drove a lot of those acquisitions. [00:19:18] Casey Golden: it was a feature, not necessarily the, the [00:19:20] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. [00:19:21] Casey Golden: And just coming outta holiday, we've got a, and then going into what many would associate as like a recession or an economic downturn. There's a lot of debt sitting out there. There's multiple players. [00:19:34] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:19:35] Casey Golden: So [00:19:36] Ricardo Belmar: definitely, definitely. [00:19:37] Prediction #6 - CDP explosion [00:19:37] Ricardo Belmar: All right, Casey, bring us to number six. [00:19:40] Casey Golden: Well, it's 2023 and everyone's a C D P. A term that, there was a few of us that knew what A C D P was, you know, three years ago. [00:19:49] Now its seems to be everybody is a C D P. . And at the same time, nobody knows what a CDP is. [00:19:54] Ricardo Belmar: is. . That's right. . It's so true. That's so true. [00:19:57] That's so true. [00:19:58] Casey Golden: So everyone [00:20:00] is, you know, essentially brands are continuing to build their own from scratch. While the marketplace landscape creates more sophisticated products these consumer data platforms create a persistent, a more unified consumer database and make this data accessible to other systems. [00:20:16] Really pulling in from all of these multiple sources, being able to have this, single customer profile and really be able to manage consumer data to support compliance and governmental regulation requirements. This is definitely becoming a bigger and bigger concern over privacy and security, consumer data loss and, and protection in general. [00:20:37] It's definitely a high priority for all retailers and brands right now, and even SaaS companies that are processing consumer data. But I think here is where we'll also see a big uptake in more productized solutions coming in with different AI and ML use cases that can be powered [00:21:00] because of the efforts going into scrub all of this data and create these, single API to be able to access it. [00:21:10] And I think it's gonna be able to drive a lot of personalization going forward. [00:21:16] So I am very excited about this trend. [00:21:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I agree. I agree. And I think you're, you're absolutely right that that , while everybody's either wants to be a CDP or claims to be a cdp, there's still a lot of confusion over exactly what is a customer data platform. [00:21:30] When you talk to retailers and understanding what, what can you do with it? What am I gonna use it for, and what's the right solution out there for it? And there are different, different products or different needs, just like in any other category, but this is definitely one that when you look at, like you're saying, anything related to all requirements around privacy and data security. [00:21:48] There are new regulations, variations by state, by country you know, it's just becoming really hard to manage all of this. So if you don't have the right platform underneath it all, then how are you really ever gonna comply [00:22:00] with everything? Not to mention, before you even get to how you're using all this data and your own marketing efforts to consumers [00:22:05] Casey Golden: Exactly. Just getting it in one place is one thing. Exactly. And being able to make an edit or a change or validate. [00:22:11] These are not simple builds. [00:22:14] Ricardo Belmar: right? Yeah, yeah. These [00:22:15] Casey Golden: heavy [00:22:16] Ricardo Belmar: builds. That's right. [00:22:17] Casey Golden: And this, this is gonna be involv. 40 different other software companies that are plugging [00:22:22] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. That's why [00:22:24] Casey Golden: may or may not be new. [00:22:25] Yeah. [00:22:25] Ricardo Belmar: So making the right choice is, is super important. And just making sure you have a good c d p is absolutely critical. Now it's, I think this, what we're saying, I guess we're saying this is the year that it becomes table stakes as you just have to have [00:22:37] Casey Golden: this [00:22:38] yes. This is not, also not a fail fast product. [00:22:41] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. [00:22:44] Prediction #7 - Loyalty program evolution [00:22:44] Ricardo Belmar: All right, Casey, give us number seven, [00:22:46] Casey Golden: Loyalty. Loyalty. Loyalty programs are definitely going to be evolving beyond a point system or a punch card. I've never seen loyalty take such [00:23:00] a center stage as I have in the, the last probably four months of conversations and going into 2023. Retention, retention, retention, retention. [00:23:10] And I think that all kind of goes back to the CPM cost the lack of performance from Facebook ads, the marketing costs lower conversion rates, and really being able to engage your customer. , we're seeing more paid tiers as a new revenue source for a lot of brands to pay more for better service or, or additional perks. [00:23:31] And there's the web three evolution for the NextGen loyalty programs. And I think this is very interesting because there are so many. How do you communicate and how do you manage these VIPs online and in-store across different locations? via email [00:23:51] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's gonna work [00:23:52] Casey Golden: well. [00:23:52] Right? You know, I mean [00:23:53] Ricardo Belmar: E emails that they're likely to ignore. [00:23:54] Casey Golden: Right? Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, we really go back to a email communication with our customer, [00:24:00] which is always one-sided. And so managing loyalty programs, potentially just by email not the best utility. And I see a lot of opportunity here with the blockchain and leveraging these different web three types of loyalty programs to manage this much better. [00:24:21] And with Unlockables, I think that there's a lot of room here to grow and I think it's one part of Web three that makes sense for retail because we don't have 10 VIPs. , we have 1.5 million globally. [00:24:38] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Exactly, exactly. I think this is one of our more interesting predictions, as well, but kind of putting it in context, what do you think then of what Starbucks is doing? [00:24:48] Casey Golden: I love Starbucks. I've never used a loyalty at Starbucks. I pay full price since I should have bought stock when I was like 10. I should own a [00:24:56] Ricardo Belmar: right? . [00:24:56] Casey Golden: So I mean, I think that what they've done is great. I'm a big fan [00:25:00] of the vendor that they're using. Of course, I think we all are right. But I, I love the fact that they just moved on web three and went on with the loyalty program and really focusing on the retention piece because when you are a regular, you are a regular, not for a year, but like 20, [00:25:16] Ricardo Belmar: right? [00:25:17] That's right. [00:25:18] Casey Golden: You know? [00:25:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. We're talking real loyalty. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And, and we know from, not even considering that the web three. evolution of this, which I think is going to have huge impact. But when you look at the most successful loyalty programs, right, I, I will call Starbucks existing one, one of those. [00:25:34] I mean, Ulta Beauty's loyalty program is massively successful. Like huge, almost all of their customers are in that loyalty program. So it'll be interesting to see how they evolve it. But this is, I, I think this is a big one, and, and. . I, I would stress too, you, you mentioned that, the idea of having paid tiers and full membership programs as part of these loyalties, so loyalty is finally becoming more than just a discount. [00:25:55] And, and I think now it's, yeah, [00:25:56] Casey Golden: And this is a way to actually make it a club tier [00:26:00] and manage it, because otherwise you're managing it literally in email segments, [00:26:04] Ricardo Belmar: emails that just get ignored. [00:26:05] Casey Golden: You just, they just get ignored. And it's just, it's not scalable solution. And I think that this could be, Really, really compelling to be able to scale one your own loyalty program, but to be able to collaborate with other people's loyalty programs. [00:26:20] So what if Starbucks loyalty program communicated to Ulta's loyalty program? And this is where Web three can play [00:26:29] Ricardo Belmar: very [00:26:29] Casey Golden: interesting, is it [00:26:30] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:26:31] Casey Golden: the collaboration's a [00:26:33] Ricardo Belmar: these an, an even more useful and, and valuable club like relationship [00:26:38] Casey Golden: Yeah. I'm not exporting my, my email list and giving it to you. It's against yeah, it's against compliance. [00:26:43] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. customer data. Yep. [00:26:47] Prediction #8 - Anywhere Commerce vs Immersive Commerce [00:26:47] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Let's go to number eight, and this one I'm kind of referring to as anywhere commerce versus immersive commerce. Why? Because we all know that consumers want to transact commerce pretty much anywhere and everywhere [00:27:00] they are. [00:27:00] And yes, we, everybody says that all the time. We all know you can sort of, kind of do this with, with mobile. The fact is it's still not quite good enough and not always quick enough to meet your in the moment needs, with just a, a phone or, or mobile device. , so what's new in this prediction is that the context of where you are and how that changes how you would conduct that transaction? It's not necessarily the same process that you want as a consumer if you're in your car or on the subway or walking down the street versus sitting on your couch or sitting at a desk. I mean, each of these has different requirements in how you shop and how you buy. [00:27:37] And we've kind of generalized them to date, right? And maybe two or three different form factors. And, that's what we're saying. So, so to me, this idea of anywhere commerce is completely new kinds of solutions coming out. Some of them were at ces, some of them have been just started come out in, in the last year. [00:27:52] We'll hopefully be talking to some of those in future episodes this year. But it, it's all about adapting the medium to [00:28:00] work in a matter that still reduces that friction, eliminates complexity and makes it easy to transact commerce for the consumer in that contextual moment. And, and that's not quite the same as just saying mobile solves everything. [00:28:11] So that's the anywhere commerce side [00:28:12] Casey Golden: I mean, we've really, I mean, how many years have we tried to get live inventory feeds for physical stores to go with mapping, right? I mean, and I, I keep saying this over and over and over again, like when I am, you know, speaking with, with people over the, the evolution of commerce, our physical software is just not digitally native. [00:28:35] And so being able to work in real time it's, it's doable. And I think we're, we're finally gonna get to that point where you're gonna know the inventory one block ahead of you. [00:28:47] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree. I agree. And, and how it's presented to you matters. So you might need to know that inventory, but depending on what you're doing, it doesn't do you any good to be shown an image of it. Right. Or to be shown, how to find it. You just need to be told [00:29:00] that it's there. Yeah. And that's all you need to know in that moment to, to make a decision. So that kind of adaptability, it makes a difference and it has an impact on conversion. [00:29:08] So that, I think there's that. So now let's talk about the immersive commerce part of this. So that's the anywhere commerce piece. I like immersive commerce as a new term. And, and I'm gonna just kind of say this sort of for me replaces the broad. Metaverse discussion because I, I kind, if I break out the AR and the VR pieces for metaverse applications and, and look at, you know, how do you actually expect consumers to engage in commerce? [00:29:31] I, I still don't think every metaverse example we have now implies that everybody's gonna sit around with a lot of gear on their head and on their hands. And who wants to do that for hours at a time? [00:29:40] Casey Golden: wants, who wants to be responsible for that for society? [00:29:44] Ricardo Belmar: there's that too. So, I don't see that yet happening for just general commerce. [00:29:49] I mean, I can see it for, you know, if, if you're, if companies are hiring new employees and they want to do some new employee training and onboarding in a metaverse version of their [00:30:00] headquarters, I think that's a totally applicable use case. That makes a lot of sense when you've got so many people working remotely. [00:30:06] But that doesn't mean they're doing it for eight hours a day. It means they might do it for half an hour and then take a break and then come back in another half an hour or, or, or whatever it is. But it's not all day long and I haven't seen enough examples. Yeah, I mean, the whole point to doing this is not just to replicate a store, but to do things that you can't do in a physical space. [00:30:25] So we, we had Alan Smithson on here before talking about the mall in the Metaverse, and they're doing it a little differently, which I think is the right answer to enable you to do things that you couldn't do in the physical space, not just replicate it. But again, let's take the, the technology pieces out of it and let's look at, for example, AR. You can create as a retailer a really immersive experience with AR that lets someone understand the product. [00:30:46] Feel like they're engaging it, seeing it, feeling it, touching it without actually having it there. You know, this year's NRF had a lot of hologram demos of showing people what outfits might look like. Look, very three-dimensional. That's pretty immersive. I think the one thing [00:31:00] coming out of a pandemic, everybody wants to go back to this experiential retail, and that's where the immersive commerce comes in. [00:31:06] But you don't have to do it in the metaverse. So if you're a retailer, you know, where am I gonna invest money? And time and resources to do something that I expect to have a short term impact this year on consumers buy more from me. I think it's chasing those immersive experiences than chasing a brand new thing that the marketing team wants to do in the metaverse. [00:31:25] Casey Golden: I agree. And I think it's, it's also too we went with like the metaverse and it's something else and you need to go to it, to I don't know, what was it, say like, decentral land had like 31 user, daily active [00:31:36] Ricardo Belmar: something like that. [00:31:36] Casey Golden: Where it's just like, okay, maybe the user adoption, it's too far of a bridge. [00:31:42] So now everything's kind of coming back into a web two scope. To make it feel more immersive, but it's not necessarily using these technologies that are, are metaverse the way we defined it. I don't know. Or end of 2021 [00:32:00] all of last year. Right, right. You know, that too big a bridge. So now it's kind of changing. [00:32:05] So I think it's more about more about what than where. [00:32:08] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:32:09] Prediction #9 - web3 vs metaverse [00:32:09] Casey Golden: but it's, I mean, that can lead us into the, the web three versus Metaverse [00:32:14] Ricardo Belmar: which is our number nine, [00:32:15] Casey Golden: which is number nine. Web three is carving out its space in commerce. While the Metaverse is a marketer's new shiny object you know, where we have this underlining technology. [00:32:27] Can provide a more scalable utility and a more secure utility for a lot of different commerce applications. But it's not necessarily the metaverse. And I think that there's been some confusion over last year, everybody kind of figuring out what's an N F T, what's a digital twin, What is phygital, right? [00:32:46] Like all of these different opportunities. Where, and then we have the crypto crash So then it's just like, oh, maybe the hype's over. Web three is a definitely, I feel here to stay. Digital twinning has become [00:33:00] much more operational after all of these players experimenting in it last year, and we'll see more mature products and use cases from streaming the operational and production changes for business processes for physical apparel, phygital apparel and really being able to leverage almost another type of infrastructure as we go into more scalable and digital, digital native software solutions. And the metaverse, I see being more of like that new immersive marketing medium where instead of it being a flat Instagram image or a reel or a video this is an opportunity to move from broadcasting to interactive brand experiences becoming the destination. [00:33:48] But actually being able to have that fantasy that a lot of brands just can't afford to do in real life, you know? [00:33:57] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I think at the end of the day, [00:34:00] Meta and our friend Zuckerberg out there really burst the bubble on, on the excitement to this I think. Everybody thinks that they're just failing by throwing good money after bad. And, and that's soured a lot of people on it. [00:34:10] But I agree. Digital twins is probably the, to me, the top use case that comes out of the metaverse. It's got real utility. There are lots of brands using that, especially on, on the CPG side to do a lot of new product development model their, their factories and production lines so that they don't have to. [00:34:25] Figure out and spend money in the physical world and to make changes. They'll know before they make the first change, whether it's gonna work or not, and how much it's gonna save by doing the digital twins. So there's real value there. And I think you're, you're right, the web three part of it, you touched on it before on the loyalty program, so that's got real, real world value in that. [00:34:41] So we'll see more of it. Yeah, so I think that's definitely web three versus the metaverse. I think Web three is gonna be the winner there this year. [00:34:48] Prediction #10 - Generative AI [00:34:48] Ricardo Belmar: So let's move into the last one, number 10, which we would be remiss if we didn't have a predictions episode without talking about all these generative AI solutions that have come up in recent weeks, [00:35:00] whether it's ChatGPT and Dalle-2, all these things. [00:35:03] And what does that mean . To me this is, these are cool technologies, these are amazing applications of AI that retailers, just like every other business, are gonna figure out where and how are they gonna make use of it. I mean, you could see , something like ChatGPT being used to help write their marketing material. [00:35:19] For example, [00:35:20] Casey Golden: like, why did we not just ask the question and. In chat, G P T before the podcast, [00:35:26] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, we should, I'm afraid of what it would've [00:35:27] told us. , I'm afraid what it would've told us, wonder if would've, we would've matched up to any other ones. It tells us are the, the top 10 [00:35:35] Casey Golden: All [00:35:35] Ricardo Belmar: like to know. Okay, so, so yeah. [00:35:37] Homework for all our listeners is go ask ChatGPT for the top 10. And my big question, would it list itself as one of the big predictions and big trends for the year? [00:35:47] Casey Golden: Right? [00:35:47] Ricardo Belmar: right. But if you think. There are tools coming out already to integrate these technologies into other applications, other areas? [00:35:55] I mean, I'm, I'm just thinking of you know, this, this could have an impact in changing how people search for [00:36:00] products. For example, if I'm a retailer and I incorporate this into my app, maybe there's new reasons now as a consumer for me to go into the app and not spend time going to Amazon or Google to search for products. [00:36:09] I can just do it in their app and I can do it in a conversational way by just talking to the app. I. I don't know. I personally don't think there are a lot of people asking Alexa or Siri to help them shop [00:36:20] Casey Golden: No, I mean, you know, it it, it comes back to garbage in, garbage out. [00:36:25] And so in shopping, we've had a lot of garbage in. [00:36:27] Yeah, right. I just wanna see pencil skirts that have a double, double kick plate. [00:36:31] I've never seen the word double kick plate on any e-commerce listing in my life. And I have to go store by store. Yeah. But there's opportunity here, [00:36:41] Ricardo Belmar: right? And, and. Connect the dots on this to our retail media networks and B2B services prediction. [00:36:48] I mean, you apply these things to all the media that you're putting into the network and how the retailer interfaces that with the brands there. There's impact on both sides of this, right? For the brands and using these technologies to generate the media they're [00:37:00] placing into the network on the retailer and how they're presenting it in store on digital screens. [00:37:05] There's amazing applications and potential here. I, it's this one. I think at the same time, it's easy to predict. It's also hard to predict because knowing exactly what we're gonna see retailers create with this, I, I don't think anybody can legitimately do that right now in January. But I think, you know, it would be foolish not to have this on any predictions list for the year that it's gonna have a major impact. [00:37:26] Casey Golden: No, I mean, it's really interesting. [00:37:27] I've spoken to a lot of people in this, more on the tech side of the space. Everybody knows what it is, but when I've spoken to some brands and designers and and whatnot, they've never heard of it. [00:37:44] Right. [00:37:44] It's too soon. [00:37:45] there is definitely going, like, there, should [00:37:50] we move so fast for, for these, these retailers and brands on the tech side that, you know, they can't keep track of all of these things. [00:37:57] Thankfully there's, you know, a lot of retail consultants and a [00:38:00] lot of technologists that are really diving into here and finding the value . To bring back some type of a solution for Branson retailers with a use [00:38:08] Ricardo Belmar: case. [00:38:08] Yeah. And, and I think this is a lot like what's we've been saying and the other predictions is happening with web three, right? Where we, where we're finally seeing major examples in loyalty. It's where the actual retail tech that's being used in some ways hides all of the complexities and, and things that you have to know to implement on the tech side for this or the retail. [00:38:27] The brand doesn't need to deal with it, the solution just doesn't. And I think the same thing will happen here once we start to see the tools. Right now everybody's playing around with the raw capability that ChatGPT gives 'em or Dalle two. But when that gets integrated with the right tools and APIs so that you can put it in other things, we'll see new retail tech solutions come up that are going to use this, but they're gonna deliver a business outcome for the retailer of the brand without having to know that this is what's going on in the [00:38:54] Casey Golden: Exactly. [00:38:54] They're probably not even gonna know. [00:38:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And And that's what's gonna help at scale [00:38:57] Casey Golden: what's coming in. Right. And I've seen a [00:39:00] lot more success on these solutions. when you have the context of the end use case. Right. And I'm, I think we're just gonna see in general a huge push of people from retail that are in tech are going to be making some really big moves in the industry. [00:39:20] I think the most need for a retail technology consultant in general. It's not about omnichannel, it's not about bricks, it's not about clicks. It's literally about getting a technologist to work with you that understands the retail [00:39:36] business. [00:39:36] Ricardo Belmar: There's, there's a big opportunity there for the consultants in the industry and for all the, the services companies that are gonna help with implementations [00:39:43] Casey Golden: because it's a lot of, it's a lot of whiplash, [00:39:46] Ricardo Belmar: It is. Yeah. . That's right, [00:39:50] Casey Golden: that's plus running your own business, you [00:39:52] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Yeah. [00:39:53] Casey Golden: has a job already, right? So [00:39:55] Ricardo Belmar: Kind of implied, not so much because it's not really worth as a prediction, but kind of implied across all of [00:40:00] these that every retailer is actually focusing on the core business while dealing with all these things. [00:40:04] So yeah, that's sort of a given to that. All right, well, those are the 10, those are our 10 predictions. So for all of our listeners and show fans, hit us up on LinkedIn. Give us your comments and feedback. Let us know what you think. And we'll be checking in throughout the year to see how we're doing on these, like we did last season and see what happens from there. [00:40:25] Casey Golden: I, I've never been more excited for a year to work in my life. like 2023 Yeah. Is going to be the most fun. [00:40:34] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right. There's so much potential here. Absolutely. Absolutely. . Well, Casey, I think that is a wrap for this episode. [00:40:42] Casey Golden: Love it. [00:40:43] Show Close [00:40:43] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you [00:41:00] more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:41:14] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:41:31] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:41:32] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail, if you cut through the clutter! Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. It’s a new year, and after wrapping up another NRF Big Show, we felt it was time to share our Top 10 Predictions for retail and retail tech in 2023! What will retailers focus on this year? How will consumer shopping and buying habits change? From the evolution of retail media networks and loyalty programs, to web3, the metaverse, and ChatGPT, what technologies make the cut and deserve your attention? Hosts Ricardo and Casey cut through the clutter and give you their top 10 trends for 2023 in this episode. See if their predictions match yours and let us know on LinkedIn!


Plus, our new segment, Retail Razor Data Blades returns, with another special data insight from Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating, learned from their 100,000’s of point-of-sale customer survey polls. In this episode learn how aligning with consumer values still plays a critical role in consumer buying decisions!


News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show was a finalist for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during the NRF Big Show 2023!


News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, Overclocked, and Tech Lore, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

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Host → Ricardo Belmar,

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Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey



TRANSCRIPT

S1E9 Top 10 Predictions for 2023

[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar:

[00:00:20] Show Intro

[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to season two, episode nine of The Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:00:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome retail show listeners to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.

[00:00:38] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Casey, this is the moment many of our fans have been waiting for.

[00:00:43] It's time for our top 10 retail predictions for 2023, and as a huge bonus, we are recording live and in person in New York City right after the end of the N R F big show. We're literally sitting face-to-face and we never get to do that for this show.

[00:00:59] Casey Golden: never, I [00:01:00] mean, we're always sitting face to face from the shoulders up, 

[00:01:02] Ricardo Belmar: and a little square on a screen, but,

[00:01:06] Casey Golden: I can't think of a better way to wrap up NRF than sharing our hot takes live.

[00:01:10] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. We don't often get to do this live and in person.

[00:01:13] Retail Razor Data Blades - "How aligning with consumer values still plays a critical role"

[00:01:13] Ricardo Belmar: But first, it's time for the newest segment of our show Retail Razor Data Blades, where we talk real world numbers and slice through measurable consumer insights. It's a bit like, show me the math so I understand where this data's coming from and bringing us that slicing and dicing of data is Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating.

[00:01:30] TruRating is changing the way retailers track how customers feel against how they spend with an innovative multi-channel feedback solution with an average of 80% response rate from consumers. Georgina will share with us some key data points and offer a bit of insight into what's behind those numbers based on their extensive customer survey data at the point of sale.

[00:01:48] Casey Golden: Welcome, Georgina.

[00:01:50] Georgina Nelson: Thank you so much for having me!

[00:01:52] Casey Golden: So today's Retail Razor Data Blade segment is "how aligning with customer values still plays [00:02:00] a critical role".

[00:02:01] Georgina Nelson: So, yeah, to that point, we wanted to really find out what was driving consumers loyalty behavior. As you know, as a time when retailers are, are feeling the, the pinch of inflation as of their shoppers. You know, we can often get to this race to the bottom where prices are slashed in desperation to, to try and win that customer loyalty.

[00:02:25] And so we, we asked some simple questions as to what was driving that loyal behavior. Interestingly, we found just over smidgen, over 50%, so 51% of consumers said they were influenced by their loyalty card and by money off vouchers. , but a staggering 77% said what actually drives their behavior and their loyalty is whether their retailers' values resonate with them and they affiliated with it.

[00:02:56] And so I think in this modern time of loyalty, [00:03:00] you know, that sends a really clear message for retailers to understand what values do their customers really affiliate with and how can they market those to them and ensure that that's understood and really build that, build that bond with their consumer base.

[00:03:17] Casey Golden: Yeah, really backs up the, you know, communicate your brand and your values. Stop talking about price.

[00:03:24] Georgina Nelson: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you know, even just recently, we've still seen that over 75% of US consumers. They do want to buy ecologically sound products. They do want to buy organic when those choices are available. And so it's really to retailers, you know, don't scrimp on these initiatives just because times might be toughed because consumers are still are looking for those.

[00:03:50] And looking for that stance in values to make their choices.

[00:03:54] Casey Golden: Yep.

[00:03:55] Ricardo Belmar: Georgina, it seems like for this to really be [00:04:00] beneficial for the retailers that are going to, like your data, is suggesting that they need to lean into this and, and not stop investing. They'd have to really understand how to communicate that to their customers to, to make it really worthwhile and beneficial.

[00:04:14] Georgina Nelson: Yeah, I, you know, I think strategies need to be, it's not like a blanket one, one email, one shot in the dark. We really need to have a nuanced understanding of the customer base and what drives that loyalty. And then that needs to be communicated across a website, across product placements, across brand messaging.

[00:04:36] And I think what's important is that, you know, all customers are not alike. You know, there's gonna be a mix. And what we see is that mix is more, you know, is obviously very prevalent at a store level. In terms of each store is a snowflake with different customer segmentation and really beginning to understand that at a store level, how you know, and testing and asking [00:05:00] customers now how have your, you know, have they understood the green initiatives which you are pushing?

[00:05:07] Do they understand the drive on organic produce in, you know, understanding that awareness and then being able to tailor. Better coms and better marketing is absolutely key. And and we recommend doing that at a granular store level.

[00:05:23] Casey Golden: I couldn't agree more. Well, that does it for another edition of Retail Razor Blades.

[00:05:28] Georgina Nelson: Does this mean I get to keep the segment intro music every time? I'm on the show.

[00:05:34] Ricardo Belmar: I, I think we can arrange that

[00:05:36] Georgina Nelson: Thank you so much both.

[00:05:38] Casey Golden: Absolute pleasure.

[00:05:39] So now let's get right to those predictions. Ricardo, what would you say there are any underlining themes that we'll see across our 10 predictions?

[00:05:53] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think there are at least two big themes. One would be the impact of the economy, of course, [00:06:00] that's having on retailer investments and consumer shopping habits, and I think the second is frankly, gen Z.

[00:06:05] We'll see how Gen Z's shopping and buying habits are gonna have a bigger impact this year than they have in past years.

[00:06:11] Prediction #1 - Private Label take over

[00:06:11] Casey Golden: Let's dive into number one. Private label is taking over our shelves. You all know that I love a good brand and I'm a label of label lover, but a lot of products have become brand neutral with the help of the homogenization of marketplaces, like Wayfair and Amazon marketing convenience over the brands that they carry. Many private label brands are actually in our cupboards without even knowing it.

[00:06:41] Margin is king, especially during these uncertain economic environments. Retailers need the most control over the product assortment and the bottom line. Finding a lot of Gen Z doesn't have the brand loyalty in CPG that a lot of other generations do. 

[00:06:58] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, I think that's [00:07:00] probably a key one right there too. Especially after a year of inflation consumers want lower cost options, but everyone still wants high quality. Nobody wants to go down in price and then get something that's just too cheap and not good enough. But I think the big difference that you just pointed out, it's, gen Z doesn't seem to care about brand loyalty, especially not with, with CPGs, might be a slightly different story if we're talking apparel or home goods. But I think at the end of the day, unless you're buying on the high end luxury side of home goods, most people don't care what the brand name is on it. It's just whatever looks good and feels good to them. When it's apparel, it all depends on who we're talking about.

[00:07:35] Department stores for sure, probably would love to have a third of their sales or more be their own private labels, but the fact is a lot of 'em haven't traditionally been good enough for most buyers, but Gen Z doesn't seem to care.

[00:07:46] Casey Golden: No. I mean, gosh, Shein did like a billion dollars in sales 

[00:07:49] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, exactly.

[00:07:50] Exactly. So , so, so what does that say? So yeah, I think that that's a, that's definitely a, a good number one to kick off the list. 

[00:07:58] Prediction #2 - Retail Media Network evolution 

[00:07:58] Ricardo Belmar: So let me take us to number two, [00:08:00] which for me is, is a big one. And everybody knows I love talking about this topic, and that's retail media networks and how they're gonna evolve. 

[00:08:07] This year it's all gonna be about the, in-store media experience and how that gets combined with all the digital channels to really make a, a good end-to-end media experience that retailers can sell to brands. So, everyone likes to debate this a little bit because it seems like a trend and yes, we all know that Amazon has the majority of the share, but the fact is even if a retailer can get one percent, of this total media network share.

[00:08:33] Those are big numbers and, and they're big numbers that come with big margins, so it really is helpful.

[00:08:39] for a

[00:08:40] retailer, and if, if we look at some relevant context to this, I mean, you've got a lot of things that are going on that make this special. I mean, one, there's all the first party data that retailers are getting from these media networks, and that's huge.

[00:08:51] That lets them deliver really strong return on the a on advertising spend, right? Good ROAS for the brands. And one of the things we heard during nrf, that's a [00:09:00] big trend on this that I a hundred percent agree with. You know, you've got a decline in TV advertising in general. We've got cookies going away and, and we've got just in general, right, the digitization of the store.

[00:09:10] All this stuff kind of combines to make it super attractive to actually put media bys and advertising at the point at which a customer makes a buying decision. So why would this not increase?

[00:09:22] And there's even, I think more from that, I mean, you know, people also like to debate where is the, where are these dollars coming from?

[00:09:28] You know, brands look at all these media networks and as a brand say, oh, do I have to spend now on 20 different retail networks in addition to all the other ads spend? I have? Well, well, maybe they do, but the truth is right, they're gonna shift the spend a little bit. So it, the, the answer is, you know, when you ask where do the dollars come from?

[00:09:43] Well, pretty much everywhere else, it's not a retail media network. But I think probably the biggest threat is to Facebook or Meta and to Google because it's their ad dollar spend that's gonna go to these retail media networks, Amazon and everybody else.

[00:09:54] Casey Golden: 100 Percent. They're already, brands have already and been shifting these [00:10:00] budgets and not by a hundred thousand dollars, but like numbers.

[00:10:04] 875,000 for those month

[00:10:06] Ricardo Belmar: it's big numbers. It's big numbers. And when you roll in, the more advanced networks, they're gonna have tie-ins to streaming tv. They're gonna have connections into, players like Netflix, Hulu, and everybody that are gonna tie into it.

[00:10:18] And it's all comes down to audience data, right? And, and when you start applying this in-store, let's remember that 85 percent of all retail sales still happen in stores. So this isn't just an e-commerce play anymore. This is about doing what, you know, Doug Stephens and others used to talk about the store as, as theater, the store as media.

[00:10:36] Well, this is the year that we're really gonna start to see that because of these retail media networks and, and I think the last thing I'll add to it is, The end goal isn't just, I think the media network. The end goal is for the retailer to introduce a collection of B2B services. They can sell to brands or, and even to other retailers.

[00:10:54] So, sure, Walmart's the obvious first one to do it because of their size and scale. But that doesn't mean that, Best [00:11:00] Buy, couldn't do it or, or any other large enough retailer couldn't take exactly what they're doing in these services, bundle 'em up and sell 'em as a package. They're gonna have so much more first party customer data.

[00:11:11] Every brand wants access to that.

[00:11:13] Casey Golden: I agree. And everybody's spent a lot of money over the last decade on creating their audience and all of their customer data. So this is just another monetization strategy that they can go ahead and not put it all just into the individual products that they're selling.

[00:11:29] Ricardo Belmar: That's right, that's right. And, and I'll just repeat again, one reason why I think this is such a, a major thing for the year, the margin is better than just selling products to consumers. So while it might not be, you know, it might only be a fraction of your total. Sales volume, it comes with a good margin.

[00:11:45] So it just helps the financials for the retailer. 

[00:11:48] Prediction #3 - Returns management is a top IT investment

[00:11:48] Ricardo Belmar: So speaking of things that help the financials for the retailer, let's go on to number three. And I think that's all about returns management becoming a top IT investment. [00:12:00] Particularly powered with AI-based solutions because every retailer has an issue with returns right now.

[00:12:05] It's not just because of of growing e-commerce buy, it's because it's just the new habits that consumers have had to buy more than what they need in return, what they don't after they decide. But this has caused massive logistics challenges for retailers. Huge cost impact. And it's one thing to say we just need to get consumers to not return things.

[00:12:25] But the fact is you can't just change those buying habits for, for consumers, you need to really look at it and say, well, what can I do to prevent the cause of the return in the first place? So, yes, we all know that this is hardest to do in apparel because we still have issues with fit. There's new fit tech coming around.

[00:12:43] We've seen some players in that. More and more of that is gonna be made available until that gets solved it's gonna be a real challenge to, to improve this situation in apparel. But if we look at any other product category, I think the key is retailers investing in solutions that are going to help them understand why the [00:13:00] returns are happening and then make adjustments.

[00:13:01] And it might even be in some cases, as simple as your product page description on your e-commerce isn't good enough. And people are buying it by, because without realizing it's not what they want in the first place,

[00:13:11] Casey Golden: a hundred percent better images, I'm seeing more 3D images, I'm seeing more videos available on the products. And I think that was pretty much the, one of the main topics that I heard from over the last week has all been about returns.

[00:13:26] We need to control our returns, we need to reduce our returns. And I think, you know, we still have to remember, too, every single time that package hits the doorstep and we pick it up, we get a dopamine hit, We really don't need what's in the box. We just wanted that dopamine hit. So there's, you know, there's that, too, 

[00:13:45] Ricardo Belmar: too there's, that too. 

[00:13:45] Casey Golden: some consumer buying behavior here that has caused some, a little bit of package addiction.

[00:13:50] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. And that has a, a huge sustainability impact. So as we see retailers lean in more into sustainability issues and control than ha controlling that [00:14:00] returns problem is a big, big part of their sustainability process.

[00:14:04] So, so that's definitely, I think gonna be a huge, again, huge area of investment is this.

[00:14:08] Casey Golden: Yeah. If you're a brand or a retailer and you have a a 35% online return rate, you're not alone

[00:14:15] that's right, 

[00:14:15] Ricardo Belmar: that's right, that's right. And, and that's, you know, at the risk of the new pun intended, but it's just not sustainable to keep having those high return rates.

[00:14:23] Casey Golden: Not unless you got a 60% conversion rate.

[00:14:26] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Exactly. 

[00:14:27] Prediction #4 - Store Automation for Frontline Workers 

[00:14:27] Ricardo Belmar: So I'm gonna move on to number four. Continuing this little mini theme on where the investment dollars are going and technology, let's talk about store automation and how that's going to help frontline workers and store operations. Why?

[00:14:40] Because the, that labor shortage retailers have had this past year. It's not going away. It's not going away this year. There's still an issue of you don't have the staff that you want, which means you need that store team to be more efficient in what they're doing, more productive, but you also need to retain them.

[00:14:55] And retaining them means you need to make the environment better and and more [00:15:00] interesting, more enjoyable for them. So what are you gonna invest? When you're gonna invest in technology? Is it help get rid of all those mundane tasks that everybody doesn't want to do because they're not complicated, they're just kind of routine and they're tedious.

[00:15:12] Find ways to automate and get rid of all, all

[00:15:14] Casey Golden: mine. We all wanna walk the aisles and do a price change.

[00:15:18] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Which, so, so things like electronic shelf labels comes into play here? I mean, that's not even a new technology, right? It's been around for a while, but because of the cost, no one's had a motivation to put it in.

[00:15:29] Now we're starting to see a lot more interest in that because it takes that job away from the store team so they don't have to deal with it and they can do more work in front of a customer. Workforce management, right? More investment in shift management. Let your employees manage their schedules.

[00:15:42] That's what every store team employee wants is flexibility in their schedule. Just give it to them. Put the tools in place, let all your store teams work with a mobile device, have the right tools on it. And then there's new things. We, we've talked on this show before about store associates leading your live streaming efforts from the store, especially in [00:16:00] smaller retailers.

[00:16:00] There are plenty of associates who are good at this and who probably already have their own livestream effort on YouTube or something on their own time. So why not take advantage of those skills, put those skills to work, which by the way, is gonna make that job more interesting.

[00:16:14] Exactly. For those story searches. Yeah.

[00:16:15] Casey Golden: it, it makes it a longer job retention because what used to be like, well, I'm gonna do this for a year. It turns into potentially five years and moving actually into your marketing department, 

[00:16:27] Ricardo Belmar: right? Which gives you a career path. And the whole goal is to make those jobs, not just jobs, but to turn it into a career path so that this is an area and a field that people want to work in now.

[00:16:38] And that's is gonna start with this, this new level of investment in these technologies this year.

[00:16:42] Casey Golden: I agree. I sure know. I expect people to know about the product when we walk up to them. Can't do that if they, they don't 

[00:16:50] Ricardo Belmar: it. Absolutely. And they gotta have access to the data and the information or, or they, they're, you can't expect them to know everything as the retailers, so you gotta put the information

[00:16:58] Casey Golden: Yeah, it's gotta be fine.

[00:16:59] Ricardo Belmar: [00:17:00] Accessible. Exactly. 

[00:17:02] Prediction #5 - BNPL explodes even more

[00:17:02] Casey Golden: B N P L. 

[00:17:04] Ricardo Belmar: Number five 

[00:17:05] Casey Golden: Explodes or implodes. We'll see. But this holiday, B N P L got a big boost mostly from Gen Z. Regulators have started to look into this in 2022, but the debt this is causing could potentially, catch up in 2023. But we're seeing that they are expanding their businesses beyond their core, buy now, pay later product by launching new revenue channels, implementing new solutions, or even making new acquisitions.

[00:17:41] To become more than just a BNPL, but to be a marketplace, to be managing customer acquisition and getting more brands and products through as a connection point, I think we'll definitely also see more sustainability and wellness for financial literacy and, and [00:18:00] financial wellness tools to increase that engagement and, you know, potentially mitigating some of the regulatory concerns.

[00:18:07] But I think we'll, we'll definitely see something here mature as a product and a, and a space in general and could be a better opportunity for more brands to actually be exposed to some new customers and customer acquisition much like a, a marketplace.

[00:18:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that, I think that one makes sense. And there's definitely, you know, again, that Gen Z connection o over the holidays for this one. I, I think you're right. We, we kind of predicted that last year.

[00:18:36] It didn't totally happen the way we thought it would or as quickly as we thought. So I think it's, it's fair we're kind of shifting in a little bit to this year because it, it's just inevitable at this point. I, I think the more this grows, the more attention it's gonna get, the more of the financial stability issues matter for consumers. So it's gonna get looked at. And I think to their credit, right, the BM p l providers that they know this is coming and that's why they're all [00:19:00] kind of protecting themselves at expanding beyond that core. Like you said, Casey turning into marketplaces,

[00:19:05] Casey Golden: they've changed their narratives. 

[00:19:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:19:06] I mean I think at the end of the day you can kind of say buy now, pay later in of itself probably wasn't an entire business, it was a

[00:19:13] Casey Golden: It was

[00:19:13] feature. so Right. 

[00:19:14] Ricardo Belmar: gotta be part of something else and, and that's what drove a lot of those acquisitions.

[00:19:18] Casey Golden: it was a feature, not necessarily the, the

[00:19:20] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly.

[00:19:21] Casey Golden: And just coming outta holiday, we've got a, and then going into what many would associate as like a recession or an economic downturn. There's a lot of debt sitting out there. There's multiple players.

[00:19:34] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:19:35] Casey Golden: So 

[00:19:36] Ricardo Belmar: definitely, definitely.

[00:19:37] Prediction #6 - CDP explosion

[00:19:37] Ricardo Belmar: All right, Casey, bring us to number six. 

[00:19:40] Casey Golden: Well, it's 2023 and everyone's a C D P. A term that, there was a few of us that knew what A C D P was, you know, three years ago.

[00:19:49] Now its seems to be everybody is a C D P. . And at the same time, nobody knows what a CDP is.

[00:19:54] Ricardo Belmar: is. . That's right. . It's so true. That's so true.

[00:19:57] That's so true.

[00:19:58] Casey Golden: So everyone [00:20:00] is, you know, essentially brands are continuing to build their own from scratch. While the marketplace landscape creates more sophisticated products these consumer data platforms create a persistent, a more unified consumer database and make this data accessible to other systems.

[00:20:16] Really pulling in from all of these multiple sources, being able to have this, single customer profile and really be able to manage consumer data to support compliance and governmental regulation requirements. This is definitely becoming a bigger and bigger concern over privacy and security, consumer data loss and, and protection in general.

[00:20:37] It's definitely a high priority for all retailers and brands right now, and even SaaS companies that are processing consumer data. But I think here is where we'll also see a big uptake in more productized solutions coming in with different AI and ML use cases that can be powered [00:21:00] because of the efforts going into scrub all of this data and create these, single API to be able to access it.

[00:21:10] And I think it's gonna be able to drive a lot of personalization going forward.

[00:21:16] So I am very excited about this trend.

[00:21:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I agree. I agree. And I think you're, you're absolutely right that that , while everybody's either wants to be a CDP or claims to be a cdp, there's still a lot of confusion over exactly what is a customer data platform.

[00:21:30] When you talk to retailers and understanding what, what can you do with it? What am I gonna use it for, and what's the right solution out there for it? And there are different, different products or different needs, just like in any other category, but this is definitely one that when you look at, like you're saying, anything related to all requirements around privacy and data security.

[00:21:48] There are new regulations, variations by state, by country you know, it's just becoming really hard to manage all of this. So if you don't have the right platform underneath it all, then how are you really ever gonna comply [00:22:00]with everything? Not to mention, before you even get to how you're using all this data and your own marketing efforts to consumers

[00:22:05] Casey Golden: Exactly. Just getting it in one place is one thing. Exactly. And being able to make an edit or a change or validate.

[00:22:11] These are not simple builds.

[00:22:14] Ricardo Belmar: right? Yeah, yeah. These

[00:22:15] Casey Golden: heavy 

[00:22:16] Ricardo Belmar: builds. That's right. 

[00:22:17] Casey Golden: And this, this is gonna be involv. 40 different other software companies that are plugging 

[00:22:22] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. That's why 

[00:22:24] Casey Golden: may or may not be new.

[00:22:25] Yeah. 

[00:22:25] Ricardo Belmar: So making the right choice is, is super important. And just making sure you have a good c d p is absolutely critical. Now it's, I think this, what we're saying, I guess we're saying this is the year that it becomes table stakes as you just have to have 

[00:22:37] Casey Golden: this

[00:22:38] yes. This is not, also not a fail fast product.

[00:22:41] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. 

[00:22:44] Prediction #7 - Loyalty program evolution 

[00:22:44] Ricardo Belmar: All right, Casey, give us number seven,

[00:22:46] Casey Golden: Loyalty. Loyalty. Loyalty programs are definitely going to be evolving beyond a point system or a punch card. I've never seen loyalty take such [00:23:00] a center stage as I have in the, the last probably four months of conversations and going into 2023. Retention, retention, retention, retention.

[00:23:10] And I think that all kind of goes back to the CPM cost the lack of performance from Facebook ads, the marketing costs lower conversion rates, and really being able to engage your customer. , we're seeing more paid tiers as a new revenue source for a lot of brands to pay more for better service or, or additional perks.

[00:23:31] And there's the web three evolution for the NextGen loyalty programs. And I think this is very interesting because there are so many. How do you communicate and how do you manage these VIPs online and in-store across different locations? via email

[00:23:51] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's gonna work 

[00:23:52] Casey Golden: well.

[00:23:52] Right? You know, I mean

[00:23:53] Ricardo Belmar: E emails that they're likely to ignore. 

[00:23:54] Casey Golden: Right? Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, we really go back to a email communication with our customer, [00:24:00] which is always one-sided. And so managing loyalty programs, potentially just by email not the best utility. And I see a lot of opportunity here with the blockchain and leveraging these different web three types of loyalty programs to manage this much better.

[00:24:21] And with Unlockables, I think that there's a lot of room here to grow and I think it's one part of Web three that makes sense for retail because we don't have 10 VIPs. , we have 1.5 million globally.

[00:24:38] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Exactly, exactly. I think this is one of our more interesting predictions, as well, but kind of putting it in context, what do you think then of what Starbucks is doing?

[00:24:48] Casey Golden: I love Starbucks. I've never used a loyalty at Starbucks. I pay full price since I should have bought stock when I was like 10. I should own a

[00:24:56] Ricardo Belmar: right? . 

[00:24:56] Casey Golden: So I mean, I think that what they've done is great. I'm a big fan [00:25:00] of the vendor that they're using. Of course, I think we all are right. But I, I love the fact that they just moved on web three and went on with the loyalty program and really focusing on the retention piece because when you are a regular, you are a regular, not for a year, but like 20,

[00:25:16] Ricardo Belmar: right?

[00:25:17] That's right. 

[00:25:18] Casey Golden: You know? 

[00:25:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. We're talking real loyalty. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And, and we know from, not even considering that the web three. evolution of this, which I think is going to have huge impact. But when you look at the most successful loyalty programs, right, I, I will call Starbucks existing one, one of those.

[00:25:34] I mean, Ulta Beauty's loyalty program is massively successful. Like huge, almost all of their customers are in that loyalty program. So it'll be interesting to see how they evolve it. But this is, I, I think this is a big one, and, and. . I, I would stress too, you, you mentioned that, the idea of having paid tiers and full membership programs as part of these loyalties, so loyalty is finally becoming more than just a discount.

[00:25:55] And, and I think now it's, yeah,

[00:25:56] Casey Golden: And this is a way to actually make it a club tier [00:26:00] and manage it, because otherwise you're managing it literally in email segments,

[00:26:04] Ricardo Belmar: emails that just get ignored.

[00:26:05] Casey Golden: You just, they just get ignored. And it's just, it's not scalable solution. And I think that this could be, Really, really compelling to be able to scale one your own loyalty program, but to be able to collaborate with other people's loyalty programs.

[00:26:20] So what if Starbucks loyalty program communicated to Ulta's loyalty program? And this is where Web three can play 

[00:26:29] Ricardo Belmar: very 

[00:26:29] Casey Golden: interesting, is it 

[00:26:30] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:26:31] Casey Golden: the collaboration's a 

[00:26:33] Ricardo Belmar: these an, an even more useful and, and valuable club like relationship

[00:26:38] Casey Golden: Yeah. I'm not exporting my, my email list and giving it to you. It's against yeah, it's against compliance.

[00:26:43] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. customer data. Yep. 

[00:26:47] Prediction #8 - Anywhere Commerce vs Immersive Commerce

[00:26:47] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Let's go to number eight, and this one I'm kind of referring to as anywhere commerce versus immersive commerce. Why? Because we all know that consumers want to transact commerce pretty much anywhere and everywhere [00:27:00] they are.

[00:27:00] And yes, we, everybody says that all the time. We all know you can sort of, kind of do this with, with mobile. The fact is it's still not quite good enough and not always quick enough to meet your in the moment needs, with just a, a phone or, or mobile device. , so what's new in this prediction is that the context of where you are and how that changes how you would conduct that transaction? It's not necessarily the same process that you want as a consumer if you're in your car or on the subway or walking down the street versus sitting on your couch or sitting at a desk. I mean, each of these has different requirements in how you shop and how you buy.

[00:27:37] And we've kind of generalized them to date, right? And maybe two or three different form factors. And, that's what we're saying. So, so to me, this idea of anywhere commerce is completely new kinds of solutions coming out. Some of them were at ces, some of them have been just started come out in, in the last year.

[00:27:52] We'll hopefully be talking to some of those in future episodes this year. But it, it's all about adapting the medium to [00:28:00] work in a matter that still reduces that friction, eliminates complexity and makes it easy to transact commerce for the consumer in that contextual moment. And, and that's not quite the same as just saying mobile solves everything.

[00:28:11] So that's the anywhere commerce side

[00:28:12] Casey Golden: I mean, we've really, I mean, how many years have we tried to get live inventory feeds for physical stores to go with mapping, right? I mean, and I, I keep saying this over and over and over again, like when I am, you know, speaking with, with people over the, the evolution of commerce, our physical software is just not digitally native.

[00:28:35] And so being able to work in real time it's, it's doable. And I think we're, we're finally gonna get to that point where you're gonna know the inventory one block ahead of you.

[00:28:47] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree. I agree. And, and how it's presented to you matters. So you might need to know that inventory, but depending on what you're doing, it doesn't do you any good to be shown an image of it. Right. Or to be shown, how to find it. You just need to be told [00:29:00] that it's there. Yeah. And that's all you need to know in that moment to, to make a decision. So that kind of adaptability, it makes a difference and it has an impact on conversion.

[00:29:08] So that, I think there's that. So now let's talk about the immersive commerce part of this. So that's the anywhere commerce piece. I like immersive commerce as a new term. And, and I'm gonna just kind of say this sort of for me replaces the broad. Metaverse discussion because I, I kind, if I break out the AR and the VR pieces for metaverse applications and, and look at, you know, how do you actually expect consumers to engage in commerce?

[00:29:31] I, I still don't think every metaverse example we have now implies that everybody's gonna sit around with a lot of gear on their head and on their hands. And who wants to do that for hours at a time? 

[00:29:40] Casey Golden: wants, who wants to be responsible for that for society? 

[00:29:44] Ricardo Belmar: there's that too. So, I don't see that yet happening for just general commerce.

[00:29:49] I mean, I can see it for, you know, if, if you're, if companies are hiring new employees and they want to do some new employee training and onboarding in a metaverse version of their [00:30:00] headquarters, I think that's a totally applicable use case. That makes a lot of sense when you've got so many people working remotely.

[00:30:06] But that doesn't mean they're doing it for eight hours a day. It means they might do it for half an hour and then take a break and then come back in another half an hour or, or, or whatever it is. But it's not all day long and I haven't seen enough examples. Yeah, I mean, the whole point to doing this is not just to replicate a store, but to do things that you can't do in a physical space.

[00:30:25] So we, we had Alan Smithson on here before talking about the mall in the Metaverse, and they're doing it a little differently, which I think is the right answer to enable you to do things that you couldn't do in the physical space, not just replicate it. But again, let's take the, the technology pieces out of it and let's look at, for example, AR. You can create as a retailer a really immersive experience with AR that lets someone understand the product.

[00:30:46] Feel like they're engaging it, seeing it, feeling it, touching it without actually having it there. You know, this year's NRF had a lot of hologram demos of showing people what outfits might look like. Look, very three-dimensional. That's pretty immersive. I think the one thing [00:31:00] coming out of a pandemic, everybody wants to go back to this experiential retail, and that's where the immersive commerce comes in.

[00:31:06] But you don't have to do it in the metaverse. So if you're a retailer, you know, where am I gonna invest money? And time and resources to do something that I expect to have a short term impact this year on consumers buy more from me. I think it's chasing those immersive experiences than chasing a brand new thing that the marketing team wants to do in the metaverse.

[00:31:25] Casey Golden: I agree. And I think it's, it's also too we went with like the metaverse and it's something else and you need to go to it, to I don't know, what was it, say like, decentral land had like 31 user, daily active

[00:31:36] Ricardo Belmar: something like that.

[00:31:36] Casey Golden: Where it's just like, okay, maybe the user adoption, it's too far of a bridge.

[00:31:42] So now everything's kind of coming back into a web two scope. To make it feel more immersive, but it's not necessarily using these technologies that are, are metaverse the way we defined it. I don't know. Or end of 2021 [00:32:00] all of last year. Right, right. You know, that too big a bridge. So now it's kind of changing.

[00:32:05] So I think it's more about more about what than where.

[00:32:08] Ricardo Belmar: Right.

[00:32:09] Prediction #9 - web3 vs metaverse

[00:32:09] Casey Golden: but it's, I mean, that can lead us into the, the web three versus Metaverse

[00:32:14] Ricardo Belmar: which is our number nine,

[00:32:15] Casey Golden: which is number nine. Web three is carving out its space in commerce. While the Metaverse is a marketer's new shiny object you know, where we have this underlining technology.

[00:32:27] Can provide a more scalable utility and a more secure utility for a lot of different commerce applications. But it's not necessarily the metaverse. And I think that there's been some confusion over last year, everybody kind of figuring out what's an N F T, what's a digital twin, What is phygital, right?

[00:32:46] Like all of these different opportunities. Where, and then we have the crypto crash So then it's just like, oh, maybe the hype's over. Web three is a definitely, I feel here to stay. Digital twinning has become [00:33:00] much more operational after all of these players experimenting in it last year, and we'll see more mature products and use cases from streaming the operational and production changes for business processes for physical apparel, phygital apparel and really being able to leverage almost another type of infrastructure as we go into more scalable and digital, digital native software solutions. And the metaverse, I see being more of like that new immersive marketing medium where instead of it being a flat Instagram image or a reel or a video this is an opportunity to move from broadcasting to interactive brand experiences becoming the destination.

[00:33:48] But actually being able to have that fantasy that a lot of brands just can't afford to do in real life, you know? 

[00:33:57] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I think at the end of the day, [00:34:00] Meta and our friend Zuckerberg out there really burst the bubble on, on the excitement to this I think. Everybody thinks that they're just failing by throwing good money after bad. And, and that's soured a lot of people on it.

[00:34:10] But I agree. Digital twins is probably the, to me, the top use case that comes out of the metaverse. It's got real utility. There are lots of brands using that, especially on, on the CPG side to do a lot of new product development model their, their factories and production lines so that they don't have to.

[00:34:25] Figure out and spend money in the physical world and to make changes. They'll know before they make the first change, whether it's gonna work or not, and how much it's gonna save by doing the digital twins. So there's real value there. And I think you're, you're right, the web three part of it, you touched on it before on the loyalty program, so that's got real, real world value in that.

[00:34:41] So we'll see more of it. Yeah, so I think that's definitely web three versus the metaverse. I think Web three is gonna be the winner there this year. 

[00:34:48] Prediction #10 - Generative AI

[00:34:48] Ricardo Belmar: So let's move into the last one, number 10, which we would be remiss if we didn't have a predictions episode without talking about all these generative AI solutions that have come up in recent weeks, [00:35:00]whether it's ChatGPT and Dalle-2, all these things.

[00:35:03] And what does that mean . To me this is, these are cool technologies, these are amazing applications of AI that retailers, just like every other business, are gonna figure out where and how are they gonna make use of it. I mean, you could see , something like ChatGPT being used to help write their marketing material.

[00:35:19] For example,

[00:35:20] Casey Golden: like, why did we not just ask the question and. In chat, G P T before the podcast,

[00:35:26] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, we should, I'm afraid of what it would've

[00:35:27] told us. , I'm afraid what it would've told us, wonder if would've, we would've matched up to any other ones. It tells us are the, the top 10 

[00:35:35] Casey Golden: All 

[00:35:35] Ricardo Belmar: like to know. Okay, so, so yeah.

[00:35:37] Homework for all our listeners is go ask ChatGPT for the top 10. And my big question, would it list itself as one of the big predictions and big trends for the year?

[00:35:47] Casey Golden: Right?

[00:35:47] Ricardo Belmar: right. But if you think. There are tools coming out already to integrate these technologies into other applications, other areas?

[00:35:55] I mean, I'm, I'm just thinking of you know, this, this could have an impact in changing how people search for [00:36:00] products. For example, if I'm a retailer and I incorporate this into my app, maybe there's new reasons now as a consumer for me to go into the app and not spend time going to Amazon or Google to search for products.

[00:36:09] I can just do it in their app and I can do it in a conversational way by just talking to the app. I. I don't know. I personally don't think there are a lot of people asking Alexa or Siri to help them shop

[00:36:20] Casey Golden: No, I mean, you know, it it, it comes back to garbage in, garbage out.

[00:36:25] And so in shopping, we've had a lot of garbage in.

[00:36:27] Yeah, right. I just wanna see pencil skirts that have a double, double kick plate.

[00:36:31] I've never seen the word double kick plate on any e-commerce listing in my life. And I have to go store by store. Yeah. But there's opportunity here,

[00:36:41] Ricardo Belmar: right? And, and. Connect the dots on this to our retail media networks and B2B services prediction.

[00:36:48] I mean, you apply these things to all the media that you're putting into the network and how the retailer interfaces that with the brands there. There's impact on both sides of this, right? For the brands and using these technologies to generate the media they're [00:37:00] placing into the network on the retailer and how they're presenting it in store on digital screens.

[00:37:05] There's amazing applications and potential here. I, it's this one. I think at the same time, it's easy to predict. It's also hard to predict because knowing exactly what we're gonna see retailers create with this, I, I don't think anybody can legitimately do that right now in January. But I think, you know, it would be foolish not to have this on any predictions list for the year that it's gonna have a major impact.

[00:37:26] Casey Golden: No, I mean, it's really interesting.

[00:37:27] I've spoken to a lot of people in this, more on the tech side of the space. Everybody knows what it is, but when I've spoken to some brands and designers and and whatnot, they've never heard of it.

[00:37:44] Right.

[00:37:44] It's too soon. 

[00:37:45] there is definitely going, like, there, should

[00:37:50] we move so fast for, for these, these retailers and brands on the tech side that, you know, they can't keep track of all of these things.

[00:37:57] Thankfully there's, you know, a lot of retail consultants and a [00:38:00] lot of technologists that are really diving into here and finding the value . To bring back some type of a solution for Branson retailers with a use 

[00:38:08] Ricardo Belmar: case.

[00:38:08] Yeah. And, and I think this is a lot like what's we've been saying and the other predictions is happening with web three, right? Where we, where we're finally seeing major examples in loyalty. It's where the actual retail tech that's being used in some ways hides all of the complexities and, and things that you have to know to implement on the tech side for this or the retail.

[00:38:27] The brand doesn't need to deal with it, the solution just doesn't. And I think the same thing will happen here once we start to see the tools. Right now everybody's playing around with the raw capability that ChatGPT gives 'em or Dalle two. But when that gets integrated with the right tools and APIs so that you can put it in other things, we'll see new retail tech solutions come up that are going to use this, but they're gonna deliver a business outcome for the retailer of the brand without having to know that this is what's going on in the 

[00:38:54] Casey Golden: Exactly.

[00:38:54] They're probably not even gonna know.

[00:38:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And And that's what's gonna help at scale

[00:38:57] Casey Golden: what's coming in. Right. And I've seen a [00:39:00] lot more success on these solutions. when you have the context of the end use case. Right. And I'm, I think we're just gonna see in general a huge push of people from retail that are in tech are going to be making some really big moves in the industry.

[00:39:20] I think the most need for a retail technology consultant in general. It's not about omnichannel, it's not about bricks, it's not about clicks. It's literally about getting a technologist to work with you that understands the retail

[00:39:36] business. 

[00:39:36] Ricardo Belmar: There's, there's a big opportunity there for the consultants in the industry and for all the, the services companies that are gonna help with implementations

[00:39:43] Casey Golden: because it's a lot of, it's a lot of whiplash,

[00:39:46] Ricardo Belmar: It is. Yeah. . That's right, 

[00:39:50] Casey Golden: that's plus running your own business, you

[00:39:52] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:39:53] Casey Golden: has a job already, right? So

[00:39:55] Ricardo Belmar: Kind of implied, not so much because it's not really worth as a prediction, but kind of implied across all of [00:40:00] these that every retailer is actually focusing on the core business while dealing with all these things.

[00:40:04] So yeah, that's sort of a given to that. All right, well, those are the 10, those are our 10 predictions. So for all of our listeners and show fans, hit us up on LinkedIn. Give us your comments and feedback. Let us know what you think. And we'll be checking in throughout the year to see how we're doing on these, like we did last season and see what happens from there.

[00:40:25] Casey Golden: I, I've never been more excited for a year to work in my life. like 2023 Yeah. Is going to be the most fun.

[00:40:34] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right. There's so much potential here. Absolutely. Absolutely. . Well, Casey, I think that is a wrap for this episode.

[00:40:42] Casey Golden: Love it.

[00:40:43] Show Close

[00:40:43] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you [00:41:00] more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. 

[00:41:14] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:41:31] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:41:32] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail, if you cut through the clutter! Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. 

]]> <p>It’s a new year, and after wrapping up another NRF Big Show, we felt it was time to share our Top 10 Predictions for retail and retail tech in 2023! What will retailers focus on this year? How will consumer shopping and buying habits change? From the evolution of retail media networks and loyalty programs, to web3, the metaverse, and ChatGPT, what technologies make the cut and deserve your attention? Hosts Ricardo and Casey cut through the clutter and give you their top 10 trends for 2023 in this episode. See if their predictions match yours and let us know on LinkedIn!</p><p><br></p><p>Plus, our new segment, Retail Razor Data Blades returns, with another special data insight from Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating, learned from their 100,000’s of point-of-sale customer survey polls. In this episode learn how aligning with consumer values still plays a critical role in consumer buying decisions!</p><p><br></p><p>News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show was a finalist for <a href="https://bit.ly/VIPretail" rel="nofollow">The Retail Voice Award</a> at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during the NRF Big Show 2023!</p><p><br></p><p>News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #18 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review &amp; be mentioned in future episodes! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023, 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>, and a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, Overclocked, </em>and<em> Tech Lore</em>, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><h2>S1E9 Top 10 Predictions for 2023</h2><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong></p><h3>[00:00:20] Show Intro</h3><p>[00:00:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello and welcome to season two, episode nine of The Retail Razor Show. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:00:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome retail show listeners to retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.</p><p>[00:00:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, Casey, this is the moment many of our fans have been waiting for.</p><p>[00:00:43] It&#39;s time for our top 10 retail predictions for 2023, and as a huge bonus, we are recording live and in person in New York City right after the end of the N R F big show. We&#39;re literally sitting face-to-face and we never get to do that for this show.</p><p>[00:00:59] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> never, I [00:01:00] mean, we&#39;re always sitting face to face from the shoulders up, </p><p>[00:01:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> and a little square on a screen, but,</p><p>[00:01:06] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I can&#39;t think of a better way to wrap up NRF than sharing our hot takes live.</p><p>[00:01:10] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Absolutely. We don&#39;t often get to do this live and in person.</p><h3>[00:01:13] Retail Razor Data Blades - &#34;How aligning with consumer values still plays a critical role&#34;</h3><p>[00:01:13] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> But first, it&#39;s time for the newest segment of our show Retail Razor Data Blades, where we talk real world numbers and slice through measurable consumer insights. It&#39;s a bit like, show me the math so I understand where this data&#39;s coming from and bringing us that slicing and dicing of data is Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating.</p><p>[00:01:30] TruRating is changing the way retailers track how customers feel against how they spend with an innovative multi-channel feedback solution with an average of 80% response rate from consumers. Georgina will share with us some key data points and offer a bit of insight into what&#39;s behind those numbers based on their extensive customer survey data at the point of sale.</p><p>[00:01:48] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Welcome, Georgina.</p><p>[00:01:50] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> Thank you so much for having me!</p><p>[00:01:52] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So today&#39;s Retail Razor Data Blade segment is &#34;how aligning with customer values still plays [00:02:00] a critical role&#34;.</p><p>[00:02:01] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> So, yeah, to that point, we wanted to really find out what was driving consumers loyalty behavior. As you know, as a time when retailers are, are feeling the, the pinch of inflation as of their shoppers. You know, we can often get to this race to the bottom where prices are slashed in desperation to, to try and win that customer loyalty.</p><p>[00:02:25] And so we, we asked some simple questions as to what was driving that loyal behavior. Interestingly, we found just over smidgen, over 50%, so 51% of consumers said they were influenced by their loyalty card and by money off vouchers. , but a staggering 77% said what actually drives their behavior and their loyalty is whether their retailers&#39; values resonate with them and they affiliated with it.</p><p>[00:02:56] And so I think in this modern time of loyalty, [00:03:00] you know, that sends a really clear message for retailers to understand what values do their customers really affiliate with and how can they market those to them and ensure that that&#39;s understood and really build that, build that bond with their consumer base.</p><p>[00:03:17] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, really backs up the, you know, communicate your brand and your values. Stop talking about price.</p><p>[00:03:24] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you know, even just recently, we&#39;ve still seen that over 75% of US consumers. They do want to buy ecologically sound products. They do want to buy organic when those choices are available. And so it&#39;s really to retailers, you know, don&#39;t scrimp on these initiatives just because times might be toughed because consumers are still are looking for those.</p><p>[00:03:50] And looking for that stance in values to make their choices.</p><p>[00:03:54] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yep.</p><p>[00:03:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Georgina, it seems like for this to really be [00:04:00] beneficial for the retailers that are going to, like your data, is suggesting that they need to lean into this and, and not stop investing. They&#39;d have to really understand how to communicate that to their customers to, to make it really worthwhile and beneficial.</p><p>[00:04:14] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> Yeah, I, you know, I think strategies need to be, it&#39;s not like a blanket one, one email, one shot in the dark. We really need to have a nuanced understanding of the customer base and what drives that loyalty. And then that needs to be communicated across a website, across product placements, across brand messaging.</p><p>[00:04:36] And I think what&#39;s important is that, you know, all customers are not alike. You know, there&#39;s gonna be a mix. And what we see is that mix is more, you know, is obviously very prevalent at a store level. In terms of each store is a snowflake with different customer segmentation and really beginning to understand that at a store level, how you know, and testing and asking [00:05:00] customers now how have your, you know, have they understood the green initiatives which you are pushing?</p><p>[00:05:07] Do they understand the drive on organic produce in, you know, understanding that awareness and then being able to tailor. Better coms and better marketing is absolutely key. And and we recommend doing that at a granular store level.</p><p>[00:05:23] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I couldn&#39;t agree more. Well, that does it for another edition of Retail Razor Blades.</p><p>[00:05:28] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> Does this mean I get to keep the segment intro music every time? I&#39;m on the show.</p><p>[00:05:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I, I think we can arrange that</p><p>[00:05:36] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> Thank you so much both.</p><p>[00:05:38] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Absolute pleasure.</p><p>[00:05:39] So now let&#39;s get right to those predictions. Ricardo, what would you say there are any underlining themes that we&#39;ll see across our 10 predictions?</p><p>[00:05:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I think there are at least two big themes. One would be the impact of the economy, of course, [00:06:00] that&#39;s having on retailer investments and consumer shopping habits, and I think the second is frankly, gen Z.</p><p>[00:06:05] We&#39;ll see how Gen Z&#39;s shopping and buying habits are gonna have a bigger impact this year than they have in past years.</p><h3>[00:06:11] Prediction #1 - Private Label take over</h3><p>[00:06:11] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Let&#39;s dive into number one. Private label is taking over our shelves. You all know that I love a good brand and I&#39;m a label of label lover, but a lot of products have become brand neutral with the help of the homogenization of marketplaces, like Wayfair and Amazon marketing convenience over the brands that they carry. Many private label brands are actually in our cupboards without even knowing it.</p><p>[00:06:41] Margin is king, especially during these uncertain economic environments. Retailers need the most control over the product assortment and the bottom line. Finding a lot of Gen Z doesn&#39;t have the brand loyalty in CPG that a lot of other generations do. </p><p>[00:06:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah, I think that&#39;s [00:07:00] probably a key one right there too. Especially after a year of inflation consumers want lower cost options, but everyone still wants high quality. Nobody wants to go down in price and then get something that&#39;s just too cheap and not good enough. But I think the big difference that you just pointed out, it&#39;s, gen Z doesn&#39;t seem to care about brand loyalty, especially not with, with CPGs, might be a slightly different story if we&#39;re talking apparel or home goods. But I think at the end of the day, unless you&#39;re buying on the high end luxury side of home goods, most people don&#39;t care what the brand name is on it. It&#39;s just whatever looks good and feels good to them. When it&#39;s apparel, it all depends on who we&#39;re talking about.</p><p>[00:07:35] Department stores for sure, probably would love to have a third of their sales or more be their own private labels, but the fact is a lot of &#39;em haven&#39;t traditionally been good enough for most buyers, but Gen Z doesn&#39;t seem to care.</p><p>[00:07:46] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> No. I mean, gosh, Shein did like a billion dollars in sales </p><p>[00:07:49] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah, exactly.</p><p>[00:07:50] Exactly. So , so, so what does that say? So yeah, I think that that&#39;s a, that&#39;s definitely a, a good number one to kick off the list. </p><h3>[00:07:58] Prediction #2 - Retail Media Network evolution </h3><p>[00:07:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So let me take us to number two, [00:08:00] which for me is, is a big one. And everybody knows I love talking about this topic, and that&#39;s retail media networks and how they&#39;re gonna evolve. </p><p>[00:08:07] This year it&#39;s all gonna be about the, in-store media experience and how that gets combined with all the digital channels to really make a, a good end-to-end media experience that retailers can sell to brands. So, everyone likes to debate this a little bit because it seems like a trend and yes, we all know that Amazon has the majority of the share, but the fact is even if a retailer can get one percent, of this total media network share.</p><p>[00:08:33] Those are big numbers and, and they&#39;re big numbers that come with big margins, so it really is helpful.</p><p>[00:08:39] for a</p><p>[00:08:40] retailer, and if, if we look at some relevant context to this, I mean, you&#39;ve got a lot of things that are going on that make this special. I mean, one, there&#39;s all the first party data that retailers are getting from these media networks, and that&#39;s huge.</p><p>[00:08:51] That lets them deliver really strong return on the a on advertising spend, right? Good ROAS for the brands. And one of the things we heard during nrf, that&#39;s a [00:09:00] big trend on this that I a hundred percent agree with. You know, you&#39;ve got a decline in TV advertising in general. We&#39;ve got cookies going away and, and we&#39;ve got just in general, right, the digitization of the store.</p><p>[00:09:10] All this stuff kind of combines to make it super attractive to actually put media bys and advertising at the point at which a customer makes a buying decision. So why would this not increase?</p><p>[00:09:22] And there&#39;s even, I think more from that, I mean, you know, people also like to debate where is the, where are these dollars coming from?</p><p>[00:09:28] You know, brands look at all these media networks and as a brand say, oh, do I have to spend now on 20 different retail networks in addition to all the other ads spend? I have? Well, well, maybe they do, but the truth is right, they&#39;re gonna shift the spend a little bit. So it, the, the answer is, you know, when you ask where do the dollars come from?</p><p>[00:09:43] Well, pretty much everywhere else, it&#39;s not a retail media network. But I think probably the biggest threat is to Facebook or Meta and to Google because it&#39;s their ad dollar spend that&#39;s gonna go to these retail media networks, Amazon and everybody else.</p><p>[00:09:54] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> 100 Percent. They&#39;re already, brands have already and been shifting these [00:10:00] budgets and not by a hundred thousand dollars, but like numbers.</p><p>[00:10:04] 875,000 for those month</p><p>[00:10:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it&#39;s big numbers. It&#39;s big numbers. And when you roll in, the more advanced networks, they&#39;re gonna have tie-ins to streaming tv. They&#39;re gonna have connections into, players like Netflix, Hulu, and everybody that are gonna tie into it.</p><p>[00:10:18] And it&#39;s all comes down to audience data, right? And, and when you start applying this in-store, let&#39;s remember that 85 percent of all retail sales still happen in stores. So this isn&#39;t just an e-commerce play anymore. This is about doing what, you know, Doug Stephens and others used to talk about the store as, as theater, the store as media.</p><p>[00:10:36] Well, this is the year that we&#39;re really gonna start to see that because of these retail media networks and, and I think the last thing I&#39;ll add to it is, The end goal isn&#39;t just, I think the media network. The end goal is for the retailer to introduce a collection of B2B services. They can sell to brands or, and even to other retailers.</p><p>[00:10:54] So, sure, Walmart&#39;s the obvious first one to do it because of their size and scale. But that doesn&#39;t mean that, Best [00:11:00] Buy, couldn&#39;t do it or, or any other large enough retailer couldn&#39;t take exactly what they&#39;re doing in these services, bundle &#39;em up and sell &#39;em as a package. They&#39;re gonna have so much more first party customer data.</p><p>[00:11:11] Every brand wants access to that.</p><p>[00:11:13] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I agree. And everybody&#39;s spent a lot of money over the last decade on creating their audience and all of their customer data. So this is just another monetization strategy that they can go ahead and not put it all just into the individual products that they&#39;re selling.</p><p>[00:11:29] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right, that&#39;s right. And, and I&#39;ll just repeat again, one reason why I think this is such a, a major thing for the year, the margin is better than just selling products to consumers. So while it might not be, you know, it might only be a fraction of your total. Sales volume, it comes with a good margin.</p><p>[00:11:45] So it just helps the financials for the retailer. </p><h3>[00:11:48] Prediction #3 - Returns management is a top IT investment</h3><p>[00:11:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So speaking of things that help the financials for the retailer, let&#39;s go on to number three. And I think that&#39;s all about returns management becoming a top IT investment. [00:12:00] Particularly powered with AI-based solutions because every retailer has an issue with returns right now.</p><p>[00:12:05] It&#39;s not just because of of growing e-commerce buy, it&#39;s because it&#39;s just the new habits that consumers have had to buy more than what they need in return, what they don&#39;t after they decide. But this has caused massive logistics challenges for retailers. Huge cost impact. And it&#39;s one thing to say we just need to get consumers to not return things.</p><p>[00:12:25] But the fact is you can&#39;t just change those buying habits for, for consumers, you need to really look at it and say, well, what can I do to prevent the cause of the return in the first place? So, yes, we all know that this is hardest to do in apparel because we still have issues with fit. There&#39;s new fit tech coming around.</p><p>[00:12:43] We&#39;ve seen some players in that. More and more of that is gonna be made available until that gets solved it&#39;s gonna be a real challenge to, to improve this situation in apparel. But if we look at any other product category, I think the key is retailers investing in solutions that are going to help them understand why the [00:13:00] returns are happening and then make adjustments.</p><p>[00:13:01] And it might even be in some cases, as simple as your product page description on your e-commerce isn&#39;t good enough. And people are buying it by, because without realizing it&#39;s not what they want in the first place,</p><p>[00:13:11] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> a hundred percent better images, I&#39;m seeing more 3D images, I&#39;m seeing more videos available on the products. And I think that was pretty much the, one of the main topics that I heard from over the last week has all been about returns.</p><p>[00:13:26] We need to control our returns, we need to reduce our returns. And I think, you know, we still have to remember, too, every single time that package hits the doorstep and we pick it up, we get a dopamine hit, We really don&#39;t need what&#39;s in the box. We just wanted that dopamine hit. So there&#39;s, you know, there&#39;s that, too, </p><p>[00:13:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> too there&#39;s, that too. </p><p>[00:13:45] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> some consumer buying behavior here that has caused some, a little bit of package addiction.</p><p>[00:13:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Absolutely. And that has a, a huge sustainability impact. So as we see retailers lean in more into sustainability issues and control than ha controlling that [00:14:00] returns problem is a big, big part of their sustainability process.</p><p>[00:14:04] So, so that&#39;s definitely, I think gonna be a huge, again, huge area of investment is this.</p><p>[00:14:08] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. If you&#39;re a brand or a retailer and you have a a 35% online return rate, you&#39;re not alone</p><p>[00:14:15] that&#39;s right, </p><p>[00:14:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> that&#39;s right, that&#39;s right. And, and that&#39;s, you know, at the risk of the new pun intended, but it&#39;s just not sustainable to keep having those high return rates.</p><p>[00:14:23] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Not unless you got a 60% conversion rate.</p><p>[00:14:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Exactly. Exactly. </p><h3>[00:14:27] Prediction #4 - Store Automation for Frontline Workers </h3><p>[00:14:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So I&#39;m gonna move on to number four. Continuing this little mini theme on where the investment dollars are going and technology, let&#39;s talk about store automation and how that&#39;s going to help frontline workers and store operations. Why?</p><p>[00:14:40] Because the, that labor shortage retailers have had this past year. It&#39;s not going away. It&#39;s not going away this year. There&#39;s still an issue of you don&#39;t have the staff that you want, which means you need that store team to be more efficient in what they&#39;re doing, more productive, but you also need to retain them.</p><p>[00:14:55] And retaining them means you need to make the environment better and and more [00:15:00] interesting, more enjoyable for them. So what are you gonna invest? When you&#39;re gonna invest in technology? Is it help get rid of all those mundane tasks that everybody doesn&#39;t want to do because they&#39;re not complicated, they&#39;re just kind of routine and they&#39;re tedious.</p><p>[00:15:12] Find ways to automate and get rid of all, all</p><p>[00:15:14] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> mine. We all wanna walk the aisles and do a price change.</p><p>[00:15:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Exactly. Which, so, so things like electronic shelf labels comes into play here? I mean, that&#39;s not even a new technology, right? It&#39;s been around for a while, but because of the cost, no one&#39;s had a motivation to put it in.</p><p>[00:15:29] Now we&#39;re starting to see a lot more interest in that because it takes that job away from the store team so they don&#39;t have to deal with it and they can do more work in front of a customer. Workforce management, right? More investment in shift management. Let your employees manage their schedules.</p><p>[00:15:42] That&#39;s what every store team employee wants is flexibility in their schedule. Just give it to them. Put the tools in place, let all your store teams work with a mobile device, have the right tools on it. And then there&#39;s new things. We, we&#39;ve talked on this show before about store associates leading your live streaming efforts from the store, especially in [00:16:00] smaller retailers.</p><p>[00:16:00] There are plenty of associates who are good at this and who probably already have their own livestream effort on YouTube or something on their own time. So why not take advantage of those skills, put those skills to work, which by the way, is gonna make that job more interesting.</p><p>[00:16:14] Exactly. For those story searches. Yeah.</p><p>[00:16:15] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> it, it makes it a longer job retention because what used to be like, well, I&#39;m gonna do this for a year. It turns into potentially five years and moving actually into your marketing department, </p><p>[00:16:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right? Which gives you a career path. And the whole goal is to make those jobs, not just jobs, but to turn it into a career path so that this is an area and a field that people want to work in now.</p><p>[00:16:38] And that&#39;s is gonna start with this, this new level of investment in these technologies this year.</p><p>[00:16:42] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I agree. I sure know. I expect people to know about the product when we walk up to them. Can&#39;t do that if they, they don&#39;t </p><p>[00:16:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it. Absolutely. And they gotta have access to the data and the information or, or they, they&#39;re, you can&#39;t expect them to know everything as the retailers, so you gotta put the information</p><p>[00:16:58] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, it&#39;s gotta be fine.</p><p>[00:16:59] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> [00:17:00] Accessible. Exactly. </p><h3>[00:17:02] Prediction #5 - BNPL explodes even more</h3><p>[00:17:02] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> B N P L. </p><p>[00:17:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Number five </p><p>[00:17:05] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Explodes or implodes. We&#39;ll see. But this holiday, B N P L got a big boost mostly from Gen Z. Regulators have started to look into this in 2022, but the debt this is causing could potentially, catch up in 2023. But we&#39;re seeing that they are expanding their businesses beyond their core, buy now, pay later product by launching new revenue channels, implementing new solutions, or even making new acquisitions.</p><p>[00:17:41] To become more than just a BNPL, but to be a marketplace, to be managing customer acquisition and getting more brands and products through as a connection point, I think we&#39;ll definitely also see more sustainability and wellness for financial literacy and, and [00:18:00] financial wellness tools to increase that engagement and, you know, potentially mitigating some of the regulatory concerns.</p><p>[00:18:07] But I think we&#39;ll, we&#39;ll definitely see something here mature as a product and a, and a space in general and could be a better opportunity for more brands to actually be exposed to some new customers and customer acquisition much like a, a marketplace.</p><p>[00:18:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I think that, I think that one makes sense. And there&#39;s definitely, you know, again, that Gen Z connection o over the holidays for this one. I, I think you&#39;re right. We, we kind of predicted that last year.</p><p>[00:18:36] It didn&#39;t totally happen the way we thought it would or as quickly as we thought. So I think it&#39;s, it&#39;s fair we&#39;re kind of shifting in a little bit to this year because it, it&#39;s just inevitable at this point. I, I think the more this grows, the more attention it&#39;s gonna get, the more of the financial stability issues matter for consumers. So it&#39;s gonna get looked at. And I think to their credit, right, the BM p l providers that they know this is coming and that&#39;s why they&#39;re all [00:19:00] kind of protecting themselves at expanding beyond that core. Like you said, Casey turning into marketplaces,</p><p>[00:19:05] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> they&#39;ve changed their narratives. </p><p>[00:19:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:19:06] I mean I think at the end of the day you can kind of say buy now, pay later in of itself probably wasn&#39;t an entire business, it was a</p><p>[00:19:13] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It was</p><p>[00:19:13] feature. so Right. </p><p>[00:19:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> gotta be part of something else and, and that&#39;s what drove a lot of those acquisitions.</p><p>[00:19:18] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> it was a feature, not necessarily the, the</p><p>[00:19:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Exactly.</p><p>[00:19:21] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And just coming outta holiday, we&#39;ve got a, and then going into what many would associate as like a recession or an economic downturn. There&#39;s a lot of debt sitting out there. There&#39;s multiple players.</p><p>[00:19:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:19:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So </p><p>[00:19:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> definitely, definitely.</p><h3>[00:19:37] Prediction #6 - CDP explosion</h3><p>[00:19:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right, Casey, bring us to number six. </p><p>[00:19:40] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, it&#39;s 2023 and everyone&#39;s a C D P. A term that, there was a few of us that knew what A C D P was, you know, three years ago.</p><p>[00:19:49] Now its seems to be everybody is a C D P. . And at the same time, nobody knows what a CDP is.</p><p>[00:19:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> is. . That&#39;s right. . It&#39;s so true. That&#39;s so true.</p><p>[00:19:57] That&#39;s so true.</p><p>[00:19:58] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So everyone [00:20:00] is, you know, essentially brands are continuing to build their own from scratch. While the marketplace landscape creates more sophisticated products these consumer data platforms create a persistent, a more unified consumer database and make this data accessible to other systems.</p><p>[00:20:16] Really pulling in from all of these multiple sources, being able to have this, single customer profile and really be able to manage consumer data to support compliance and governmental regulation requirements. This is definitely becoming a bigger and bigger concern over privacy and security, consumer data loss and, and protection in general.</p><p>[00:20:37] It&#39;s definitely a high priority for all retailers and brands right now, and even SaaS companies that are processing consumer data. But I think here is where we&#39;ll also see a big uptake in more productized solutions coming in with different AI and ML use cases that can be powered [00:21:00] because of the efforts going into scrub all of this data and create these, single API to be able to access it.</p><p>[00:21:10] And I think it&#39;s gonna be able to drive a lot of personalization going forward.</p><p>[00:21:16] So I am very excited about this trend.</p><p>[00:21:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I, I agree. I agree. And I think you&#39;re, you&#39;re absolutely right that that , while everybody&#39;s either wants to be a CDP or claims to be a cdp, there&#39;s still a lot of confusion over exactly what is a customer data platform.</p><p>[00:21:30] When you talk to retailers and understanding what, what can you do with it? What am I gonna use it for, and what&#39;s the right solution out there for it? And there are different, different products or different needs, just like in any other category, but this is definitely one that when you look at, like you&#39;re saying, anything related to all requirements around privacy and data security.</p><p>[00:21:48] There are new regulations, variations by state, by country you know, it&#39;s just becoming really hard to manage all of this. So if you don&#39;t have the right platform underneath it all, then how are you really ever gonna comply [00:22:00]with everything? Not to mention, before you even get to how you&#39;re using all this data and your own marketing efforts to consumers</p><p>[00:22:05] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Exactly. Just getting it in one place is one thing. Exactly. And being able to make an edit or a change or validate.</p><p>[00:22:11] These are not simple builds.</p><p>[00:22:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right? Yeah, yeah. These</p><p>[00:22:15] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> heavy </p><p>[00:22:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> builds. That&#39;s right. </p><p>[00:22:17] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And this, this is gonna be involv. 40 different other software companies that are plugging </p><p>[00:22:22] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. That&#39;s right. That&#39;s why </p><p>[00:22:24] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> may or may not be new.</p><p>[00:22:25] Yeah. </p><p>[00:22:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So making the right choice is, is super important. And just making sure you have a good c d p is absolutely critical. Now it&#39;s, I think this, what we&#39;re saying, I guess we&#39;re saying this is the year that it becomes table stakes as you just have to have </p><p>[00:22:37] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> this</p><p>[00:22:38] yes. This is not, also not a fail fast product.</p><p>[00:22:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. That&#39;s right. </p><h3>[00:22:44] Prediction #7 - Loyalty program evolution </h3><p>[00:22:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right, Casey, give us number seven,</p><p>[00:22:46] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Loyalty. Loyalty. Loyalty programs are definitely going to be evolving beyond a point system or a punch card. I&#39;ve never seen loyalty take such [00:23:00] a center stage as I have in the, the last probably four months of conversations and going into 2023. Retention, retention, retention, retention.</p><p>[00:23:10] And I think that all kind of goes back to the CPM cost the lack of performance from Facebook ads, the marketing costs lower conversion rates, and really being able to engage your customer. , we&#39;re seeing more paid tiers as a new revenue source for a lot of brands to pay more for better service or, or additional perks.</p><p>[00:23:31] And there&#39;s the web three evolution for the NextGen loyalty programs. And I think this is very interesting because there are so many. How do you communicate and how do you manage these VIPs online and in-store across different locations? via email</p><p>[00:23:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. That&#39;s gonna work </p><p>[00:23:52] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> well.</p><p>[00:23:52] Right? You know, I mean</p><p>[00:23:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> E emails that they&#39;re likely to ignore. </p><p>[00:23:54] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Right? Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, we really go back to a email communication with our customer, [00:24:00] which is always one-sided. And so managing loyalty programs, potentially just by email not the best utility. And I see a lot of opportunity here with the blockchain and leveraging these different web three types of loyalty programs to manage this much better.</p><p>[00:24:21] And with Unlockables, I think that there&#39;s a lot of room here to grow and I think it&#39;s one part of Web three that makes sense for retail because we don&#39;t have 10 VIPs. , we have 1.5 million globally.</p><p>[00:24:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Exactly. Exactly, exactly. I think this is one of our more interesting predictions, as well, but kind of putting it in context, what do you think then of what Starbucks is doing?</p><p>[00:24:48] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I love Starbucks. I&#39;ve never used a loyalty at Starbucks. I pay full price since I should have bought stock when I was like 10. I should own a</p><p>[00:24:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right? . </p><p>[00:24:56] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So I mean, I think that what they&#39;ve done is great. I&#39;m a big fan [00:25:00] of the vendor that they&#39;re using. Of course, I think we all are right. But I, I love the fact that they just moved on web three and went on with the loyalty program and really focusing on the retention piece because when you are a regular, you are a regular, not for a year, but like 20,</p><p>[00:25:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right?</p><p>[00:25:17] That&#39;s right. </p><p>[00:25:18] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> You know? </p><p>[00:25:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. We&#39;re talking real loyalty. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And, and we know from, not even considering that the web three. evolution of this, which I think is going to have huge impact. But when you look at the most successful loyalty programs, right, I, I will call Starbucks existing one, one of those.</p><p>[00:25:34] I mean, Ulta Beauty&#39;s loyalty program is massively successful. Like huge, almost all of their customers are in that loyalty program. So it&#39;ll be interesting to see how they evolve it. But this is, I, I think this is a big one, and, and. . I, I would stress too, you, you mentioned that, the idea of having paid tiers and full membership programs as part of these loyalties, so loyalty is finally becoming more than just a discount.</p><p>[00:25:55] And, and I think now it&#39;s, yeah,</p><p>[00:25:56] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And this is a way to actually make it a club tier [00:26:00] and manage it, because otherwise you&#39;re managing it literally in email segments,</p><p>[00:26:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> emails that just get ignored.</p><p>[00:26:05] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> You just, they just get ignored. And it&#39;s just, it&#39;s not scalable solution. And I think that this could be, Really, really compelling to be able to scale one your own loyalty program, but to be able to collaborate with other people&#39;s loyalty programs.</p><p>[00:26:20] So what if Starbucks loyalty program communicated to Ulta&#39;s loyalty program? And this is where Web three can play </p><p>[00:26:29] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> very </p><p>[00:26:29] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> interesting, is it </p><p>[00:26:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:26:31] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> the collaboration&#39;s a </p><p>[00:26:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> these an, an even more useful and, and valuable club like relationship</p><p>[00:26:38] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. I&#39;m not exporting my, my email list and giving it to you. It&#39;s against yeah, it&#39;s against compliance.</p><p>[00:26:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. customer data. Yep. </p><h3>[00:26:47] Prediction #8 - Anywhere Commerce vs Immersive Commerce</h3><p>[00:26:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right. Let&#39;s go to number eight, and this one I&#39;m kind of referring to as anywhere commerce versus immersive commerce. Why? Because we all know that consumers want to transact commerce pretty much anywhere and everywhere [00:27:00] they are.</p><p>[00:27:00] And yes, we, everybody says that all the time. We all know you can sort of, kind of do this with, with mobile. The fact is it&#39;s still not quite good enough and not always quick enough to meet your in the moment needs, with just a, a phone or, or mobile device. , so what&#39;s new in this prediction is that the context of where you are and how that changes how you would conduct that transaction? It&#39;s not necessarily the same process that you want as a consumer if you&#39;re in your car or on the subway or walking down the street versus sitting on your couch or sitting at a desk. I mean, each of these has different requirements in how you shop and how you buy.</p><p>[00:27:37] And we&#39;ve kind of generalized them to date, right? And maybe two or three different form factors. And, that&#39;s what we&#39;re saying. So, so to me, this idea of anywhere commerce is completely new kinds of solutions coming out. Some of them were at ces, some of them have been just started come out in, in the last year.</p><p>[00:27:52] We&#39;ll hopefully be talking to some of those in future episodes this year. But it, it&#39;s all about adapting the medium to [00:28:00] work in a matter that still reduces that friction, eliminates complexity and makes it easy to transact commerce for the consumer in that contextual moment. And, and that&#39;s not quite the same as just saying mobile solves everything.</p><p>[00:28:11] So that&#39;s the anywhere commerce side</p><p>[00:28:12] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I mean, we&#39;ve really, I mean, how many years have we tried to get live inventory feeds for physical stores to go with mapping, right? I mean, and I, I keep saying this over and over and over again, like when I am, you know, speaking with, with people over the, the evolution of commerce, our physical software is just not digitally native.</p><p>[00:28:35] And so being able to work in real time it&#39;s, it&#39;s doable. And I think we&#39;re, we&#39;re finally gonna get to that point where you&#39;re gonna know the inventory one block ahead of you.</p><p>[00:28:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I agree. I agree. And, and how it&#39;s presented to you matters. So you might need to know that inventory, but depending on what you&#39;re doing, it doesn&#39;t do you any good to be shown an image of it. Right. Or to be shown, how to find it. You just need to be told [00:29:00] that it&#39;s there. Yeah. And that&#39;s all you need to know in that moment to, to make a decision. So that kind of adaptability, it makes a difference and it has an impact on conversion.</p><p>[00:29:08] So that, I think there&#39;s that. So now let&#39;s talk about the immersive commerce part of this. So that&#39;s the anywhere commerce piece. I like immersive commerce as a new term. And, and I&#39;m gonna just kind of say this sort of for me replaces the broad. Metaverse discussion because I, I kind, if I break out the AR and the VR pieces for metaverse applications and, and look at, you know, how do you actually expect consumers to engage in commerce?</p><p>[00:29:31] I, I still don&#39;t think every metaverse example we have now implies that everybody&#39;s gonna sit around with a lot of gear on their head and on their hands. And who wants to do that for hours at a time? </p><p>[00:29:40] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> wants, who wants to be responsible for that for society? </p><p>[00:29:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> there&#39;s that too. So, I don&#39;t see that yet happening for just general commerce.</p><p>[00:29:49] I mean, I can see it for, you know, if, if you&#39;re, if companies are hiring new employees and they want to do some new employee training and onboarding in a metaverse version of their [00:30:00] headquarters, I think that&#39;s a totally applicable use case. That makes a lot of sense when you&#39;ve got so many people working remotely.</p><p>[00:30:06] But that doesn&#39;t mean they&#39;re doing it for eight hours a day. It means they might do it for half an hour and then take a break and then come back in another half an hour or, or, or whatever it is. But it&#39;s not all day long and I haven&#39;t seen enough examples. Yeah, I mean, the whole point to doing this is not just to replicate a store, but to do things that you can&#39;t do in a physical space.</p><p>[00:30:25] So we, we had Alan Smithson on here before talking about the mall in the Metaverse, and they&#39;re doing it a little differently, which I think is the right answer to enable you to do things that you couldn&#39;t do in the physical space, not just replicate it. But again, let&#39;s take the, the technology pieces out of it and let&#39;s look at, for example, AR. You can create as a retailer a really immersive experience with AR that lets someone understand the product.</p><p>[00:30:46] Feel like they&#39;re engaging it, seeing it, feeling it, touching it without actually having it there. You know, this year&#39;s NRF had a lot of hologram demos of showing people what outfits might look like. Look, very three-dimensional. That&#39;s pretty immersive. I think the one thing [00:31:00] coming out of a pandemic, everybody wants to go back to this experiential retail, and that&#39;s where the immersive commerce comes in.</p><p>[00:31:06] But you don&#39;t have to do it in the metaverse. So if you&#39;re a retailer, you know, where am I gonna invest money? And time and resources to do something that I expect to have a short term impact this year on consumers buy more from me. I think it&#39;s chasing those immersive experiences than chasing a brand new thing that the marketing team wants to do in the metaverse.</p><p>[00:31:25] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I agree. And I think it&#39;s, it&#39;s also too we went with like the metaverse and it&#39;s something else and you need to go to it, to I don&#39;t know, what was it, say like, decentral land had like 31 user, daily active</p><p>[00:31:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> something like that.</p><p>[00:31:36] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Where it&#39;s just like, okay, maybe the user adoption, it&#39;s too far of a bridge.</p><p>[00:31:42] So now everything&#39;s kind of coming back into a web two scope. To make it feel more immersive, but it&#39;s not necessarily using these technologies that are, are metaverse the way we defined it. I don&#39;t know. Or end of 2021 [00:32:00] all of last year. Right, right. You know, that too big a bridge. So now it&#39;s kind of changing.</p><p>[00:32:05] So I think it&#39;s more about more about what than where.</p><p>[00:32:08] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right.</p><h3>[00:32:09] Prediction #9 - web3 vs metaverse</h3><p>[00:32:09] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> but it&#39;s, I mean, that can lead us into the, the web three versus Metaverse</p><p>[00:32:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> which is our number nine,</p><p>[00:32:15] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> which is number nine. Web three is carving out its space in commerce. While the Metaverse is a marketer&#39;s new shiny object you know, where we have this underlining technology.</p><p>[00:32:27] Can provide a more scalable utility and a more secure utility for a lot of different commerce applications. But it&#39;s not necessarily the metaverse. And I think that there&#39;s been some confusion over last year, everybody kind of figuring out what&#39;s an N F T, what&#39;s a digital twin, What is phygital, right?</p><p>[00:32:46] Like all of these different opportunities. Where, and then we have the crypto crash So then it&#39;s just like, oh, maybe the hype&#39;s over. Web three is a definitely, I feel here to stay. Digital twinning has become [00:33:00] much more operational after all of these players experimenting in it last year, and we&#39;ll see more mature products and use cases from streaming the operational and production changes for business processes for physical apparel, phygital apparel and really being able to leverage almost another type of infrastructure as we go into more scalable and digital, digital native software solutions. And the metaverse, I see being more of like that new immersive marketing medium where instead of it being a flat Instagram image or a reel or a video this is an opportunity to move from broadcasting to interactive brand experiences becoming the destination.</p><p>[00:33:48] But actually being able to have that fantasy that a lot of brands just can&#39;t afford to do in real life, you know? </p><p>[00:33:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I, I think at the end of the day, [00:34:00] Meta and our friend Zuckerberg out there really burst the bubble on, on the excitement to this I think. Everybody thinks that they&#39;re just failing by throwing good money after bad. And, and that&#39;s soured a lot of people on it.</p><p>[00:34:10] But I agree. Digital twins is probably the, to me, the top use case that comes out of the metaverse. It&#39;s got real utility. There are lots of brands using that, especially on, on the CPG side to do a lot of new product development model their, their factories and production lines so that they don&#39;t have to.</p><p>[00:34:25] Figure out and spend money in the physical world and to make changes. They&#39;ll know before they make the first change, whether it&#39;s gonna work or not, and how much it&#39;s gonna save by doing the digital twins. So there&#39;s real value there. And I think you&#39;re, you&#39;re right, the web three part of it, you touched on it before on the loyalty program, so that&#39;s got real, real world value in that.</p><p>[00:34:41] So we&#39;ll see more of it. Yeah, so I think that&#39;s definitely web three versus the metaverse. I think Web three is gonna be the winner there this year. </p><h3>[00:34:48] Prediction #10 - Generative AI</h3><p>[00:34:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So let&#39;s move into the last one, number 10, which we would be remiss if we didn&#39;t have a predictions episode without talking about all these generative AI solutions that have come up in recent weeks, [00:35:00]whether it&#39;s ChatGPT and Dalle-2, all these things.</p><p>[00:35:03] And what does that mean . To me this is, these are cool technologies, these are amazing applications of AI that retailers, just like every other business, are gonna figure out where and how are they gonna make use of it. I mean, you could see , something like ChatGPT being used to help write their marketing material.</p><p>[00:35:19] For example,</p><p>[00:35:20] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> like, why did we not just ask the question and. In chat, G P T before the podcast,</p><p>[00:35:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, we should, I&#39;m afraid of what it would&#39;ve</p><p>[00:35:27] told us. , I&#39;m afraid what it would&#39;ve told us, wonder if would&#39;ve, we would&#39;ve matched up to any other ones. It tells us are the, the top 10 </p><p>[00:35:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> All </p><p>[00:35:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> like to know. Okay, so, so yeah.</p><p>[00:35:37] Homework for all our listeners is go ask ChatGPT for the top 10. And my big question, would it list itself as one of the big predictions and big trends for the year?</p><p>[00:35:47] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Right?</p><p>[00:35:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right. But if you think. There are tools coming out already to integrate these technologies into other applications, other areas?</p><p>[00:35:55] I mean, I&#39;m, I&#39;m just thinking of you know, this, this could have an impact in changing how people search for [00:36:00] products. For example, if I&#39;m a retailer and I incorporate this into my app, maybe there&#39;s new reasons now as a consumer for me to go into the app and not spend time going to Amazon or Google to search for products.</p><p>[00:36:09] I can just do it in their app and I can do it in a conversational way by just talking to the app. I. I don&#39;t know. I personally don&#39;t think there are a lot of people asking Alexa or Siri to help them shop</p><p>[00:36:20] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> No, I mean, you know, it it, it comes back to garbage in, garbage out.</p><p>[00:36:25] And so in shopping, we&#39;ve had a lot of garbage in.</p><p>[00:36:27] Yeah, right. I just wanna see pencil skirts that have a double, double kick plate.</p><p>[00:36:31] I&#39;ve never seen the word double kick plate on any e-commerce listing in my life. And I have to go store by store. Yeah. But there&#39;s opportunity here,</p><p>[00:36:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right? And, and. Connect the dots on this to our retail media networks and B2B services prediction.</p><p>[00:36:48] I mean, you apply these things to all the media that you&#39;re putting into the network and how the retailer interfaces that with the brands there. There&#39;s impact on both sides of this, right? For the brands and using these technologies to generate the media they&#39;re [00:37:00] placing into the network on the retailer and how they&#39;re presenting it in store on digital screens.</p><p>[00:37:05] There&#39;s amazing applications and potential here. I, it&#39;s this one. I think at the same time, it&#39;s easy to predict. It&#39;s also hard to predict because knowing exactly what we&#39;re gonna see retailers create with this, I, I don&#39;t think anybody can legitimately do that right now in January. But I think, you know, it would be foolish not to have this on any predictions list for the year that it&#39;s gonna have a major impact.</p><p>[00:37:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> No, I mean, it&#39;s really interesting.</p><p>[00:37:27] I&#39;ve spoken to a lot of people in this, more on the tech side of the space. Everybody knows what it is, but when I&#39;ve spoken to some brands and designers and and whatnot, they&#39;ve never heard of it.</p><p>[00:37:44] Right.</p><p>[00:37:44] It&#39;s too soon. </p><p>[00:37:45] there is definitely going, like, there, should</p><p>[00:37:50] we move so fast for, for these, these retailers and brands on the tech side that, you know, they can&#39;t keep track of all of these things.</p><p>[00:37:57] Thankfully there&#39;s, you know, a lot of retail consultants and a [00:38:00] lot of technologists that are really diving into here and finding the value . To bring back some type of a solution for Branson retailers with a use </p><p>[00:38:08] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> case.</p><p>[00:38:08] Yeah. And, and I think this is a lot like what&#39;s we&#39;ve been saying and the other predictions is happening with web three, right? Where we, where we&#39;re finally seeing major examples in loyalty. It&#39;s where the actual retail tech that&#39;s being used in some ways hides all of the complexities and, and things that you have to know to implement on the tech side for this or the retail.</p><p>[00:38:27] The brand doesn&#39;t need to deal with it, the solution just doesn&#39;t. And I think the same thing will happen here once we start to see the tools. Right now everybody&#39;s playing around with the raw capability that ChatGPT gives &#39;em or Dalle two. But when that gets integrated with the right tools and APIs so that you can put it in other things, we&#39;ll see new retail tech solutions come up that are going to use this, but they&#39;re gonna deliver a business outcome for the retailer of the brand without having to know that this is what&#39;s going on in the </p><p>[00:38:54] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Exactly.</p><p>[00:38:54] They&#39;re probably not even gonna know.</p><p>[00:38:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. And And that&#39;s what&#39;s gonna help at scale</p><p>[00:38:57] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> what&#39;s coming in. Right. And I&#39;ve seen a [00:39:00] lot more success on these solutions. when you have the context of the end use case. Right. And I&#39;m, I think we&#39;re just gonna see in general a huge push of people from retail that are in tech are going to be making some really big moves in the industry.</p><p>[00:39:20] I think the most need for a retail technology consultant in general. It&#39;s not about omnichannel, it&#39;s not about bricks, it&#39;s not about clicks. It&#39;s literally about getting a technologist to work with you that understands the retail</p><p>[00:39:36] business. </p><p>[00:39:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> There&#39;s, there&#39;s a big opportunity there for the consultants in the industry and for all the, the services companies that are gonna help with implementations</p><p>[00:39:43] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> because it&#39;s a lot of, it&#39;s a lot of whiplash,</p><p>[00:39:46] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It is. Yeah. . That&#39;s right, </p><p>[00:39:50] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> that&#39;s plus running your own business, you</p><p>[00:39:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Exactly. Yeah.</p><p>[00:39:53] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> has a job already, right? So</p><p>[00:39:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Kind of implied, not so much because it&#39;s not really worth as a prediction, but kind of implied across all of [00:40:00] these that every retailer is actually focusing on the core business while dealing with all these things.</p><p>[00:40:04] So yeah, that&#39;s sort of a given to that. All right, well, those are the 10, those are our 10 predictions. So for all of our listeners and show fans, hit us up on LinkedIn. Give us your comments and feedback. Let us know what you think. And we&#39;ll be checking in throughout the year to see how we&#39;re doing on these, like we did last season and see what happens from there.</p><p>[00:40:25] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I, I&#39;ve never been more excited for a year to work in my life. like 2023 Yeah. Is going to be the most fun.</p><p>[00:40:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right, right. There&#39;s so much potential here. Absolutely. Absolutely. . Well, Casey, I think that is a wrap for this episode.</p><p>[00:40:42] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Love it.</p><h3>[00:40:43] Show Close</h3><p>[00:40:43] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We hope you enjoyed our show and we can&#39;t ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you [00:41:00] more great episodes. If you don&#39;t wanna miss a minute of what&#39;s next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don&#39;t forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden. </p><p>[00:41:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:41:31] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:41:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail, if you cut through the clutter! Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. </p> 0b392b34-e67d-4745-8606-a4065b0b4266 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 25 Jan 2023 12:05:00 +0000 2513 no full S2E8 - #NRFforBeginners with Andrew Laudato S2E8 - #NRFforBeginners with Andrew Laudato 8 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E8 - #NRFforBeginners with Andrew Laudato Happy New Year from the Retail Razor Show! A new year means it’s time for the annual National Retail Federation Big show held in New York City. But what if it’s your first time? It can be quite overwhelming for retailers and retailtech beginners. Fortunately, we’re here to help by bringing you a seasoned NRF veteran with his best tips and tricks to get the most out of your NRF experience! Fan favorite friend of the show, Andrew Laudato, COO of The Vitamin Shoppe joins our hosts to talk all things NRF Big Show and share what he has learned over 20+ years of attending the event. We hope to see you at NRF! Plus, our new segment, Retail Razor Data Blades returns, with another special insight from Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating ,learned from their 100,000’s of point-of-sale customer survey polls. In this episode learn how inflation is impacting shopper buying habits! News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show is nominated for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during the NRF Big Show 2023! News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, Overclocked, and Tech Lore, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E8 NRF for Beginners [00:00:20] Show Intro [00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode eight of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:00:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome, retail Razor Show listeners to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. [00:00:38] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Casey, this is a conversation I've really been looking forward to each year in January, pandemic year's, not withstanding, retail industry comes together for the largest event in our industry. The National Retail Federation's, big show in New York. At its peak, I think this event was right before the pandemic, 40,000 attendees from across North America and, and a lot of international visitors from all over the world. [00:00:59] Now [00:01:00] we're coming up on the 2023 big show next month from, from when we're recording this. So we're thinking listeners are probably hearing a lot of noise by now about what's gonna happen at this show, [00:01:10] Casey Golden: That's right. And they don't call it the big show for no reason. And since our specialty is cutting through the clutter and the noise, In retail to get to the useful bits that everyone wants to know. We thought we'd put together a special ed addition to our show to serve as a guide for beginners who are either attending their first show or feel like they could benefit from an experienced N R F veteran on how to navigate Javits. [00:01:36] Ricardo Belmar: And to do that, we invited a really incredible retailer with years of experience attending and leveraging the N R F event to the fullest to bring you this special edition N R F for beginner's episode. So today we are going to hear from no stranger to the show, Andrew Laudato, CEO of The Vitamin Shoppe. [00:01:53] Casey Golden: So many great tips and tricks on how to make the best of the show, how to meet your goals as a [00:02:00] retailer attendee, and even more importantly, how to navigate my city, New York City. So if you're new to the N R F Show or to New York City, you're going to find a few nuggets here that are useful, in this conversation. [00:02:13] Be sure to have your notepads ready to go get that Slack channel open. [00:02:19] Retail Razor Data Blades [00:02:19] Ricardo Belmar: But first it's time for the newest segment of our show, the Retail Razor Data Blades, where we talk real world numbers and slice through measurable consumer insights. It's a bit like, show me the math so I understand where this data is coming from and bringing us that slicing and dicing of data is Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating. [00:02:37] TruRating is changing the way retailers track how customers feel against how they spend with an innovative multi-channel feedback solution that has an average of 80% response rate from consumers. Georgina will share with us some key data points and offer a bit of insight into what's behind those numbers based on that extensive customer survey data at the point of sale. [00:02:56] Casey Golden: Welcome, Georgina. [00:02:58] Georgina Nelson: Thank you so much for having me. [00:02:59] Casey Golden: [00:03:00] So today's Retail Razor Data Blade segment is "how rising prices are impacting shopper habits". Georgina, give us the data. [00:03:09] Georgina Nelson: Well, last time we chatted, we discussed how over 81% of consumers who we polled across our markets, and that was, yeah, over 170,000 shoppers had been noticing the, the pinch on the cost of living. So 81% were noticing, but then we thought, how, how is that actually impacting behavior? You know, what changes are people making in light of that and how is that affecting retailers? [00:03:36] So we asked whether people were driving less or more as a result, and we found that 63% of consumers in the US said they were driving less because of the rising gas prices. We also found out that 60% were cooking more at home, so eating out less and 74% were using a list [00:04:00] when they went shopping which is a big increase on our, on the previous times, which we've asked that. [00:04:05] And academic research shows that generally consumers spend 15% less when they have a list. It's that, that discipline and keeping to it. [00:04:14] Casey Golden: Interesting. [00:04:15] Georgina Nelson: Yes. So so it, it's really become clear to us that there's, when it comes down to discretionary spend, big ticket items, you know, consumers are definitely being more careful. [00:04:27] They're shopping around more, they're making less frequent trips when they're going by public transport. And that means that the retailers who are in urban areas where, where there's a great public transport network aren't at such a disadvantage. [00:04:42] Casey Golden: So Georgina, I know retailers and consumers alike have been feeling the burden of inflation for quite a few months now. I'm certainly shopping around more and being a lot more considerate about where I choose to spend my hard-earned dollars. , is it pretty much all doom and [00:05:00] gloom until inflation winds down, or is there some upside here for retailers? [00:05:06] Georgina Nelson: I think that's a definite upside when you think of that consumer shopping around. That opens a whole world of opportunity. You've got new consumers coming through your door and you've got a chance to to woo and turn them. And so you know, this is a great. Yeah, a great opportunity to win new loyalty with incredible customer experience, targeted marketing and comms, and yeah, and build that loyalty fan base. [00:05:34] Casey Golden: And I think there's something to say when, in any type of recession or inflation or any type of point when the economy's taking that pinch. Those consumers that continue to shop with you, they're really kind of top of mind as a brand is really top of mind for them. And it's, it's pretty important as you go into like a different economy to see where those customers end up flushing [00:06:00] out. [00:06:00] Overall, I would assume. [00:06:02] Georgina Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think it's around understanding, you know, what makes that that customer loyal? What are they, what are they affiliating with your brand? What products are they purchasing? And really getting into that deeper level of, of customer insight and analytics. . I think, you know, as we, as we look to how a, a lot of our retailers are fighting the, the inflation and the, and the pinch on wallets spend. [00:06:32] It's really focusing down on, as I said, the element of customer experience, but train, train, training, you know, the, the store cashier to actually be a brand ambassador. How can they promote recommendations? How can they promote upsell, and even, you know, simple things. We found that like such as asking a customer their name. [00:06:53] In some of these, you know, fashion environments, et cetera when that consultative sale really helps, we've [00:07:00] seen that drive average basket spend by over 30%. [00:07:04] Ricardo Belmar: Mm. [00:07:05] Georgina Nelson: Likewise, if a customer makes a, you know, if, if a cashier makes a recommendation. So, you know, all these, all these simple things which a retailer can, can take and train the teams and then see the, see the impact down at a store level are key. [00:07:22] Ricardo Belmar: Well, it all comes back to that experience, doesn't it? . Well, there we have another edition of the Retail Razor Data Blades. [00:07:28] Casey Golden: I'm listening for the cool segment music right now. [00:07:31] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. And with that cool update, let's jump right into the discussion with our special guest for our NRF for Beginner's discussion. [00:07:44] [00:07:49] #NRFforBeginners with Andy Laudato [00:07:49] Ricardo Belmar: Today we're here with a retailer who's no stranger to the show and has extensive experience making the most of the N R F Show and all the activities during N R F Week in New York City each year.[00:08:00] [00:08:00] Casey Golden: That's right. So let's introduce our guest, Andrew Lodato, COO of the Vitamin Shoppe and former CIO of Pier one imports. Let's pave the way for the newbies coming to N R F this year. [00:08:12] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome back to the show, Andy. [00:08:13] Andrew Laudato: Yeah. Thank you. Hello. Great to see you, Ricardo and Casey. [00:08:16] Casey Golden: So how many NRFs have each of you been to in your retail career? [00:08:20] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, so I've been to 20, 21. This will be 22. [00:08:25] Ricardo Belmar: Wow. [00:08:26] Andrew Laudato: I actually took a little stint outside of retail. Well, it sounds like a lot, but when you meet people there, you'll meet people with 30 plus NRFs under their belt. I consider myself a veteran, but certainly not a senior. Some, some of the people [00:08:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think this is gonna be my, I, I've lost track, even though it doesn't sound like I should with like 11th or 12th nrf. So sometimes you're, you're totally right about that, Andy. I'll run into someone in those say, oh, this is my 20th N R f, and I'm thinking, oh, that, that's kind of making me sound like the newbie [00:08:55] Andrew Laudato: exactly. [00:08:56] Casey Golden: think I'm only at like six, so you guys have got, definitely got me beat[00:09:00] [00:09:01] Ricardo Belmar: Well, let's take a brief step back and for those who are the true beginners to nrf, let's define exactly what NRF is. And so Andy, how would you describe the, the jam-packed NRF week as its start, become called in the last few years? You know, of activity surrounding the actual NRF show and everything else that's going on in New York City during that nice bitter cold week in January that we're always also used to [00:09:27] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, so we all call it NRF or NRF Week, but actually NRF is stands for the National Retail Federation, and it's a retail advocacy and lobby organization. So most retailers are members of the National Retail Federation, and every year the NRF puts on several shows, conferences, events around different disciplines, technology, supply chain, digital store ops. [00:09:50] But in New York, once a year, they have what they call the "big show". So we just call it the NRF and but it's the big show. I don't know if this is true, but the [00:10:00] story is a hundred plus years ago. Retailers, you know, all got together in New York City and said, how'd we do over the holidays? I just imagined like 12 people in a room with a box of donuts and, and it really evolved from there. [00:10:11] Ricardo Belmar: I wonder if that's true. [00:10:13] Andrew Laudato: I made it up, but It sounds [00:10:14] Ricardo Belmar: good though. You can picture it. [00:10:17] Casey Golden: I'm like, it's a building filled with men in pleaded pants. So as a retailer, what should our goals be attending? What kind of ROI do you expect to get from this trip? [00:10:30] All about ROI [00:10:30] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, I case, I'm glad you used the term roi. I mean, people spend a lot of time and money to attend. You know, hotels in New York are 300 to $500 a night and then travel, you [00:10:41] Casey Golden: Put a P and L behind every event, [00:10:44] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, exactly right. And so, you know, so I think it's really important and if, you know, you get the opportunity to go, especially one of your first times, you know, make sure your company feels like they got their money's worth of their investment. [00:10:57] And so I always have goals. I think everyone [00:11:00] should set some goals, and mine are pretty simple, but, but I think they're powerful. My goal will be to come back from the big show with one to three brand new ideas, something I haven't heard, read, whether it's been on a podcast. So you get inspired whether you're at a formal session or a chat or a social and you hear something someone's doing or contemplating. [00:11:19] And to get one new idea that you can bring back to your business makes you know the investment palatable or, or worth it. Then I also have a goal of having, making three or more retail connections. Just to meet someone new finding someone in a different company that does what you did, or maybe they're ahead of you on some journey on either omni or digital or some path that's important to you. [00:11:41] So making that connection that you can follow up with later is really, really key. And then the last thing on my return on investment is to get a scorecard on how you're doing to honestly judge yourself when you, you talk to others and sometimes you find. Everyone's not as far as long. So sometimes you may be like, [00:12:00] wow, I feel like we're behind when you read all the hype and then you start talking to people about their reality. Or you may find that someone's way ahead of you on something and, and then that sets the standard that, Hey, we need, we need to redouble our efforts. [00:12:13] Casey Golden: That makes sense. I find that N R F. Different than a lot of other trade shows, has more customers join rather than some other trade shows and industry events where I find that it's a sea of vendors. I definitely feel like I get to meet more customers and more retailers that attend N R F. From like the daytime into the evenings, [00:12:34] Andrew Laudato: Yeah. You know, and, and if you're new, you'll notice quickly that the NRF is kind enough to color code your badges. And so you'll be able to tell if someone is a, from a retailer, from a supplier, from the analyst, are they a speaker? So you'll learn the code pretty quick and if you are a, call it, you're a buyer, not a seller, you're gonna get a lot more attention walking down the aisles. [00:12:55] But yeah, you're certainly fine. Not, and not just, I would say not just a lot more [00:13:00] retailers, but a lot more principals. You're talking about CEOs and a lot of C-Suite also attend the show. [00:13:05] Validating the hype [00:13:05] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That, that's true. That's true. I'm, I'm curious about one thing you, you just said there a minute ago, Andy, about Seeing how, how far along you are. I'm curious is when you're thinking about that, are you in, in a way trying to gauge and compare where you're at versus what all the industry hype might be before you get to the show? [00:13:23] And kind of, are you trying to see if while you're there at the show, can I level set around that hype? Is it really hype or is there something real there that maybe you are doing, and you don't feel like you're far off along, or maybe there are things that you haven't been able to figure out if you should be doing, but you keep hearing all this hype and you get to the show and you're trying to validate that. [00:13:41] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, you hear the hype and you try to validate it, right? So I'll make something up because this has been going on since my first N RF to talk about R F I D. [00:13:50] It's gonna change the world and talk about that. And you know, you open up the press and people are like, oh, we solved all our inventory woes with the R F I D. So you sit down with [00:14:00] people and talk about what did it take, how was it, was it really worth it? [00:14:03] And you kind of get that honest. And if you meet with 25 people and ask 'em all about the same question, you really get a better feel for than just reading the article. [00:14:12] Ricardo Belmar: What, what about the sessions at N R F do, do you go to the sessions that are there and, and if you do, how do you decide which ones are worth your time to go to? And, and, and I guess the sort of second part to that is for this coming N R F, are there any sessions you're particularly interested in? [00:14:27] Andrew Laudato: So I think the sessions are extremely important. I think it's easy to not go because you end up getting all these invitations before. and the expo booth is, you know, for a retailer you can pretty much get in for free. That's not that difficult. But I think they're extremely important. So for me it's the keynotes because ultimately every NRF ends up with a feel to it or a theme. And, you know, I have some theories on what I think the theme will end up being this year. And I think it'll be around you know, your business in a tough economy. But I don't know. We'll see. And, [00:15:00] and I think getting to some sessions are important. The sessions that I like to attend are really about the, call it the bleeding edge stuff. [00:15:07] I'm actually I'll do a little plug. I'm the moderator of a session on digital twins on Sunday afternoon, [00:15:13] so I'm super excited about that topic and I know very little about it. So, you know, I'm gonna learn a lot being the moderator of that. So those are the kind of sessions I like. And then anyone who's done, done something you're trying to. So, for example, you know, we're at the Vitamin Shoppe, we just last year rolled out buy online store ships, BOSS. So any session on those we were eager to get to because we heard, you know, some learnings we can have from others. [00:15:40] Casey Golden: What would you, as a retailer, what kind of advice would you give to a, a technology vendor that's going for the first time? Because obviously we're there for you, right? So [00:15:50] Andrew Laudato: right. [00:15:52] I, I think the NF big show is the most amazing place to meet people for the first time and get [00:16:00] started. So my advice would be to try to have your meetings just about, have some coffee and get to know someone. I don't think you should try to demo in detail. It's loud, it's noisy, there's interruptions. [00:16:11] It's a horrible place to sit down and spend 45 minutes going through a new AI-driven planning system, right? People aren't gonna be able to focus, so, For technology vendors, you know, make plans up front of who you wanna meet with, reach out and make the meetings really as casual as you're comfortable doing. [00:16:29] And it may not feel worthwhile, but I think that's more worthwhile than trying to, no one, no one shop, no one shows up at the NRF big show with their checkbook, right? We're not shopping. We're there to learn and to make relationships. So that's my advice is just focus on the relattionship. [00:16:44] Casey Golden: It's great to know that you're really not there to shop Thanks for saying that out loud. Andy [00:16:51] Ricardo Belmar: So, so, let me ask you then [00:16:52] on [00:16:52] Andrew Laudato: I've never bought a single thing in 20 some years [00:16:54] Yeah. [00:16:54] Ricardo Belmar: I, I was just gonna say, yeah, I, I bet that was gonna be the answer. Yeah. It, which, which I think I kind of find with most retailers, I know that [00:17:00] that's always true. It's you know, it's, , you're not there to decide to buy. You're there to learn, right? You're there to find out and investigate and, and kind of help you help set up maybe some G rails around where you want to go and what you wanna look for. [00:17:12] Casey Golden: That's great. I mean that, that really helps everybody understand like what value they need to be thinking about providing when they show up. [00:17:18] Building relationships [00:17:18] Ricardo Belmar: So I guess maybe also along those lines, Andy, you know, just thinking in terms of from. , the retail tech vendors that are there, right. In so many cases. Right. And I'll, I'll speak from the vendor side here. You know, there's always a desire to try to show off what every, for every vendor, what we have to, every retailer that comes by. [00:17:35] And to your point, right, where you're, you're kind of saying focus on building the relationship, you know, it's not the best environment to go through a detailed demo and kind of thing. So so I'm curious, what, what, what advice would you have vendors who are. totally focused on making sure they have the right demo and the right experience to show off to any retailer that comes by. [00:17:53] What's your advice for, for that vendor? In terms of how they should present themselves? [00:17:56] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, let me start with something that people may forget about. It's [00:18:00] a good opportunity for. retail vendors to shore up their existing relationships. I mean, a lot of us haven't seen each other for three years. Right? So, you know, start with that. And again, I always talk about the principles are there. We're gonna, my ceo, Sharon Leite, gonna be at the nrf. [00:18:16] She's on the board of the nrf. So, you know, establishing and firming up those relationships. Because remember, we're wandering around CIOs, COOs, we're wandering around to these parties, events, and people are asking us, who do you use for this? Who do you use for that? that's kind of like, almost like a defensive, but focus on your incumbents first, like your existing customers. And then my second thing would be just to be, you know, I don't know what the right analogy is, but to be targeted. What's the point? A lot of people in my mind seem like they're, they consider winning the maximum number of meetings, but go for quality over quantity is what I would say. I mean, the people beg me to come meet in their booth where I have no interest and I'm not shopping. [00:19:00] And I tell 'em that, but it seems like they don't care. I mean, someone offered me a hundred dollars to meet with them, which I find really quite humorous. I like to go back and tell my younger self that, but why, why are they so desperate for me to come to their booth if they know I'm not interested? [00:19:12] I guess it's just a ticket count, right? So don't do that. [00:19:16] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, [00:19:17] Andrew Laudato: 10 good meetings. Way better than 30 substandard meetings. [00:19:20] Ricardo Belmar: I is there, you know, is there any, like, any one thing that you've seen vendors do in the past that you just say to yourself, why do you, why would you do that? Please stop doing that. Don't do that again. [00:19:30] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, that tackle you when you're coming down the aisle, right? I mean, [00:19:34] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. [00:19:34] Yeah. [00:19:36] Andrew Laudato: of us try to flip around our badge, but say you just interrupt me. Step in front of me. Start chatting. Give me your pitch. I don't know you. I don't know who you are. I know what you're doing. , I'm late for something and it's just that's gonna be, you talk about relationship building, you're starting with [00:19:50] the [00:19:50] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Yeah. You're doing the opposite right there. [00:19:52] A few top tips [00:19:52] Casey Golden: So this is fascinating. So related question, what are your top tips overall? I'm a big fan of the [00:20:00] coat check, but what about lunch, et cetera. Have you ever done any lunch meetings like, away from N R F? [00:20:07] Andrew Laudato: Yeah. You know, it's important to have a plan and your first time at nrf. I mean, I, I'm glad you mentioned co check. Like you walk in and there's a long line to check your coat and you come, if you come the first day, you know you're, and you have to have a coat. I mean, it's New York City and January's cold. [00:20:21] It could be snowing, freezing rain, but just be like, have a plan. If you see a long line, I bet if you go down the place is really huge, you go down to another section. There'll be a no line, or someone might invite you to have, I know some, and I'm not gonna say who, but I know a vendor who built a coat check into their booth. [00:20:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:20:38] Andrew Laudato: You know, they get traffic and that's where my coat goes. And [00:20:40] Casey Golden: actually quite smart. I always find anytime that there's a line at an event that's really an opportunity to meet your neighbor [00:20:47] Andrew Laudato: sure. But say, you [00:20:48] Casey Golden: more organic conversation when you're both sitting there like complaining or waiting. [00:20:53] Andrew Laudato: Absolutely the line is Starbucks. You know, and I agree. And that's when they talk about having a goal of making, you know, at least three new [00:21:00] relationships. [00:21:00] Casey Golden: Yeah. [00:21:01] Andrew Laudato: But you could get frustrated very quickly, like getting to Javits in the morning on a bus, and then waiting in a line. And then, you know, now all of a sudden you're missing the keynote. [00:21:09] And you go in there and there's no more seats and you're, you're nervous and stressed. And so have a plan. Get there early. Put your coat somewhere smart. Remember where you put it. The lunch at Javits is really almost inedible. It's horrible and expensive, and so I don't recommend at all leaving the Javits Center, you know, and you're gonna, it's gonna, Well, we sell plenty of healthy protein bars at the vitamin shop. Or on the floor, you know, these booths are gonna have popcorn and candy, but I would definitely plan on eating on the fly. The reason I say don't leave is that now you gotta get your coat again, and then you're gonna go somewhere. And if it's a sit down restaurant, that takes time. [00:21:45] So you're talking about an hour and a half minimum to leave, to leave the grounds for lunch. So I wouldn't recommend that. But yeah, just I would say have a plan for all these things and don't be frustrated and. if you wanna get your badge early, like you can sometimes get your badge at the hotel. They [00:22:00] have satellite places, so that's a nice little trick. If not, if you come in a day before, you can get it day before. They may even have ways you can print it. Read, read the instructions. They're not a lot, but sometimes, like, you need your ID or you need this or that, or, I don't know if they're gonna do with covid, but just read the instructions, be ready, and take the stress out by, by having a plan for these things. [00:22:17] Ricardo Belmar: So on on that topic of scheduling meetings, for example. You know, so, good, good tip. You mentioned, you know, don't, don't try to leave in the middle of, of the day from Javits and then expect to come back. What do you do around meetings? You know, for example, do you, do you try to avoid having too many meetings in a row? [00:22:32] Because I, I know I've always found like the biggest challenge, is Javits is bigger than you think it is. So just trying to get from one meeting to another can be tricky sometimes, especially if you're trying to go between floors and you gotta leave yourself enough time. But do you have a strategy for, for how you look at scheduling meetings on your calendar while you're there? [00:22:49] Andrew Laudato: Yeah. So not only is it really, really big, you got the people stopping you, like I mentioned earlier, right? So you got the gauntlet to try to get to your meeting, and so Plan your meetings with a map. And so they'll [00:23:00] lay out where the booths are and if you have, you know, you wanna meet with say, six people on a, on one of the days. [00:23:06] So what I would do is I would start, sit down and start with what sessions do you absolutely want to attend? And block those out in your calendar. And then you say, okay, who do I absolutely wanna meet with then reach out to them and, and I've already done a lot of this. I mean, you need to be doing this now, right? [00:23:20] These things, I laugh when someone will invite me to dinner, like the day before. I laugh cause it's been booked forever, right? So and then lay out the, the meetings kind of like from, you know, Javits is numbered from zero to whatever, 10,000. So either go left or right or right to left and, and be smart about it and just plan it. [00:23:40] And if you can, that's a big puzzle cuz they also have to be available. But plan your meetings and then you will encounter something that you want to see at the Javits that you don't know about before you go. So there's some balance. You wanna leave some free time, maybe at the end of the day to say, oh, wow, I, I met this person in the line at the coat check, and I want to go by and, and meet them. [00:23:59] [00:24:00] So leave some time for that as well. [00:24:02] Ricardo Belmar: what about some of the other big attractions during that week are all of these other ancillary events that are happening? Casey mentioned it, right? All the things in the, the celebrations, the dinners, everything happening all around the city outside of the Javits and outside of the show. [00:24:15] I would even say some of my favorite things that happen at N R F are those extra events. I think Casey would probably say the same thing. That's why you go to those too. And some are vendor led, some are vendor sponsored. Some are not really led in any way by a vendor. . They have a different purpose. [00:24:28] What are your goals and expectations around how you approach those events? [00:24:33] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, so for a lot of people, for me, you know, I usually never even came to New York City other than the nrf. So if you wanna see New York City, I mean, New York City's an amazing place so you could maybe plan some of your own time. One thing that may fascinate people like you may pick a night and only go have dinner with your coworkers. you know, I know you'd have to pay, your company will have to pay or you have to pay yourself, but you know, it's something you don't probably normally do back home is spend some time. So everything doesn't have to be, and you don't have to be [00:25:00] on, and you don't have to be here on a pitch. So that's something that we did all the time at Pier one. [00:25:04] We'd pick a night and just have dinner with, with all of our coworkers that came to the show. I think the long, the more people that attend a dinner, the longer it takes. And I actually have some math formula. I add like seven minutes for every attendee to my dinner. So when you start to get into these, number one thing I ask is how many people are gonna be there? [00:25:19] So, you know, if it's a 30 person dinner and a big room, you're looking at three plus hours. [00:25:23] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. [00:25:24] Andrew Laudato: I try to avoid those. I'd rather kind of bop from, call it a happy hour to happy hour kind of event where I can meet people and have one-on-one conversations. I know I keep talking about not eating, but there's plenty You're gonna eat, right? [00:25:34] There's gonna be [00:25:35] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:25:36] Andrew Laudato: your bars and the popcorn and the treats, and then there's gonna be at these happy hours, we'll call 'em happy hours or cocktail. There's gonna be plenty of hors d'oeuvres and you know, kind stay on the fly is what I like to do. Maybe pick out that one night for a team meeting and then bop from event to event. [00:25:51] Casey Golden: There's one vendor, and I'm not gonna say who it is, but it's usually probably around like 11 o'clock. at every trade show. [00:26:00] They're like my before lunch stop because they have like this whole entire booth made out of Jelly Bellies, [00:26:08] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, like. [00:26:08] Casey Golden: I'm like, it's just great. [00:26:11] Andrew Laudato: I have a fun NRF story. So years ago I was talk talking to someone at a booth and they ordered out sub sandwiches they were delicious cuz New York you can find amazing delis. And then it became a thing. So the next year I'm like, Hey, are you guys gonna do that again? And they actually got to where they were bringing in hundreds of sandwiches and they reorganized their booth. [00:26:31] Well, the NRF got angry cuz they wanna make money or, or the Javits Center got angry cause there's rules and unions and so they shut it down. But I had a good thing going for a few years there. And, and so did they, cause they had, they had the, the lunch booth going so [00:26:44] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean I find when you offer food at any trade show, even, you know, when I was on the fashion side, going to market feed people with good food and they'll stick around and come back, [00:26:55] Andrew Laudato: great. [00:26:56] New York City Tips [00:26:56] Casey Golden: All right, so we also have to recognize that if you're new to [00:27:00] NRF you also might be new to the city. and New York City is one of the most, is like the pure definition of a city And [00:27:08] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, I'd argue the best city in the world. I haven't been to [00:27:11] Casey Golden: city in the world. [00:27:12] Andrew Laudato: it [00:27:13] Casey Golden: I mean, granted, I just went to a couple really beautiful cities last week, but there's nothing like New York. [00:27:19] But it can be definitely overwhelming for a lot of new people, especially new people coming into you know, there's a lot of people that have new jobs, right? And this is their first time to nrf, first time in New York City. Where would you suggest a beginner to stay or how to get around? Something that they, they, they must see just because they're in New York City for the first time. [00:27:40] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, so lemme go back. First of all, it's about getting here, right? So there are three airports. There's the LaGuardia Airport, which most people think is where they need to fly, but there's also JFK, which is a little more of a hassle, but you may save hundreds of dollars or get a more convenient time. [00:27:54] Casey Golden: Mm-hmm. [00:27:55] Andrew Laudato: and then there's the Newark Airport. [00:27:56] And don't sleep on Newark. It's just as close to Manhattan [00:27:59] Casey Golden: I always [00:28:00] find. [00:28:01] Andrew Laudato: So there you go. And you know, so there's three choices for airports. Once you get to the airport, you gotta get to the city. The biggest hack now, now I take the subway, but I'm not gonna recommend the subway from the airport for beginner. [00:28:13] But the biggest hack is the oldest hack. It's cabs. So it used to be, yet I had to take a cab and then Uber came. But now everyone's taking Uber. So the cabs have no line. And there's an app that lets turns your cab into Uber called Curbed, C U R B E D. You download that app and there's a number in the back of the cab, you sync it so you don't have to deal with paying the driver. [00:28:35] So my hack at LaGuardia is just to go down and get a cab at the cab stand, no wait, and then all the people fighting over the Ubers in that parking garage deal with that. So that's that. So now we're, they're there. You get into Manhattan, where to stay. I gu I guess if you're new, stay at one of the sanctioned hotels on the N R F website. Now, you know, back years ago there was nothing out by Javits. It's out by the water in a rail yard, but now [00:29:00] there's Hudson Yards, so you're starting to see more restaurants, hotels out there. But another thing I will say is don't get on the bus to the NRF show. So there's buses from the hotels. It's so easy to take the subway and I know subways are scary, but there's a seven Subway, it's one stop from Times Square. [00:29:17] It goes right by Javitz. You don't need a card anymore, you just pay with your cell phone or even your Apple watch. It's the seven train. And you just take the seven train, west, you get off there. There's no other place to get off than the last stop. And you're right there. It's $2 and 75 cents. And that's my my big advice as. [00:29:37] Casey Golden: Well, as a transplant New Yorker, it's only three avenues. You can always walk it. I always like to remind people that like, we don't have cars. We just, you know, get your steps in [00:29:51] Andrew Laudato: Well, speaking of walking, whether you're walking to Javits or not, you're gonna walk a lot at [00:29:56] Casey Golden: walk. [00:29:57] Andrew Laudato: So I know we could, and you know, you're a woman, so you [00:30:00] could talk about shoes, but shoes become an issue cause you wanna look good. so. You know, wear, wear you're watching, you'll see how many steps you get in. [00:30:07] But even whether you take the bus, the subway, you walk to Javitz, once you get there, it's, you're gonna walk a lot. Around, you'll be walking basically for eight to 10 hours. [00:30:16] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, yeah, so much walking. So, you know, another interesting thing you brought up when we were ahead of this session and you were talking about, what, what kind of tips would there be? You mentioned a few things about, thinking about who's listening in your conversations. What did you mean by that? [00:30:29] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, so, you know, New York is what millions and millions of people live here, but it's, it becomes a real small world in the retail. So you get on a flight and it seems more often than not, the person's next to me, some kind of software vendor. And when you're at the bag claim, I've had people come up to me and recognize me from LinkedIn and so just be careful what you're saying about your company business personal. [00:30:50] Just assume that, you know, I mean, probably rare that it will happen, but it seems to happen a lot to me, so just be careful what you're saying on an airplane, in the cab, you know, when, as you're going around the [00:31:00] city, you know, so especially people start drinking, they get loud and, and people can overhear you. So, you know, I, I'd be careful about that. [00:31:07] It's just about, you know, being professional when you travel, I guess is a simple way to say it. [00:31:11] Casey Golden: I've met some of my favorite people and long-term friends from traveling and hitting airports during this time of year. People who worked at, at different consulting companies or technology vendors or retailers, literally from a flight delay to and, and having a chat, you know, over like an unexpected dinner at the airport or literally just sitting next to them on the flight. [00:31:37] So, I mean, it's a great opportunity. But yeah, somebody, the likelihood of somebody sitting next to you that's going to the same show. It's very high. [00:31:46] Andrew Laudato: Yeah. Now you could arrange for a ride. I've certainly used the opportunity to arrange for a ride. Like, Hey, let's grab a cab to the city together. Cause you know, there's two of you or three of you and the cab's gonna be 65 bucks and that's pretty nice to share. And then you got another [00:32:00] forty five minutes to chat with your new friend. [00:32:02] Groups of coworkers [00:32:02] Casey Golden: Yeah. Have you ever visited N R F as a part of a group? Where the whole company's kind of going. I know you mentioned doing company dinners but what is that? I've always gone solo. What is that kind of like when you've got a whole bunch of group of coworkers going together? [00:32:20] Andrew Laudato: I think there's a lot of positives. Like I said, you could have the dinner together. You can also divide and conquer. So, hey, I'm gonna focus, you know, so sit down with the group and say, oh, who's gonna go to what sessions? And then take notes for each other and come back and share what you learned. If you're all there on the same mission, maybe you can all hear something together. If you're all there looking at, you know, x, y, z category of software I would say, you know, to my tech friends, the introverts, it is, you have to be careful cuz with your, with people, you know. So you go to a party, it's a lot easier just to stay with them and talk to them, but don't do that. [00:32:51] Force yourself to break out and, and go make the new connections. And if one of your goals is to make at least three new connections, it sounds like Casey, you have no problem doing that. [00:33:00] But there are certainly people that come from more of the you know, technical side of the house or other places where they're not naturally extrovert. [00:33:08] So you gotta kinda force yourself to not just hang back with your coworker that you talk to, at least on Zoom every day. [00:33:14] Casey Golden: butterfly, [00:33:17] Andrew Laudato: So, you know, one trick I I tell people is to use the extroverts to your advantage. So say someone meets you at a social event, they could ask you, Hey, will you introduce me to another retailer? And so they may not just wanna walk up, especially if people are in a group. And that's the other thing, if people come in a group and they stay in the group, they're not really approachable, but someone like you would be easily able to bust [00:33:38] Casey Golden: Hi. [00:33:39] Andrew Laudato: yeah, so I might say, Casey, I really wanna meet people at, I don't know, coach or Louis Vuitton, and you're like, I know them. [00:33:46] Let me introduce you. Right? So the introverts can use the extroverts to build their relationships. [00:33:51] Casey Golden: Yeah, I always I was very shy growing up. Who would've thought? And I always go and try and find like [00:34:00] people who are kind of like being like a wallflower almost. And I'm like, oh, come on in. Get into the conversation or come join. Cuz you never really do know who that, who those people are, but I find that some of the introverts, they're, they're very good operators. [00:34:15] wanna know who you are I've, cuz otherwise it's like a whole bunch of a lot of social people. They're usually sales people [00:34:21] Andrew Laudato: Exactly. That's, yeah. That's [00:34:23] Casey Golden: I don't wanna talk to another salesperson. I'm like, where are some operators around here? [00:34:27] Andrew Laudato: exactly. [00:34:28] Ricardo Belmar: it interesting. [00:34:29] Andrew Laudato: Exactly. Mm-hmm. [00:34:31] Andy's favorite activities [00:34:31] Ricardo Belmar: So, so maybe re related to, to that note, I, I should have asked you earlier, Andy, I mean are, are in this NF coming up, are there other side events or other ancillary events around town that you're excited about this year that you're looking forward to? [00:34:44] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, you know, I'm very active and I know you are too, with the Retail ROI, which is the Retail Orphan Initiative. And you get to go and that's on Saturdays and there may even be opportunities still to attend, whether you're a retailer or a supplier. But that event is really, Amazing content [00:35:00] for learning amazing content about, you know, what the organization does for orphans around the world. [00:35:05] And it's a worthwhile cause, right? Just your attendance alone helps. So that's, I put that as number one is my favorite event. And I, I've been going since the original one. There's, even if you back up, you know, years ago the NRF started on Monday and went through Wednesday, the show. Then the CIO councils and the other councils would meet on Sunday. [00:35:23] So then the show started to move things backwards and then Greg Buzek put his thing on Saturday. Now there's Vicki Cantrell has something called vendors in partnerships, which is really exciting. It's about bringing together the providers and the retailers and giving an award show, and that's moved us back to Friday. [00:35:40] So it really has become, A weekend event, you know, now you're talking about traveling on Friday, spending the weekend and the show ends on Tuesday now. So again, it's not just about the Javits, it's about from Friday, Saturday. No, those are my favorite events. There's a Kathy Hotka Secret Event. You gotta know. [00:35:58] You gotta know to know. [00:36:00] So if you wanna get on that, you gotta figure it out. That makes it more fun. I hear about things even though after 20 years that go on that I had no idea. Or sometimes I find out there's something. So I, I also don't wanna pigeonhole people into what I do. Cause it's, it's amazing. [00:36:15] There are sometimes events at the big flagship stores in town [00:36:18] Casey Golden: Mm-hmm. [00:36:18] Andrew Laudato: or store tours. It's another thing we didn't talk about, but you know, especially if you come in a day earlier, stay an extra day, you can really do some retailing [00:36:25] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. Visit some of the [00:36:26] Andrew Laudato: lot of lot of store. [00:36:29] Casey Golden: highly recommend visiting stores during holiday season. No matter what type of of retailer you are hitting, the flagships in New York City is an experience in itself. [00:36:41] Andrew Laudato: and you know, if your company has stores in the city, absolutely. Make sure you get into those stores and say hi to those, [00:36:48] you know, store associates and you know, [00:36:51] Casey Golden: there's so many learnings. So many learnings. Even, even as a e, even as a shopper, right? You don't have to be in the own brand. It doesn't have to be a competitive [00:37:00] brand. Just being able to experience a fifth Avenue and hit up 10 different stores it's very rare that we get to, to see that level of quality and or just have that much. [00:37:10] To what a lot of the flagship experiences are. So I'm a big advocate. A lot of people come in from like, mid door tiers and so I think it's always pretty special when you have a chance to visit the flagships. [00:37:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. I've, I've often done that when I'll, I'll stay over on Wednesday in, in fact, after the day after the show's over, just to do that, just to visit different stores around the city, just to get a, get a chance to see and experience what's new and what's special about those locations with, with so many flagship stores there and, and other interesting experiences to, to compare with. [00:37:44] Casey Golden: Yeah. [00:37:45] Your post-NRF recap [00:37:45] Ricardo Belmar: I guess that kind of begs the question, Andy, so you, we've gone through all these things to do while you're at nrf, all these things to do around nrf. What do you do after the show? You get back home, back to the office. Then what do you do? [00:37:59] Andrew Laudato: So, I [00:38:00] may, may sound nerdy, but I always write a report. So I always use my flight home to read all my notes and summarize what I learned, what I saw, and then I [00:38:08] Casey Golden: tired, Amy [00:38:10] Andrew Laudato: Well, you like, I mean, I used to be on a four hour flight. You got, you know, if you're not gonna nap, then you can at least do that. But if you don't do it, then you're gonna, you're already behind it work cuz you've been gone for four days. [00:38:20] Right. So then I just, you. Publish that to the exec team and peers and say, here, here's what I saw, what I learned. And that's the first thing. And then that's, it's justifying the ROI we talked about up front. So you know, you have so much fun, you wanna make sure you can get to go again. And so you make sure you justify the investment. Maybe then follow ups. I some thank yous for anything. If people gave me gifts or meetings, I'll, I'll do that when I'm back. And then things that you really. Wow, you have your one big idea you want to chase, so start scheduling meetings to talk about that back home. [00:38:54] Casey Golden: So I do have a conference hack for note taking that I found [00:39:00] extremely beneficial is I open up a Slack channel and I invite a few people into my Slack channel and I take notes in Slack and take pictures of the business cards as I get them. And so I'll have an entire Slack channel that the team is actually digesting. [00:39:15] Throughout the day and doing like end of day recaps and then already on it before I even get back. But I do [00:39:22] Andrew Laudato: I love it. That's [00:39:22] Casey Golden: Slack channel because it's mid-thought. I'll just go in there right after I meet somebody and leave notes. So I can remember contact no more pens and papers for me, but it shares it right with the team immediately. [00:39:34] So I've, I even had people get back to me and say, oh, This person is also friends with this person and they had just left this company and I literally was still in conversation. I was able to like have the extra contact. So it is nice to have that, that Slack channel open with somebody [00:39:52] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, that's a great [00:39:53] Casey Golden: all the recon. I'm so impressed by all of these like valuable tips and tricks and recommendations. I don't know where you were [00:40:00] when I went to my first nrf. It was very overwhelming for me. And just cause I didn't know who anybody was and how to navigate successfully because there's just so many vendors. But this is just amazing. [00:40:11] Is there anything that we've missed? Anything you wanna add before we, we close out, Andy? [00:40:16] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, look, it's, you can have some fun too, right? I dunno, what's that word? Boondoggle. But you're getting to go on a trip and meet some amazing people and see some amazing things maybe at a restaurant you couldn't normally get into or couldn't normally afford. So enjoy yourself. Have some fun, right? It's, it's not all work. [00:40:31] It's should be mostly work, but not all work. [00:40:33] Casey Golden: corporate accounts? Man, I missed those. [00:40:36] Ricardo Belmar: Well, well, Andy, I thanks so much for, for coming back to the show and, and joining us for this. Like, just like Casey said and some amazing tips and a really excellent guide to NRF for beginners. I don't know why I can keep track of all of 'em. I took some notes myself. Like I said at the beginning, this might be my 11th or 12th NRF, but sometimes I still feel like I'm the beginner learning all the the best tips and tricks on how to get through the week. [00:40:59] Andrew Laudato: [00:41:00] All right. Well, I look forward to seeing both of you there. [00:41:02] Ricardo Belmar: absolutely. [00:41:02] Casey Golden: Well, Ricardo, I think that this episode is a wrap. Thank you so much, Andy! [00:41:06] Andrew Laudato: Welcome. [00:41:07] Show Close [00:41:07] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:41:39] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:41:55] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:41:57] Ricardo Belmar: And [00:42:00] remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. Happy New Year from the Retail Razor Show! A new year means it’s time for the annual National Retail Federation Big show held in New York City. But what if it’s your first time? It can be quite overwhelming for retailers and retailtech beginners. Fortunately, we’re here to help by bringing you a seasoned NRF veteran with his best tips and tricks to get the most out of your NRF experience!


Fan favorite friend of the show, Andrew Laudato, COO of The Vitamin Shoppe joins our hosts to talk all things NRF Big Show and share what he has learned over 20+ years of attending the event. We hope to see you at NRF!


Plus, our new segment, Retail Razor Data Blades returns, with another special insight from Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating ,learned from their 100,000’s of point-of-sale customer survey polls. In this episode learn how inflation is impacting shopper buying habits!


News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show is nominated for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during the NRF Big Show 2023!


News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, Overclocked, and Tech Lore, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

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Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar


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Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey



TRANSCRIPT

S2E8 NRF for Beginners

[00:00:20] Show Intro

[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode eight of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:00:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome, retail Razor Show listeners to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.

[00:00:38] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Casey, this is a conversation I've really been looking forward to each year in January, pandemic year's, not withstanding, retail industry comes together for the largest event in our industry. The National Retail Federation's, big show in New York. At its peak, I think this event was right before the pandemic, 40,000 attendees from across North America and, and a lot of international visitors from all over the world.

[00:00:59] Now [00:01:00] we're coming up on the 2023 big show next month from, from when we're recording this. So we're thinking listeners are probably hearing a lot of noise by now about what's gonna happen at this show,

[00:01:10] Casey Golden: That's right. And they don't call it the big show for no reason. And since our specialty is cutting through the clutter and the noise, In retail to get to the useful bits that everyone wants to know. We thought we'd put together a special ed addition to our show to serve as a guide for beginners who are either attending their first show or feel like they could benefit from an experienced N R F veteran on how to navigate Javits.

[00:01:36] Ricardo Belmar: And to do that, we invited a really incredible retailer with years of experience attending and leveraging the N R F event to the fullest to bring you this special edition N R F for beginner's episode. So today we are going to hear from no stranger to the show, Andrew Laudato, CEO of The Vitamin Shoppe.

[00:01:53] Casey Golden: So many great tips and tricks on how to make the best of the show, how to meet your goals as a [00:02:00] retailer attendee, and even more importantly, how to navigate my city, New York City. So if you're new to the N R F Show or to New York City, you're going to find a few nuggets here that are useful, in this conversation.

[00:02:13] Be sure to have your notepads ready to go get that Slack channel open.

[00:02:19] Retail Razor Data Blades

[00:02:19] Ricardo Belmar: But first it's time for the newest segment of our show, the Retail Razor Data Blades, where we talk real world numbers and slice through measurable consumer insights. It's a bit like, show me the math so I understand where this data is coming from and bringing us that slicing and dicing of data is Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating.

[00:02:37] TruRating is changing the way retailers track how customers feel against how they spend with an innovative multi-channel feedback solution that has an average of 80% response rate from consumers. Georgina will share with us some key data points and offer a bit of insight into what's behind those numbers based on that extensive customer survey data at the point of sale.

[00:02:56] Casey Golden: Welcome, Georgina.

[00:02:58] Georgina Nelson: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:02:59] Casey Golden: [00:03:00] So today's Retail Razor Data Blade segment is "how rising prices are impacting shopper habits". Georgina, give us the data.

[00:03:09] Georgina Nelson: Well, last time we chatted, we discussed how over 81% of consumers who we polled across our markets, and that was, yeah, over 170,000 shoppers had been noticing the, the pinch on the cost of living. So 81% were noticing, but then we thought, how, how is that actually impacting behavior? You know, what changes are people making in light of that and how is that affecting retailers?

[00:03:36] So we asked whether people were driving less or more as a result, and we found that 63% of consumers in the US said they were driving less because of the rising gas prices. We also found out that 60% were cooking more at home, so eating out less and 74% were using a list [00:04:00] when they went shopping which is a big increase on our, on the previous times, which we've asked that.

[00:04:05] And academic research shows that generally consumers spend 15% less when they have a list. It's that, that discipline and keeping to it.

[00:04:14] Casey Golden: Interesting.

[00:04:15] Georgina Nelson: Yes. So so it, it's really become clear to us that there's, when it comes down to discretionary spend, big ticket items, you know, consumers are definitely being more careful.

[00:04:27] They're shopping around more, they're making less frequent trips when they're going by public transport. And that means that the retailers who are in urban areas where, where there's a great public transport network aren't at such a disadvantage.

[00:04:42] Casey Golden: So Georgina, I know retailers and consumers alike have been feeling the burden of inflation for quite a few months now. I'm certainly shopping around more and being a lot more considerate about where I choose to spend my hard-earned dollars. , is it pretty much all doom and [00:05:00] gloom until inflation winds down, or is there some upside here for retailers?

[00:05:06] Georgina Nelson: I think that's a definite upside when you think of that consumer shopping around. That opens a whole world of opportunity. You've got new consumers coming through your door and you've got a chance to to woo and turn them. And so you know, this is a great. Yeah, a great opportunity to win new loyalty with incredible customer experience, targeted marketing and comms, and yeah, and build that loyalty fan base.

[00:05:34] Casey Golden: And I think there's something to say when, in any type of recession or inflation or any type of point when the economy's taking that pinch. Those consumers that continue to shop with you, they're really kind of top of mind as a brand is really top of mind for them. And it's, it's pretty important as you go into like a different economy to see where those customers end up flushing [00:06:00] out.

[00:06:00] Overall, I would assume.

[00:06:02] Georgina Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think it's around understanding, you know, what makes that that customer loyal? What are they, what are they affiliating with your brand? What products are they purchasing? And really getting into that deeper level of, of customer insight and analytics. . I think, you know, as we, as we look to how a, a lot of our retailers are fighting the, the inflation and the, and the pinch on wallets spend.

[00:06:32] It's really focusing down on, as I said, the element of customer experience, but train, train, training, you know, the, the store cashier to actually be a brand ambassador. How can they promote recommendations? How can they promote upsell, and even, you know, simple things. We found that like such as asking a customer their name.

[00:06:53] In some of these, you know, fashion environments, et cetera when that consultative sale really helps, we've [00:07:00] seen that drive average basket spend by over 30%. 

[00:07:04] Ricardo Belmar: Mm. 

[00:07:05] Georgina Nelson: Likewise, if a customer makes a, you know, if, if a cashier makes a recommendation. So, you know, all these, all these simple things which a retailer can, can take and train the teams and then see the, see the impact down at a store level are key.

[00:07:22] Ricardo Belmar: Well, it all comes back to that experience, doesn't it? . Well, there we have another edition of the Retail Razor Data Blades.

[00:07:28] Casey Golden: I'm listening for the cool segment music right now.

[00:07:31] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. And with that cool update, let's jump right into the discussion with our special guest for our NRF for Beginner's discussion.

[00:07:44]

[00:07:49] #NRFforBeginners with Andy Laudato

[00:07:49] Ricardo Belmar: Today we're here with a retailer who's no stranger to the show and has extensive experience making the most of the N R F Show and all the activities during N R F Week in New York City each year.[00:08:00]

[00:08:00] Casey Golden: That's right. So let's introduce our guest, Andrew Lodato, COO of the Vitamin Shoppe and former CIO of Pier one imports. Let's pave the way for the newbies coming to N R F this year. 

[00:08:12] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome back to the show, Andy.

[00:08:13] Andrew Laudato: Yeah. Thank you. Hello. Great to see you, Ricardo and Casey.

[00:08:16] Casey Golden: So how many NRFs have each of you been to in your retail career?

[00:08:20] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, so I've been to 20, 21. This will be 22. 

[00:08:25] Ricardo Belmar: Wow. 

[00:08:26] Andrew Laudato: I actually took a little stint outside of retail. Well, it sounds like a lot, but when you meet people there, you'll meet people with 30 plus NRFs under their belt. I consider myself a veteran, but certainly not a senior. Some, some of the people 

[00:08:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think this is gonna be my, I, I've lost track, even though it doesn't sound like I should with like 11th or 12th nrf. So sometimes you're, you're totally right about that, Andy. I'll run into someone in those say, oh, this is my 20th N R f, and I'm thinking, oh, that, that's kind of making me sound like the newbie

[00:08:55] Andrew Laudato: exactly.

[00:08:56] Casey Golden: think I'm only at like six, so you guys have got, definitely got me beat[00:09:00]

[00:09:01] Ricardo Belmar: Well, let's take a brief step back and for those who are the true beginners to nrf, let's define exactly what NRF is. And so Andy, how would you describe the, the jam-packed NRF week as its start, become called in the last few years? You know, of activity surrounding the actual NRF show and everything else that's going on in New York City during that nice bitter cold week in January that we're always also used to

[00:09:27] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, so we all call it NRF or NRF Week, but actually NRF is stands for the National Retail Federation, and it's a retail advocacy and lobby organization. So most retailers are members of the National Retail Federation, and every year the NRF puts on several shows, conferences, events around different disciplines, technology, supply chain, digital store ops.

[00:09:50] But in New York, once a year, they have what they call the "big show". So we just call it the NRF and but it's the big show. I don't know if this is true, but the [00:10:00] story is a hundred plus years ago. Retailers, you know, all got together in New York City and said, how'd we do over the holidays? I just imagined like 12 people in a room with a box of donuts and, and it really evolved from there. 

[00:10:11] Ricardo Belmar: I wonder if that's true.

[00:10:13] Andrew Laudato: I made it up, but It sounds 

[00:10:14] Ricardo Belmar: good though. You can picture it.

[00:10:17] Casey Golden: I'm like, it's a building filled with men in pleaded pants. So as a retailer, what should our goals be attending? What kind of ROI do you expect to get from this trip?

[00:10:30] All about ROI

[00:10:30] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, I case, I'm glad you used the term roi. I mean, people spend a lot of time and money to attend. You know, hotels in New York are 300 to $500 a night and then travel, you

[00:10:41] Casey Golden: Put a P and L behind every event,

[00:10:44] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, exactly right. And so, you know, so I think it's really important and if, you know, you get the opportunity to go, especially one of your first times, you know, make sure your company feels like they got their money's worth of their investment.

[00:10:57] And so I always have goals. I think everyone [00:11:00] should set some goals, and mine are pretty simple, but, but I think they're powerful. My goal will be to come back from the big show with one to three brand new ideas, something I haven't heard, read, whether it's been on a podcast. So you get inspired whether you're at a formal session or a chat or a social and you hear something someone's doing or contemplating.

[00:11:19] And to get one new idea that you can bring back to your business makes you know the investment palatable or, or worth it. Then I also have a goal of having, making three or more retail connections. Just to meet someone new finding someone in a different company that does what you did, or maybe they're ahead of you on some journey on either omni or digital or some path that's important to you.

[00:11:41] So making that connection that you can follow up with later is really, really key. And then the last thing on my return on investment is to get a scorecard on how you're doing to honestly judge yourself when you, you talk to others and sometimes you find. Everyone's not as far as long. So sometimes you may be like, [00:12:00] wow, I feel like we're behind when you read all the hype and then you start talking to people about their reality. Or you may find that someone's way ahead of you on something and, and then that sets the standard that, Hey, we need, we need to redouble our efforts.

[00:12:13] Casey Golden: That makes sense. I find that N R F. Different than a lot of other trade shows, has more customers join rather than some other trade shows and industry events where I find that it's a sea of vendors. I definitely feel like I get to meet more customers and more retailers that attend N R F. From like the daytime into the evenings, 

[00:12:34] Andrew Laudato: Yeah. You know, and, and if you're new, you'll notice quickly that the NRF is kind enough to color code your badges. And so you'll be able to tell if someone is a, from a retailer, from a supplier, from the analyst, are they a speaker? So you'll learn the code pretty quick and if you are a, call it, you're a buyer, not a seller, you're gonna get a lot more attention walking down the aisles.

[00:12:55] But yeah, you're certainly fine. Not, and not just, I would say not just a lot more [00:13:00]retailers, but a lot more principals. You're talking about CEOs and a lot of C-Suite also attend the show.

[00:13:05] Validating the hype

[00:13:05] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That, that's true. That's true. I'm, I'm curious about one thing you, you just said there a minute ago, Andy, about Seeing how, how far along you are. I'm curious is when you're thinking about that, are you in, in a way trying to gauge and compare where you're at versus what all the industry hype might be before you get to the show?

[00:13:23] And kind of, are you trying to see if while you're there at the show, can I level set around that hype? Is it really hype or is there something real there that maybe you are doing, and you don't feel like you're far off along, or maybe there are things that you haven't been able to figure out if you should be doing, but you keep hearing all this hype and you get to the show and you're trying to validate that.

[00:13:41] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, you hear the hype and you try to validate it, right? So I'll make something up because this has been going on since my first N RF to talk about R F I D. 

[00:13:50] It's gonna change the world and talk about that. And you know, you open up the press and people are like, oh, we solved all our inventory woes with the R F I D. So you sit down with [00:14:00] people and talk about what did it take, how was it, was it really worth it?

[00:14:03] And you kind of get that honest. And if you meet with 25 people and ask 'em all about the same question, you really get a better feel for than just reading the article.

[00:14:12] Ricardo Belmar: What, what about the sessions at N R F do, do you go to the sessions that are there and, and if you do, how do you decide which ones are worth your time to go to? And, and, and I guess the sort of second part to that is for this coming N R F, are there any sessions you're particularly interested in?

[00:14:27] Andrew Laudato: So I think the sessions are extremely important. I think it's easy to not go because you end up getting all these invitations before. and the expo booth is, you know, for a retailer you can pretty much get in for free. That's not that difficult. But I think they're extremely important. So for me it's the keynotes because ultimately every NRF ends up with a feel to it or a theme. And, you know, I have some theories on what I think the theme will end up being this year. And I think it'll be around you know, your business in a tough economy. But I don't know. We'll see. And, [00:15:00] and I think getting to some sessions are important. The sessions that I like to attend are really about the, call it the bleeding edge stuff.

[00:15:07] I'm actually I'll do a little plug. I'm the moderator of a session on digital twins on Sunday afternoon,

[00:15:13] so I'm super excited about that topic and I know very little about it. So, you know, I'm gonna learn a lot being the moderator of that. So those are the kind of sessions I like. And then anyone who's done, done something you're trying to. So, for example, you know, we're at the Vitamin Shoppe, we just last year rolled out buy online store ships, BOSS. So any session on those we were eager to get to because we heard, you know, some learnings we can have from others.

[00:15:40] Casey Golden: What would you, as a retailer, what kind of advice would you give to a, a technology vendor that's going for the first time? Because obviously we're there for you, right? So

[00:15:50] Andrew Laudato: right.

[00:15:52] I, I think the NF big show is the most amazing place to meet people for the first time and get [00:16:00] started. So my advice would be to try to have your meetings just about, have some coffee and get to know someone. I don't think you should try to demo in detail. It's loud, it's noisy, there's interruptions.

[00:16:11] It's a horrible place to sit down and spend 45 minutes going through a new AI-driven planning system, right? People aren't gonna be able to focus, so, For technology vendors, you know, make plans up front of who you wanna meet with, reach out and make the meetings really as casual as you're comfortable doing.

[00:16:29] And it may not feel worthwhile, but I think that's more worthwhile than trying to, no one, no one shop, no one shows up at the NRF big show with their checkbook, right? We're not shopping. We're there to learn and to make relationships. So that's my advice is just focus on the relattionship.

[00:16:44] Casey Golden: It's great to know that you're really not there to shop Thanks for saying that out loud. Andy 

[00:16:51] Ricardo Belmar: So, so, let me ask you then

[00:16:52] on 

[00:16:52] Andrew Laudato: I've never bought a single thing in 20 some years 

[00:16:54] Yeah. 

[00:16:54] Ricardo Belmar: I, I was just gonna say, yeah, I, I bet that was gonna be the answer. Yeah. It, which, which I think I kind of find with most retailers, I know that [00:17:00] that's always true. It's you know, it's, , you're not there to decide to buy. You're there to learn, right? You're there to find out and investigate and, and kind of help you help set up maybe some G rails around where you want to go and what you wanna look for.

[00:17:12] Casey Golden: That's great. I mean that, that really helps everybody understand like what value they need to be thinking about providing when they show up.

[00:17:18] Building relationships

[00:17:18] Ricardo Belmar: So I guess maybe also along those lines, Andy, you know, just thinking in terms of from. , the retail tech vendors that are there, right. In so many cases. Right. And I'll, I'll speak from the vendor side here. You know, there's always a desire to try to show off what every, for every vendor, what we have to, every retailer that comes by.

[00:17:35] And to your point, right, where you're, you're kind of saying focus on building the relationship, you know, it's not the best environment to go through a detailed demo and kind of thing. So so I'm curious, what, what, what advice would you have vendors who are. totally focused on making sure they have the right demo and the right experience to show off to any retailer that comes by.

[00:17:53] What's your advice for, for that vendor? In terms of how they should present themselves?

[00:17:56] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, let me start with something that people may forget about. It's [00:18:00] a good opportunity for. retail vendors to shore up their existing relationships. I mean, a lot of us haven't seen each other for three years. Right? So, you know, start with that. And again, I always talk about the principles are there. We're gonna, my ceo, Sharon Leite, gonna be at the nrf.

[00:18:16] She's on the board of the nrf. So, you know, establishing and firming up those relationships. Because remember, we're wandering around CIOs, COOs, we're wandering around to these parties, events, and people are asking us, who do you use for this? Who do you use for that? that's kind of like, almost like a defensive, but focus on your incumbents first, like your existing customers. And then my second thing would be just to be, you know, I don't know what the right analogy is, but to be targeted. What's the point? A lot of people in my mind seem like they're, they consider winning the maximum number of meetings, but go for quality over quantity is what I would say. I mean, the people beg me to come meet in their booth where I have no interest and I'm not shopping. [00:19:00] And I tell 'em that, but it seems like they don't care. I mean, someone offered me a hundred dollars to meet with them, which I find really quite humorous. I like to go back and tell my younger self that, but why, why are they so desperate for me to come to their booth if they know I'm not interested?

[00:19:12] I guess it's just a ticket count, right? So don't do that.

[00:19:16] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, 

[00:19:17] Andrew Laudato: 10 good meetings. Way better than 30 substandard meetings.

[00:19:20] Ricardo Belmar: I is there, you know, is there any, like, any one thing that you've seen vendors do in the past that you just say to yourself, why do you, why would you do that? Please stop doing that. Don't do that again.

[00:19:30] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, that tackle you when you're coming down the aisle, right? I mean,

[00:19:34] Ricardo Belmar: Okay.

[00:19:34] Yeah. 

[00:19:36] Andrew Laudato: of us try to flip around our badge, but say you just interrupt me. Step in front of me. Start chatting. Give me your pitch. I don't know you. I don't know who you are. I know what you're doing. , I'm late for something and it's just that's gonna be, you talk about relationship building, you're starting with 

[00:19:50] the 

[00:19:50] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Yeah. You're doing the opposite right there.

[00:19:52] A few top tips

[00:19:52] Casey Golden: So this is fascinating. So related question, what are your top tips overall? I'm a big fan of the [00:20:00] coat check, but what about lunch, et cetera. Have you ever done any lunch meetings like, away from N R F?

[00:20:07] Andrew Laudato: Yeah. You know, it's important to have a plan and your first time at nrf. I mean, I, I'm glad you mentioned co check. Like you walk in and there's a long line to check your coat and you come, if you come the first day, you know you're, and you have to have a coat. I mean, it's New York City and January's cold.

[00:20:21] It could be snowing, freezing rain, but just be like, have a plan. If you see a long line, I bet if you go down the place is really huge, you go down to another section. There'll be a no line, or someone might invite you to have, I know some, and I'm not gonna say who, but I know a vendor who built a coat check into their booth.

[00:20:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:20:38] Andrew Laudato: You know, they get traffic and that's where my coat goes. And

[00:20:40] Casey Golden: actually quite smart. I always find anytime that there's a line at an event that's really an opportunity to meet your neighbor

[00:20:47] Andrew Laudato: sure. But say, you

[00:20:48] Casey Golden: more organic conversation when you're both sitting there like complaining or waiting.

[00:20:53] Andrew Laudato: Absolutely the line is Starbucks. You know, and I agree. And that's when they talk about having a goal of making, you know, at least three new [00:21:00] relationships.

[00:21:00] Casey Golden: Yeah. 

[00:21:01] Andrew Laudato: But you could get frustrated very quickly, like getting to Javits in the morning on a bus, and then waiting in a line. And then, you know, now all of a sudden you're missing the keynote.

[00:21:09] And you go in there and there's no more seats and you're, you're nervous and stressed. And so have a plan. Get there early. Put your coat somewhere smart. Remember where you put it. The lunch at Javits is really almost inedible. It's horrible and expensive, and so I don't recommend at all leaving the Javits Center, you know, and you're gonna, it's gonna, Well, we sell plenty of healthy protein bars at the vitamin shop. Or on the floor, you know, these booths are gonna have popcorn and candy, but I would definitely plan on eating on the fly. The reason I say don't leave is that now you gotta get your coat again, and then you're gonna go somewhere. And if it's a sit down restaurant, that takes time.

[00:21:45] So you're talking about an hour and a half minimum to leave, to leave the grounds for lunch. So I wouldn't recommend that. But yeah, just I would say have a plan for all these things and don't be frustrated and. if you wanna get your badge early, like you can sometimes get your badge at the hotel. They [00:22:00] have satellite places, so that's a nice little trick. If not, if you come in a day before, you can get it day before. They may even have ways you can print it. Read, read the instructions. They're not a lot, but sometimes, like, you need your ID or you need this or that, or, I don't know if they're gonna do with covid, but just read the instructions, be ready, and take the stress out by, by having a plan for these things.

[00:22:17] Ricardo Belmar: So on on that topic of scheduling meetings, for example. You know, so, good, good tip. You mentioned, you know, don't, don't try to leave in the middle of, of the day from Javits and then expect to come back. What do you do around meetings? You know, for example, do you, do you try to avoid having too many meetings in a row?

[00:22:32] Because I, I know I've always found like the biggest challenge, is Javits is bigger than you think it is. So just trying to get from one meeting to another can be tricky sometimes, especially if you're trying to go between floors and you gotta leave yourself enough time. But do you have a strategy for, for how you look at scheduling meetings on your calendar while you're there?

[00:22:49] Andrew Laudato: Yeah. So not only is it really, really big, you got the people stopping you, like I mentioned earlier, right? So you got the gauntlet to try to get to your meeting, and so Plan your meetings with a map. And so they'll [00:23:00] lay out where the booths are and if you have, you know, you wanna meet with say, six people on a, on one of the days.

[00:23:06] So what I would do is I would start, sit down and start with what sessions do you absolutely want to attend? And block those out in your calendar. And then you say, okay, who do I absolutely wanna meet with then reach out to them and, and I've already done a lot of this. I mean, you need to be doing this now, right?

[00:23:20] These things, I laugh when someone will invite me to dinner, like the day before. I laugh cause it's been booked forever, right? So and then lay out the, the meetings kind of like from, you know, Javits is numbered from zero to whatever, 10,000. So either go left or right or right to left and, and be smart about it and just plan it.

[00:23:40] And if you can, that's a big puzzle cuz they also have to be available. But plan your meetings and then you will encounter something that you want to see at the Javits that you don't know about before you go. So there's some balance. You wanna leave some free time, maybe at the end of the day to say, oh, wow, I, I met this person in the line at the coat check, and I want to go by and, and meet them.

[00:23:59] [00:24:00] So leave some time for that as well.

[00:24:02] Ricardo Belmar: what about some of the other big attractions during that week are all of these other ancillary events that are happening? Casey mentioned it, right? All the things in the, the celebrations, the dinners, everything happening all around the city outside of the Javits and outside of the show.

[00:24:15] I would even say some of my favorite things that happen at N R F are those extra events. I think Casey would probably say the same thing. That's why you go to those too. And some are vendor led, some are vendor sponsored. Some are not really led in any way by a vendor. . They have a different purpose.

[00:24:28] What are your goals and expectations around how you approach those events?

[00:24:33] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, so for a lot of people, for me, you know, I usually never even came to New York City other than the nrf. So if you wanna see New York City, I mean, New York City's an amazing place so you could maybe plan some of your own time. One thing that may fascinate people like you may pick a night and only go have dinner with your coworkers. you know, I know you'd have to pay, your company will have to pay or you have to pay yourself, but you know, it's something you don't probably normally do back home is spend some time. So everything doesn't have to be, and you don't have to be [00:25:00] on, and you don't have to be here on a pitch. So that's something that we did all the time at Pier one.

[00:25:04] We'd pick a night and just have dinner with, with all of our coworkers that came to the show. I think the long, the more people that attend a dinner, the longer it takes. And I actually have some math formula. I add like seven minutes for every attendee to my dinner. So when you start to get into these, number one thing I ask is how many people are gonna be there?

[00:25:19] So, you know, if it's a 30 person dinner and a big room, you're looking at three plus hours. 

[00:25:23] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm. 

[00:25:24] Andrew Laudato: I try to avoid those. I'd rather kind of bop from, call it a happy hour to happy hour kind of event where I can meet people and have one-on-one conversations. I know I keep talking about not eating, but there's plenty You're gonna eat, right?

[00:25:34] There's gonna be 

[00:25:35] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:25:36] Andrew Laudato: your bars and the popcorn and the treats, and then there's gonna be at these happy hours, we'll call 'em happy hours or cocktail. There's gonna be plenty of hors d'oeuvres and you know, kind stay on the fly is what I like to do. Maybe pick out that one night for a team meeting and then bop from event to event.

[00:25:51] Casey Golden: There's one vendor, and I'm not gonna say who it is, but it's usually probably around like 11 o'clock. at every trade show. [00:26:00] They're like my before lunch stop because they have like this whole entire booth made out of Jelly Bellies,

[00:26:08] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, like.

[00:26:08] Casey Golden: I'm like, it's just great.

[00:26:11] Andrew Laudato: I have a fun NRF story. So years ago I was talk talking to someone at a booth and they ordered out sub sandwiches they were delicious cuz New York you can find amazing delis. And then it became a thing. So the next year I'm like, Hey, are you guys gonna do that again? And they actually got to where they were bringing in hundreds of sandwiches and they reorganized their booth.

[00:26:31] Well, the NRF got angry cuz they wanna make money or, or the Javits Center got angry cause there's rules and unions and so they shut it down. But I had a good thing going for a few years there. And, and so did they, cause they had, they had the, the lunch booth going so

[00:26:44] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean I find when you offer food at any trade show, even, you know, when I was on the fashion side, going to market feed people with good food and they'll stick around and come back,

[00:26:55] Andrew Laudato: great.

[00:26:56] New York City Tips

[00:26:56] Casey Golden: All right, so we also have to recognize that if you're new to [00:27:00]NRF you also might be new to the city. and New York City is one of the most, is like the pure definition of a city And

[00:27:08] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, I'd argue the best city in the world. I haven't been to

[00:27:11] Casey Golden: city in the world.

[00:27:12] Andrew Laudato: it

[00:27:13] Casey Golden: I mean, granted, I just went to a couple really beautiful cities last week, but there's nothing like New York.

[00:27:19] But it can be definitely overwhelming for a lot of new people, especially new people coming into you know, there's a lot of people that have new jobs, right? And this is their first time to nrf, first time in New York City. Where would you suggest a beginner to stay or how to get around? Something that they, they, they must see just because they're in New York City for the first time.

[00:27:40] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, so lemme go back. First of all, it's about getting here, right? So there are three airports. There's the LaGuardia Airport, which most people think is where they need to fly, but there's also JFK, which is a little more of a hassle, but you may save hundreds of dollars or get a more convenient time.

[00:27:54] Casey Golden: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:55] Andrew Laudato: and then there's the Newark Airport.

[00:27:56] And don't sleep on Newark. It's just as close to Manhattan

[00:27:59] Casey Golden: I always [00:28:00] find.

[00:28:01] Andrew Laudato: So there you go. And you know, so there's three choices for airports. Once you get to the airport, you gotta get to the city. The biggest hack now, now I take the subway, but I'm not gonna recommend the subway from the airport for beginner.

[00:28:13] But the biggest hack is the oldest hack. It's cabs. So it used to be, yet I had to take a cab and then Uber came. But now everyone's taking Uber. So the cabs have no line. And there's an app that lets turns your cab into Uber called Curbed, C U R B E D. You download that app and there's a number in the back of the cab, you sync it so you don't have to deal with paying the driver.

[00:28:35] So my hack at LaGuardia is just to go down and get a cab at the cab stand, no wait, and then all the people fighting over the Ubers in that parking garage deal with that. So that's that. So now we're, they're there. You get into Manhattan, where to stay. I gu I guess if you're new, stay at one of the sanctioned hotels on the N R F website. Now, you know, back years ago there was nothing out by Javits. It's out by the water in a rail yard, but now [00:29:00] there's Hudson Yards, so you're starting to see more restaurants, hotels out there. But another thing I will say is don't get on the bus to the NRF show. So there's buses from the hotels. It's so easy to take the subway and I know subways are scary, but there's a seven Subway, it's one stop from Times Square.

[00:29:17] It goes right by Javitz. You don't need a card anymore, you just pay with your cell phone or even your Apple watch. It's the seven train. And you just take the seven train, west, you get off there. There's no other place to get off than the last stop. And you're right there. It's $2 and 75 cents. And that's my my big advice as.

[00:29:37] Casey Golden: Well, as a transplant New Yorker, it's only three avenues. You can always walk it. I always like to remind people that like, we don't have cars. We just, you know, get your steps in

[00:29:51] Andrew Laudato: Well, speaking of walking, whether you're walking to Javits or not, you're gonna walk a lot at

[00:29:56] Casey Golden: walk.

[00:29:57] Andrew Laudato: So I know we could, and you know, you're a woman, so you [00:30:00]could talk about shoes, but shoes become an issue cause you wanna look good. so. You know, wear, wear you're watching, you'll see how many steps you get in.

[00:30:07] But even whether you take the bus, the subway, you walk to Javitz, once you get there, it's, you're gonna walk a lot. Around, you'll be walking basically for eight to 10 hours.

[00:30:16] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, yeah, so much walking. So, you know, another interesting thing you brought up when we were ahead of this session and you were talking about, what, what kind of tips would there be? You mentioned a few things about, thinking about who's listening in your conversations. What did you mean by that?

[00:30:29] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, so, you know, New York is what millions and millions of people live here, but it's, it becomes a real small world in the retail. So you get on a flight and it seems more often than not, the person's next to me, some kind of software vendor. And when you're at the bag claim, I've had people come up to me and recognize me from LinkedIn and so just be careful what you're saying about your company business personal.

[00:30:50] Just assume that, you know, I mean, probably rare that it will happen, but it seems to happen a lot to me, so just be careful what you're saying on an airplane, in the cab, you know, when, as you're going around the [00:31:00] city, you know, so especially people start drinking, they get loud and, and people can overhear you. So, you know, I, I'd be careful about that.

[00:31:07] It's just about, you know, being professional when you travel, I guess is a simple way to say it.

[00:31:11] Casey Golden: I've met some of my favorite people and long-term friends from traveling and hitting airports during this time of year. People who worked at, at different consulting companies or technology vendors or retailers, literally from a flight delay to and, and having a chat, you know, over like an unexpected dinner at the airport or literally just sitting next to them on the flight.

[00:31:37] So, I mean, it's a great opportunity. But yeah, somebody, the likelihood of somebody sitting next to you that's going to the same show. It's very high.

[00:31:46] Andrew Laudato: Yeah. Now you could arrange for a ride. I've certainly used the opportunity to arrange for a ride. Like, Hey, let's grab a cab to the city together. Cause you know, there's two of you or three of you and the cab's gonna be 65 bucks and that's pretty nice to share. And then you got another [00:32:00] forty five minutes to chat with your new friend.

[00:32:02] Groups of coworkers

[00:32:02] Casey Golden: Yeah. Have you ever visited N R F as a part of a group? Where the whole company's kind of going. I know you mentioned doing company dinners but what is that? I've always gone solo. What is that kind of like when you've got a whole bunch of group of coworkers going together?

[00:32:20] Andrew Laudato: I think there's a lot of positives. Like I said, you could have the dinner together. You can also divide and conquer. So, hey, I'm gonna focus, you know, so sit down with the group and say, oh, who's gonna go to what sessions? And then take notes for each other and come back and share what you learned. If you're all there on the same mission, maybe you can all hear something together. If you're all there looking at, you know, x, y, z category of software I would say, you know, to my tech friends, the introverts, it is, you have to be careful cuz with your, with people, you know. So you go to a party, it's a lot easier just to stay with them and talk to them, but don't do that.

[00:32:51] Force yourself to break out and, and go make the new connections. And if one of your goals is to make at least three new connections, it sounds like Casey, you have no problem doing that. [00:33:00] But there are certainly people that come from more of the you know, technical side of the house or other places where they're not naturally extrovert.

[00:33:08] So you gotta kinda force yourself to not just hang back with your coworker that you talk to, at least on Zoom every day.

[00:33:14] Casey Golden: butterfly,

[00:33:17] Andrew Laudato: So, you know, one trick I I tell people is to use the extroverts to your advantage. So say someone meets you at a social event, they could ask you, Hey, will you introduce me to another retailer? And so they may not just wanna walk up, especially if people are in a group. And that's the other thing, if people come in a group and they stay in the group, they're not really approachable, but someone like you would be easily able to bust

[00:33:38] Casey Golden: Hi.

[00:33:39] Andrew Laudato: yeah, so I might say, Casey, I really wanna meet people at, I don't know, coach or Louis Vuitton, and you're like, I know them.

[00:33:46] Let me introduce you. Right? So the introverts can use the extroverts to build their relationships.

[00:33:51] Casey Golden: Yeah, I always I was very shy growing up. Who would've thought? And I always go and try and find like [00:34:00] people who are kind of like being like a wallflower almost. And I'm like, oh, come on in. Get into the conversation or come join. Cuz you never really do know who that, who those people are, but I find that some of the introverts, they're, they're very good operators.

[00:34:15] wanna know who you are I've, cuz otherwise it's like a whole bunch of a lot of social people. They're usually sales people

[00:34:21] Andrew Laudato: Exactly. That's, yeah. That's

[00:34:23] Casey Golden: I don't wanna talk to another salesperson. I'm like, where are some operators around here?

[00:34:27] Andrew Laudato: exactly.

[00:34:28] Ricardo Belmar: it interesting.

[00:34:29] Andrew Laudato: Exactly. Mm-hmm.

[00:34:31] Andy's favorite activities

[00:34:31] Ricardo Belmar: So, so maybe re related to, to that note, I, I should have asked you earlier, Andy, I mean are, are in this NF coming up, are there other side events or other ancillary events around town that you're excited about this year that you're looking forward to?

[00:34:44] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, you know, I'm very active and I know you are too, with the Retail ROI, which is the Retail Orphan Initiative. And you get to go and that's on Saturdays and there may even be opportunities still to attend, whether you're a retailer or a supplier. But that event is really, Amazing content [00:35:00] for learning amazing content about, you know, what the organization does for orphans around the world.

[00:35:05] And it's a worthwhile cause, right? Just your attendance alone helps. So that's, I put that as number one is my favorite event. And I, I've been going since the original one. There's, even if you back up, you know, years ago the NRF started on Monday and went through Wednesday, the show. Then the CIO councils and the other councils would meet on Sunday.

[00:35:23] So then the show started to move things backwards and then Greg Buzek put his thing on Saturday. Now there's Vicki Cantrell has something called vendors in partnerships, which is really exciting. It's about bringing together the providers and the retailers and giving an award show, and that's moved us back to Friday.

[00:35:40] So it really has become, A weekend event, you know, now you're talking about traveling on Friday, spending the weekend and the show ends on Tuesday now. So again, it's not just about the Javits, it's about from Friday, Saturday. No, those are my favorite events. There's a Kathy Hotka Secret Event. You gotta know.

[00:35:58] You gotta know to know. [00:36:00] So if you wanna get on that, you gotta figure it out. That makes it more fun. I hear about things even though after 20 years that go on that I had no idea. Or sometimes I find out there's something. So I, I also don't wanna pigeonhole people into what I do. Cause it's, it's amazing.

[00:36:15] There are sometimes events at the big flagship stores in town

[00:36:18] Casey Golden: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:18] Andrew Laudato: or store tours. It's another thing we didn't talk about, but you know, especially if you come in a day earlier, stay an extra day, you can really do some retailing 

[00:36:25] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. Visit some of the 

[00:36:26] Andrew Laudato: lot of lot of store.

[00:36:29] Casey Golden: highly recommend visiting stores during holiday season. No matter what type of of retailer you are hitting, the flagships in New York City is an experience in itself.

[00:36:41] Andrew Laudato: and you know, if your company has stores in the city, absolutely. Make sure you get into those stores and say hi to those,

[00:36:48] you know, store associates and you know,

[00:36:51] Casey Golden: there's so many learnings. So many learnings. Even, even as a e, even as a shopper, right? You don't have to be in the own brand. It doesn't have to be a competitive [00:37:00]brand. Just being able to experience a fifth Avenue and hit up 10 different stores it's very rare that we get to, to see that level of quality and or just have that much.

[00:37:10] To what a lot of the flagship experiences are. So I'm a big advocate. A lot of people come in from like, mid door tiers and so I think it's always pretty special when you have a chance to visit the flagships.

[00:37:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. I've, I've often done that when I'll, I'll stay over on Wednesday in, in fact, after the day after the show's over, just to do that, just to visit different stores around the city, just to get a, get a chance to see and experience what's new and what's special about those locations with, with so many flagship stores there and, and other interesting experiences to, to compare with.

[00:37:44] Casey Golden: Yeah.

[00:37:45] Your post-NRF recap

[00:37:45] Ricardo Belmar: I guess that kind of begs the question, Andy, so you, we've gone through all these things to do while you're at nrf, all these things to do around nrf. What do you do after the show? You get back home, back to the office. Then what do you do?

[00:37:59] Andrew Laudato: So, I [00:38:00] may, may sound nerdy, but I always write a report. So I always use my flight home to read all my notes and summarize what I learned, what I saw, and then I

[00:38:08] Casey Golden: tired, Amy

[00:38:10] Andrew Laudato: Well, you like, I mean, I used to be on a four hour flight. You got, you know, if you're not gonna nap, then you can at least do that. But if you don't do it, then you're gonna, you're already behind it work cuz you've been gone for four days.

[00:38:20] Right. So then I just, you. Publish that to the exec team and peers and say, here, here's what I saw, what I learned. And that's the first thing. And then that's, it's justifying the ROI we talked about up front. So you know, you have so much fun, you wanna make sure you can get to go again. And so you make sure you justify the investment. Maybe then follow ups. I some thank yous for anything. If people gave me gifts or meetings, I'll, I'll do that when I'm back. And then things that you really. Wow, you have your one big idea you want to chase, so start scheduling meetings to talk about that back home.

[00:38:54] Casey Golden: So I do have a conference hack for note taking that I found [00:39:00]extremely beneficial is I open up a Slack channel and I invite a few people into my Slack channel and I take notes in Slack and take pictures of the business cards as I get them. And so I'll have an entire Slack channel that the team is actually digesting.

[00:39:15] Throughout the day and doing like end of day recaps and then already on it before I even get back. But I do

[00:39:22] Andrew Laudato: I love it. That's

[00:39:22] Casey Golden: Slack channel because it's mid-thought. I'll just go in there right after I meet somebody and leave notes. So I can remember contact no more pens and papers for me, but it shares it right with the team immediately.

[00:39:34] So I've, I even had people get back to me and say, oh, This person is also friends with this person and they had just left this company and I literally was still in conversation. I was able to like have the extra contact. So it is nice to have that, that Slack channel open with somebody 

[00:39:52] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, that's a great 

[00:39:53] Casey Golden: all the recon. I'm so impressed by all of these like valuable tips and tricks and recommendations. I don't know where you were [00:40:00] when I went to my first nrf. It was very overwhelming for me. And just cause I didn't know who anybody was and how to navigate successfully because there's just so many vendors. But this is just amazing.

[00:40:11] Is there anything that we've missed? Anything you wanna add before we, we close out, Andy?

[00:40:16] Andrew Laudato: Yeah, look, it's, you can have some fun too, right? I dunno, what's that word? Boondoggle. But you're getting to go on a trip and meet some amazing people and see some amazing things maybe at a restaurant you couldn't normally get into or couldn't normally afford. So enjoy yourself. Have some fun, right? It's, it's not all work.

[00:40:31] It's should be mostly work, but not all work.

[00:40:33] Casey Golden: corporate accounts? Man, I missed those.

[00:40:36] Ricardo Belmar: Well, well, Andy, I thanks so much for, for coming back to the show and, and joining us for this. Like, just like Casey said and some amazing tips and a really excellent guide to NRF for beginners. I don't know why I can keep track of all of 'em. I took some notes myself. Like I said at the beginning, this might be my 11th or 12th NRF, but sometimes I still feel like I'm the beginner learning all the the best tips and tricks on how to get through the week.

[00:40:59] Andrew Laudato: [00:41:00] All right. Well, I look forward to seeing both of you there.

[00:41:02] Ricardo Belmar: absolutely.

[00:41:02] Casey Golden: Well, Ricardo, I think that this episode is a wrap. Thank you so much, Andy!

[00:41:06] Andrew Laudato: Welcome.

[00:41:07] Show Close

[00:41:07] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. 

[00:41:39] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:41:55] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:41:57] Ricardo Belmar: And [00:42:00] remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. 

]]> <p>Happy New Year from the Retail Razor Show! A new year means it’s time for the annual <a href="https://nrfbigshow.nrf.com" rel="nofollow">National Retail Federation Big show</a> held in New York City. But what if it’s your first time? It can be quite overwhelming for retailers and retailtech beginners. Fortunately, we’re here to help by bringing you a seasoned NRF veteran with his best tips and tricks to get the most out of your NRF experience!</p><p><br></p><p>Fan favorite friend of the show, Andrew Laudato, COO of The Vitamin Shoppe joins our hosts to talk all things NRF Big Show and share what he has learned over 20+ years of attending the event. We hope to see you at NRF!</p><p><br></p><p>Plus, our new segment, Retail Razor Data Blades returns, with another special insight from Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating ,learned from their 100,000’s of point-of-sale customer survey polls. In this episode learn how inflation is impacting shopper buying habits!</p><p><br></p><p>News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show is nominated for <a href="https://bit.ly/VIPretail" rel="nofollow">The Retail Voice Award</a> at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during the NRF Big Show 2023!</p><p><br></p><p>News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #18 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review &amp; be mentioned in future episodes! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, Overclocked, </em>and<em> Tech Lore</em>, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><h2><strong>S2E8 NRF for Beginners</strong></h2><h3>[00:00:20] Show Intro</h3><p>[00:00:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello, and welcome to season two, episode eight of the Retail Razor Show. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:00:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome, retail Razor Show listeners to retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.</p><p>[00:00:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, Casey, this is a conversation I&#39;ve really been looking forward to each year in January, pandemic year&#39;s, not withstanding, retail industry comes together for the largest event in our industry. The National Retail Federation&#39;s, big show in New York. At its peak, I think this event was right before the pandemic, 40,000 attendees from across North America and, and a lot of international visitors from all over the world.</p><p>[00:00:59] Now [00:01:00] we&#39;re coming up on the 2023 big show next month from, from when we&#39;re recording this. So we&#39;re thinking listeners are probably hearing a lot of noise by now about what&#39;s gonna happen at this show,</p><p>[00:01:10] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That&#39;s right. And they don&#39;t call it the big show for no reason. And since our specialty is cutting through the clutter and the noise, In retail to get to the useful bits that everyone wants to know. We thought we&#39;d put together a special ed addition to our show to serve as a guide for beginners who are either attending their first show or feel like they could benefit from an experienced N R F veteran on how to navigate Javits.</p><p>[00:01:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And to do that, we invited a really incredible retailer with years of experience attending and leveraging the N R F event to the fullest to bring you this special edition N R F for beginner&#39;s episode. So today we are going to hear from no stranger to the show, Andrew Laudato, CEO of The Vitamin Shoppe.</p><p>[00:01:53] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So many great tips and tricks on how to make the best of the show, how to meet your goals as a [00:02:00] retailer attendee, and even more importantly, how to navigate my city, New York City. So if you&#39;re new to the N R F Show or to New York City, you&#39;re going to find a few nuggets here that are useful, in this conversation.</p><p>[00:02:13] Be sure to have your notepads ready to go get that Slack channel open.</p><h3>[00:02:19] Retail Razor Data Blades</h3><p>[00:02:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> But first it&#39;s time for the newest segment of our show, the Retail Razor Data Blades, where we talk real world numbers and slice through measurable consumer insights. It&#39;s a bit like, show me the math so I understand where this data is coming from and bringing us that slicing and dicing of data is Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating.</p><p>[00:02:37] TruRating is changing the way retailers track how customers feel against how they spend with an innovative multi-channel feedback solution that has an average of 80% response rate from consumers. Georgina will share with us some key data points and offer a bit of insight into what&#39;s behind those numbers based on that extensive customer survey data at the point of sale.</p><p>[00:02:56] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Welcome, Georgina.</p><p>[00:02:58] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> Thank you so much for having me.</p><p>[00:02:59] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> [00:03:00] So today&#39;s Retail Razor Data Blade segment is &#34;how rising prices are impacting shopper habits&#34;. Georgina, give us the data.</p><p>[00:03:09] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> Well, last time we chatted, we discussed how over 81% of consumers who we polled across our markets, and that was, yeah, over 170,000 shoppers had been noticing the, the pinch on the cost of living. So 81% were noticing, but then we thought, how, how is that actually impacting behavior? You know, what changes are people making in light of that and how is that affecting retailers?</p><p>[00:03:36] So we asked whether people were driving less or more as a result, and we found that 63% of consumers in the US said they were driving less because of the rising gas prices. We also found out that 60% were cooking more at home, so eating out less and 74% were using a list [00:04:00] when they went shopping which is a big increase on our, on the previous times, which we&#39;ve asked that.</p><p>[00:04:05] And academic research shows that generally consumers spend 15% less when they have a list. It&#39;s that, that discipline and keeping to it.</p><p>[00:04:14] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Interesting.</p><p>[00:04:15] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> Yes. So so it, it&#39;s really become clear to us that there&#39;s, when it comes down to discretionary spend, big ticket items, you know, consumers are definitely being more careful.</p><p>[00:04:27] They&#39;re shopping around more, they&#39;re making less frequent trips when they&#39;re going by public transport. And that means that the retailers who are in urban areas where, where there&#39;s a great public transport network aren&#39;t at such a disadvantage.</p><p>[00:04:42] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So Georgina, I know retailers and consumers alike have been feeling the burden of inflation for quite a few months now. I&#39;m certainly shopping around more and being a lot more considerate about where I choose to spend my hard-earned dollars. , is it pretty much all doom and [00:05:00] gloom until inflation winds down, or is there some upside here for retailers?</p><p>[00:05:06] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> I think that&#39;s a definite upside when you think of that consumer shopping around. That opens a whole world of opportunity. You&#39;ve got new consumers coming through your door and you&#39;ve got a chance to to woo and turn them. And so you know, this is a great. Yeah, a great opportunity to win new loyalty with incredible customer experience, targeted marketing and comms, and yeah, and build that loyalty fan base.</p><p>[00:05:34] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I think there&#39;s something to say when, in any type of recession or inflation or any type of point when the economy&#39;s taking that pinch. Those consumers that continue to shop with you, they&#39;re really kind of top of mind as a brand is really top of mind for them. And it&#39;s, it&#39;s pretty important as you go into like a different economy to see where those customers end up flushing [00:06:00] out.</p><p>[00:06:00] Overall, I would assume.</p><p>[00:06:02] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think it&#39;s around understanding, you know, what makes that that customer loyal? What are they, what are they affiliating with your brand? What products are they purchasing? And really getting into that deeper level of, of customer insight and analytics. . I think, you know, as we, as we look to how a, a lot of our retailers are fighting the, the inflation and the, and the pinch on wallets spend.</p><p>[00:06:32] It&#39;s really focusing down on, as I said, the element of customer experience, but train, train, training, you know, the, the store cashier to actually be a brand ambassador. How can they promote recommendations? How can they promote upsell, and even, you know, simple things. We found that like such as asking a customer their name.</p><p>[00:06:53] In some of these, you know, fashion environments, et cetera when that consultative sale really helps, we&#39;ve [00:07:00] seen that drive average basket spend by over 30%. </p><p>[00:07:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Mm. </p><p>[00:07:05] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> Likewise, if a customer makes a, you know, if, if a cashier makes a recommendation. So, you know, all these, all these simple things which a retailer can, can take and train the teams and then see the, see the impact down at a store level are key.</p><p>[00:07:22] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, it all comes back to that experience, doesn&#39;t it? . Well, there we have another edition of the Retail Razor Data Blades.</p><p>[00:07:28] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I&#39;m listening for the cool segment music right now.</p><p>[00:07:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. And with that cool update, let&#39;s jump right into the discussion with our special guest for our NRF for Beginner&#39;s discussion.</p><p>[00:07:44]</p><h3>[00:07:49] #NRFforBeginners with Andy Laudato</h3><p>[00:07:49] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Today we&#39;re here with a retailer who&#39;s no stranger to the show and has extensive experience making the most of the N R F Show and all the activities during N R F Week in New York City each year.[00:08:00]</p><p>[00:08:00] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That&#39;s right. So let&#39;s introduce our guest, Andrew Lodato, COO of the Vitamin Shoppe and former CIO of Pier one imports. Let&#39;s pave the way for the newbies coming to N R F this year. </p><p>[00:08:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Welcome back to the show, Andy.</p><p>[00:08:13] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah. Thank you. Hello. Great to see you, Ricardo and Casey.</p><p>[00:08:16] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So how many NRFs have each of you been to in your retail career?</p><p>[00:08:20] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, so I&#39;ve been to 20, 21. This will be 22. </p><p>[00:08:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Wow. </p><p>[00:08:26] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> I actually took a little stint outside of retail. Well, it sounds like a lot, but when you meet people there, you&#39;ll meet people with 30 plus NRFs under their belt. I consider myself a veteran, but certainly not a senior. Some, some of the people </p><p>[00:08:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I think this is gonna be my, I, I&#39;ve lost track, even though it doesn&#39;t sound like I should with like 11th or 12th nrf. So sometimes you&#39;re, you&#39;re totally right about that, Andy. I&#39;ll run into someone in those say, oh, this is my 20th N R f, and I&#39;m thinking, oh, that, that&#39;s kind of making me sound like the newbie</p><p>[00:08:55] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> exactly.</p><p>[00:08:56] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> think I&#39;m only at like six, so you guys have got, definitely got me beat[00:09:00]</p><p>[00:09:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, let&#39;s take a brief step back and for those who are the true beginners to nrf, let&#39;s define exactly what NRF is. And so Andy, how would you describe the, the jam-packed NRF week as its start, become called in the last few years? You know, of activity surrounding the actual NRF show and everything else that&#39;s going on in New York City during that nice bitter cold week in January that we&#39;re always also used to</p><p>[00:09:27] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, so we all call it NRF or NRF Week, but actually NRF is stands for the National Retail Federation, and it&#39;s a retail advocacy and lobby organization. So most retailers are members of the National Retail Federation, and every year the NRF puts on several shows, conferences, events around different disciplines, technology, supply chain, digital store ops.</p><p>[00:09:50] But in New York, once a year, they have what they call the &#34;big show&#34;. So we just call it the NRF and but it&#39;s the big show. I don&#39;t know if this is true, but the [00:10:00] story is a hundred plus years ago. Retailers, you know, all got together in New York City and said, how&#39;d we do over the holidays? I just imagined like 12 people in a room with a box of donuts and, and it really evolved from there. </p><p>[00:10:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I wonder if that&#39;s true.</p><p>[00:10:13] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> I made it up, but It sounds </p><p>[00:10:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> good though. You can picture it.</p><p>[00:10:17] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I&#39;m like, it&#39;s a building filled with men in pleaded pants. So as a retailer, what should our goals be attending? What kind of ROI do you expect to get from this trip?</p><h3>[00:10:30] All about ROI</h3><p>[00:10:30] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, I case, I&#39;m glad you used the term roi. I mean, people spend a lot of time and money to attend. You know, hotels in New York are 300 to $500 a night and then travel, you</p><p>[00:10:41] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Put a P and L behind every event,</p><p>[00:10:44] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, exactly right. And so, you know, so I think it&#39;s really important and if, you know, you get the opportunity to go, especially one of your first times, you know, make sure your company feels like they got their money&#39;s worth of their investment.</p><p>[00:10:57] And so I always have goals. I think everyone [00:11:00] should set some goals, and mine are pretty simple, but, but I think they&#39;re powerful. My goal will be to come back from the big show with one to three brand new ideas, something I haven&#39;t heard, read, whether it&#39;s been on a podcast. So you get inspired whether you&#39;re at a formal session or a chat or a social and you hear something someone&#39;s doing or contemplating.</p><p>[00:11:19] And to get one new idea that you can bring back to your business makes you know the investment palatable or, or worth it. Then I also have a goal of having, making three or more retail connections. Just to meet someone new finding someone in a different company that does what you did, or maybe they&#39;re ahead of you on some journey on either omni or digital or some path that&#39;s important to you.</p><p>[00:11:41] So making that connection that you can follow up with later is really, really key. And then the last thing on my return on investment is to get a scorecard on how you&#39;re doing to honestly judge yourself when you, you talk to others and sometimes you find. Everyone&#39;s not as far as long. So sometimes you may be like, [00:12:00] wow, I feel like we&#39;re behind when you read all the hype and then you start talking to people about their reality. Or you may find that someone&#39;s way ahead of you on something and, and then that sets the standard that, Hey, we need, we need to redouble our efforts.</p><p>[00:12:13] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That makes sense. I find that N R F. Different than a lot of other trade shows, has more customers join rather than some other trade shows and industry events where I find that it&#39;s a sea of vendors. I definitely feel like I get to meet more customers and more retailers that attend N R F. From like the daytime into the evenings, </p><p>[00:12:34] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah. You know, and, and if you&#39;re new, you&#39;ll notice quickly that the NRF is kind enough to color code your badges. And so you&#39;ll be able to tell if someone is a, from a retailer, from a supplier, from the analyst, are they a speaker? So you&#39;ll learn the code pretty quick and if you are a, call it, you&#39;re a buyer, not a seller, you&#39;re gonna get a lot more attention walking down the aisles.</p><p>[00:12:55] But yeah, you&#39;re certainly fine. Not, and not just, I would say not just a lot more [00:13:00]retailers, but a lot more principals. You&#39;re talking about CEOs and a lot of C-Suite also attend the show.</p><h3>[00:13:05] Validating the hype</h3><p>[00:13:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. That, that&#39;s true. That&#39;s true. I&#39;m, I&#39;m curious about one thing you, you just said there a minute ago, Andy, about Seeing how, how far along you are. I&#39;m curious is when you&#39;re thinking about that, are you in, in a way trying to gauge and compare where you&#39;re at versus what all the industry hype might be before you get to the show?</p><p>[00:13:23] And kind of, are you trying to see if while you&#39;re there at the show, can I level set around that hype? Is it really hype or is there something real there that maybe you are doing, and you don&#39;t feel like you&#39;re far off along, or maybe there are things that you haven&#39;t been able to figure out if you should be doing, but you keep hearing all this hype and you get to the show and you&#39;re trying to validate that.</p><p>[00:13:41] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, you hear the hype and you try to validate it, right? So I&#39;ll make something up because this has been going on since my first N RF to talk about R F I D. </p><p>[00:13:50] It&#39;s gonna change the world and talk about that. And you know, you open up the press and people are like, oh, we solved all our inventory woes with the R F I D. So you sit down with [00:14:00] people and talk about what did it take, how was it, was it really worth it?</p><p>[00:14:03] And you kind of get that honest. And if you meet with 25 people and ask &#39;em all about the same question, you really get a better feel for than just reading the article.</p><p>[00:14:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> What, what about the sessions at N R F do, do you go to the sessions that are there and, and if you do, how do you decide which ones are worth your time to go to? And, and, and I guess the sort of second part to that is for this coming N R F, are there any sessions you&#39;re particularly interested in?</p><p>[00:14:27] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> So I think the sessions are extremely important. I think it&#39;s easy to not go because you end up getting all these invitations before. and the expo booth is, you know, for a retailer you can pretty much get in for free. That&#39;s not that difficult. But I think they&#39;re extremely important. So for me it&#39;s the keynotes because ultimately every NRF ends up with a feel to it or a theme. And, you know, I have some theories on what I think the theme will end up being this year. And I think it&#39;ll be around you know, your business in a tough economy. But I don&#39;t know. We&#39;ll see. And, [00:15:00] and I think getting to some sessions are important. The sessions that I like to attend are really about the, call it the bleeding edge stuff.</p><p>[00:15:07] I&#39;m actually I&#39;ll do a little plug. I&#39;m the moderator of a session on digital twins on Sunday afternoon,</p><p>[00:15:13] so I&#39;m super excited about that topic and I know very little about it. So, you know, I&#39;m gonna learn a lot being the moderator of that. So those are the kind of sessions I like. And then anyone who&#39;s done, done something you&#39;re trying to. So, for example, you know, we&#39;re at the Vitamin Shoppe, we just last year rolled out buy online store ships, BOSS. So any session on those we were eager to get to because we heard, you know, some learnings we can have from others.</p><p>[00:15:40] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> What would you, as a retailer, what kind of advice would you give to a, a technology vendor that&#39;s going for the first time? Because obviously we&#39;re there for you, right? So</p><p>[00:15:50] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> right.</p><p>[00:15:52] I, I think the NF big show is the most amazing place to meet people for the first time and get [00:16:00] started. So my advice would be to try to have your meetings just about, have some coffee and get to know someone. I don&#39;t think you should try to demo in detail. It&#39;s loud, it&#39;s noisy, there&#39;s interruptions.</p><p>[00:16:11] It&#39;s a horrible place to sit down and spend 45 minutes going through a new AI-driven planning system, right? People aren&#39;t gonna be able to focus, so, For technology vendors, you know, make plans up front of who you wanna meet with, reach out and make the meetings really as casual as you&#39;re comfortable doing.</p><p>[00:16:29] And it may not feel worthwhile, but I think that&#39;s more worthwhile than trying to, no one, no one shop, no one shows up at the NRF big show with their checkbook, right? We&#39;re not shopping. We&#39;re there to learn and to make relationships. So that&#39;s my advice is just focus on the relattionship.</p><p>[00:16:44] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It&#39;s great to know that you&#39;re really not there to shop Thanks for saying that out loud. Andy </p><p>[00:16:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So, so, let me ask you then</p><p>[00:16:52] on </p><p>[00:16:52] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> I&#39;ve never bought a single thing in 20 some years </p><p>[00:16:54] Yeah. </p><p>[00:16:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I, I was just gonna say, yeah, I, I bet that was gonna be the answer. Yeah. It, which, which I think I kind of find with most retailers, I know that [00:17:00] that&#39;s always true. It&#39;s you know, it&#39;s, , you&#39;re not there to decide to buy. You&#39;re there to learn, right? You&#39;re there to find out and investigate and, and kind of help you help set up maybe some G rails around where you want to go and what you wanna look for.</p><p>[00:17:12] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That&#39;s great. I mean that, that really helps everybody understand like what value they need to be thinking about providing when they show up.</p><h3>[00:17:18] Building relationships</h3><p>[00:17:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So I guess maybe also along those lines, Andy, you know, just thinking in terms of from. , the retail tech vendors that are there, right. In so many cases. Right. And I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll speak from the vendor side here. You know, there&#39;s always a desire to try to show off what every, for every vendor, what we have to, every retailer that comes by.</p><p>[00:17:35] And to your point, right, where you&#39;re, you&#39;re kind of saying focus on building the relationship, you know, it&#39;s not the best environment to go through a detailed demo and kind of thing. So so I&#39;m curious, what, what, what advice would you have vendors who are. totally focused on making sure they have the right demo and the right experience to show off to any retailer that comes by.</p><p>[00:17:53] What&#39;s your advice for, for that vendor? In terms of how they should present themselves?</p><p>[00:17:56] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, let me start with something that people may forget about. It&#39;s [00:18:00] a good opportunity for. retail vendors to shore up their existing relationships. I mean, a lot of us haven&#39;t seen each other for three years. Right? So, you know, start with that. And again, I always talk about the principles are there. We&#39;re gonna, my ceo, Sharon Leite, gonna be at the nrf.</p><p>[00:18:16] She&#39;s on the board of the nrf. So, you know, establishing and firming up those relationships. Because remember, we&#39;re wandering around CIOs, COOs, we&#39;re wandering around to these parties, events, and people are asking us, who do you use for this? Who do you use for that? that&#39;s kind of like, almost like a defensive, but focus on your incumbents first, like your existing customers. And then my second thing would be just to be, you know, I don&#39;t know what the right analogy is, but to be targeted. What&#39;s the point? A lot of people in my mind seem like they&#39;re, they consider winning the maximum number of meetings, but go for quality over quantity is what I would say. I mean, the people beg me to come meet in their booth where I have no interest and I&#39;m not shopping. [00:19:00] And I tell &#39;em that, but it seems like they don&#39;t care. I mean, someone offered me a hundred dollars to meet with them, which I find really quite humorous. I like to go back and tell my younger self that, but why, why are they so desperate for me to come to their booth if they know I&#39;m not interested?</p><p>[00:19:12] I guess it&#39;s just a ticket count, right? So don&#39;t do that.</p><p>[00:19:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, </p><p>[00:19:17] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> 10 good meetings. Way better than 30 substandard meetings.</p><p>[00:19:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I is there, you know, is there any, like, any one thing that you&#39;ve seen vendors do in the past that you just say to yourself, why do you, why would you do that? Please stop doing that. Don&#39;t do that again.</p><p>[00:19:30] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, that tackle you when you&#39;re coming down the aisle, right? I mean,</p><p>[00:19:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay.</p><p>[00:19:34] Yeah. </p><p>[00:19:36] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> of us try to flip around our badge, but say you just interrupt me. Step in front of me. Start chatting. Give me your pitch. I don&#39;t know you. I don&#39;t know who you are. I know what you&#39;re doing. , I&#39;m late for something and it&#39;s just that&#39;s gonna be, you talk about relationship building, you&#39;re starting with </p><p>[00:19:50] the </p><p>[00:19:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. Yeah. You&#39;re doing the opposite right there.</p><h3>[00:19:52] A few top tips</h3><p>[00:19:52] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So this is fascinating. So related question, what are your top tips overall? I&#39;m a big fan of the [00:20:00] coat check, but what about lunch, et cetera. Have you ever done any lunch meetings like, away from N R F?</p><p>[00:20:07] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah. You know, it&#39;s important to have a plan and your first time at nrf. I mean, I, I&#39;m glad you mentioned co check. Like you walk in and there&#39;s a long line to check your coat and you come, if you come the first day, you know you&#39;re, and you have to have a coat. I mean, it&#39;s New York City and January&#39;s cold.</p><p>[00:20:21] It could be snowing, freezing rain, but just be like, have a plan. If you see a long line, I bet if you go down the place is really huge, you go down to another section. There&#39;ll be a no line, or someone might invite you to have, I know some, and I&#39;m not gonna say who, but I know a vendor who built a coat check into their booth.</p><p>[00:20:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:20:38] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> You know, they get traffic and that&#39;s where my coat goes. And</p><p>[00:20:40] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> actually quite smart. I always find anytime that there&#39;s a line at an event that&#39;s really an opportunity to meet your neighbor</p><p>[00:20:47] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> sure. But say, you</p><p>[00:20:48] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> more organic conversation when you&#39;re both sitting there like complaining or waiting.</p><p>[00:20:53] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Absolutely the line is Starbucks. You know, and I agree. And that&#39;s when they talk about having a goal of making, you know, at least three new [00:21:00] relationships.</p><p>[00:21:00] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:21:01] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> But you could get frustrated very quickly, like getting to Javits in the morning on a bus, and then waiting in a line. And then, you know, now all of a sudden you&#39;re missing the keynote.</p><p>[00:21:09] And you go in there and there&#39;s no more seats and you&#39;re, you&#39;re nervous and stressed. And so have a plan. Get there early. Put your coat somewhere smart. Remember where you put it. The lunch at Javits is really almost inedible. It&#39;s horrible and expensive, and so I don&#39;t recommend at all leaving the Javits Center, you know, and you&#39;re gonna, it&#39;s gonna, Well, we sell plenty of healthy protein bars at the vitamin shop. Or on the floor, you know, these booths are gonna have popcorn and candy, but I would definitely plan on eating on the fly. The reason I say don&#39;t leave is that now you gotta get your coat again, and then you&#39;re gonna go somewhere. And if it&#39;s a sit down restaurant, that takes time.</p><p>[00:21:45] So you&#39;re talking about an hour and a half minimum to leave, to leave the grounds for lunch. So I wouldn&#39;t recommend that. But yeah, just I would say have a plan for all these things and don&#39;t be frustrated and. if you wanna get your badge early, like you can sometimes get your badge at the hotel. They [00:22:00] have satellite places, so that&#39;s a nice little trick. If not, if you come in a day before, you can get it day before. They may even have ways you can print it. Read, read the instructions. They&#39;re not a lot, but sometimes, like, you need your ID or you need this or that, or, I don&#39;t know if they&#39;re gonna do with covid, but just read the instructions, be ready, and take the stress out by, by having a plan for these things.</p><p>[00:22:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So on on that topic of scheduling meetings, for example. You know, so, good, good tip. You mentioned, you know, don&#39;t, don&#39;t try to leave in the middle of, of the day from Javits and then expect to come back. What do you do around meetings? You know, for example, do you, do you try to avoid having too many meetings in a row?</p><p>[00:22:32] Because I, I know I&#39;ve always found like the biggest challenge, is Javits is bigger than you think it is. So just trying to get from one meeting to another can be tricky sometimes, especially if you&#39;re trying to go between floors and you gotta leave yourself enough time. But do you have a strategy for, for how you look at scheduling meetings on your calendar while you&#39;re there?</p><p>[00:22:49] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah. So not only is it really, really big, you got the people stopping you, like I mentioned earlier, right? So you got the gauntlet to try to get to your meeting, and so Plan your meetings with a map. And so they&#39;ll [00:23:00] lay out where the booths are and if you have, you know, you wanna meet with say, six people on a, on one of the days.</p><p>[00:23:06] So what I would do is I would start, sit down and start with what sessions do you absolutely want to attend? And block those out in your calendar. And then you say, okay, who do I absolutely wanna meet with then reach out to them and, and I&#39;ve already done a lot of this. I mean, you need to be doing this now, right?</p><p>[00:23:20] These things, I laugh when someone will invite me to dinner, like the day before. I laugh cause it&#39;s been booked forever, right? So and then lay out the, the meetings kind of like from, you know, Javits is numbered from zero to whatever, 10,000. So either go left or right or right to left and, and be smart about it and just plan it.</p><p>[00:23:40] And if you can, that&#39;s a big puzzle cuz they also have to be available. But plan your meetings and then you will encounter something that you want to see at the Javits that you don&#39;t know about before you go. So there&#39;s some balance. You wanna leave some free time, maybe at the end of the day to say, oh, wow, I, I met this person in the line at the coat check, and I want to go by and, and meet them.</p><p>[00:23:59] [00:24:00] So leave some time for that as well.</p><p>[00:24:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> what about some of the other big attractions during that week are all of these other ancillary events that are happening? Casey mentioned it, right? All the things in the, the celebrations, the dinners, everything happening all around the city outside of the Javits and outside of the show.</p><p>[00:24:15] I would even say some of my favorite things that happen at N R F are those extra events. I think Casey would probably say the same thing. That&#39;s why you go to those too. And some are vendor led, some are vendor sponsored. Some are not really led in any way by a vendor. . They have a different purpose.</p><p>[00:24:28] What are your goals and expectations around how you approach those events?</p><p>[00:24:33] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, so for a lot of people, for me, you know, I usually never even came to New York City other than the nrf. So if you wanna see New York City, I mean, New York City&#39;s an amazing place so you could maybe plan some of your own time. One thing that may fascinate people like you may pick a night and only go have dinner with your coworkers. you know, I know you&#39;d have to pay, your company will have to pay or you have to pay yourself, but you know, it&#39;s something you don&#39;t probably normally do back home is spend some time. So everything doesn&#39;t have to be, and you don&#39;t have to be [00:25:00] on, and you don&#39;t have to be here on a pitch. So that&#39;s something that we did all the time at Pier one.</p><p>[00:25:04] We&#39;d pick a night and just have dinner with, with all of our coworkers that came to the show. I think the long, the more people that attend a dinner, the longer it takes. And I actually have some math formula. I add like seven minutes for every attendee to my dinner. So when you start to get into these, number one thing I ask is how many people are gonna be there?</p><p>[00:25:19] So, you know, if it&#39;s a 30 person dinner and a big room, you&#39;re looking at three plus hours. </p><p>[00:25:23] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Mm-hmm. </p><p>[00:25:24] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> I try to avoid those. I&#39;d rather kind of bop from, call it a happy hour to happy hour kind of event where I can meet people and have one-on-one conversations. I know I keep talking about not eating, but there&#39;s plenty You&#39;re gonna eat, right?</p><p>[00:25:34] There&#39;s gonna be </p><p>[00:25:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:25:36] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> your bars and the popcorn and the treats, and then there&#39;s gonna be at these happy hours, we&#39;ll call &#39;em happy hours or cocktail. There&#39;s gonna be plenty of hors d&#39;oeuvres and you know, kind stay on the fly is what I like to do. Maybe pick out that one night for a team meeting and then bop from event to event.</p><p>[00:25:51] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> There&#39;s one vendor, and I&#39;m not gonna say who it is, but it&#39;s usually probably around like 11 o&#39;clock. at every trade show. [00:26:00] They&#39;re like my before lunch stop because they have like this whole entire booth made out of Jelly Bellies,</p><p>[00:26:08] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, like.</p><p>[00:26:08] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I&#39;m like, it&#39;s just great.</p><p>[00:26:11] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> I have a fun NRF story. So years ago I was talk talking to someone at a booth and they ordered out sub sandwiches they were delicious cuz New York you can find amazing delis. And then it became a thing. So the next year I&#39;m like, Hey, are you guys gonna do that again? And they actually got to where they were bringing in hundreds of sandwiches and they reorganized their booth.</p><p>[00:26:31] Well, the NRF got angry cuz they wanna make money or, or the Javits Center got angry cause there&#39;s rules and unions and so they shut it down. But I had a good thing going for a few years there. And, and so did they, cause they had, they had the, the lunch booth going so</p><p>[00:26:44] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I mean I find when you offer food at any trade show, even, you know, when I was on the fashion side, going to market feed people with good food and they&#39;ll stick around and come back,</p><p>[00:26:55] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> great.</p><h3>[00:26:56] New York City Tips</h3><p>[00:26:56] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> All right, so we also have to recognize that if you&#39;re new to [00:27:00]NRF you also might be new to the city. and New York City is one of the most, is like the pure definition of a city And</p><p>[00:27:08] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, I&#39;d argue the best city in the world. I haven&#39;t been to</p><p>[00:27:11] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> city in the world.</p><p>[00:27:12] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> it</p><p>[00:27:13] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I mean, granted, I just went to a couple really beautiful cities last week, but there&#39;s nothing like New York.</p><p>[00:27:19] But it can be definitely overwhelming for a lot of new people, especially new people coming into you know, there&#39;s a lot of people that have new jobs, right? And this is their first time to nrf, first time in New York City. Where would you suggest a beginner to stay or how to get around? Something that they, they, they must see just because they&#39;re in New York City for the first time.</p><p>[00:27:40] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, so lemme go back. First of all, it&#39;s about getting here, right? So there are three airports. There&#39;s the LaGuardia Airport, which most people think is where they need to fly, but there&#39;s also JFK, which is a little more of a hassle, but you may save hundreds of dollars or get a more convenient time.</p><p>[00:27:54] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:27:55] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> and then there&#39;s the Newark Airport.</p><p>[00:27:56] And don&#39;t sleep on Newark. It&#39;s just as close to Manhattan</p><p>[00:27:59] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I always [00:28:00] find.</p><p>[00:28:01] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> So there you go. And you know, so there&#39;s three choices for airports. Once you get to the airport, you gotta get to the city. The biggest hack now, now I take the subway, but I&#39;m not gonna recommend the subway from the airport for beginner.</p><p>[00:28:13] But the biggest hack is the oldest hack. It&#39;s cabs. So it used to be, yet I had to take a cab and then Uber came. But now everyone&#39;s taking Uber. So the cabs have no line. And there&#39;s an app that lets turns your cab into Uber called Curbed, C U R B E D. You download that app and there&#39;s a number in the back of the cab, you sync it so you don&#39;t have to deal with paying the driver.</p><p>[00:28:35] So my hack at LaGuardia is just to go down and get a cab at the cab stand, no wait, and then all the people fighting over the Ubers in that parking garage deal with that. So that&#39;s that. So now we&#39;re, they&#39;re there. You get into Manhattan, where to stay. I gu I guess if you&#39;re new, stay at one of the sanctioned hotels on the N R F website. Now, you know, back years ago there was nothing out by Javits. It&#39;s out by the water in a rail yard, but now [00:29:00] there&#39;s Hudson Yards, so you&#39;re starting to see more restaurants, hotels out there. But another thing I will say is don&#39;t get on the bus to the NRF show. So there&#39;s buses from the hotels. It&#39;s so easy to take the subway and I know subways are scary, but there&#39;s a seven Subway, it&#39;s one stop from Times Square.</p><p>[00:29:17] It goes right by Javitz. You don&#39;t need a card anymore, you just pay with your cell phone or even your Apple watch. It&#39;s the seven train. And you just take the seven train, west, you get off there. There&#39;s no other place to get off than the last stop. And you&#39;re right there. It&#39;s $2 and 75 cents. And that&#39;s my my big advice as.</p><p>[00:29:37] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, as a transplant New Yorker, it&#39;s only three avenues. You can always walk it. I always like to remind people that like, we don&#39;t have cars. We just, you know, get your steps in</p><p>[00:29:51] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Well, speaking of walking, whether you&#39;re walking to Javits or not, you&#39;re gonna walk a lot at</p><p>[00:29:56] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> walk.</p><p>[00:29:57] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> So I know we could, and you know, you&#39;re a woman, so you [00:30:00]could talk about shoes, but shoes become an issue cause you wanna look good. so. You know, wear, wear you&#39;re watching, you&#39;ll see how many steps you get in.</p><p>[00:30:07] But even whether you take the bus, the subway, you walk to Javitz, once you get there, it&#39;s, you&#39;re gonna walk a lot. Around, you&#39;ll be walking basically for eight to 10 hours.</p><p>[00:30:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, yeah, so much walking. So, you know, another interesting thing you brought up when we were ahead of this session and you were talking about, what, what kind of tips would there be? You mentioned a few things about, thinking about who&#39;s listening in your conversations. What did you mean by that?</p><p>[00:30:29] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, so, you know, New York is what millions and millions of people live here, but it&#39;s, it becomes a real small world in the retail. So you get on a flight and it seems more often than not, the person&#39;s next to me, some kind of software vendor. And when you&#39;re at the bag claim, I&#39;ve had people come up to me and recognize me from LinkedIn and so just be careful what you&#39;re saying about your company business personal.</p><p>[00:30:50] Just assume that, you know, I mean, probably rare that it will happen, but it seems to happen a lot to me, so just be careful what you&#39;re saying on an airplane, in the cab, you know, when, as you&#39;re going around the [00:31:00] city, you know, so especially people start drinking, they get loud and, and people can overhear you. So, you know, I, I&#39;d be careful about that.</p><p>[00:31:07] It&#39;s just about, you know, being professional when you travel, I guess is a simple way to say it.</p><p>[00:31:11] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I&#39;ve met some of my favorite people and long-term friends from traveling and hitting airports during this time of year. People who worked at, at different consulting companies or technology vendors or retailers, literally from a flight delay to and, and having a chat, you know, over like an unexpected dinner at the airport or literally just sitting next to them on the flight.</p><p>[00:31:37] So, I mean, it&#39;s a great opportunity. But yeah, somebody, the likelihood of somebody sitting next to you that&#39;s going to the same show. It&#39;s very high.</p><p>[00:31:46] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah. Now you could arrange for a ride. I&#39;ve certainly used the opportunity to arrange for a ride. Like, Hey, let&#39;s grab a cab to the city together. Cause you know, there&#39;s two of you or three of you and the cab&#39;s gonna be 65 bucks and that&#39;s pretty nice to share. And then you got another [00:32:00] forty five minutes to chat with your new friend.</p><h3>[00:32:02] Groups of coworkers</h3><p>[00:32:02] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. Have you ever visited N R F as a part of a group? Where the whole company&#39;s kind of going. I know you mentioned doing company dinners but what is that? I&#39;ve always gone solo. What is that kind of like when you&#39;ve got a whole bunch of group of coworkers going together?</p><p>[00:32:20] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> I think there&#39;s a lot of positives. Like I said, you could have the dinner together. You can also divide and conquer. So, hey, I&#39;m gonna focus, you know, so sit down with the group and say, oh, who&#39;s gonna go to what sessions? And then take notes for each other and come back and share what you learned. If you&#39;re all there on the same mission, maybe you can all hear something together. If you&#39;re all there looking at, you know, x, y, z category of software I would say, you know, to my tech friends, the introverts, it is, you have to be careful cuz with your, with people, you know. So you go to a party, it&#39;s a lot easier just to stay with them and talk to them, but don&#39;t do that.</p><p>[00:32:51] Force yourself to break out and, and go make the new connections. And if one of your goals is to make at least three new connections, it sounds like Casey, you have no problem doing that. [00:33:00] But there are certainly people that come from more of the you know, technical side of the house or other places where they&#39;re not naturally extrovert.</p><p>[00:33:08] So you gotta kinda force yourself to not just hang back with your coworker that you talk to, at least on Zoom every day.</p><p>[00:33:14] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> butterfly,</p><p>[00:33:17] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> So, you know, one trick I I tell people is to use the extroverts to your advantage. So say someone meets you at a social event, they could ask you, Hey, will you introduce me to another retailer? And so they may not just wanna walk up, especially if people are in a group. And that&#39;s the other thing, if people come in a group and they stay in the group, they&#39;re not really approachable, but someone like you would be easily able to bust</p><p>[00:33:38] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Hi.</p><p>[00:33:39] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> yeah, so I might say, Casey, I really wanna meet people at, I don&#39;t know, coach or Louis Vuitton, and you&#39;re like, I know them.</p><p>[00:33:46] Let me introduce you. Right? So the introverts can use the extroverts to build their relationships.</p><p>[00:33:51] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I always I was very shy growing up. Who would&#39;ve thought? And I always go and try and find like [00:34:00] people who are kind of like being like a wallflower almost. And I&#39;m like, oh, come on in. Get into the conversation or come join. Cuz you never really do know who that, who those people are, but I find that some of the introverts, they&#39;re, they&#39;re very good operators.</p><p>[00:34:15] wanna know who you are I&#39;ve, cuz otherwise it&#39;s like a whole bunch of a lot of social people. They&#39;re usually sales people</p><p>[00:34:21] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Exactly. That&#39;s, yeah. That&#39;s</p><p>[00:34:23] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I don&#39;t wanna talk to another salesperson. I&#39;m like, where are some operators around here?</p><p>[00:34:27] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> exactly.</p><p>[00:34:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it interesting.</p><p>[00:34:29] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Exactly. Mm-hmm.</p><h3>[00:34:31] Andy&#39;s favorite activities</h3><p>[00:34:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So, so maybe re related to, to that note, I, I should have asked you earlier, Andy, I mean are, are in this NF coming up, are there other side events or other ancillary events around town that you&#39;re excited about this year that you&#39;re looking forward to?</p><p>[00:34:44] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, you know, I&#39;m very active and I know you are too, with the Retail ROI, which is the Retail Orphan Initiative. And you get to go and that&#39;s on Saturdays and there may even be opportunities still to attend, whether you&#39;re a retailer or a supplier. But that event is really, Amazing content [00:35:00] for learning amazing content about, you know, what the organization does for orphans around the world.</p><p>[00:35:05] And it&#39;s a worthwhile cause, right? Just your attendance alone helps. So that&#39;s, I put that as number one is my favorite event. And I, I&#39;ve been going since the original one. There&#39;s, even if you back up, you know, years ago the NRF started on Monday and went through Wednesday, the show. Then the CIO councils and the other councils would meet on Sunday.</p><p>[00:35:23] So then the show started to move things backwards and then Greg Buzek put his thing on Saturday. Now there&#39;s Vicki Cantrell has something called vendors in partnerships, which is really exciting. It&#39;s about bringing together the providers and the retailers and giving an award show, and that&#39;s moved us back to Friday.</p><p>[00:35:40] So it really has become, A weekend event, you know, now you&#39;re talking about traveling on Friday, spending the weekend and the show ends on Tuesday now. So again, it&#39;s not just about the Javits, it&#39;s about from Friday, Saturday. No, those are my favorite events. There&#39;s a Kathy Hotka Secret Event. You gotta know.</p><p>[00:35:58] You gotta know to know. [00:36:00] So if you wanna get on that, you gotta figure it out. That makes it more fun. I hear about things even though after 20 years that go on that I had no idea. Or sometimes I find out there&#39;s something. So I, I also don&#39;t wanna pigeonhole people into what I do. Cause it&#39;s, it&#39;s amazing.</p><p>[00:36:15] There are sometimes events at the big flagship stores in town</p><p>[00:36:18] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Mm-hmm.</p><p>[00:36:18] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> or store tours. It&#39;s another thing we didn&#39;t talk about, but you know, especially if you come in a day earlier, stay an extra day, you can really do some retailing </p><p>[00:36:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah. Visit some of the </p><p>[00:36:26] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> lot of lot of store.</p><p>[00:36:29] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> highly recommend visiting stores during holiday season. No matter what type of of retailer you are hitting, the flagships in New York City is an experience in itself.</p><p>[00:36:41] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> and you know, if your company has stores in the city, absolutely. Make sure you get into those stores and say hi to those,</p><p>[00:36:48] you know, store associates and you know,</p><p>[00:36:51] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> there&#39;s so many learnings. So many learnings. Even, even as a e, even as a shopper, right? You don&#39;t have to be in the own brand. It doesn&#39;t have to be a competitive [00:37:00]brand. Just being able to experience a fifth Avenue and hit up 10 different stores it&#39;s very rare that we get to, to see that level of quality and or just have that much.</p><p>[00:37:10] To what a lot of the flagship experiences are. So I&#39;m a big advocate. A lot of people come in from like, mid door tiers and so I think it&#39;s always pretty special when you have a chance to visit the flagships.</p><p>[00:37:23] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. I&#39;ve, I&#39;ve often done that when I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll stay over on Wednesday in, in fact, after the day after the show&#39;s over, just to do that, just to visit different stores around the city, just to get a, get a chance to see and experience what&#39;s new and what&#39;s special about those locations with, with so many flagship stores there and, and other interesting experiences to, to compare with.</p><p>[00:37:44] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah.</p><h3>[00:37:45] Your post-NRF recap</h3><p>[00:37:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I guess that kind of begs the question, Andy, so you, we&#39;ve gone through all these things to do while you&#39;re at nrf, all these things to do around nrf. What do you do after the show? You get back home, back to the office. Then what do you do?</p><p>[00:37:59] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> So, I [00:38:00] may, may sound nerdy, but I always write a report. So I always use my flight home to read all my notes and summarize what I learned, what I saw, and then I</p><p>[00:38:08] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> tired, Amy</p><p>[00:38:10] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Well, you like, I mean, I used to be on a four hour flight. You got, you know, if you&#39;re not gonna nap, then you can at least do that. But if you don&#39;t do it, then you&#39;re gonna, you&#39;re already behind it work cuz you&#39;ve been gone for four days.</p><p>[00:38:20] Right. So then I just, you. Publish that to the exec team and peers and say, here, here&#39;s what I saw, what I learned. And that&#39;s the first thing. And then that&#39;s, it&#39;s justifying the ROI we talked about up front. So you know, you have so much fun, you wanna make sure you can get to go again. And so you make sure you justify the investment. Maybe then follow ups. I some thank yous for anything. If people gave me gifts or meetings, I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll do that when I&#39;m back. And then things that you really. Wow, you have your one big idea you want to chase, so start scheduling meetings to talk about that back home.</p><p>[00:38:54] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So I do have a conference hack for note taking that I found [00:39:00]extremely beneficial is I open up a Slack channel and I invite a few people into my Slack channel and I take notes in Slack and take pictures of the business cards as I get them. And so I&#39;ll have an entire Slack channel that the team is actually digesting.</p><p>[00:39:15] Throughout the day and doing like end of day recaps and then already on it before I even get back. But I do</p><p>[00:39:22] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> I love it. That&#39;s</p><p>[00:39:22] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Slack channel because it&#39;s mid-thought. I&#39;ll just go in there right after I meet somebody and leave notes. So I can remember contact no more pens and papers for me, but it shares it right with the team immediately.</p><p>[00:39:34] So I&#39;ve, I even had people get back to me and say, oh, This person is also friends with this person and they had just left this company and I literally was still in conversation. I was able to like have the extra contact. So it is nice to have that, that Slack channel open with somebody </p><p>[00:39:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh, that&#39;s a great </p><p>[00:39:53] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> all the recon. I&#39;m so impressed by all of these like valuable tips and tricks and recommendations. I don&#39;t know where you were [00:40:00] when I went to my first nrf. It was very overwhelming for me. And just cause I didn&#39;t know who anybody was and how to navigate successfully because there&#39;s just so many vendors. But this is just amazing.</p><p>[00:40:11] Is there anything that we&#39;ve missed? Anything you wanna add before we, we close out, Andy?</p><p>[00:40:16] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Yeah, look, it&#39;s, you can have some fun too, right? I dunno, what&#39;s that word? Boondoggle. But you&#39;re getting to go on a trip and meet some amazing people and see some amazing things maybe at a restaurant you couldn&#39;t normally get into or couldn&#39;t normally afford. So enjoy yourself. Have some fun, right? It&#39;s, it&#39;s not all work.</p><p>[00:40:31] It&#39;s should be mostly work, but not all work.</p><p>[00:40:33] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> corporate accounts? Man, I missed those.</p><p>[00:40:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, well, Andy, I thanks so much for, for coming back to the show and, and joining us for this. Like, just like Casey said and some amazing tips and a really excellent guide to NRF for beginners. I don&#39;t know why I can keep track of all of &#39;em. I took some notes myself. Like I said at the beginning, this might be my 11th or 12th NRF, but sometimes I still feel like I&#39;m the beginner learning all the the best tips and tricks on how to get through the week.</p><p>[00:40:59] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> [00:41:00] All right. Well, I look forward to seeing both of you there.</p><p>[00:41:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> absolutely.</p><p>[00:41:02] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, Ricardo, I think that this episode is a wrap. Thank you so much, Andy!</p><p>[00:41:06] <strong>Andrew Laudato:</strong> Welcome.</p><h3>[00:41:07] Show Close</h3><p>[00:41:07] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We hope you enjoyed our show and we can&#39;t ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don&#39;t wanna miss a minute of what&#39;s next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don&#39;t forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden. </p><p>[00:41:39] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:41:55] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:41:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And [00:42:00] remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. </p> b76d4364-582d-46f9-80a0-8b7241ee2ab3 https://retailrazor.com/episode/s2e8-nrfforbeginners Fri, 06 Jan 2023 20:40:00 +0000 2537 no full S2E7 - Retail Transformers - Bryan Dove S2E7 - Retail Transformers - Bryan Dove 7 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E7 - Retail Transformers - Bryan Dove What is the future of ecommerce? How will dropship, marketplaces, and fulfillment evolve to serve an ever-demanding consumer? These are complex issues to tackle so we invited our latest Retail Transformer to the show to help us cut through the clutter – meet Bryan Dove, CEO of CommerceHub. Bryan talks us through how DTC brands and retailers alike can tackle these challenges while delivering the conveniences consumers demand – from communicating delivery schedules to fulfilling orders most efficiently, and so much more! Get your notepad ready to take notes because you’re going to learn why Bryan Dove is more than meets the eye in this nonstop stream of insightful ecommerce nuggets! Introducing our new segment, Retail Razor Data Blades, with special consumer insights from Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating ,learned from their 100,000’s of point-of-sale customer survey polls. In this episode we learn how inflation doesn't impact everyone the same way! News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show has been nominated for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during the NRF Big Show 2023 in January in New York City! News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, Overclocked, and Tech Lore, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E7 Bryan Dove [00:00:00] Pre-Intro [00:00:00] Casey Golden: Ricardo, I've got one word for you to describe this week's show, marketplaces drop ship fulfillment data. Okay. It's a whole lot of one words. Drop ship counts as a word, right? All right. Let's just say this is all about the future of e-com. [00:00:23] Ricardo Belmar: Y Yeah. Okay. So I'm not quite sure how many words that counts for, but I'm, I'm gonna go ahead and stick with e-commerce as the theme for this week, and following up our amazing episode with Polly Wong focused on direct to consumer. And we've got another amazing retail transformer on today's show to dive into the future of e-commerce. [00:00:41] Casey Golden: And this is really exciting. Like every e-commerce junkie out there listening or watching should be taking out their notepad right now and be ready for some golden nuggets and tips. Um, no pun intended, These strategies that will come at you faster than you can say, where's my package? [00:01:02] Ricardo Belmar: That is so true actually. Actually, this is getting to be a habit, isn't it? Needing a notepad just to listen to the podcast. So should we [00:01:09] Casey Golden: know if it's like good or bad. [00:01:10] Ricardo Belmar: know, right. ,maybe we should just get this episode started or, or should we just make everybody wait a little more and keep listening to us talking about it? [00:01:19] Casey Golden: You're too cruel and obsessed with long introductions. Let's say we just jump in to the intro music already. [00:01:28] Show Intro [00:01:28] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode seven of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:01:55] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome, retail Razor Show listeners to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologist, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. [00:02:07] Ricardo Belmar: We're back with another incredible retail transformer as our guest this week, and if you're just coming from episode five, our special D T C retail transformer episode with Polly Wong, then you're really going to do the dance of joy for this one. [00:02:21] Casey Golden: Yes. And as a founder, I am so exciting. We're diving into the future of e-commerce, looking at marketplaces, drop shipping, fulfillment challenges, inventory challenges, and much, much more for the whole Commerce family in this episode. [00:02:37] Ricardo Belmar: Oh yeah, faithful Retail Razor Show listeners will learn exactly why Bryan Dove, CEO of Commerce Hub is more than meets the eye. [00:02:45] Casey Golden: I have to say that I love that we finally got to deep dive into the murky waters of e-commerce to really think about and talk through what brands need to get out of their e-commerce sites going forward and how they should grow, what the right tools are. What they need to be building and how they should handle their supplier relationships. There's just so much more to go into, like fulfillment strategies, managing inventory, and much of this will relate back to what Polly talked about, customer retention. [00:03:18] Ricardo Belmar: that, that's right. This discussion with Bryan is a nice bookend to our chat with Polly. I, I can't say enough that if you're a DTC founder or you're responsible for your brand's e-commerce and are looking at drop shipping or marketplace expansion to grow the business, wow are you here at the right time. This discussion combined with Polly's could just about be your best practices guide to success. [00:03:40] Retail Razor Data Blades - "Inflation doesn't impact everyone the same way" [00:03:40] Ricardo Belmar: But first it's time for the newest segment of our show, Retail Razor Data Blades, where we talk real world numbers and slice through measurable consumer insights. It's a bit like, show me the math so I understand where this data is coming from, and bringing us that slicing and dicing of data is Georgina Nelson, c e o of true rating. [00:03:58] Georgina will share with us some key data points and offer a bit of insight into what's behind those numbers based on their extensive customer insight data at the point of sale [00:04:06] Casey Golden: welcome, Georgina. [00:04:12] Georgina Nelson: Thank you so much for having me. [00:04:14] Casey Golden: So today's retail razor data blades segment is "Inflation doesn't impact everyone the same way". Georgina, tell us more. [00:04:22] Georgina Nelson: So yeah. We've done some consumer insight research over the past few months to really try and understand how all these macroeconomic trends are influencing consumers in their shopping behaviors and habits. We sampled over 170,000 consumers across our key markets in the UK, North America, and Australia. And I think in terms of the nugget I wanted to shout about today was just really, I guess not surprisingly, the number of people who are noticing the impact on rising, rising cost of living. And that was a whopping 81% of consumers registered that change. But where I think it gets interesting and you, as you say, Ricardo, slicing and dicing that data is looking at the differences across demographics and age range. So when we looked at seniors, we found that 89% had been noticing the the rising cost of living. But take that, flip that up and look at those under 30 and only 75%. And so when you actually think about how the cost of living is impacting different demographics, I think it's, really focused on the rising cost of food, food bills, keeping your house warm and yeah. [00:05:39] And fuel, et cetera. And so you know, many of us, including me, did a, did a few stints living with mom and dad in my twenties. And so, you know, those household bills aren't, aren't impacting us as, as, as much. And and I think that's, you know, that's really the key lesson is that it's not, not a generic homogenous sweep all impact. [00:06:03] We have to really look at slicing and dicing that data and getting very granular insights about how, how these trends are impacting different groups. [00:06:11] Ricardo Belmar: So Georgina, we, we so often hear retailers being tempted to chase the newest and youngest demographic because they believe that's where the staying power is and the greater lifetime customer value might come from. But from the data you're, you're telling us, it, it seems to tell us really that retailers need to both tailor their messaging and their targeting unique to uniquely speak to each of those demographics to get the best conversion just based on how current economic conditions are impacting them differently. [00:06:39] So how would you say retailers should react to this data? [00:06:42] Georgina Nelson: Yeah, I, I very much agree. I think it needs to be a nuanced approach and you know, primarily to survive these times, retailers need to really invest in understanding their consumers. And, you know, as we saw through the pandemic, how. Quickly, these consumers are changing and keeping abreast of that. And so that means, you know, nuanced and targeted messaging to different consumer groups. But also I think it's down to a store level. You know, taking a very granular approach each, each store, as I always say, is a snowflake, and they have their own client. You know, their own customer mix. And so being able to get customer insight down to that store and granular level and really understanding that, that mix up. It helps you have targeted and nuanced strategies depending on that store. So, you know, if you do need to make a price increase, it might be an idea to, you know, look across the whole of North America, for example, and understand your, your base and, and share that distribution across different states and vary that price increase depending on the customer base, for example. So I definitely think that those retailers who are on the front foot with understanding their customers and being able to react really quickly to sentiment and changes in behavior are those who are gonna have the competitive advantage as we muddle through these times. [00:08:07] Casey Golden: It's great. Georgina, thank you so much for joining us today on Retail Razor's Data Blades, [00:08:13] Georgina Nelson: Thank you. It's been a pleasure. [00:08:15] [00:08:20] Interview with Bryan Dove [00:08:20] Casey Golden: Things have changed now that we've sliced some data. Let's get back to the evolution of e-commerce with Bryan Dove. [00:08:27] Ricardo Belmar: And we are here with our special guest and latest retail transformer to visit the show. Bryan Dove, CEO of Commerce Hub, a leading provider of cloud-based e-commerce, fulfillment and marketing solutions for large retailers, marketplaces, consumer brands, and their suppliers. Welcome Bryan. [00:08:48] Bryan Dove: Thanks for having me. [00:08:49] Casey Golden: Really glad to have you join us, Bryan. Since our last call, we've both been really excited to have this conversation on marketplaces and fulfillment. Kind of touch on some drop shipping and what's been really what the future holds for all these areas for retailing in today's environment and our tomorrow's. [00:09:06] Bryan Dove: That's great. I'm, I'm excited to share, share what share what we've learned along the way. [00:09:10] Casey Golden: So just to get started, Bryan, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, Commerce Hub and how Commerce Hub works with retailers? [00:09:18] Bryan Dove: Sure. to start with Commerce Hub, the Commerce hub's got 25 years of history. We've been working with the largest big box retailers that are out there and, and really from the late nineties helping them enable and, and expand their e-commerce selection. So our customer lists. Our are the largest retailers you can imagine, folks like Walmart and Costco and, and Macy's and Nordstrom and Best Buy and so on. [00:09:38] We have a, we have a, a pretty, pretty meaningful number of customers in the large, large, big box retailer enterprise space. And what we've focused on since the beginning is helping them expand the number of items that they sell on their website. Where they have not had to have not had to purchase those items. [00:09:54] So classically referred to as Drop Ship. I think in modern terms there's drop ship, there's marketplace, and there's probably a blend of some other terms to, to describe that. We really just think about it as the unowned inventory. And for most of our, for most of our retailers, it powers it powers a significant portion and sometimes the majority of their overall overall online sales and almost always the majority of their overall online selection. [00:10:15] And for my personal background, I've been at Commerce Hub. Coming up on two years, so a little bit more than a year and a half. And then prior to this, I ran a travel business based outta Europe that helped almost a billion travelers a year worldwide. We were number one in 140, 150 countries. And then prior to that, I spent some time at at Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and and some other tech companies along the way. [00:10:33] Casey Golden: Amazing. So just to add a little bit of context for our listeners, the Commerce Suite, what does that mean to a brand or a retailer? [00:10:42] Bryan Dove: So we at Shop Talk this year, So back in March of 22, we, we launched what we branded as the Commerce Suite. And this was really our, our primary evolution of the history of the business. So historically we've been, we had been really narrowly focused on. Enabling drop ship and has been been quite successful. [00:10:59] It's a critical piece of infrastructure for all of these retailers that we work with. But as we were talking to our customers, what we heard is we heard lots of needs for expansion for flexibility, various customers experimenting with item, with ideas like marketplace. Now, if you ask five customers what they mean by a marketplace, you'll get 10 to 15 different answers [00:11:18] Casey Golden: omnichannel. [00:11:19] Bryan Dove: Yeah. And, and so, so when, when you, when you really listen for the essence and, and push the labels to the side, what they were really looking for is flexibility in the way that they engaged with suppliers, flexibility in the way that they set up items and got them published to the site. Flexibility in striking different economic arrangements with different brands that they worked with. [00:11:38] And so our, our release of the commerce suite was really the first major step in that direction to go from a pure drop ship platform. To enabling that flexibility that allows, that allows our retailers and the brands and suppliers that work with them to, to flex between a drop ship model, a marketplace model, and be able to look at those differences really as, as almost like, like light switches that you could turn some on, you could turn some off and, and really enable that to work as well as there's some there's some lightweight catalog management and items set up automation that's in there as well, really to help enable brands and suppliers to take more control over their listings and and optionally over, over prices as they publish onto these different retailer platforms. And so that's really what's encompassed in our commerce suite that we launched earlier this year. [00:12:20] Ricardo Belmar: That's Great so really all kind of broadly encompassing all the major functions that any, any eCommerce brands really, really searching for. Right? Just in into one platform. [00:12:29] Bryan Dove: Y Yeah. I mean, if you, if you think all the way, you know, at a, at a million foot elevation, broadly speaking, retailers are trying to carry two buckets of goods. Things that they have. That they have purchased. So whether it's sitting in their warehouse to only be sold online or they purchased to bring into their stores, and then the rest of their selection are items that are still owned by either the brand or the distributor or the supplier that they still wanna list, but they haven't actually taken inventory possession for. [00:12:54] And when I, when I look at what our Commerce Suite enables, it really becomes that, that single platform to power all of your needs for your unowned inventory, we have a, we have a network not only of, of dozens to hundreds of retailers of the, of the largest retailers, but tens of thousands of brands and suppliers that are connected. [00:13:11] And so over the last, over the last 25 years, we've really built this, this network that encompasses virtually everybody of scale across the the North American eCommerce system. [00:13:21] Ricardo Belmar: Well, that's pretty impressive. so one of the things I think we should talk about along those lines too is around fulfillment strategies. So for any of the retailers, you're talking about in all these scenarios with this mix of owned inventory and other inventory that they have, how that retailer can create a really exceptional delivery experience , and overall fulfillment experience for their customer using, using your platform, how do you help retailers kind of unify their, that online marketplace or, and or drop ship capabilities that they're doing with their overall customer experience? [00:13:52] Bryan Dove: Sure. So, so I mentioned, I started, it's called a year and a half ago or so, and, and part of, part of starting, one of the great things about being in the, in the B2B space, in the enterprise space is it's, you can go talk to your customers. And, you know, I, I made a point to go out and talk to them when I started. [00:14:07] I, I still talk to a number of customers virtually every week now. But as I was just talking to 'em, I would just ask what problems are they thinking about? What are they worried about immediately? What are they worried about over the next couple years? And we really started to see this trend where historically organizations would really separate the fulfillment inside of their supply chain. [00:14:26] So thinking about everything from warehouses to fulfillment contracts to logistics, separate from the merchandising. Pricing and online sales, and it only really, almost really operated as, as almost two different business units inside the organization. And what we saw as an emerging trend is, I, I heard from more and more of these retailer executives and, and the executives at brands talking about intersecting the two, How could they use their knowledge on merchandising to better optimizer fulfillment and how could they use their, their expertise in fulfillment to better optimize their merchandising? [00:14:58] If you want just a simple example, you might price an. Or you might price shipping differently if you know it's sitting in a warehouse that's you know, that's a hundred miles from you. So if the warehouse is in the central Florida and you're shipping it to Orlando, I might offer you next day service for free because I actually know the net cost of that is gonna be cheap and I'm gonna delight my customer by saying, Hey, you've gotten a free upgrade to overnight, versus that item is sitting in a warehouse in California. [00:15:22] Well, I know it's not economically feasible for me to do so, and, and therefore I may go a more traditional round of saying, I'll just send it ground and it will be. In maybe four to six days. And so we heard just the early, the early inklings of some of these ideas without a lot of concrete plans. And so at the earlier this year, at the same time, we launched our commerce suite, we launched a new product offering for us in the fulfillment space that we call our delivery suite. [00:15:45] And what that has really focused on is, is helping retailers. A number of different individual items in their fulfillment chain. So things like as simple as the delivery promise, when will this item show up on the customer's doorstep, which most folks have, have pretty well under control for items that are in their stores and in their warehouses, but for things that aren't under their control that are sitting in the, these brands and supplier warehouses, they're sitting in three pls and remember this, I know an inventory makes up the, the majority of selection that, that a lot of these retailers. [00:16:17] They really have no control and no insight, and we were able to use the data that we have to be able to drive high quality and high accuracy estimates, and then you connect it into what shipping method to be used. Should I ship this by, by two day, by three day by ground? Well, it depends on what date you promise to the customer. [00:16:34] And then how do I manage the economics of that? There are lots of different ways to rerate, What, what warehouse should I originate that shipment from? Where, you know, I may, I may choose my secondary warehouse, but it might just be on the other side of a zone line, which is gonna materially save me money in shipping. [00:16:49] Because we work with all these suppliers, how do we drive better compliance of the ship method to be used so that when the retailer's planning on paying for say maybe a ground. How do we make sure that it actually gets coded as ground and doesn't accidentally get coded as, as three day error or something like this? [00:17:04] All the way to visibility and tracking and out to even the consumer facing technology so that they can see, where's my package? Let me, let me track it. When is it gonna be, when is it gonna be received? How could I receive text message updates? All of the really consumer facing functions. So we worked with a couple vendors in the space to bring these together and provide our, our retailers with an all-in-one package. [00:17:24] What we learned is we dug in. One. Most of our retailers were out purchasing individual solutions and while they could find best of breeds for each niche, what it meant was that they had a pretty high total cost of ownership in having to staff various IT people to set that up, to manage those, to do their own integration between all these tools to make them work seamlessly. [00:17:46] And second is that all of those investments had really focused on a lot of their owned inventory, their their first party inventory. And so what we really set out to focus is make our delivery products available and functional for whether it's first party inventory or third party inventory. But we, we saw a notable a notable gap in being able to optimize the fulfillment operations, both for consumer experience and for cost, and being able to do that for all of their third party and unknown items. [00:18:14] And we, we've seen, we've seen really substantial interest over the last six months, this was a completely new area for us. It's adjacent to what we've done on the, on the, on the unknown inventory platform. And we've seen great interest. We've seen a number of different pilots and a number of different customers already beginning to realize pretty substantial savings along the way. [00:18:33] And we, we think we're still pretty early days in how we integrate what happens on the fulfillment side and what happens on the, on the ordering side. And we think as we can bring more and more of that insight and intelligence. It ends up winning for everybody. It wins for the end consumer because they have more accurate expectations that more consistently get met and ideally get exceeded. [00:18:53] They have better consumers, have better visibility and better transparency to what's really happening. The retailer. Gets more, gets more accurate information to predict what's gonna happen, as well as getting better cost control, as well as taking out some of their internal costs and how they strip strip these together. [00:19:09] And then the, the fulfillment carriers also get excited by this because there's opportunities for them to get better insight into the data of what's gonna be there when they drive a truck to go pick up at a, at a three PL location, do they need to send a 20 foot truck or a 40 foot truck today? Or do they need to send three trucks or six trucks? [00:19:24] And being able to, to use that information to drive efficiency through the whole system ultimately results in everybody having lower costs and being able to return that in the form of lower prices to everybody in the, in the ecosystem. So we think there's a, there's a lot of legs to really further integrating these two and, and, and seeing more and more retailers think about how can they use those two halves of the business to inform each other and drive more, more value and efficiency into the system. [00:19:48] Casey Golden: It really sounds like you're building a lot of these distribution strategies into the software to optimize for these for a more flexible business model so that it's not as painful as we remember to be able to launch a new channel or to be able to communicate across some of these different departments. Fulfillment to merchandise planning to customer experience. Do you bring, do you find that a lot this process with launching the delivery suite or just implementing it I'm sure that you guys are bringing a lot of distribution strategy and options to the table that some of these retailers or brands just really thought was out of their reach of being able to deploy. [00:20:34] Bryan Dove: Yeah, I, I, I think one of the, one of the things that's really unique about, about the retail space is how, how substantial the scale differences are, even amongst the top, top 10 or top 15. And so if you just take, just take overall annualized sales as as just one metric of, of overall size, and you think about, you think about Amazon being in the 800 plus billion range in annual sales, then Walmart number two at 550 ish, give or take, and then you get to number three and four, and they're, they're in the 200 2200 30 billion. [00:21:07] Two 30 billion is still a a ton of money, a ton of volume, but if you look out on a relative basis, it's pretty rare to see the step from number one to number three, be a 75% reduction. I mean, you've got a four x difference between number one and number three, and you keep going down. You get from number number three and four at 222 and 30 billion folks like Costco and Target. [00:21:27] When you get to like number 15 on the list, you're. 20 or 25 billion. Now, again, 25 billion a year in sales is enormous. These are enormous businesses, enormous brands really delivering value for consumers. But there's still one 10th of the size of the folks who are number three and four. And so when you look at that dispersion in scale, there's, there's technologies and techniques and opportunities that are available to the, to the number one or number two players in the market that all of a sudden become less Less viable on an ROI basis to bring even to numbers 3, 4, 5, and so on. [00:22:02] And I think what's really unique about our, about our approach is that we do work with the, the virtually all of the large retailers that are out there. So we get to see what, what the best and brightest and retail are doing, and then we work with them to say, how can we learn from that? How can we, how can we bring that at scale? [00:22:18] And how can we democratize access to that insight and that technology in a way that benefits everybody? And again, what, what I, what I. What I really love about the retail space is as we can drive efficiency and and scale and, and flexibility into this platform, it ultimately results in lower costs, which in turn, because the sector is so competitive, results in lower costs and lower prices for consumers. [00:22:42] And so being able to drive that efficiency all the way through the ecosystem by. Scaling, scaling these best practices and, and democratizing access. But quite frankly, we'll really guide our, guide our path over the next several years. And we continue to listen to our customers about what are the most pressing and most important items. [00:22:56] But we think we have given our reach and engagement and the, the size and scale of, of what we internally call the commerce network of just the number of folks connected to it. We think we have a pretty unique position in the ecosystem to to democratize access to a lot of. A lot of these newer pieces of flexibility and, and efficiency. [00:23:14] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So speaking of, you know, consumer expectations, let's kind of shift a little bit there cuz you've mentioned a couple times right, on how retailers needing that ability to. Deliver, I'll describe it as sort of the same or meet the same expectations. Right. Whether it's their own, their inventory or the unknown inventory. [00:23:31] Right. To your point, and if we think about how a lot of these expectations, I believe have changed or, or maybe been slightly modified a little bit of in recent years, certainly because of the changes in shopping behaviors during the pandemic. Now there's, I think, new pressures right on retailers on how they go about meeting these. [00:23:50] Customer expectations and certainly the old tools that they're used to using are, are probably not built to support the kind of mass, direct to consumer characteristics that a lot of these expectations are really. Calling for right now based on the new experiences that consumers got so used to during the pandemic years. [00:24:06] So so Bryan, I mean, when you look at this, what, what kind of impact are we talking about in this concept? Cause you've, you've mentioned a few examples of how , retailers using solution can really meet these expectations, deliver on those customer promises. And you've also talked about how it's not just about delivering the experience, but also doing it in a cost effective way, there's potential cost savings that can be had because you're doing things more efficiently. You know, I love the example you gave about how, you know, if you know that the particular item is in a warehouse that's relatively close to the customer's destination, then you can offer a different a different shipping shipping. [00:24:43] Still save money in, in the process. Right? Because you're not shipping it across the country to meet that requirement. Do you have some, some data points you can share some examples on, on just what kind of, , whether it's the cost savings or, or increases in, in customer satisfaction and things that you've seen with your customers. [00:24:58] Bryan Dove: Sure, sure. Maybe, maybe I'll share I'll share one that's that's quite solved and one that I think is really interesting. But as of yet, as of yet, unsolved, which I think is always, always interesting to talk about what else could come in the [00:25:08] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Right. [00:25:09] Bryan Dove: So in, in the, in the places that are solved maybe two data points that we see. [00:25:14] One is that being able to provide certainty of when something is going to show up on your door. Which sounds so, so rudimentary and basic, but yet what you'll see across a lot of sites is either they'll see high precision on the items that they have in their warehouses and stores, but low precision on the items that are sold through that are still, they'll still, still sitting in the vendor's warehouse. [00:25:34] You know, you might say, arrives in six to 10 days. Well, it turns out that that really hurts your conversion rate. And so a customer may come to that page, they want to buy that. But now they're worried six to 10 days. One, I might need it within a week, which is not unreasonable. And I don't know if it's gonna be there. [00:25:51] Two, it seems so fuzzy. I'm worried six to 10 days becomes 20 days or 30 days, or I worry it's on back order. There's all these things that we've, we've been trained as consumers that, that, that, that gives me low confidence. And so we saw, we saw with one of the large retailers just being able to give delivery certainty both on parcels things that'll fit in boxes. But also on, also on appliances and refrigerators and, and, and, and furniture and just large purchases. We were able to increase the conversion rate into the into the low double digits. So when you start talking about a, plus 10 or plus 12 or plus 14% relative improvement in conversion rate on those types of items, Those are, those are tremendous value creators for both, for the retailer and for the consumer. [00:26:33] They're already on the page, they're already on the specific item that they're looking for. This is not a, a top of funnel or browse behavior. This is the last step of add to cart, and, and we see that, We see that driving a, a tremendous tremendous benefit for consumers and for retailers. Similarly I mentioned in our delivery suite. One of the products that we work on helps give consumers visibility to where is their items, where are their stuff? And this is classically the number one driver of customer service calls. Hey, I was expecting this item on this date. Where is it? And so what we've seen is not only driving a better, higher quality consumer experience for where they can see what the, the actual status of their order is. [00:27:09] We've seen it result in 25 to 40% lower customer service calls. We've also seen it result in higher conversion of subsequent purchase. So I'll get that update mail that says, Hey, your items on the way. It'll be there on Tuesday. And there are some links there if in case I'm looking for additional items that might be related additional categories or sales. [00:27:28] And by doing that in a really consumer first way we've seen there was one example I saw that folks were seeing an increase of 300%. So a three x increase in the amount of total conversions and the total revenue from people clicking through that email. They had built it in-house. They upgraded from an in-house solution to the partner that we're. [00:27:46] They were seeing a 300% increase in that in that conversion rate. And so we see really, really dramatic gains that can be had when you're able to to really orient on and meet and exceed those consumer expectations. [00:27:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, three X is an amazing, amazing change, amazing improvement. [00:28:01] Bryan Dove: amazing [00:28:02] now and, [00:28:03] Casey Golden: like on that consumer side, like as somebody who lives in Brooklyn without a doorman, Delivery time and knowing when it's arrived, it affects whether or not I'm going into the city and when I'm gonna be back. And there's many of times I do not order something online just because it may not be on my doorstep when I get back. [00:28:22] Bryan Dove: That that's right. So that is an amazingly unplanned segue to the thing that I was gonna tease, I said is, is a growing trend but as of yet unsolved, [00:28:29] which [00:28:30] Casey Golden: had somebody running around Brooklyn wearing a Monaco hoodie, and I spent three years looking for it, and [00:28:36] Bryan Dove: Yeah, [00:28:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:28:38] Bryan Dove: you're gonna, you're gonna run into them someday on the on the subway and, and you're gonna to have that moment of, how do I get this back [00:28:44] Casey Golden: that's. [00:28:45] Ricardo Belmar: Right [00:28:46] Bryan Dove: Just carry the printed receipt around [00:28:47] Ricardo Belmar: Right . Yeah. [00:28:49] Bryan Dove: So, so speaking of that, there's, there's an really incredible trend that I think is still in, its in its early days that there's a lot that we can adapt the ecosystem around. So this notion of buying online, picking up a store, right? Classically BOPIS and when we, when we saw this spike over the last couple years, when you think about what happened in 2020. [00:29:08] Obviously the stores closed. You saw this massive spike in e-commerce adoption and at the time, all of us collectively believed this has just pulled the future forward. And what we've started to see is when you just look at the overall public retailer numbers and and public e-commerce numbers, you see that over 21 and 22 is things began to open up as we started to feel more comfortable in this pandemic or potentially get past it. You saw, you saw slower growth in the e-commerce space, and it almost starts to revert back to the historical trendline, historical average. Now, e-commerce is still up to the right over time, but that, that dramatic pull forward has started to start to ebb back to the, to the longer term 10 15 year trend. [00:29:46] What's interesting to me is buy a line pickup in store when, when you look at some of these BOPIS numbers that some of the retailers put out. They were not talking about 20% year on year gains. They were talking about things like 60% gains, 80% gains, a hundred percent year on year. You see some retailers, huge retailers talking more than 50 or 60% of all online orders are fulfilled by BOPIS. [00:30:07] Now to me, what's really fascinating is that that trend has not just been a spike in during 2020 and early 21. That trend has sustained and continues to grow. So now then I start to look at it and think, well, how is BOPIS working today? Really what it's limited to is it's limited to the stock that's on hand in the store that's around the corner from you. [00:30:26] And so if you think about the evolution of e-commerce, we went from only buying what was in stock at our stores to now having this access to this infinite aisle, this endless aisle where all of the items were available. And now we have this new emerging preference around BOPIS. Yet BOPIS now comes back to being restricted to only the items, only the items that are on hand in the store. [00:30:46] And so, you know, when, when I look at where is additional space for innovation by, by intersecting where consumer patterns are showing up, and what retailers are looking at is, we're, we're actively working with folks to figure out how do we expand what's available for BOPIS? How could we have you still get that convenience? [00:31:03] Maybe it's not one hour, maybe it's 12 hours. But if you ordered it tonight, how do you go pick it up from the store tomorrow so you don't worry about the item getting stolen from your doorstep, which is not only a Brooklyn problem, it's a pretty common urban problem. And we are, we are, we are broadly a an, you know urban plus plus suburbs population. [00:31:21] When you look at the population dynamics in a rural is a, is a relatively small portion of the population overall eCommerce spend. How do we make that safe to have things ordered at home? How do we make that safe to have the convenience so that, you know, you get that item and there's, there's a lot of drivers behind the, the rise in BOPIS There's another theory, which is, you know, we all work from home these days, or, or a number of us do. [00:31:41] And if you work from home, sometimes you're just looking for an excuse to get outta the house, but you still want the, the convenience of e-commerce. You don't wanna be waiting through aisles with a cart and picking out all the things you need. And so it, it does BOPIS provide that middle ground where you're, you're really getting outta the house, but not, but, Reducing the time spent on the part that you don't enjoy. [00:31:59] And so we're seeing this tremendous rise and looking at how we can help help expand that selection for what's available by Bopis. So you still get that endless aisle experience, but you're still able to leave the house, still able to go pick up the items that you want on your schedule in your time. [00:32:11] Casey Golden: No, I think that that's great and I think , it's really important, when so many sales start online and really bringing in. We have 80% of retail that's traditionally been in store. It only makes sense to be able to window shop or browse online and swing by and pick it up. The likelihood of you buying another item is higher. [00:32:32] And just being able to be more focused , when you're looking to make , a purchase today, you know I need something. I need it today. You go browse online and then if you don't have that pickup in store availability, or be able to filter those products to be able to say like, what is actually here? [00:32:53] Cause I'm gonna be swinging by, or I'm coming this direction and I need to pick it up. There's a lot of, there's a lack of communication there from online to the stores. Commonly, you know, if they don't have a really good program in place. I, I look at going to five, six stores to make a purchase. I wanna know what you have. [00:33:11] I don't wanna go to six stores. Physically . I am looking for something and I just wanna go to the store that has, has it or something that will suffice because I needed it tonight and it was last minute or whatnot. And I think that this is a big opportunity for a lot of brands to solve these inventory issues that kind of goes back to omnichannel. Really understanding where the overlap is, where your inventory levels are and how do you get it to the customer based off of like multiple options. Waiting five days is not ideal, but either is, you know, going to like seven stores in between your day to day trying to just find a sweater for a holiday party or for something. You know a lot of people wanted to get back out, but at the same time, in-store inventory was 10% of what was available online. And you'd go to the store and there's like nothing in the stores. All of these things were available online only. So big difference if you knew what your customers could pick up in store. [00:34:18] You could plan your in-store inventory a lot better too. [00:34:20] Bryan Dove: That's right. Well, and I think, I think you hit, hit the nail on the head with the, with the 10% number, which is, if somebody has, I'll make up a million s skews. They may have only 30,000, 50,000, maybe a hundred thousand in, in the store, minus whatever is currently outta stock or sold out. Cuz they only stocked one or two or three of, of a lot of these SKUs. [00:34:42] And so the idea that I need it tonight you know, you're pretty limited, but if you could get it in the morning. All of a sudden, what's available in the morning is 40,000 SKUs. Maybe not the full, maybe not the, the, you know, the, the full million skews, but maybe 40,000, maybe a hundred thousand, maybe 200,000, some meaningful portion of that million SKUs all of a sudden is available on relatively short notice that all of a sudden changes the, the way that you think about this, rather than waiting three or four days for it to get home. [00:35:09] Casey Golden: how you filter, how you search from like the first click is like, show me, this, I need it around this time. Rather than looking at product first, you're looking at filter my product based off of timelines and availability. [00:35:23] Bryan Dove: That That's exactly right. And, and I, you know what I find in the B2B space, the place I always try to anchor myself is I start from what is the consumer experience and work backwards. And I feel like if there's something that's, that meaningfully improves the consumer experience going from, you know, tens of thousands of SKUs to hundreds of thousands of SKUs that I can pick up within the next 12 hours, that's a great upgrade. [00:35:43] And then it turns out being able to do that drives better economic efficiency for the retailer and for the brand as well. And so now all of a sudden that becomes not just a viable option, but in fact sometimes a preferred option. And when you have this intersection of better for the consumer and more efficient and effective for for all of the businesses in the operational chain, that, that's really where I I where I start to see the magic light up. [00:36:06] And, and I think those are the types of scenarios and combinations that when we're talking with our customers, we really look for and say, Now is there, is there an interesting or unique way that we can invest to enable that scenario in a way that's gonna benefit every single member of the of the ecosystem? [00:36:21] And, and those we find are the winners that we really try to focus on. [00:36:24] Casey Golden: Yeah, your white boarding sessions sound like fun. [00:36:27] Ricardo Belmar: In this case, Bryan, isn't it really a situation where the data's there for the retailer and maybe not in one place, obviously, but in lots of different systems potentially, but to a certain degree where at this scenario you've just described in trying to solve this challenge, it seems like it just comes down to being able to collect the data from all these different areas and find the right way to surface that The corresponding insight that you're really getting at here, right into how do I make these additional products available to, to a a, a BOPIS customer right at the time that they wanted to be available knowing that I probably have an item somewhere, but it may or may not be in the right place at the right time. [00:37:06] Bryan Dove: That, that, that's exactly right. I think all of this data to somebody in the, in the ecosystem, they have all the data. The difficulty of can you find the right data? Can you, can you make it usable and can you intersect it in ways that ultimately benefits everybody? I think that's where, where everybody needs to focus on what they're great at. [00:37:28] You know, if I'm a retailer, what I'm, what I'm amazing at is finding my target customer segments, understanding what they're looking for, being able to reach them consistently and do so at, do so at relatively low cost. That that's how they're, that's how they're able to generate these, these large level of sales and, and do it profitably. [00:37:44] If I look at brands, they really understand their core customer and. Understand their tastes and preferences, and then they're able to, to get that to their customers, both through direct channels as well as through through retail channels. And you know, I, I look at companies like Commerce Hub and other technology companies in, in the e-commerce ecosystem. [00:38:02] Our focus is really on how do we take the data that's available, How do we take the, how do we find those insights of ways that we can improve a workflow that adds benefits and efficiency to everybody in the, in the chain. Democratize that through technology so that everybody gets access to those benefits and technology in a way that works for them. [00:38:20] And then this, the level of scale works for us. And so, you know, I think everybody's got a role to play and, and we try to, we try to do our best at listening to our customers and focus on ours. [00:38:28] Casey Golden: I think it's really great and I think that that's a, a wonderful term by democratizing access to technology because a lot of the times the technology costs are so large and to be able to obtain an ROI from it quick enough to validate that cost. Sometimes it's just, it's too much for a brand to be able to take on sometimes to be moved from number 15 to number eight, you know? [00:38:55] But 15 to number eight is huge. But these technology costs have definitely been almost gated by needing to be able to have a certain level of cash and resources to be able to implement some of the great solutions that are at that are available for the one Twos and threes. [00:39:15] Bryan Dove: Absolutely at, at a earlier point in my career, in my life, I spent, I spent about a decade building software for large hospital organizations. And it, you know, when you look at those, it's a, it's a, it's a different world than retail, but I think from a technology perspective, they were in a really similar place. [00:39:33] You have even more specialization you can imagine. The software for the radiology folks doing x-rays is different than the software for the cardiologist doing heart exams, which is different than the, the nurses doing general intake versus the the ICU and and everything else. And so they had hundreds of these individual pieces of software and the IT costs were just becoming overwhelming. [00:39:56] Cuz even if you just think I only need one person to maintain each product. Next thing you know, if you've got a, a group of three or four hospitals, you might have 1500 pieces of software, and you really saw, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, you started to see these, these hospital chains really start to crumble under the, the technology burden. [00:40:12] And, and out of that, you saw a few technology companies really rise by, by focusing on reducing that total cost of ownership. Easing that integration and making more and more of that functionality available to everybody, not just the two or three hospitals that, that had disproportionate scale, but really across the, the whole country and eventually the world. [00:40:32] And so having, having lived through that, and as I've gotten to know the e-commerce space more and more, I think there's a, there's a similar pattern that's starting to play out because e-commerce was, was so nascent for the first 20 years that it was just about, I need to have more items. I need to be able to reach more customers. [00:40:47] I need to be able to, I need to have more warehouse capacity, I need to have more fulfillment capacity. It was really about that scale up, but we've now started to reach this place where the scale, the growth, and the scale is swelling. And now it becomes a focus on efficiency. And I think the innovation that we'll see over the next 10 years is all about finding, not only can I take cost out, but can I increase and improve the consumer experience while I'm taking cost out. [00:41:11] And I think that's really where, where this notion of, of democratizing access to this technology and enabling some of these mid-size, mid-size folks or even the folks that have, have large scale and absolute terms. But, but under scale in retailer terms how do we help them compete with With the largest changes and with the largest businesses. [00:41:31] And, and then how do we partner with the largest businesses and help support them to, to spend their, their resources on the things that benefit consumers most rather than building infrastructure and tools. And so that's really how we focus on enabling the whole, the whole ecosystem. [00:41:43] Casey Golden: I think it's great. I really love seeing just a focus on your technology spend and how that affects the customer experience. We've been depicting the rules for a long time. And not really considering them in our software decisions. And now I feel that how any software impacts the customer experience is a conversation that's being had before contracts are signed. [00:42:04] And I think it's, I think that's definitely a step in the right direction. [00:42:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And I think it also relates to an issue that when we last spoke with you, we talked about, if you have a retailer who able to spend on the right technology to help accomplish all these things. You're also kind of balancing that against what's the cash outlay for that owned inventory that you need to keep up with. [00:42:24] And given that we've kind of entered a holiday shopping season here, we know that the, the traditional retail approaches to really stock up on inventory for those holiday selling period. But there's also right, a model that says, You know what, what about having a more of a just in time merchandising? [00:42:41] Model for how you do this, particularly if you are becoming a marketplace. And I think you, you have some thoughts on, on this, right, Bryan? [00:42:47] Bryan Dove: Y Yeah, certainly. I, you know, I think fir first and foremost, if you asked a business, if you could meet all of your customer needs, would you rather put more of your cash at risk or less of your cash at risk? The, the answer is, The answer's pretty simple, right? I'd much rather conserve my cash and hold it in my bank account if I could still fulfill and meet all of my, all of my customer needs. [00:43:08] And so, You know, I look at that first as a trend and think, Well, if we can, if we land on the right side of that, then we're probably onto something. And then second is we look at, well, what are the, what are the barriers to meeting all of their, to meeting all of their consumer needs? And there are a number of them. [00:43:25] I mean, if we look over the last 18 months, we've all lived through these, these incredible supply chain challenges. And not only did you see the, the sometimes historical trends of, Let me boost the inventory I own, as we get into the holiday. But you saw a number of folks placing orders over the last 12 or 18 months to buy more inventory because they were just scared of having empty shelves. [00:43:44] And then what you saw in some of the public earning announcements earlier this year, you know, at the end of q1, at the end of q2, you heard people talking about now an inventory surplus. They'd built up all this inventory, but as demand began to contract, they ended up with surplus of what they didn't want and, and they have to start clearing it out. [00:44:00] And so we, we think one. Enabling retailers to conserve their cash or to choose to deploy it elsewhere. It, as long as they can meet all their customer expectations, it is better for their model. And so we really try to think about it less of what is the balance between owned versus unowned inventory and more, how do we enable more of the un unknown inventory to still meet all those consumer expectations? [00:44:25] And so when we, when we look at that, that notion of just in time merchandising, we think. How are we enabling more variety and more selection to still meet those consumer expectations? Things like next day Bo as a, as a place that we're looking at things like what we're already doing today of narrowing that expectation of when is that item really gonna be on my doorstep? [00:44:45] Or there's, there's other work that we've done with some of our customers where they may have multiple suppliers who provide the same item. And so how do we just automate the process of dropping through that supply? So when your preferred supplier sells through their. You don't need a merchandise person to go change things. [00:45:01] We just wanna fulfill from the next available supplier who has the next best, next, best offering, or next best price or next best shipping method. And how do we just automate that so it's not blocked by some, by some employee in the merchandising or supply chain team, quite frankly, to go in and hit, hit a green button to turn it on. [00:45:17] How do we just automate that process? And so we're, we're often looking for ways to take friction out of the system and, and bring some of that more real time and reaction. Experience to, to the offers. I, I think the, maybe the, the more, the broader trend around just in time merchandising is one that's gonna evolve quite frankly over the next few years. [00:45:38] And when, when I look at that, I heard I was talking to one of our retailer executives and, and he made a really interesting comment to me. And his comment was that he sees merchandising shifting from a group of folks who curate particular items. To a group who really curates and nurtures relationships with brands, and, and I thought that that was a, a really interesting notion. [00:45:59] We spent a lot of time talking about it. And what it really came down to is that if you think about the world of not just technology, retailers for years have been AB testing on their website, what is the page? What is the orientation that's gonna deliver the best, the best conversion rate, the best experience for consumers? [00:46:15] The best return rate I'm sorry, retention. But you have not seen a lot of that concept extend into the actual items that are being carried. And so where, where I heard this, this retail exec talking about really shifting to a relationship with brands and thinking, how do you entice a brand to just carry their whole catalog? [00:46:33] And you can almost start to use your website as a way to test if a, if a, maybe a brand has 10,000 items. Well, you're only gonna carry probably 200 of them in the. How do you know which 200 to carry and how do you start to let the website and your consumer demand through your website actually give you the data to know of these, of these 10,000 items this brand carries which of the 200 that resonate most with your customers. [00:46:58] And there's something really powerful about knowing that if you're on you know, abc.com, the customers who are already shopping there are telling you which of this brand's products they love most and then being able to upgrade that. So, A separate season, not a new wholesale order, not a new, not a new relationship or system setup or six month lag, but how would you change that from a per unit drop ship order or a pure unit marketplace order? [00:47:25] And how would you just order a thousand of those most popular I of those 200 popular items to just ship them into your stores directly? And so when we look at this, this notion of just in time merchandising over the next few years, we really see the technology doing more and more automation of the, of the easy and obvious tasks, enabling merchants to be far more sophisticated, far more data led, and thinking much more about relationships with brands and that escalation path that, that some of those SKUs are gonna be sold in the marketplace model. [00:47:56] Some are gonna be drop ship and some of they're gonna make it to the store. And how do we use data to, to really rethink that process and, and evolve it in a way that that just has, has yet to penetrate the, the way that we approach retail today. [00:48:07] Casey Golden: No, I think I, you, you, you beat me to the punch. My, my last question was really No, it was perfect. Was really about like what do you see the biggest change in commerce will be? That will be a new standard in, in about five years. And I think that just in time merchandising pan, like full stop, there's so much opportunity to make sure that the right product is being shown to the right customer at the right. [00:48:30] I've been a buyer in a former life, and yeah, you shoot from the hip. There's not a lot of data decisions that are made from that. And so there's such a huge opportunity of having the right product or that customer at the right time versus marketing a product to all the customers for a period of. [00:48:47] Bryan Dove: Well, as a merchandiser, as a buyer. What you're really trying to do is predict the future. You're trying to predict which products your customers will love most. [00:48:56] Casey Golden: Without customer data [00:48:59] Ricardo Belmar: it's all about the data. [00:49:01] Bryan Dove: Well, you know, this is not an exclusively retail problem. I mean, across all of technology. For years and years, people have tried to, to, to predict the future of what, of what their customers would want in whatever sector they. And I think what, what we've learned across almost every sector is that at scale our opinions kind of suck. [00:49:24] Like our opinions aren't, aren't very accurate. You know, we have instincts in the directions our ability to read the market of the direction we should go in tends to be pretty accurate. But our ability to read the direction of the specifics and the details is pretty tough. And this is why you see, you know, AB testing is maybe the easiest thing to point to, but it's not the exclusive one. [00:49:44] You see across every industry and every sector, this continual shift to data driven decision making. And today, while it has penetrated things like the, the front end of the, of the retailers' website, it has not made it all the way into the backend, into the merchandising selection, into fulfillment strategies, into into warehouse locations and positioning. [00:50:05] There are, there are more and more places where we can use more data from the end. To drive better and smarter decisions and, and to let the data guide guide the way. And I think that is just a, a continual evolution that, that all of us have had to experience across basically every, every vertical because it's, you know, unless somebody's got a crystal ball, I don't know about, or, or a DeLorean that can go back in time, like predicting the future is, is it's really hard. [00:50:31] And so that, that's where we try to think about partnering with our customers to, to enable a more data driven approach. [00:50:35] Casey Golden: Yeah, everybody has an opinion in retail, right? And, you know, we've had to rely on that for, for decades. That opinion has carried a lot of weight on business decisions. And I think that, you know, we, I really appreciate you joining us today to dig into this much needed discussion as we approach the new year, new budgets holiday season. [00:50:57] Coming in really fast right now, so I have a feeling our listeners will hit the replay button and grab a notebook, [00:51:04] Bryan Dove: Oh, that's, that's very kind to [00:51:05] Casey Golden: uh, re-listen [00:51:06] Bryan Dove: both so much for having me today. [00:51:07] Casey Golden: , if any of our listeners, they, if they wanna learn more about Commerce Hub and how you might be able to help them, how should they reach out to you or, or follow you as, as you guys post more information and more case studies and things of that nature. [00:51:20] Bryan Dove: Sure. Easiest thing to do, just to learn more about our products and services, it's commerce hub.com spelled exactly like it sounds. You can also, we post a, a number of stories and, and, and insights that we've learned along the way. On the Commerce Hub LinkedIn account, that's probably the, the most active place where we post content or if anybody has specific questions or wants to get in touch. [00:51:37] I'm, I'm personally quite findable on LinkedIn. Feel, Feel more than free to just reach out to me directly and I'll happily direct you to the right folks on our team. [00:51:43] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Fantastic. Well, thanks again, Bryan for joining us. We really hope to have you back again soon. This has been a really insightful discussion. [00:51:50] Casey Golden: I mean, I can keep [00:51:51] you here all day. So Ricardo, I think it's that time for us to wrap up this episode, but thank you again, Brian. Really appreciate it. [00:51:58] Bryan Dove: All right, thanks, y'all. Have a great day. [00:52:00] Show Close [00:52:00] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:52:32] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:52:48] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:52:50] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. What is the future of ecommerce? How will dropship, marketplaces, & fulfillment evolve to serve an ever-demanding consumer? These are complex issues so we invited our latest Retail Transformer to help us cut through the clutter – meet Bryan Dove, CEO of CommerceHub. 


Bryan talks us through how DTC brands and retailers alike can tackle these challenges while delivering the conveniences consumers demand – from communicating delivery schedules to fulfilling orders most efficiently, and so much more! Get your notepad ready to take notes because you’re going to learn why Bryan Dove is more than meets the eye in this nonstop stream of insightful ecommerce nuggets! 


Introducing our new segment, Retail Razor Data Blades, with special consumer insights from Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating ,learned from their 100,000’s of point-of-sale customer survey polls. In this episode we learn how inflation doesn't impact everyone the same way!


News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show has been nominated for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during the NRF Big Show 2023 in January in New York City!


News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, Overclocked, and Tech Lore, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. 


The Retail Razor Show

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TRANSCRIPT

S2E7 Bryan Dove

[00:00:00] Pre-Intro

[00:00:00] Casey Golden: Ricardo, I've got one word for you to describe this week's show, marketplaces drop ship fulfillment data. Okay. It's a whole lot of one words. Drop ship counts as a word, right? All right. Let's just say this is all about the future of e-com.

[00:00:23] Ricardo Belmar: Y Yeah. Okay. So I'm not quite sure how many words that counts for, but I'm, I'm gonna go ahead and stick with e-commerce as the theme for this week, and following up our amazing episode with Polly Wong focused on direct to consumer. And we've got another amazing retail transformer on today's show to dive into the future of e-commerce.

[00:00:41] Casey Golden: And this is really exciting. Like every e-commerce junkie out there listening or watching should be taking out their notepad right now and be ready for some golden nuggets and tips. Um, no pun intended, These strategies that will come at you faster than you can say, where's my package? 

[00:01:02] Ricardo Belmar: That is so true actually. Actually, this is getting to be a habit, isn't it? Needing a notepad just to listen to the podcast. So should we 

[00:01:09] Casey Golden: know if it's like good or bad. 

[00:01:10] Ricardo Belmar: know, right. ,maybe we should just get this episode started or, or should we just make everybody wait a little more and keep listening to us talking about it?

[00:01:19] Casey Golden: You're too cruel and obsessed with long introductions. Let's say we just jump in to the intro music already.

[00:01:28] Show Intro

[00:01:28] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode seven of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:01:55] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome, retail Razor Show listeners to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologist, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.

[00:02:07] Ricardo Belmar: We're back with another incredible retail transformer as our guest this week, and if you're just coming from episode five, our special D T C retail transformer episode with Polly Wong, then you're really going to do the dance of joy for this one.

[00:02:21] Casey Golden: Yes. And as a founder, I am so exciting. We're diving into the future of e-commerce, looking at marketplaces, drop shipping, fulfillment challenges, inventory challenges, and much, much more for the whole Commerce family in this episode.

[00:02:37] Ricardo Belmar: Oh yeah, faithful Retail Razor Show listeners will learn exactly why Bryan Dove, CEO of Commerce Hub is more than meets the eye.

[00:02:45] Casey Golden: I have to say that I love that we finally got to deep dive into the murky waters of e-commerce to really think about and talk through what brands need to get out of their e-commerce sites going forward and how they should grow, what the right tools are. What they need to be building and how they should handle their supplier relationships. There's just so much more to go into, like fulfillment strategies, managing inventory, and much of this will relate back to what Polly talked about, customer retention.

[00:03:18] Ricardo Belmar: that, that's right. This discussion with Bryan is a nice bookend to our chat with Polly. I, I can't say enough that if you're a DTC founder or you're responsible for your brand's e-commerce and are looking at drop shipping or marketplace expansion to grow the business, wow are you here at the right time. This discussion combined with Polly's could just about be your best practices guide to success.

[00:03:40] Retail Razor Data Blades - "Inflation doesn't impact everyone the same way"

[00:03:40] Ricardo Belmar: But first it's time for the newest segment of our show, Retail Razor Data Blades, where we talk real world numbers and slice through measurable consumer insights. It's a bit like, show me the math so I understand where this data is coming from, and bringing us that slicing and dicing of data is Georgina Nelson, c e o of true rating.

[00:03:58] Georgina will share with us some key data points and offer a bit of insight into what's behind those numbers based on their extensive customer insight data at the point of sale

[00:04:06] Casey Golden: welcome, Georgina.

[00:04:12] Georgina Nelson: Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:04:14] Casey Golden: So today's retail razor data blades segment is "Inflation doesn't impact everyone the same way". Georgina, tell us more.

[00:04:22] Georgina Nelson: So yeah. We've done some consumer insight research over the past few months to really try and understand how all these macroeconomic trends are influencing consumers in their shopping behaviors and habits. We sampled over 170,000 consumers across our key markets in the UK, North America, and Australia. And I think in terms of the nugget I wanted to shout about today was just really, I guess not surprisingly, the number of people who are noticing the impact on rising, rising cost of living. And that was a whopping 81% of consumers registered that change. But where I think it gets interesting and you, as you say, Ricardo, slicing and dicing that data is looking at the differences across demographics and age range. So when we looked at seniors, we found that 89% had been noticing the the rising cost of living. But take that, flip that up and look at those under 30 and only 75%. And so when you actually think about how the cost of living is impacting different demographics, I think it's, really focused on the rising cost of food, food bills, keeping your house warm and yeah.

[00:05:39] And fuel, et cetera. And so you know, many of us, including me, did a, did a few stints living with mom and dad in my twenties. And so, you know, those household bills aren't, aren't impacting us as, as, as much. And and I think that's, you know, that's really the key lesson is that it's not, not a generic homogenous sweep all impact.

[00:06:03] We have to really look at slicing and dicing that data and getting very granular insights about how, how these trends are impacting different groups.

[00:06:11] Ricardo Belmar: So Georgina, we, we so often hear retailers being tempted to chase the newest and youngest demographic because they believe that's where the staying power is and the greater lifetime customer value might come from. But from the data you're, you're telling us, it, it seems to tell us really that retailers need to both tailor their messaging and their targeting unique to uniquely speak to each of those demographics to get the best conversion just based on how current economic conditions are impacting them differently.

[00:06:39] So how would you say retailers should react to this data?

[00:06:42] Georgina Nelson: Yeah, I, I very much agree. I think it needs to be a nuanced approach and you know, primarily to survive these times, retailers need to really invest in understanding their consumers. And, you know, as we saw through the pandemic, how. Quickly, these consumers are changing and keeping abreast of that. And so that means, you know, nuanced and targeted messaging to different consumer groups. But also I think it's down to a store level. You know, taking a very granular approach each, each store, as I always say, is a snowflake, and they have their own client. You know, their own customer mix. And so being able to get customer insight down to that store and granular level and really understanding that, that mix up. It helps you have targeted and nuanced strategies depending on that store. So, you know, if you do need to make a price increase, it might be an idea to, you know, look across the whole of North America, for example, and understand your, your base and, and share that distribution across different states and vary that price increase depending on the customer base, for example. So I definitely think that those retailers who are on the front foot with understanding their customers and being able to react really quickly to sentiment and changes in behavior are those who are gonna have the competitive advantage as we muddle through these times.

[00:08:07] Casey Golden: It's great. Georgina, thank you so much for joining us today on Retail Razor's Data Blades,

[00:08:13] Georgina Nelson: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

[00:08:15]

[00:08:20] Interview with Bryan Dove

[00:08:20] Casey Golden: Things have changed now that we've sliced some data. Let's get back to the evolution of e-commerce with Bryan Dove.

[00:08:27] Ricardo Belmar: And we are here with our special guest and latest retail transformer to visit the show. Bryan Dove, CEO of Commerce Hub, a leading provider of cloud-based e-commerce, fulfillment and marketing solutions for large retailers, marketplaces, consumer brands, and their suppliers. Welcome Bryan.

[00:08:48] Bryan Dove: Thanks for having me.

[00:08:49] Casey Golden: Really glad to have you join us, Bryan. Since our last call, we've both been really excited to have this conversation on marketplaces and fulfillment. Kind of touch on some drop shipping and what's been really what the future holds for all these areas for retailing in today's environment and our tomorrow's.

[00:09:06] Bryan Dove: That's great. I'm, I'm excited to share, share what share what we've learned along the way.

[00:09:10] Casey Golden: So just to get started, Bryan, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, Commerce Hub and how Commerce Hub works with retailers?

[00:09:18] Bryan Dove: Sure. to start with Commerce Hub, the Commerce hub's got 25 years of history. We've been working with the largest big box retailers that are out there and, and really from the late nineties helping them enable and, and expand their e-commerce selection. So our customer lists. Our are the largest retailers you can imagine, folks like Walmart and Costco and, and Macy's and Nordstrom and Best Buy and so on.

[00:09:38] We have a, we have a, a pretty, pretty meaningful number of customers in the large, large, big box retailer enterprise space. And what we've focused on since the beginning is helping them expand the number of items that they sell on their website. Where they have not had to have not had to purchase those items.

[00:09:54] So classically referred to as Drop Ship. I think in modern terms there's drop ship, there's marketplace, and there's probably a blend of some other terms to, to describe that. We really just think about it as the unowned inventory. And for most of our, for most of our retailers, it powers it powers a significant portion and sometimes the majority of their overall overall online sales and almost always the majority of their overall online selection.

[00:10:15] And for my personal background, I've been at Commerce Hub. Coming up on two years, so a little bit more than a year and a half. And then prior to this, I ran a travel business based outta Europe that helped almost a billion travelers a year worldwide. We were number one in 140, 150 countries. And then prior to that, I spent some time at at Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and and some other tech companies along the way.

[00:10:33] Casey Golden: Amazing. So just to add a little bit of context for our listeners, the Commerce Suite, what does that mean to a brand or a retailer?

[00:10:42] Bryan Dove: So we at Shop Talk this year, So back in March of 22, we, we launched what we branded as the Commerce Suite. And this was really our, our primary evolution of the history of the business. So historically we've been, we had been really narrowly focused on. Enabling drop ship and has been been quite successful.

[00:10:59] It's a critical piece of infrastructure for all of these retailers that we work with. But as we were talking to our customers, what we heard is we heard lots of needs for expansion for flexibility, various customers experimenting with item, with ideas like marketplace. Now, if you ask five customers what they mean by a marketplace, you'll get 10 to 15 different answers 

[00:11:18] Casey Golden: omnichannel.

[00:11:19] Bryan Dove: Yeah. And, and so, so when, when you, when you really listen for the essence and, and push the labels to the side, what they were really looking for is flexibility in the way that they engaged with suppliers, flexibility in the way that they set up items and got them published to the site. Flexibility in striking different economic arrangements with different brands that they worked with.

[00:11:38] And so our, our release of the commerce suite was really the first major step in that direction to go from a pure drop ship platform. To enabling that flexibility that allows, that allows our retailers and the brands and suppliers that work with them to, to flex between a drop ship model, a marketplace model, and be able to look at those differences really as, as almost like, like light switches that you could turn some on, you could turn some off and, and really enable that to work as well as there's some there's some lightweight catalog management and items set up automation that's in there as well, really to help enable brands and suppliers to take more control over their listings and and optionally over, over prices as they publish onto these different retailer platforms. And so that's really what's encompassed in our commerce suite that we launched earlier this year.

[00:12:20] Ricardo Belmar: That's Great so really all kind of broadly encompassing all the major functions that any, any eCommerce brands really, really searching for. Right? Just in into one platform.

[00:12:29] Bryan Dove: Y Yeah. I mean, if you, if you think all the way, you know, at a, at a million foot elevation, broadly speaking, retailers are trying to carry two buckets of goods. Things that they have. That they have purchased. So whether it's sitting in their warehouse to only be sold online or they purchased to bring into their stores, and then the rest of their selection are items that are still owned by either the brand or the distributor or the supplier that they still wanna list, but they haven't actually taken inventory possession for.

[00:12:54] And when I, when I look at what our Commerce Suite enables, it really becomes that, that single platform to power all of your needs for your unowned inventory, we have a, we have a network not only of, of dozens to hundreds of retailers of the, of the largest retailers, but tens of thousands of brands and suppliers that are connected.

[00:13:11] And so over the last, over the last 25 years, we've really built this, this network that encompasses virtually everybody of scale across the the North American eCommerce system.

[00:13:21] Ricardo Belmar: Well, that's pretty impressive. so one of the things I think we should talk about along those lines too is around fulfillment strategies. So for any of the retailers, you're talking about in all these scenarios with this mix of owned inventory and other inventory that they have, how that retailer can create a really exceptional delivery experience , and overall fulfillment experience for their customer using, using your platform, how do you help retailers kind of unify their, that online marketplace or, and or drop ship capabilities that they're doing with their overall customer experience?

[00:13:52] Bryan Dove: Sure. So, so I mentioned, I started, it's called a year and a half ago or so, and, and part of, part of starting, one of the great things about being in the, in the B2B space, in the enterprise space is it's, you can go talk to your customers. And, you know, I, I made a point to go out and talk to them when I started.

[00:14:07] I, I still talk to a number of customers virtually every week now. But as I was just talking to 'em, I would just ask what problems are they thinking about? What are they worried about immediately? What are they worried about over the next couple years? And we really started to see this trend where historically organizations would really separate the fulfillment inside of their supply chain.

[00:14:26] So thinking about everything from warehouses to fulfillment contracts to logistics, separate from the merchandising. Pricing and online sales, and it only really, almost really operated as, as almost two different business units inside the organization. And what we saw as an emerging trend is, I, I heard from more and more of these retailer executives and, and the executives at brands talking about intersecting the two, How could they use their knowledge on merchandising to better optimizer fulfillment and how could they use their, their expertise in fulfillment to better optimize their merchandising?

[00:14:58] If you want just a simple example, you might price an. Or you might price shipping differently if you know it's sitting in a warehouse that's you know, that's a hundred miles from you. So if the warehouse is in the central Florida and you're shipping it to Orlando, I might offer you next day service for free because I actually know the net cost of that is gonna be cheap and I'm gonna delight my customer by saying, Hey, you've gotten a free upgrade to overnight, versus that item is sitting in a warehouse in California.

[00:15:22] Well, I know it's not economically feasible for me to do so, and, and therefore I may go a more traditional round of saying, I'll just send it ground and it will be. In maybe four to six days. And so we heard just the early, the early inklings of some of these ideas without a lot of concrete plans. And so at the earlier this year, at the same time, we launched our commerce suite, we launched a new product offering for us in the fulfillment space that we call our delivery suite.

[00:15:45] And what that has really focused on is, is helping retailers. A number of different individual items in their fulfillment chain. So things like as simple as the delivery promise, when will this item show up on the customer's doorstep, which most folks have, have pretty well under control for items that are in their stores and in their warehouses, but for things that aren't under their control that are sitting in the, these brands and supplier warehouses, they're sitting in three pls and remember this, I know an inventory makes up the, the majority of selection that, that a lot of these retailers.

[00:16:17] They really have no control and no insight, and we were able to use the data that we have to be able to drive high quality and high accuracy estimates, and then you connect it into what shipping method to be used. Should I ship this by, by two day, by three day by ground? Well, it depends on what date you promise to the customer.

[00:16:34] And then how do I manage the economics of that? There are lots of different ways to rerate, What, what warehouse should I originate that shipment from? Where, you know, I may, I may choose my secondary warehouse, but it might just be on the other side of a zone line, which is gonna materially save me money in shipping.

[00:16:49] Because we work with all these suppliers, how do we drive better compliance of the ship method to be used so that when the retailer's planning on paying for say maybe a ground. How do we make sure that it actually gets coded as ground and doesn't accidentally get coded as, as three day error or something like this?

[00:17:04] All the way to visibility and tracking and out to even the consumer facing technology so that they can see, where's my package? Let me, let me track it. When is it gonna be, when is it gonna be received? How could I receive text message updates? All of the really consumer facing functions. So we worked with a couple vendors in the space to bring these together and provide our, our retailers with an all-in-one package.

[00:17:24] What we learned is we dug in. One. Most of our retailers were out purchasing individual solutions and while they could find best of breeds for each niche, what it meant was that they had a pretty high total cost of ownership in having to staff various IT people to set that up, to manage those, to do their own integration between all these tools to make them work seamlessly.

[00:17:46] And second is that all of those investments had really focused on a lot of their owned inventory, their their first party inventory. And so what we really set out to focus is make our delivery products available and functional for whether it's first party inventory or third party inventory. But we, we saw a notable a notable gap in being able to optimize the fulfillment operations, both for consumer experience and for cost, and being able to do that for all of their third party and unknown items.

[00:18:14] And we, we've seen, we've seen really substantial interest over the last six months, this was a completely new area for us. It's adjacent to what we've done on the, on the, on the unknown inventory platform. And we've seen great interest. We've seen a number of different pilots and a number of different customers already beginning to realize pretty substantial savings along the way.

[00:18:33] And we, we think we're still pretty early days in how we integrate what happens on the fulfillment side and what happens on the, on the ordering side. And we think as we can bring more and more of that insight and intelligence. It ends up winning for everybody. It wins for the end consumer because they have more accurate expectations that more consistently get met and ideally get exceeded.

[00:18:53] They have better consumers, have better visibility and better transparency to what's really happening. The retailer. Gets more, gets more accurate information to predict what's gonna happen, as well as getting better cost control, as well as taking out some of their internal costs and how they strip strip these together.

[00:19:09] And then the, the fulfillment carriers also get excited by this because there's opportunities for them to get better insight into the data of what's gonna be there when they drive a truck to go pick up at a, at a three PL location, do they need to send a 20 foot truck or a 40 foot truck today? Or do they need to send three trucks or six trucks?

[00:19:24] And being able to, to use that information to drive efficiency through the whole system ultimately results in everybody having lower costs and being able to return that in the form of lower prices to everybody in the, in the ecosystem. So we think there's a, there's a lot of legs to really further integrating these two and, and, and seeing more and more retailers think about how can they use those two halves of the business to inform each other and drive more, more value and efficiency into the system.

[00:19:48] Casey Golden: It really sounds like you're building a lot of these distribution strategies into the software to optimize for these for a more flexible business model so that it's not as painful as we remember to be able to launch a new channel or to be able to communicate across some of these different departments. Fulfillment to merchandise planning to customer experience. Do you bring, do you find that a lot this process with launching the delivery suite or just implementing it I'm sure that you guys are bringing a lot of distribution strategy and options to the table that some of these retailers or brands just really thought was out of their reach of being able to deploy.

[00:20:34] Bryan Dove: Yeah, I, I, I think one of the, one of the things that's really unique about, about the retail space is how, how substantial the scale differences are, even amongst the top, top 10 or top 15. And so if you just take, just take overall annualized sales as as just one metric of, of overall size, and you think about, you think about Amazon being in the 800 plus billion range in annual sales, then Walmart number two at 550 ish, give or take, and then you get to number three and four, and they're, they're in the 200 2200 30 billion.

[00:21:07] Two 30 billion is still a a ton of money, a ton of volume, but if you look out on a relative basis, it's pretty rare to see the step from number one to number three, be a 75% reduction. I mean, you've got a four x difference between number one and number three, and you keep going down. You get from number number three and four at 222 and 30 billion folks like Costco and Target.

[00:21:27] When you get to like number 15 on the list, you're. 20 or 25 billion. Now, again, 25 billion a year in sales is enormous. These are enormous businesses, enormous brands really delivering value for consumers. But there's still one 10th of the size of the folks who are number three and four. And so when you look at that dispersion in scale, there's, there's technologies and techniques and opportunities that are available to the, to the number one or number two players in the market that all of a sudden become less Less viable on an ROI basis to bring even to numbers 3, 4, 5, and so on.

[00:22:02] And I think what's really unique about our, about our approach is that we do work with the, the virtually all of the large retailers that are out there. So we get to see what, what the best and brightest and retail are doing, and then we work with them to say, how can we learn from that? How can we, how can we bring that at scale?

[00:22:18] And how can we democratize access to that insight and that technology in a way that benefits everybody? And again, what, what I, what I. What I really love about the retail space is as we can drive efficiency and and scale and, and flexibility into this platform, it ultimately results in lower costs, which in turn, because the sector is so competitive, results in lower costs and lower prices for consumers.

[00:22:42] And so being able to drive that efficiency all the way through the ecosystem by. Scaling, scaling these best practices and, and democratizing access. But quite frankly, we'll really guide our, guide our path over the next several years. And we continue to listen to our customers about what are the most pressing and most important items.

[00:22:56] But we think we have given our reach and engagement and the, the size and scale of, of what we internally call the commerce network of just the number of folks connected to it. We think we have a pretty unique position in the ecosystem to to democratize access to a lot of. A lot of these newer pieces of flexibility and, and efficiency.

[00:23:14] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So speaking of, you know, consumer expectations, let's kind of shift a little bit there cuz you've mentioned a couple times right, on how retailers needing that ability to. Deliver, I'll describe it as sort of the same or meet the same expectations. Right. Whether it's their own, their inventory or the unknown inventory.

[00:23:31] Right. To your point, and if we think about how a lot of these expectations, I believe have changed or, or maybe been slightly modified a little bit of in recent years, certainly because of the changes in shopping behaviors during the pandemic. Now there's, I think, new pressures right on retailers on how they go about meeting these.

[00:23:50] Customer expectations and certainly the old tools that they're used to using are, are probably not built to support the kind of mass, direct to consumer characteristics that a lot of these expectations are really. Calling for right now based on the new experiences that consumers got so used to during the pandemic years.

[00:24:06] So so Bryan, I mean, when you look at this, what, what kind of impact are we talking about in this concept? Cause you've, you've mentioned a few examples of how , retailers using solution can really meet these expectations, deliver on those customer promises. And you've also talked about how it's not just about delivering the experience, but also doing it in a cost effective way, there's potential cost savings that can be had because you're doing things more efficiently. You know, I love the example you gave about how, you know, if you know that the particular item is in a warehouse that's relatively close to the customer's destination, then you can offer a different a different shipping shipping.

[00:24:43] Still save money in, in the process. Right? Because you're not shipping it across the country to meet that requirement. Do you have some, some data points you can share some examples on, on just what kind of, , whether it's the cost savings or, or increases in, in customer satisfaction and things that you've seen with your customers.

[00:24:58] Bryan Dove: Sure, sure. Maybe, maybe I'll share I'll share one that's that's quite solved and one that I think is really interesting. But as of yet, as of yet, unsolved, which I think is always, always interesting to talk about what else could come in the

[00:25:08] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Right.

[00:25:09] Bryan Dove: So in, in the, in the places that are solved maybe two data points that we see.

[00:25:14] One is that being able to provide certainty of when something is going to show up on your door. Which sounds so, so rudimentary and basic, but yet what you'll see across a lot of sites is either they'll see high precision on the items that they have in their warehouses and stores, but low precision on the items that are sold through that are still, they'll still, still sitting in the vendor's warehouse.

[00:25:34] You know, you might say, arrives in six to 10 days. Well, it turns out that that really hurts your conversion rate. And so a customer may come to that page, they want to buy that. But now they're worried six to 10 days. One, I might need it within a week, which is not unreasonable. And I don't know if it's gonna be there.

[00:25:51] Two, it seems so fuzzy. I'm worried six to 10 days becomes 20 days or 30 days, or I worry it's on back order. There's all these things that we've, we've been trained as consumers that, that, that, that gives me low confidence. And so we saw, we saw with one of the large retailers just being able to give delivery certainty both on parcels things that'll fit in boxes. But also on, also on appliances and refrigerators and, and, and, and furniture and just large purchases. We were able to increase the conversion rate into the into the low double digits. So when you start talking about a, plus 10 or plus 12 or plus 14% relative improvement in conversion rate on those types of items, Those are, those are tremendous value creators for both, for the retailer and for the consumer.

[00:26:33] They're already on the page, they're already on the specific item that they're looking for. This is not a, a top of funnel or browse behavior. This is the last step of add to cart, and, and we see that, We see that driving a, a tremendous tremendous benefit for consumers and for retailers. Similarly I mentioned in our delivery suite. One of the products that we work on helps give consumers visibility to where is their items, where are their stuff? And this is classically the number one driver of customer service calls. Hey, I was expecting this item on this date. Where is it? And so what we've seen is not only driving a better, higher quality consumer experience for where they can see what the, the actual status of their order is.

[00:27:09] We've seen it result in 25 to 40% lower customer service calls. We've also seen it result in higher conversion of subsequent purchase. So I'll get that update mail that says, Hey, your items on the way. It'll be there on Tuesday. And there are some links there if in case I'm looking for additional items that might be related additional categories or sales.

[00:27:28] And by doing that in a really consumer first way we've seen there was one example I saw that folks were seeing an increase of 300%. So a three x increase in the amount of total conversions and the total revenue from people clicking through that email. They had built it in-house. They upgraded from an in-house solution to the partner that we're.

[00:27:46] They were seeing a 300% increase in that in that conversion rate. And so we see really, really dramatic gains that can be had when you're able to to really orient on and meet and exceed those consumer expectations.

[00:27:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, three X is an amazing, amazing change, amazing improvement. 

[00:28:01] Bryan Dove: amazing 

[00:28:02] now and,

[00:28:03] Casey Golden: like on that consumer side, like as somebody who lives in Brooklyn without a doorman, Delivery time and knowing when it's arrived, it affects whether or not I'm going into the city and when I'm gonna be back. And there's many of times I do not order something online just because it may not be on my doorstep when I get back.

[00:28:22] Bryan Dove: That that's right. So that is an amazingly unplanned segue to the thing that I was gonna tease, I said is, is a growing trend but as of yet unsolved,

[00:28:29] which 

[00:28:30] Casey Golden: had somebody running around Brooklyn wearing a Monaco hoodie, and I spent three years looking for it, and

[00:28:36] Bryan Dove: Yeah,

[00:28:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:28:38] Bryan Dove: you're gonna, you're gonna run into them someday on the on the subway and, and you're gonna to have that moment of, how do I get this back

[00:28:44] Casey Golden: that's.

[00:28:45] Ricardo Belmar: Right

[00:28:46] Bryan Dove: Just carry the printed receipt around 

[00:28:47] Ricardo Belmar: Right . Yeah.

[00:28:49] Bryan Dove: So, so speaking of that, there's, there's an really incredible trend that I think is still in, its in its early days that there's a lot that we can adapt the ecosystem around. So this notion of buying online, picking up a store, right? Classically BOPIS and when we, when we saw this spike over the last couple years, when you think about what happened in 2020.

[00:29:08] Obviously the stores closed. You saw this massive spike in e-commerce adoption and at the time, all of us collectively believed this has just pulled the future forward. And what we've started to see is when you just look at the overall public retailer numbers and and public e-commerce numbers, you see that over 21 and 22 is things began to open up as we started to feel more comfortable in this pandemic or potentially get past it. You saw, you saw slower growth in the e-commerce space, and it almost starts to revert back to the historical trendline, historical average. Now, e-commerce is still up to the right over time, but that, that dramatic pull forward has started to start to ebb back to the, to the longer term 10 15 year trend.

[00:29:46] What's interesting to me is buy a line pickup in store when, when you look at some of these BOPIS numbers that some of the retailers put out. They were not talking about 20% year on year gains. They were talking about things like 60% gains, 80% gains, a hundred percent year on year. You see some retailers, huge retailers talking more than 50 or 60% of all online orders are fulfilled by BOPIS.

[00:30:07] Now to me, what's really fascinating is that that trend has not just been a spike in during 2020 and early 21. That trend has sustained and continues to grow. So now then I start to look at it and think, well, how is BOPIS working today? Really what it's limited to is it's limited to the stock that's on hand in the store that's around the corner from you.

[00:30:26] And so if you think about the evolution of e-commerce, we went from only buying what was in stock at our stores to now having this access to this infinite aisle, this endless aisle where all of the items were available. And now we have this new emerging preference around BOPIS. Yet BOPIS now comes back to being restricted to only the items, only the items that are on hand in the store.

[00:30:46] And so, you know, when, when I look at where is additional space for innovation by, by intersecting where consumer patterns are showing up, and what retailers are looking at is, we're, we're actively working with folks to figure out how do we expand what's available for BOPIS? How could we have you still get that convenience?

[00:31:03] Maybe it's not one hour, maybe it's 12 hours. But if you ordered it tonight, how do you go pick it up from the store tomorrow so you don't worry about the item getting stolen from your doorstep, which is not only a Brooklyn problem, it's a pretty common urban problem. And we are, we are, we are broadly a an, you know urban plus plus suburbs population.

[00:31:21] When you look at the population dynamics in a rural is a, is a relatively small portion of the population overall eCommerce spend. How do we make that safe to have things ordered at home? How do we make that safe to have the convenience so that, you know, you get that item and there's, there's a lot of drivers behind the, the rise in BOPIS There's another theory, which is, you know, we all work from home these days, or, or a number of us do.

[00:31:41] And if you work from home, sometimes you're just looking for an excuse to get outta the house, but you still want the, the convenience of e-commerce. You don't wanna be waiting through aisles with a cart and picking out all the things you need. And so it, it does BOPIS provide that middle ground where you're, you're really getting outta the house, but not, but, Reducing the time spent on the part that you don't enjoy.

[00:31:59] And so we're seeing this tremendous rise and looking at how we can help help expand that selection for what's available by Bopis. So you still get that endless aisle experience, but you're still able to leave the house, still able to go pick up the items that you want on your schedule in your time.

[00:32:11] Casey Golden: No, I think that that's great and I think , it's really important, when so many sales start online and really bringing in. We have 80% of retail that's traditionally been in store. It only makes sense to be able to window shop or browse online and swing by and pick it up. The likelihood of you buying another item is higher.

[00:32:32] And just being able to be more focused , when you're looking to make , a purchase today, you know I need something. I need it today. You go browse online and then if you don't have that pickup in store availability, or be able to filter those products to be able to say like, what is actually here?

[00:32:53] Cause I'm gonna be swinging by, or I'm coming this direction and I need to pick it up. There's a lot of, there's a lack of communication there from online to the stores. Commonly, you know, if they don't have a really good program in place. I, I look at going to five, six stores to make a purchase. I wanna know what you have.

[00:33:11] I don't wanna go to six stores. Physically . I am looking for something and I just wanna go to the store that has, has it or something that will suffice because I needed it tonight and it was last minute or whatnot. And I think that this is a big opportunity for a lot of brands to solve these inventory issues that kind of goes back to omnichannel. Really understanding where the overlap is, where your inventory levels are and how do you get it to the customer based off of like multiple options. Waiting five days is not ideal, but either is, you know, going to like seven stores in between your day to day trying to just find a sweater for a holiday party or for something. You know a lot of people wanted to get back out, but at the same time, in-store inventory was 10% of what was available online. And you'd go to the store and there's like nothing in the stores. All of these things were available online only. So big difference if you knew what your customers could pick up in store.

[00:34:18] You could plan your in-store inventory a lot better too.

[00:34:20] Bryan Dove: That's right. Well, and I think, I think you hit, hit the nail on the head with the, with the 10% number, which is, if somebody has, I'll make up a million s skews. They may have only 30,000, 50,000, maybe a hundred thousand in, in the store, minus whatever is currently outta stock or sold out. Cuz they only stocked one or two or three of, of a lot of these SKUs.

[00:34:42] And so the idea that I need it tonight you know, you're pretty limited, but if you could get it in the morning. All of a sudden, what's available in the morning is 40,000 SKUs. Maybe not the full, maybe not the, the, you know, the, the full million skews, but maybe 40,000, maybe a hundred thousand, maybe 200,000, some meaningful portion of that million SKUs all of a sudden is available on relatively short notice that all of a sudden changes the, the way that you think about this, rather than waiting three or four days for it to get home.

[00:35:09] Casey Golden: how you filter, how you search from like the first click is like, show me, this, I need it around this time. Rather than looking at product first, you're looking at filter my product based off of timelines and availability.

[00:35:23] Bryan Dove: That That's exactly right. And, and I, you know what I find in the B2B space, the place I always try to anchor myself is I start from what is the consumer experience and work backwards. And I feel like if there's something that's, that meaningfully improves the consumer experience going from, you know, tens of thousands of SKUs to hundreds of thousands of SKUs that I can pick up within the next 12 hours, that's a great upgrade.

[00:35:43] And then it turns out being able to do that drives better economic efficiency for the retailer and for the brand as well. And so now all of a sudden that becomes not just a viable option, but in fact sometimes a preferred option. And when you have this intersection of better for the consumer and more efficient and effective for for all of the businesses in the operational chain, that, that's really where I I where I start to see the magic light up.

[00:36:06] And, and I think those are the types of scenarios and combinations that when we're talking with our customers, we really look for and say, Now is there, is there an interesting or unique way that we can invest to enable that scenario in a way that's gonna benefit every single member of the of the ecosystem?

[00:36:21] And, and those we find are the winners that we really try to focus on.

[00:36:24] Casey Golden: Yeah, your white boarding sessions sound like fun.

[00:36:27] Ricardo Belmar: In this case, Bryan, isn't it really a situation where the data's there for the retailer and maybe not in one place, obviously, but in lots of different systems potentially, but to a certain degree where at this scenario you've just described in trying to solve this challenge, it seems like it just comes down to being able to collect the data from all these different areas and find the right way to surface that The corresponding insight that you're really getting at here, right into how do I make these additional products available to, to a a, a BOPIS customer right at the time that they wanted to be available knowing that I probably have an item somewhere, but it may or may not be in the right place at the right time.

[00:37:06] Bryan Dove: That, that, that's exactly right. I think all of this data to somebody in the, in the ecosystem, they have all the data. The difficulty of can you find the right data? Can you, can you make it usable and can you intersect it in ways that ultimately benefits everybody? I think that's where, where everybody needs to focus on what they're great at.

[00:37:28] You know, if I'm a retailer, what I'm, what I'm amazing at is finding my target customer segments, understanding what they're looking for, being able to reach them consistently and do so at, do so at relatively low cost. That that's how they're, that's how they're able to generate these, these large level of sales and, and do it profitably.

[00:37:44] If I look at brands, they really understand their core customer and. Understand their tastes and preferences, and then they're able to, to get that to their customers, both through direct channels as well as through through retail channels. And you know, I, I look at companies like Commerce Hub and other technology companies in, in the e-commerce ecosystem.

[00:38:02] Our focus is really on how do we take the data that's available, How do we take the, how do we find those insights of ways that we can improve a workflow that adds benefits and efficiency to everybody in the, in the chain. Democratize that through technology so that everybody gets access to those benefits and technology in a way that works for them.

[00:38:20] And then this, the level of scale works for us. And so, you know, I think everybody's got a role to play and, and we try to, we try to do our best at listening to our customers and focus on ours.

[00:38:28] Casey Golden: I think it's really great and I think that that's a, a wonderful term by democratizing access to technology because a lot of the times the technology costs are so large and to be able to obtain an ROI from it quick enough to validate that cost. Sometimes it's just, it's too much for a brand to be able to take on sometimes to be moved from number 15 to number eight, you know?

[00:38:55] But 15 to number eight is huge. But these technology costs have definitely been almost gated by needing to be able to have a certain level of cash and resources to be able to implement some of the great solutions that are at that are available for the one Twos and threes.

[00:39:15] Bryan Dove: Absolutely at, at a earlier point in my career, in my life, I spent, I spent about a decade building software for large hospital organizations. And it, you know, when you look at those, it's a, it's a, it's a different world than retail, but I think from a technology perspective, they were in a really similar place.

[00:39:33] You have even more specialization you can imagine. The software for the radiology folks doing x-rays is different than the software for the cardiologist doing heart exams, which is different than the, the nurses doing general intake versus the the ICU and and everything else. And so they had hundreds of these individual pieces of software and the IT costs were just becoming overwhelming.

[00:39:56] Cuz even if you just think I only need one person to maintain each product. Next thing you know, if you've got a, a group of three or four hospitals, you might have 1500 pieces of software, and you really saw, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, you started to see these, these hospital chains really start to crumble under the, the technology burden.

[00:40:12] And, and out of that, you saw a few technology companies really rise by, by focusing on reducing that total cost of ownership. Easing that integration and making more and more of that functionality available to everybody, not just the two or three hospitals that, that had disproportionate scale, but really across the, the whole country and eventually the world.

[00:40:32] And so having, having lived through that, and as I've gotten to know the e-commerce space more and more, I think there's a, there's a similar pattern that's starting to play out because e-commerce was, was so nascent for the first 20 years that it was just about, I need to have more items. I need to be able to reach more customers.

[00:40:47] I need to be able to, I need to have more warehouse capacity, I need to have more fulfillment capacity. It was really about that scale up, but we've now started to reach this place where the scale, the growth, and the scale is swelling. And now it becomes a focus on efficiency. And I think the innovation that we'll see over the next 10 years is all about finding, not only can I take cost out, but can I increase and improve the consumer experience while I'm taking cost out.

[00:41:11] And I think that's really where, where this notion of, of democratizing access to this technology and enabling some of these mid-size, mid-size folks or even the folks that have, have large scale and absolute terms. But, but under scale in retailer terms how do we help them compete with With the largest changes and with the largest businesses.

[00:41:31] And, and then how do we partner with the largest businesses and help support them to, to spend their, their resources on the things that benefit consumers most rather than building infrastructure and tools. And so that's really how we focus on enabling the whole, the whole ecosystem.

[00:41:43] Casey Golden: I think it's great. I really love seeing just a focus on your technology spend and how that affects the customer experience. We've been depicting the rules for a long time. And not really considering them in our software decisions. And now I feel that how any software impacts the customer experience is a conversation that's being had before contracts are signed.

[00:42:04] And I think it's, I think that's definitely a step in the right direction.

[00:42:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And I think it also relates to an issue that when we last spoke with you, we talked about, if you have a retailer who able to spend on the right technology to help accomplish all these things. You're also kind of balancing that against what's the cash outlay for that owned inventory that you need to keep up with.

[00:42:24] And given that we've kind of entered a holiday shopping season here, we know that the, the traditional retail approaches to really stock up on inventory for those holiday selling period. But there's also right, a model that says, You know what, what about having a more of a just in time merchandising?

[00:42:41] Model for how you do this, particularly if you are becoming a marketplace. And I think you, you have some thoughts on, on this, right, Bryan?

[00:42:47] Bryan Dove: Y Yeah, certainly. I, you know, I think fir first and foremost, if you asked a business, if you could meet all of your customer needs, would you rather put more of your cash at risk or less of your cash at risk? The, the answer is, The answer's pretty simple, right? I'd much rather conserve my cash and hold it in my bank account if I could still fulfill and meet all of my, all of my customer needs.

[00:43:08] And so, You know, I look at that first as a trend and think, Well, if we can, if we land on the right side of that, then we're probably onto something. And then second is we look at, well, what are the, what are the barriers to meeting all of their, to meeting all of their consumer needs? And there are a number of them.

[00:43:25] I mean, if we look over the last 18 months, we've all lived through these, these incredible supply chain challenges. And not only did you see the, the sometimes historical trends of, Let me boost the inventory I own, as we get into the holiday. But you saw a number of folks placing orders over the last 12 or 18 months to buy more inventory because they were just scared of having empty shelves.

[00:43:44] And then what you saw in some of the public earning announcements earlier this year, you know, at the end of q1, at the end of q2, you heard people talking about now an inventory surplus. They'd built up all this inventory, but as demand began to contract, they ended up with surplus of what they didn't want and, and they have to start clearing it out.

[00:44:00] And so we, we think one. Enabling retailers to conserve their cash or to choose to deploy it elsewhere. It, as long as they can meet all their customer expectations, it is better for their model. And so we really try to think about it less of what is the balance between owned versus unowned inventory and more, how do we enable more of the un unknown inventory to still meet all those consumer expectations?

[00:44:25] And so when we, when we look at that, that notion of just in time merchandising, we think. How are we enabling more variety and more selection to still meet those consumer expectations? Things like next day Bo as a, as a place that we're looking at things like what we're already doing today of narrowing that expectation of when is that item really gonna be on my doorstep?

[00:44:45] Or there's, there's other work that we've done with some of our customers where they may have multiple suppliers who provide the same item. And so how do we just automate the process of dropping through that supply? So when your preferred supplier sells through their. You don't need a merchandise person to go change things.

[00:45:01] We just wanna fulfill from the next available supplier who has the next best, next, best offering, or next best price or next best shipping method. And how do we just automate that so it's not blocked by some, by some employee in the merchandising or supply chain team, quite frankly, to go in and hit, hit a green button to turn it on.

[00:45:17] How do we just automate that process? And so we're, we're often looking for ways to take friction out of the system and, and bring some of that more real time and reaction. Experience to, to the offers. I, I think the, maybe the, the more, the broader trend around just in time merchandising is one that's gonna evolve quite frankly over the next few years.

[00:45:38] And when, when I look at that, I heard I was talking to one of our retailer executives and, and he made a really interesting comment to me. And his comment was that he sees merchandising shifting from a group of folks who curate particular items. To a group who really curates and nurtures relationships with brands, and, and I thought that that was a, a really interesting notion.

[00:45:59] We spent a lot of time talking about it. And what it really came down to is that if you think about the world of not just technology, retailers for years have been AB testing on their website, what is the page? What is the orientation that's gonna deliver the best, the best conversion rate, the best experience for consumers?

[00:46:15] The best return rate I'm sorry, retention. But you have not seen a lot of that concept extend into the actual items that are being carried. And so where, where I heard this, this retail exec talking about really shifting to a relationship with brands and thinking, how do you entice a brand to just carry their whole catalog?

[00:46:33] And you can almost start to use your website as a way to test if a, if a, maybe a brand has 10,000 items. Well, you're only gonna carry probably 200 of them in the. How do you know which 200 to carry and how do you start to let the website and your consumer demand through your website actually give you the data to know of these, of these 10,000 items this brand carries which of the 200 that resonate most with your customers.

[00:46:58] And there's something really powerful about knowing that if you're on you know, abc.com, the customers who are already shopping there are telling you which of this brand's products they love most and then being able to upgrade that. So, A separate season, not a new wholesale order, not a new, not a new relationship or system setup or six month lag, but how would you change that from a per unit drop ship order or a pure unit marketplace order?

[00:47:25] And how would you just order a thousand of those most popular I of those 200 popular items to just ship them into your stores directly? And so when we look at this, this notion of just in time merchandising over the next few years, we really see the technology doing more and more automation of the, of the easy and obvious tasks, enabling merchants to be far more sophisticated, far more data led, and thinking much more about relationships with brands and that escalation path that, that some of those SKUs are gonna be sold in the marketplace model.

[00:47:56] Some are gonna be drop ship and some of they're gonna make it to the store. And how do we use data to, to really rethink that process and, and evolve it in a way that that just has, has yet to penetrate the, the way that we approach retail today.

[00:48:07] Casey Golden: No, I think I, you, you, you beat me to the punch. My, my last question was really No, it was perfect. Was really about like what do you see the biggest change in commerce will be? That will be a new standard in, in about five years. And I think that just in time merchandising pan, like full stop, there's so much opportunity to make sure that the right product is being shown to the right customer at the right.

[00:48:30] I've been a buyer in a former life, and yeah, you shoot from the hip. There's not a lot of data decisions that are made from that. And so there's such a huge opportunity of having the right product or that customer at the right time versus marketing a product to all the customers for a period of.

[00:48:47] Bryan Dove: Well, as a merchandiser, as a buyer. What you're really trying to do is predict the future. You're trying to predict which products your customers will love most. 

[00:48:56] Casey Golden: Without customer data

[00:48:59] Ricardo Belmar: it's all about the data.

[00:49:01] Bryan Dove: Well, you know, this is not an exclusively retail problem. I mean, across all of technology. For years and years, people have tried to, to, to predict the future of what, of what their customers would want in whatever sector they. And I think what, what we've learned across almost every sector is that at scale our opinions kind of suck.

[00:49:24] Like our opinions aren't, aren't very accurate. You know, we have instincts in the directions our ability to read the market of the direction we should go in tends to be pretty accurate. But our ability to read the direction of the specifics and the details is pretty tough. And this is why you see, you know, AB testing is maybe the easiest thing to point to, but it's not the exclusive one.

[00:49:44] You see across every industry and every sector, this continual shift to data driven decision making. And today, while it has penetrated things like the, the front end of the, of the retailers' website, it has not made it all the way into the backend, into the merchandising selection, into fulfillment strategies, into into warehouse locations and positioning.

[00:50:05] There are, there are more and more places where we can use more data from the end. To drive better and smarter decisions and, and to let the data guide guide the way. And I think that is just a, a continual evolution that, that all of us have had to experience across basically every, every vertical because it's, you know, unless somebody's got a crystal ball, I don't know about, or, or a DeLorean that can go back in time, like predicting the future is, is it's really hard.

[00:50:31] And so that, that's where we try to think about partnering with our customers to, to enable a more data driven approach.

[00:50:35] Casey Golden: Yeah, everybody has an opinion in retail, right? And, you know, we've had to rely on that for, for decades. That opinion has carried a lot of weight on business decisions. And I think that, you know, we, I really appreciate you joining us today to dig into this much needed discussion as we approach the new year, new budgets holiday season.

[00:50:57] Coming in really fast right now, so I have a feeling our listeners will hit the replay button and grab a notebook,

[00:51:04] Bryan Dove: Oh, that's, that's very kind to 

[00:51:05] Casey Golden: uh, re-listen 

[00:51:06] Bryan Dove: both so much for having me today.

[00:51:07] Casey Golden: , if any of our listeners, they, if they wanna learn more about Commerce Hub and how you might be able to help them, how should they reach out to you or, or follow you as, as you guys post more information and more case studies and things of that nature.

[00:51:20] Bryan Dove: Sure. Easiest thing to do, just to learn more about our products and services, it's commerce hub.com spelled exactly like it sounds. You can also, we post a, a number of stories and, and, and insights that we've learned along the way. On the Commerce Hub LinkedIn account, that's probably the, the most active place where we post content or if anybody has specific questions or wants to get in touch.

[00:51:37] I'm, I'm personally quite findable on LinkedIn. Feel, Feel more than free to just reach out to me directly and I'll happily direct you to the right folks on our team.

[00:51:43] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Fantastic. Well, thanks again, Bryan for joining us. We really hope to have you back again soon. This has been a really insightful discussion.

[00:51:50] Casey Golden: I mean, I can keep 

[00:51:51] you here all day. So Ricardo, I think it's that time for us to wrap up this episode, but thank you again, Brian. Really appreciate it.

[00:51:58] Bryan Dove: All right, thanks, y'all. Have a great day.

[00:52:00] Show Close

[00:52:00] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. 

[00:52:32] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:52:48] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:52:50] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. 

]]> <p>What is the future of ecommerce? How will dropship, marketplaces, &amp; fulfillment evolve to serve an ever-demanding consumer? These are complex issues so we invited our latest Retail Transformer to help us cut through the clutter – meet Bryan Dove, CEO of <a href="https://www.commercehub.com/" rel="nofollow">CommerceHub</a>. </p><p><br></p><p>Bryan talks us through how DTC brands and retailers alike can tackle these challenges while delivering the conveniences consumers demand – from communicating delivery schedules to fulfilling orders most efficiently, and so much more! Get your notepad ready to take notes because you’re going to learn why Bryan Dove is more than meets the eye in this nonstop stream of insightful ecommerce nuggets! </p><p><br></p><p>Introducing our new segment, <em>Retail Razor Data Blades</em>, with special consumer insights from Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating ,learned from their 100,000’s of point-of-sale customer survey polls. In this episode we learn how inflation doesn&#39;t impact everyone the same way!</p><p><br></p><p>News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show has been nominated for <a href="https://bit.ly/VIPretail" rel="nofollow">The Retail Voice Award</a> at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during the NRF Big Show 2023 in January in New York City!</p><p><br></p><p>News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #18 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review &amp; be mentioned in future episodes! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive, Overclocked, </em>and<em> Tech Lore</em>, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>S2E7 Bryan Dove</strong></p><h3>[00:00:00] Pre-Intro</h3><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Ricardo, I&#39;ve got one word for you to describe this week&#39;s show, marketplaces drop ship fulfillment data. Okay. It&#39;s a whole lot of one words. Drop ship counts as a word, right? All right. Let&#39;s just say this is all about the future of e-com.</p><p>[00:00:23] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Y Yeah. Okay. So I&#39;m not quite sure how many words that counts for, but I&#39;m, I&#39;m gonna go ahead and stick with e-commerce as the theme for this week, and following up our amazing episode with Polly Wong focused on direct to consumer. And we&#39;ve got another amazing retail transformer on today&#39;s show to dive into the future of e-commerce.</p><p>[00:00:41] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And this is really exciting. Like every e-commerce junkie out there listening or watching should be taking out their notepad right now and be ready for some golden nuggets and tips. Um, no pun intended, These strategies that will come at you faster than you can say, where&#39;s my package? </p><p>[00:01:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That is so true actually. Actually, this is getting to be a habit, isn&#39;t it? Needing a notepad just to listen to the podcast. So should we </p><p>[00:01:09] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> know if it&#39;s like good or bad. </p><p>[00:01:10] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> know, right. ,maybe we should just get this episode started or, or should we just make everybody wait a little more and keep listening to us talking about it?</p><p>[00:01:19] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> You&#39;re too cruel and obsessed with long introductions. Let&#39;s say we just jump in to the intro music already.</p><h3>[00:01:28] Show Intro</h3><p>[00:01:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello, and welcome to season two, episode seven of the Retail Razor Show. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:01:55] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome, retail Razor Show listeners to retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologist, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.</p><p>[00:02:07] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> We&#39;re back with another incredible retail transformer as our guest this week, and if you&#39;re just coming from episode five, our special D T C retail transformer episode with Polly Wong, then you&#39;re really going to do the dance of joy for this one.</p><p>[00:02:21] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yes. And as a founder, I am so exciting. We&#39;re diving into the future of e-commerce, looking at marketplaces, drop shipping, fulfillment challenges, inventory challenges, and much, much more for the whole Commerce family in this episode.</p><p>[00:02:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh yeah, faithful Retail Razor Show listeners will learn exactly why Bryan Dove, CEO of Commerce Hub is more than meets the eye.</p><p>[00:02:45] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I have to say that I love that we finally got to deep dive into the murky waters of e-commerce to really think about and talk through what brands need to get out of their e-commerce sites going forward and how they should grow, what the right tools are. What they need to be building and how they should handle their supplier relationships. There&#39;s just so much more to go into, like fulfillment strategies, managing inventory, and much of this will relate back to what Polly talked about, customer retention.</p><p>[00:03:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> that, that&#39;s right. This discussion with Bryan is a nice bookend to our chat with Polly. I, I can&#39;t say enough that if you&#39;re a DTC founder or you&#39;re responsible for your brand&#39;s e-commerce and are looking at drop shipping or marketplace expansion to grow the business, wow are you here at the right time. This discussion combined with Polly&#39;s could just about be your best practices guide to success.</p><h3>[00:03:40] Retail Razor Data Blades - &#34;Inflation doesn&#39;t impact everyone the same way&#34;</h3><p>[00:03:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> But first it&#39;s time for the newest segment of our show, Retail Razor Data Blades, where we talk real world numbers and slice through measurable consumer insights. It&#39;s a bit like, show me the math so I understand where this data is coming from, and bringing us that slicing and dicing of data is Georgina Nelson, c e o of true rating.</p><p>[00:03:58] Georgina will share with us some key data points and offer a bit of insight into what&#39;s behind those numbers based on their extensive customer insight data at the point of sale</p><p>[00:04:06] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> welcome, Georgina.</p><p>[00:04:12] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> Thank you so much for having me. </p><p>[00:04:14] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So today&#39;s retail razor data blades segment is &#34;Inflation doesn&#39;t impact everyone the same way&#34;. Georgina, tell us more.</p><p>[00:04:22] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> So yeah. We&#39;ve done some consumer insight research over the past few months to really try and understand how all these macroeconomic trends are influencing consumers in their shopping behaviors and habits. We sampled over 170,000 consumers across our key markets in the UK, North America, and Australia. And I think in terms of the nugget I wanted to shout about today was just really, I guess not surprisingly, the number of people who are noticing the impact on rising, rising cost of living. And that was a whopping 81% of consumers registered that change. But where I think it gets interesting and you, as you say, Ricardo, slicing and dicing that data is looking at the differences across demographics and age range. So when we looked at seniors, we found that 89% had been noticing the the rising cost of living. But take that, flip that up and look at those under 30 and only 75%. And so when you actually think about how the cost of living is impacting different demographics, I think it&#39;s, really focused on the rising cost of food, food bills, keeping your house warm and yeah.</p><p>[00:05:39] And fuel, et cetera. And so you know, many of us, including me, did a, did a few stints living with mom and dad in my twenties. And so, you know, those household bills aren&#39;t, aren&#39;t impacting us as, as, as much. And and I think that&#39;s, you know, that&#39;s really the key lesson is that it&#39;s not, not a generic homogenous sweep all impact.</p><p>[00:06:03] We have to really look at slicing and dicing that data and getting very granular insights about how, how these trends are impacting different groups.</p><p>[00:06:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So Georgina, we, we so often hear retailers being tempted to chase the newest and youngest demographic because they believe that&#39;s where the staying power is and the greater lifetime customer value might come from. But from the data you&#39;re, you&#39;re telling us, it, it seems to tell us really that retailers need to both tailor their messaging and their targeting unique to uniquely speak to each of those demographics to get the best conversion just based on how current economic conditions are impacting them differently.</p><p>[00:06:39] So how would you say retailers should react to this data?</p><p>[00:06:42] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> Yeah, I, I very much agree. I think it needs to be a nuanced approach and you know, primarily to survive these times, retailers need to really invest in understanding their consumers. And, you know, as we saw through the pandemic, how. Quickly, these consumers are changing and keeping abreast of that. And so that means, you know, nuanced and targeted messaging to different consumer groups. But also I think it&#39;s down to a store level. You know, taking a very granular approach each, each store, as I always say, is a snowflake, and they have their own client. You know, their own customer mix. And so being able to get customer insight down to that store and granular level and really understanding that, that mix up. It helps you have targeted and nuanced strategies depending on that store. So, you know, if you do need to make a price increase, it might be an idea to, you know, look across the whole of North America, for example, and understand your, your base and, and share that distribution across different states and vary that price increase depending on the customer base, for example. So I definitely think that those retailers who are on the front foot with understanding their customers and being able to react really quickly to sentiment and changes in behavior are those who are gonna have the competitive advantage as we muddle through these times.</p><p>[00:08:07] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It&#39;s great. Georgina, thank you so much for joining us today on Retail Razor&#39;s Data Blades,</p><p>[00:08:13] <strong>Georgina Nelson:</strong> Thank you. It&#39;s been a pleasure.</p><p>[00:08:15]</p><h3>[00:08:20] Interview with Bryan Dove</h3><p>[00:08:20] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Things have changed now that we&#39;ve sliced some data. Let&#39;s get back to the evolution of e-commerce with Bryan Dove.</p><p>[00:08:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And we are here with our special guest and latest retail transformer to visit the show. Bryan Dove, CEO of Commerce Hub, a leading provider of cloud-based e-commerce, fulfillment and marketing solutions for large retailers, marketplaces, consumer brands, and their suppliers. Welcome Bryan.</p><p>[00:08:48] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Thanks for having me.</p><p>[00:08:49] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Really glad to have you join us, Bryan. Since our last call, we&#39;ve both been really excited to have this conversation on marketplaces and fulfillment. Kind of touch on some drop shipping and what&#39;s been really what the future holds for all these areas for retailing in today&#39;s environment and our tomorrow&#39;s.</p><p>[00:09:06] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> That&#39;s great. I&#39;m, I&#39;m excited to share, share what share what we&#39;ve learned along the way.</p><p>[00:09:10] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So just to get started, Bryan, why don&#39;t you tell us a little bit about yourself, Commerce Hub and how Commerce Hub works with retailers?</p><p>[00:09:18] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Sure. to start with Commerce Hub, the Commerce hub&#39;s got 25 years of history. We&#39;ve been working with the largest big box retailers that are out there and, and really from the late nineties helping them enable and, and expand their e-commerce selection. So our customer lists. Our are the largest retailers you can imagine, folks like Walmart and Costco and, and Macy&#39;s and Nordstrom and Best Buy and so on.</p><p>[00:09:38] We have a, we have a, a pretty, pretty meaningful number of customers in the large, large, big box retailer enterprise space. And what we&#39;ve focused on since the beginning is helping them expand the number of items that they sell on their website. Where they have not had to have not had to purchase those items.</p><p>[00:09:54] So classically referred to as Drop Ship. I think in modern terms there&#39;s drop ship, there&#39;s marketplace, and there&#39;s probably a blend of some other terms to, to describe that. We really just think about it as the unowned inventory. And for most of our, for most of our retailers, it powers it powers a significant portion and sometimes the majority of their overall overall online sales and almost always the majority of their overall online selection.</p><p>[00:10:15] And for my personal background, I&#39;ve been at Commerce Hub. Coming up on two years, so a little bit more than a year and a half. And then prior to this, I ran a travel business based outta Europe that helped almost a billion travelers a year worldwide. We were number one in 140, 150 countries. And then prior to that, I spent some time at at Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and and some other tech companies along the way.</p><p>[00:10:33] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Amazing. So just to add a little bit of context for our listeners, the Commerce Suite, what does that mean to a brand or a retailer?</p><p>[00:10:42] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> So we at Shop Talk this year, So back in March of 22, we, we launched what we branded as the Commerce Suite. And this was really our, our primary evolution of the history of the business. So historically we&#39;ve been, we had been really narrowly focused on. Enabling drop ship and has been been quite successful.</p><p>[00:10:59] It&#39;s a critical piece of infrastructure for all of these retailers that we work with. But as we were talking to our customers, what we heard is we heard lots of needs for expansion for flexibility, various customers experimenting with item, with ideas like marketplace. Now, if you ask five customers what they mean by a marketplace, you&#39;ll get 10 to 15 different answers </p><p>[00:11:18] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> omnichannel.</p><p>[00:11:19] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Yeah. And, and so, so when, when you, when you really listen for the essence and, and push the labels to the side, what they were really looking for is flexibility in the way that they engaged with suppliers, flexibility in the way that they set up items and got them published to the site. Flexibility in striking different economic arrangements with different brands that they worked with.</p><p>[00:11:38] And so our, our release of the commerce suite was really the first major step in that direction to go from a pure drop ship platform. To enabling that flexibility that allows, that allows our retailers and the brands and suppliers that work with them to, to flex between a drop ship model, a marketplace model, and be able to look at those differences really as, as almost like, like light switches that you could turn some on, you could turn some off and, and really enable that to work as well as there&#39;s some there&#39;s some lightweight catalog management and items set up automation that&#39;s in there as well, really to help enable brands and suppliers to take more control over their listings and and optionally over, over prices as they publish onto these different retailer platforms. And so that&#39;s really what&#39;s encompassed in our commerce suite that we launched earlier this year.</p><p>[00:12:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s Great so really all kind of broadly encompassing all the major functions that any, any eCommerce brands really, really searching for. Right? Just in into one platform.</p><p>[00:12:29] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Y Yeah. I mean, if you, if you think all the way, you know, at a, at a million foot elevation, broadly speaking, retailers are trying to carry two buckets of goods. Things that they have. That they have purchased. So whether it&#39;s sitting in their warehouse to only be sold online or they purchased to bring into their stores, and then the rest of their selection are items that are still owned by either the brand or the distributor or the supplier that they still wanna list, but they haven&#39;t actually taken inventory possession for.</p><p>[00:12:54] And when I, when I look at what our Commerce Suite enables, it really becomes that, that single platform to power all of your needs for your unowned inventory, we have a, we have a network not only of, of dozens to hundreds of retailers of the, of the largest retailers, but tens of thousands of brands and suppliers that are connected.</p><p>[00:13:11] And so over the last, over the last 25 years, we&#39;ve really built this, this network that encompasses virtually everybody of scale across the the North American eCommerce system.</p><p>[00:13:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, that&#39;s pretty impressive. so one of the things I think we should talk about along those lines too is around fulfillment strategies. So for any of the retailers, you&#39;re talking about in all these scenarios with this mix of owned inventory and other inventory that they have, how that retailer can create a really exceptional delivery experience , and overall fulfillment experience for their customer using, using your platform, how do you help retailers kind of unify their, that online marketplace or, and or drop ship capabilities that they&#39;re doing with their overall customer experience?</p><p>[00:13:52] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Sure. So, so I mentioned, I started, it&#39;s called a year and a half ago or so, and, and part of, part of starting, one of the great things about being in the, in the B2B space, in the enterprise space is it&#39;s, you can go talk to your customers. And, you know, I, I made a point to go out and talk to them when I started.</p><p>[00:14:07] I, I still talk to a number of customers virtually every week now. But as I was just talking to &#39;em, I would just ask what problems are they thinking about? What are they worried about immediately? What are they worried about over the next couple years? And we really started to see this trend where historically organizations would really separate the fulfillment inside of their supply chain.</p><p>[00:14:26] So thinking about everything from warehouses to fulfillment contracts to logistics, separate from the merchandising. Pricing and online sales, and it only really, almost really operated as, as almost two different business units inside the organization. And what we saw as an emerging trend is, I, I heard from more and more of these retailer executives and, and the executives at brands talking about intersecting the two, How could they use their knowledge on merchandising to better optimizer fulfillment and how could they use their, their expertise in fulfillment to better optimize their merchandising?</p><p>[00:14:58] If you want just a simple example, you might price an. Or you might price shipping differently if you know it&#39;s sitting in a warehouse that&#39;s you know, that&#39;s a hundred miles from you. So if the warehouse is in the central Florida and you&#39;re shipping it to Orlando, I might offer you next day service for free because I actually know the net cost of that is gonna be cheap and I&#39;m gonna delight my customer by saying, Hey, you&#39;ve gotten a free upgrade to overnight, versus that item is sitting in a warehouse in California.</p><p>[00:15:22] Well, I know it&#39;s not economically feasible for me to do so, and, and therefore I may go a more traditional round of saying, I&#39;ll just send it ground and it will be. In maybe four to six days. And so we heard just the early, the early inklings of some of these ideas without a lot of concrete plans. And so at the earlier this year, at the same time, we launched our commerce suite, we launched a new product offering for us in the fulfillment space that we call our delivery suite.</p><p>[00:15:45] And what that has really focused on is, is helping retailers. A number of different individual items in their fulfillment chain. So things like as simple as the delivery promise, when will this item show up on the customer&#39;s doorstep, which most folks have, have pretty well under control for items that are in their stores and in their warehouses, but for things that aren&#39;t under their control that are sitting in the, these brands and supplier warehouses, they&#39;re sitting in three pls and remember this, I know an inventory makes up the, the majority of selection that, that a lot of these retailers.</p><p>[00:16:17] They really have no control and no insight, and we were able to use the data that we have to be able to drive high quality and high accuracy estimates, and then you connect it into what shipping method to be used. Should I ship this by, by two day, by three day by ground? Well, it depends on what date you promise to the customer.</p><p>[00:16:34] And then how do I manage the economics of that? There are lots of different ways to rerate, What, what warehouse should I originate that shipment from? Where, you know, I may, I may choose my secondary warehouse, but it might just be on the other side of a zone line, which is gonna materially save me money in shipping.</p><p>[00:16:49] Because we work with all these suppliers, how do we drive better compliance of the ship method to be used so that when the retailer&#39;s planning on paying for say maybe a ground. How do we make sure that it actually gets coded as ground and doesn&#39;t accidentally get coded as, as three day error or something like this?</p><p>[00:17:04] All the way to visibility and tracking and out to even the consumer facing technology so that they can see, where&#39;s my package? Let me, let me track it. When is it gonna be, when is it gonna be received? How could I receive text message updates? All of the really consumer facing functions. So we worked with a couple vendors in the space to bring these together and provide our, our retailers with an all-in-one package.</p><p>[00:17:24] What we learned is we dug in. One. Most of our retailers were out purchasing individual solutions and while they could find best of breeds for each niche, what it meant was that they had a pretty high total cost of ownership in having to staff various IT people to set that up, to manage those, to do their own integration between all these tools to make them work seamlessly.</p><p>[00:17:46] And second is that all of those investments had really focused on a lot of their owned inventory, their their first party inventory. And so what we really set out to focus is make our delivery products available and functional for whether it&#39;s first party inventory or third party inventory. But we, we saw a notable a notable gap in being able to optimize the fulfillment operations, both for consumer experience and for cost, and being able to do that for all of their third party and unknown items.</p><p>[00:18:14] And we, we&#39;ve seen, we&#39;ve seen really substantial interest over the last six months, this was a completely new area for us. It&#39;s adjacent to what we&#39;ve done on the, on the, on the unknown inventory platform. And we&#39;ve seen great interest. We&#39;ve seen a number of different pilots and a number of different customers already beginning to realize pretty substantial savings along the way.</p><p>[00:18:33] And we, we think we&#39;re still pretty early days in how we integrate what happens on the fulfillment side and what happens on the, on the ordering side. And we think as we can bring more and more of that insight and intelligence. It ends up winning for everybody. It wins for the end consumer because they have more accurate expectations that more consistently get met and ideally get exceeded.</p><p>[00:18:53] They have better consumers, have better visibility and better transparency to what&#39;s really happening. The retailer. Gets more, gets more accurate information to predict what&#39;s gonna happen, as well as getting better cost control, as well as taking out some of their internal costs and how they strip strip these together.</p><p>[00:19:09] And then the, the fulfillment carriers also get excited by this because there&#39;s opportunities for them to get better insight into the data of what&#39;s gonna be there when they drive a truck to go pick up at a, at a three PL location, do they need to send a 20 foot truck or a 40 foot truck today? Or do they need to send three trucks or six trucks?</p><p>[00:19:24] And being able to, to use that information to drive efficiency through the whole system ultimately results in everybody having lower costs and being able to return that in the form of lower prices to everybody in the, in the ecosystem. So we think there&#39;s a, there&#39;s a lot of legs to really further integrating these two and, and, and seeing more and more retailers think about how can they use those two halves of the business to inform each other and drive more, more value and efficiency into the system.</p><p>[00:19:48] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It really sounds like you&#39;re building a lot of these distribution strategies into the software to optimize for these for a more flexible business model so that it&#39;s not as painful as we remember to be able to launch a new channel or to be able to communicate across some of these different departments. Fulfillment to merchandise planning to customer experience. Do you bring, do you find that a lot this process with launching the delivery suite or just implementing it I&#39;m sure that you guys are bringing a lot of distribution strategy and options to the table that some of these retailers or brands just really thought was out of their reach of being able to deploy.</p><p>[00:20:34] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Yeah, I, I, I think one of the, one of the things that&#39;s really unique about, about the retail space is how, how substantial the scale differences are, even amongst the top, top 10 or top 15. And so if you just take, just take overall annualized sales as as just one metric of, of overall size, and you think about, you think about Amazon being in the 800 plus billion range in annual sales, then Walmart number two at 550 ish, give or take, and then you get to number three and four, and they&#39;re, they&#39;re in the 200 2200 30 billion.</p><p>[00:21:07] Two 30 billion is still a a ton of money, a ton of volume, but if you look out on a relative basis, it&#39;s pretty rare to see the step from number one to number three, be a 75% reduction. I mean, you&#39;ve got a four x difference between number one and number three, and you keep going down. You get from number number three and four at 222 and 30 billion folks like Costco and Target.</p><p>[00:21:27] When you get to like number 15 on the list, you&#39;re. 20 or 25 billion. Now, again, 25 billion a year in sales is enormous. These are enormous businesses, enormous brands really delivering value for consumers. But there&#39;s still one 10th of the size of the folks who are number three and four. And so when you look at that dispersion in scale, there&#39;s, there&#39;s technologies and techniques and opportunities that are available to the, to the number one or number two players in the market that all of a sudden become less Less viable on an ROI basis to bring even to numbers 3, 4, 5, and so on.</p><p>[00:22:02] And I think what&#39;s really unique about our, about our approach is that we do work with the, the virtually all of the large retailers that are out there. So we get to see what, what the best and brightest and retail are doing, and then we work with them to say, how can we learn from that? How can we, how can we bring that at scale?</p><p>[00:22:18] And how can we democratize access to that insight and that technology in a way that benefits everybody? And again, what, what I, what I. What I really love about the retail space is as we can drive efficiency and and scale and, and flexibility into this platform, it ultimately results in lower costs, which in turn, because the sector is so competitive, results in lower costs and lower prices for consumers.</p><p>[00:22:42] And so being able to drive that efficiency all the way through the ecosystem by. Scaling, scaling these best practices and, and democratizing access. But quite frankly, we&#39;ll really guide our, guide our path over the next several years. And we continue to listen to our customers about what are the most pressing and most important items.</p><p>[00:22:56] But we think we have given our reach and engagement and the, the size and scale of, of what we internally call the commerce network of just the number of folks connected to it. We think we have a pretty unique position in the ecosystem to to democratize access to a lot of. A lot of these newer pieces of flexibility and, and efficiency.</p><p>[00:23:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. So speaking of, you know, consumer expectations, let&#39;s kind of shift a little bit there cuz you&#39;ve mentioned a couple times right, on how retailers needing that ability to. Deliver, I&#39;ll describe it as sort of the same or meet the same expectations. Right. Whether it&#39;s their own, their inventory or the unknown inventory.</p><p>[00:23:31] Right. To your point, and if we think about how a lot of these expectations, I believe have changed or, or maybe been slightly modified a little bit of in recent years, certainly because of the changes in shopping behaviors during the pandemic. Now there&#39;s, I think, new pressures right on retailers on how they go about meeting these.</p><p>[00:23:50] Customer expectations and certainly the old tools that they&#39;re used to using are, are probably not built to support the kind of mass, direct to consumer characteristics that a lot of these expectations are really. Calling for right now based on the new experiences that consumers got so used to during the pandemic years.</p><p>[00:24:06] So so Bryan, I mean, when you look at this, what, what kind of impact are we talking about in this concept? Cause you&#39;ve, you&#39;ve mentioned a few examples of how , retailers using solution can really meet these expectations, deliver on those customer promises. And you&#39;ve also talked about how it&#39;s not just about delivering the experience, but also doing it in a cost effective way, there&#39;s potential cost savings that can be had because you&#39;re doing things more efficiently. You know, I love the example you gave about how, you know, if you know that the particular item is in a warehouse that&#39;s relatively close to the customer&#39;s destination, then you can offer a different a different shipping shipping.</p><p>[00:24:43] Still save money in, in the process. Right? Because you&#39;re not shipping it across the country to meet that requirement. Do you have some, some data points you can share some examples on, on just what kind of, , whether it&#39;s the cost savings or, or increases in, in customer satisfaction and things that you&#39;ve seen with your customers.</p><p>[00:24:58] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Sure, sure. Maybe, maybe I&#39;ll share I&#39;ll share one that&#39;s that&#39;s quite solved and one that I think is really interesting. But as of yet, as of yet, unsolved, which I think is always, always interesting to talk about what else could come in the</p><p>[00:25:08] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. Right.</p><p>[00:25:09] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> So in, in the, in the places that are solved maybe two data points that we see.</p><p>[00:25:14] One is that being able to provide certainty of when something is going to show up on your door. Which sounds so, so rudimentary and basic, but yet what you&#39;ll see across a lot of sites is either they&#39;ll see high precision on the items that they have in their warehouses and stores, but low precision on the items that are sold through that are still, they&#39;ll still, still sitting in the vendor&#39;s warehouse.</p><p>[00:25:34] You know, you might say, arrives in six to 10 days. Well, it turns out that that really hurts your conversion rate. And so a customer may come to that page, they want to buy that. But now they&#39;re worried six to 10 days. One, I might need it within a week, which is not unreasonable. And I don&#39;t know if it&#39;s gonna be there.</p><p>[00:25:51] Two, it seems so fuzzy. I&#39;m worried six to 10 days becomes 20 days or 30 days, or I worry it&#39;s on back order. There&#39;s all these things that we&#39;ve, we&#39;ve been trained as consumers that, that, that, that gives me low confidence. And so we saw, we saw with one of the large retailers just being able to give delivery certainty both on parcels things that&#39;ll fit in boxes. But also on, also on appliances and refrigerators and, and, and, and furniture and just large purchases. We were able to increase the conversion rate into the into the low double digits. So when you start talking about a, plus 10 or plus 12 or plus 14% relative improvement in conversion rate on those types of items, Those are, those are tremendous value creators for both, for the retailer and for the consumer.</p><p>[00:26:33] They&#39;re already on the page, they&#39;re already on the specific item that they&#39;re looking for. This is not a, a top of funnel or browse behavior. This is the last step of add to cart, and, and we see that, We see that driving a, a tremendous tremendous benefit for consumers and for retailers. Similarly I mentioned in our delivery suite. One of the products that we work on helps give consumers visibility to where is their items, where are their stuff? And this is classically the number one driver of customer service calls. Hey, I was expecting this item on this date. Where is it? And so what we&#39;ve seen is not only driving a better, higher quality consumer experience for where they can see what the, the actual status of their order is.</p><p>[00:27:09] We&#39;ve seen it result in 25 to 40% lower customer service calls. We&#39;ve also seen it result in higher conversion of subsequent purchase. So I&#39;ll get that update mail that says, Hey, your items on the way. It&#39;ll be there on Tuesday. And there are some links there if in case I&#39;m looking for additional items that might be related additional categories or sales.</p><p>[00:27:28] And by doing that in a really consumer first way we&#39;ve seen there was one example I saw that folks were seeing an increase of 300%. So a three x increase in the amount of total conversions and the total revenue from people clicking through that email. They had built it in-house. They upgraded from an in-house solution to the partner that we&#39;re.</p><p>[00:27:46] They were seeing a 300% increase in that in that conversion rate. And so we see really, really dramatic gains that can be had when you&#39;re able to to really orient on and meet and exceed those consumer expectations.</p><p>[00:27:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, three X is an amazing, amazing change, amazing improvement. </p><p>[00:28:01] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> amazing </p><p>[00:28:02] now and,</p><p>[00:28:03] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> like on that consumer side, like as somebody who lives in Brooklyn without a doorman, Delivery time and knowing when it&#39;s arrived, it affects whether or not I&#39;m going into the city and when I&#39;m gonna be back. And there&#39;s many of times I do not order something online just because it may not be on my doorstep when I get back.</p><p>[00:28:22] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> That that&#39;s right. So that is an amazingly unplanned segue to the thing that I was gonna tease, I said is, is a growing trend but as of yet unsolved,</p><p>[00:28:29] which </p><p>[00:28:30] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> had somebody running around Brooklyn wearing a Monaco hoodie, and I spent three years looking for it, and</p><p>[00:28:36] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:28:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:28:38] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> you&#39;re gonna, you&#39;re gonna run into them someday on the on the subway and, and you&#39;re gonna to have that moment of, how do I get this back</p><p>[00:28:44] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> that&#39;s.</p><p>[00:28:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right</p><p>[00:28:46] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Just carry the printed receipt around </p><p>[00:28:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right . Yeah.</p><p>[00:28:49] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> So, so speaking of that, there&#39;s, there&#39;s an really incredible trend that I think is still in, its in its early days that there&#39;s a lot that we can adapt the ecosystem around. So this notion of buying online, picking up a store, right? Classically BOPIS and when we, when we saw this spike over the last couple years, when you think about what happened in 2020.</p><p>[00:29:08] Obviously the stores closed. You saw this massive spike in e-commerce adoption and at the time, all of us collectively believed this has just pulled the future forward. And what we&#39;ve started to see is when you just look at the overall public retailer numbers and and public e-commerce numbers, you see that over 21 and 22 is things began to open up as we started to feel more comfortable in this pandemic or potentially get past it. You saw, you saw slower growth in the e-commerce space, and it almost starts to revert back to the historical trendline, historical average. Now, e-commerce is still up to the right over time, but that, that dramatic pull forward has started to start to ebb back to the, to the longer term 10 15 year trend.</p><p>[00:29:46] What&#39;s interesting to me is buy a line pickup in store when, when you look at some of these BOPIS numbers that some of the retailers put out. They were not talking about 20% year on year gains. They were talking about things like 60% gains, 80% gains, a hundred percent year on year. You see some retailers, huge retailers talking more than 50 or 60% of all online orders are fulfilled by BOPIS.</p><p>[00:30:07] Now to me, what&#39;s really fascinating is that that trend has not just been a spike in during 2020 and early 21. That trend has sustained and continues to grow. So now then I start to look at it and think, well, how is BOPIS working today? Really what it&#39;s limited to is it&#39;s limited to the stock that&#39;s on hand in the store that&#39;s around the corner from you.</p><p>[00:30:26] And so if you think about the evolution of e-commerce, we went from only buying what was in stock at our stores to now having this access to this infinite aisle, this endless aisle where all of the items were available. And now we have this new emerging preference around BOPIS. Yet BOPIS now comes back to being restricted to only the items, only the items that are on hand in the store.</p><p>[00:30:46] And so, you know, when, when I look at where is additional space for innovation by, by intersecting where consumer patterns are showing up, and what retailers are looking at is, we&#39;re, we&#39;re actively working with folks to figure out how do we expand what&#39;s available for BOPIS? How could we have you still get that convenience?</p><p>[00:31:03] Maybe it&#39;s not one hour, maybe it&#39;s 12 hours. But if you ordered it tonight, how do you go pick it up from the store tomorrow so you don&#39;t worry about the item getting stolen from your doorstep, which is not only a Brooklyn problem, it&#39;s a pretty common urban problem. And we are, we are, we are broadly a an, you know urban plus plus suburbs population.</p><p>[00:31:21] When you look at the population dynamics in a rural is a, is a relatively small portion of the population overall eCommerce spend. How do we make that safe to have things ordered at home? How do we make that safe to have the convenience so that, you know, you get that item and there&#39;s, there&#39;s a lot of drivers behind the, the rise in BOPIS There&#39;s another theory, which is, you know, we all work from home these days, or, or a number of us do.</p><p>[00:31:41] And if you work from home, sometimes you&#39;re just looking for an excuse to get outta the house, but you still want the, the convenience of e-commerce. You don&#39;t wanna be waiting through aisles with a cart and picking out all the things you need. And so it, it does BOPIS provide that middle ground where you&#39;re, you&#39;re really getting outta the house, but not, but, Reducing the time spent on the part that you don&#39;t enjoy.</p><p>[00:31:59] And so we&#39;re seeing this tremendous rise and looking at how we can help help expand that selection for what&#39;s available by Bopis. So you still get that endless aisle experience, but you&#39;re still able to leave the house, still able to go pick up the items that you want on your schedule in your time.</p><p>[00:32:11] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> No, I think that that&#39;s great and I think , it&#39;s really important, when so many sales start online and really bringing in. We have 80% of retail that&#39;s traditionally been in store. It only makes sense to be able to window shop or browse online and swing by and pick it up. The likelihood of you buying another item is higher.</p><p>[00:32:32] And just being able to be more focused , when you&#39;re looking to make , a purchase today, you know I need something. I need it today. You go browse online and then if you don&#39;t have that pickup in store availability, or be able to filter those products to be able to say like, what is actually here?</p><p>[00:32:53] Cause I&#39;m gonna be swinging by, or I&#39;m coming this direction and I need to pick it up. There&#39;s a lot of, there&#39;s a lack of communication there from online to the stores. Commonly, you know, if they don&#39;t have a really good program in place. I, I look at going to five, six stores to make a purchase. I wanna know what you have.</p><p>[00:33:11] I don&#39;t wanna go to six stores. Physically . I am looking for something and I just wanna go to the store that has, has it or something that will suffice because I needed it tonight and it was last minute or whatnot. And I think that this is a big opportunity for a lot of brands to solve these inventory issues that kind of goes back to omnichannel. Really understanding where the overlap is, where your inventory levels are and how do you get it to the customer based off of like multiple options. Waiting five days is not ideal, but either is, you know, going to like seven stores in between your day to day trying to just find a sweater for a holiday party or for something. You know a lot of people wanted to get back out, but at the same time, in-store inventory was 10% of what was available online. And you&#39;d go to the store and there&#39;s like nothing in the stores. All of these things were available online only. So big difference if you knew what your customers could pick up in store.</p><p>[00:34:18] You could plan your in-store inventory a lot better too.</p><p>[00:34:20] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> That&#39;s right. Well, and I think, I think you hit, hit the nail on the head with the, with the 10% number, which is, if somebody has, I&#39;ll make up a million s skews. They may have only 30,000, 50,000, maybe a hundred thousand in, in the store, minus whatever is currently outta stock or sold out. Cuz they only stocked one or two or three of, of a lot of these SKUs.</p><p>[00:34:42] And so the idea that I need it tonight you know, you&#39;re pretty limited, but if you could get it in the morning. All of a sudden, what&#39;s available in the morning is 40,000 SKUs. Maybe not the full, maybe not the, the, you know, the, the full million skews, but maybe 40,000, maybe a hundred thousand, maybe 200,000, some meaningful portion of that million SKUs all of a sudden is available on relatively short notice that all of a sudden changes the, the way that you think about this, rather than waiting three or four days for it to get home.</p><p>[00:35:09] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> how you filter, how you search from like the first click is like, show me, this, I need it around this time. Rather than looking at product first, you&#39;re looking at filter my product based off of timelines and availability.</p><p>[00:35:23] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> That That&#39;s exactly right. And, and I, you know what I find in the B2B space, the place I always try to anchor myself is I start from what is the consumer experience and work backwards. And I feel like if there&#39;s something that&#39;s, that meaningfully improves the consumer experience going from, you know, tens of thousands of SKUs to hundreds of thousands of SKUs that I can pick up within the next 12 hours, that&#39;s a great upgrade.</p><p>[00:35:43] And then it turns out being able to do that drives better economic efficiency for the retailer and for the brand as well. And so now all of a sudden that becomes not just a viable option, but in fact sometimes a preferred option. And when you have this intersection of better for the consumer and more efficient and effective for for all of the businesses in the operational chain, that, that&#39;s really where I I where I start to see the magic light up.</p><p>[00:36:06] And, and I think those are the types of scenarios and combinations that when we&#39;re talking with our customers, we really look for and say, Now is there, is there an interesting or unique way that we can invest to enable that scenario in a way that&#39;s gonna benefit every single member of the of the ecosystem?</p><p>[00:36:21] And, and those we find are the winners that we really try to focus on.</p><p>[00:36:24] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, your white boarding sessions sound like fun.</p><p>[00:36:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> In this case, Bryan, isn&#39;t it really a situation where the data&#39;s there for the retailer and maybe not in one place, obviously, but in lots of different systems potentially, but to a certain degree where at this scenario you&#39;ve just described in trying to solve this challenge, it seems like it just comes down to being able to collect the data from all these different areas and find the right way to surface that The corresponding insight that you&#39;re really getting at here, right into how do I make these additional products available to, to a a, a BOPIS customer right at the time that they wanted to be available knowing that I probably have an item somewhere, but it may or may not be in the right place at the right time.</p><p>[00:37:06] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> That, that, that&#39;s exactly right. I think all of this data to somebody in the, in the ecosystem, they have all the data. The difficulty of can you find the right data? Can you, can you make it usable and can you intersect it in ways that ultimately benefits everybody? I think that&#39;s where, where everybody needs to focus on what they&#39;re great at.</p><p>[00:37:28] You know, if I&#39;m a retailer, what I&#39;m, what I&#39;m amazing at is finding my target customer segments, understanding what they&#39;re looking for, being able to reach them consistently and do so at, do so at relatively low cost. That that&#39;s how they&#39;re, that&#39;s how they&#39;re able to generate these, these large level of sales and, and do it profitably.</p><p>[00:37:44] If I look at brands, they really understand their core customer and. Understand their tastes and preferences, and then they&#39;re able to, to get that to their customers, both through direct channels as well as through through retail channels. And you know, I, I look at companies like Commerce Hub and other technology companies in, in the e-commerce ecosystem.</p><p>[00:38:02] Our focus is really on how do we take the data that&#39;s available, How do we take the, how do we find those insights of ways that we can improve a workflow that adds benefits and efficiency to everybody in the, in the chain. Democratize that through technology so that everybody gets access to those benefits and technology in a way that works for them.</p><p>[00:38:20] And then this, the level of scale works for us. And so, you know, I think everybody&#39;s got a role to play and, and we try to, we try to do our best at listening to our customers and focus on ours.</p><p>[00:38:28] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I think it&#39;s really great and I think that that&#39;s a, a wonderful term by democratizing access to technology because a lot of the times the technology costs are so large and to be able to obtain an ROI from it quick enough to validate that cost. Sometimes it&#39;s just, it&#39;s too much for a brand to be able to take on sometimes to be moved from number 15 to number eight, you know?</p><p>[00:38:55] But 15 to number eight is huge. But these technology costs have definitely been almost gated by needing to be able to have a certain level of cash and resources to be able to implement some of the great solutions that are at that are available for the one Twos and threes.</p><p>[00:39:15] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Absolutely at, at a earlier point in my career, in my life, I spent, I spent about a decade building software for large hospital organizations. And it, you know, when you look at those, it&#39;s a, it&#39;s a, it&#39;s a different world than retail, but I think from a technology perspective, they were in a really similar place.</p><p>[00:39:33] You have even more specialization you can imagine. The software for the radiology folks doing x-rays is different than the software for the cardiologist doing heart exams, which is different than the, the nurses doing general intake versus the the ICU and and everything else. And so they had hundreds of these individual pieces of software and the IT costs were just becoming overwhelming.</p><p>[00:39:56] Cuz even if you just think I only need one person to maintain each product. Next thing you know, if you&#39;ve got a, a group of three or four hospitals, you might have 1500 pieces of software, and you really saw, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, you started to see these, these hospital chains really start to crumble under the, the technology burden.</p><p>[00:40:12] And, and out of that, you saw a few technology companies really rise by, by focusing on reducing that total cost of ownership. Easing that integration and making more and more of that functionality available to everybody, not just the two or three hospitals that, that had disproportionate scale, but really across the, the whole country and eventually the world.</p><p>[00:40:32] And so having, having lived through that, and as I&#39;ve gotten to know the e-commerce space more and more, I think there&#39;s a, there&#39;s a similar pattern that&#39;s starting to play out because e-commerce was, was so nascent for the first 20 years that it was just about, I need to have more items. I need to be able to reach more customers.</p><p>[00:40:47] I need to be able to, I need to have more warehouse capacity, I need to have more fulfillment capacity. It was really about that scale up, but we&#39;ve now started to reach this place where the scale, the growth, and the scale is swelling. And now it becomes a focus on efficiency. And I think the innovation that we&#39;ll see over the next 10 years is all about finding, not only can I take cost out, but can I increase and improve the consumer experience while I&#39;m taking cost out.</p><p>[00:41:11] And I think that&#39;s really where, where this notion of, of democratizing access to this technology and enabling some of these mid-size, mid-size folks or even the folks that have, have large scale and absolute terms. But, but under scale in retailer terms how do we help them compete with With the largest changes and with the largest businesses.</p><p>[00:41:31] And, and then how do we partner with the largest businesses and help support them to, to spend their, their resources on the things that benefit consumers most rather than building infrastructure and tools. And so that&#39;s really how we focus on enabling the whole, the whole ecosystem.</p><p>[00:41:43] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I think it&#39;s great. I really love seeing just a focus on your technology spend and how that affects the customer experience. We&#39;ve been depicting the rules for a long time. And not really considering them in our software decisions. And now I feel that how any software impacts the customer experience is a conversation that&#39;s being had before contracts are signed.</p><p>[00:42:04] And I think it&#39;s, I think that&#39;s definitely a step in the right direction.</p><p>[00:42:07] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. And I think it also relates to an issue that when we last spoke with you, we talked about, if you have a retailer who able to spend on the right technology to help accomplish all these things. You&#39;re also kind of balancing that against what&#39;s the cash outlay for that owned inventory that you need to keep up with.</p><p>[00:42:24] And given that we&#39;ve kind of entered a holiday shopping season here, we know that the, the traditional retail approaches to really stock up on inventory for those holiday selling period. But there&#39;s also right, a model that says, You know what, what about having a more of a just in time merchandising?</p><p>[00:42:41] Model for how you do this, particularly if you are becoming a marketplace. And I think you, you have some thoughts on, on this, right, Bryan?</p><p>[00:42:47] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Y Yeah, certainly. I, you know, I think fir first and foremost, if you asked a business, if you could meet all of your customer needs, would you rather put more of your cash at risk or less of your cash at risk? The, the answer is, The answer&#39;s pretty simple, right? I&#39;d much rather conserve my cash and hold it in my bank account if I could still fulfill and meet all of my, all of my customer needs.</p><p>[00:43:08] And so, You know, I look at that first as a trend and think, Well, if we can, if we land on the right side of that, then we&#39;re probably onto something. And then second is we look at, well, what are the, what are the barriers to meeting all of their, to meeting all of their consumer needs? And there are a number of them.</p><p>[00:43:25] I mean, if we look over the last 18 months, we&#39;ve all lived through these, these incredible supply chain challenges. And not only did you see the, the sometimes historical trends of, Let me boost the inventory I own, as we get into the holiday. But you saw a number of folks placing orders over the last 12 or 18 months to buy more inventory because they were just scared of having empty shelves.</p><p>[00:43:44] And then what you saw in some of the public earning announcements earlier this year, you know, at the end of q1, at the end of q2, you heard people talking about now an inventory surplus. They&#39;d built up all this inventory, but as demand began to contract, they ended up with surplus of what they didn&#39;t want and, and they have to start clearing it out.</p><p>[00:44:00] And so we, we think one. Enabling retailers to conserve their cash or to choose to deploy it elsewhere. It, as long as they can meet all their customer expectations, it is better for their model. And so we really try to think about it less of what is the balance between owned versus unowned inventory and more, how do we enable more of the un unknown inventory to still meet all those consumer expectations?</p><p>[00:44:25] And so when we, when we look at that, that notion of just in time merchandising, we think. How are we enabling more variety and more selection to still meet those consumer expectations? Things like next day Bo as a, as a place that we&#39;re looking at things like what we&#39;re already doing today of narrowing that expectation of when is that item really gonna be on my doorstep?</p><p>[00:44:45] Or there&#39;s, there&#39;s other work that we&#39;ve done with some of our customers where they may have multiple suppliers who provide the same item. And so how do we just automate the process of dropping through that supply? So when your preferred supplier sells through their. You don&#39;t need a merchandise person to go change things.</p><p>[00:45:01] We just wanna fulfill from the next available supplier who has the next best, next, best offering, or next best price or next best shipping method. And how do we just automate that so it&#39;s not blocked by some, by some employee in the merchandising or supply chain team, quite frankly, to go in and hit, hit a green button to turn it on.</p><p>[00:45:17] How do we just automate that process? And so we&#39;re, we&#39;re often looking for ways to take friction out of the system and, and bring some of that more real time and reaction. Experience to, to the offers. I, I think the, maybe the, the more, the broader trend around just in time merchandising is one that&#39;s gonna evolve quite frankly over the next few years.</p><p>[00:45:38] And when, when I look at that, I heard I was talking to one of our retailer executives and, and he made a really interesting comment to me. And his comment was that he sees merchandising shifting from a group of folks who curate particular items. To a group who really curates and nurtures relationships with brands, and, and I thought that that was a, a really interesting notion.</p><p>[00:45:59] We spent a lot of time talking about it. And what it really came down to is that if you think about the world of not just technology, retailers for years have been AB testing on their website, what is the page? What is the orientation that&#39;s gonna deliver the best, the best conversion rate, the best experience for consumers?</p><p>[00:46:15] The best return rate I&#39;m sorry, retention. But you have not seen a lot of that concept extend into the actual items that are being carried. And so where, where I heard this, this retail exec talking about really shifting to a relationship with brands and thinking, how do you entice a brand to just carry their whole catalog?</p><p>[00:46:33] And you can almost start to use your website as a way to test if a, if a, maybe a brand has 10,000 items. Well, you&#39;re only gonna carry probably 200 of them in the. How do you know which 200 to carry and how do you start to let the website and your consumer demand through your website actually give you the data to know of these, of these 10,000 items this brand carries which of the 200 that resonate most with your customers.</p><p>[00:46:58] And there&#39;s something really powerful about knowing that if you&#39;re on you know, abc.com, the customers who are already shopping there are telling you which of this brand&#39;s products they love most and then being able to upgrade that. So, A separate season, not a new wholesale order, not a new, not a new relationship or system setup or six month lag, but how would you change that from a per unit drop ship order or a pure unit marketplace order?</p><p>[00:47:25] And how would you just order a thousand of those most popular I of those 200 popular items to just ship them into your stores directly? And so when we look at this, this notion of just in time merchandising over the next few years, we really see the technology doing more and more automation of the, of the easy and obvious tasks, enabling merchants to be far more sophisticated, far more data led, and thinking much more about relationships with brands and that escalation path that, that some of those SKUs are gonna be sold in the marketplace model.</p><p>[00:47:56] Some are gonna be drop ship and some of they&#39;re gonna make it to the store. And how do we use data to, to really rethink that process and, and evolve it in a way that that just has, has yet to penetrate the, the way that we approach retail today.</p><p>[00:48:07] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> No, I think I, you, you, you beat me to the punch. My, my last question was really No, it was perfect. Was really about like what do you see the biggest change in commerce will be? That will be a new standard in, in about five years. And I think that just in time merchandising pan, like full stop, there&#39;s so much opportunity to make sure that the right product is being shown to the right customer at the right.</p><p>[00:48:30] I&#39;ve been a buyer in a former life, and yeah, you shoot from the hip. There&#39;s not a lot of data decisions that are made from that. And so there&#39;s such a huge opportunity of having the right product or that customer at the right time versus marketing a product to all the customers for a period of.</p><p>[00:48:47] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Well, as a merchandiser, as a buyer. What you&#39;re really trying to do is predict the future. You&#39;re trying to predict which products your customers will love most. </p><p>[00:48:56] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Without customer data</p><p>[00:48:59] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it&#39;s all about the data.</p><p>[00:49:01] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Well, you know, this is not an exclusively retail problem. I mean, across all of technology. For years and years, people have tried to, to, to predict the future of what, of what their customers would want in whatever sector they. And I think what, what we&#39;ve learned across almost every sector is that at scale our opinions kind of suck.</p><p>[00:49:24] Like our opinions aren&#39;t, aren&#39;t very accurate. You know, we have instincts in the directions our ability to read the market of the direction we should go in tends to be pretty accurate. But our ability to read the direction of the specifics and the details is pretty tough. And this is why you see, you know, AB testing is maybe the easiest thing to point to, but it&#39;s not the exclusive one.</p><p>[00:49:44] You see across every industry and every sector, this continual shift to data driven decision making. And today, while it has penetrated things like the, the front end of the, of the retailers&#39; website, it has not made it all the way into the backend, into the merchandising selection, into fulfillment strategies, into into warehouse locations and positioning.</p><p>[00:50:05] There are, there are more and more places where we can use more data from the end. To drive better and smarter decisions and, and to let the data guide guide the way. And I think that is just a, a continual evolution that, that all of us have had to experience across basically every, every vertical because it&#39;s, you know, unless somebody&#39;s got a crystal ball, I don&#39;t know about, or, or a DeLorean that can go back in time, like predicting the future is, is it&#39;s really hard.</p><p>[00:50:31] And so that, that&#39;s where we try to think about partnering with our customers to, to enable a more data driven approach.</p><p>[00:50:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, everybody has an opinion in retail, right? And, you know, we&#39;ve had to rely on that for, for decades. That opinion has carried a lot of weight on business decisions. And I think that, you know, we, I really appreciate you joining us today to dig into this much needed discussion as we approach the new year, new budgets holiday season.</p><p>[00:50:57] Coming in really fast right now, so I have a feeling our listeners will hit the replay button and grab a notebook,</p><p>[00:51:04] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Oh, that&#39;s, that&#39;s very kind to </p><p>[00:51:05] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> uh, re-listen </p><p>[00:51:06] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> both so much for having me today.</p><p>[00:51:07] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> , if any of our listeners, they, if they wanna learn more about Commerce Hub and how you might be able to help them, how should they reach out to you or, or follow you as, as you guys post more information and more case studies and things of that nature.</p><p>[00:51:20] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> Sure. Easiest thing to do, just to learn more about our products and services, it&#39;s commerce hub.com spelled exactly like it sounds. You can also, we post a, a number of stories and, and, and insights that we&#39;ve learned along the way. On the Commerce Hub LinkedIn account, that&#39;s probably the, the most active place where we post content or if anybody has specific questions or wants to get in touch.</p><p>[00:51:37] I&#39;m, I&#39;m personally quite findable on LinkedIn. Feel, Feel more than free to just reach out to me directly and I&#39;ll happily direct you to the right folks on our team.</p><p>[00:51:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. Fantastic. Well, thanks again, Bryan for joining us. We really hope to have you back again soon. This has been a really insightful discussion.</p><p>[00:51:50] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I mean, I can keep </p><p>[00:51:51] you here all day. So Ricardo, I think it&#39;s that time for us to wrap up this episode, but thank you again, Brian. Really appreciate it.</p><p>[00:51:58] <strong>Bryan Dove:</strong> All right, thanks, y&#39;all. Have a great day.</p><h3>[00:52:00] Show Close</h3><p>[00:52:00] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We hope you enjoyed our show and we can&#39;t ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don&#39;t wanna miss a minute of what&#39;s next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don&#39;t forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden. </p><p>[00:52:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:52:48] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:52:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. </p> cf6579f3-9395-4597-9d99-250b3705d14e https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 21 Dec 2022 17:00:00 +0000 3190 no full S2E6 – Holiday Special – Gifting S2E6 – Holiday Special – Gifting 6 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E6 – Holiday Special – Roshan Jhunja & Bridget Johns-Pavlopoulos What will the holiday 2023 shopping season look like for retailers? How are consumers adjusting their shopping, buying, and gifting habits this holiday season given the current economic environment? It’s our Holiday Special episode and we’ve brought in two incredible experts to dive into what’s really happening this season and explore what we expect the season will bring retailers. Meet Roshan Jhunja, Head of Retail for Square, who recently released their holiday Festive Forecast report based on surveying merchants and consumers, and Bridget Johns-Pavlopoulos, co-Founder of To&From, a premium multi-brand marketplace for gifts of all occasions. Square/AfterPay Festive Forecast Report available here: https://bit.ly/3EwpqP2 To&From gifting marketplace: https://app.toandfrom.com/ News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show has been nominated for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during NRF 2023 in January in New York City! IF you’re a fan of the show, please give us your vote! You can vote here: https://bit.ly/VIPretail News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review to be mentioned in upcoming episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Made It On Stream (Xmas), from the album Lo-Fi Christmas, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. Incldues sound effects provided by Free Sounds Library. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E6 Holiday Special [00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: [00:00:20] Show Intro [00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to a very Merry and Joyous season two episode six of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo. [00:00:28] Casey Golden: And I'm your holiday spirited cohost, Casey Golden. Welcome retail Razor Show listeners to retail's favorite jingle, bell filled podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. [00:00:45] Ricardo Belmar: And if you didn't guess by our whimsical and seasonal intro, this is our holiday specials for 2023 episode of the show. [00:00:54] Casey Golden: So Ricardo did. Did you start your holiday shopping or this season? [00:00:58] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Actually, [00:01:00] no, not really. I mean, had every intention to, honestly, ever since that second Amazon Prime day that we're not supposed to call Prime Day, cuz apparently I'm one of the few people who did buy things on that sale, but they were mostly for me and it didn't really help me get the shopping started early. [00:01:14] Casey Golden: Oh, shame on you, Well, didn't you know that every industry expert is saying customers started the season early? Maybe you just need to hear it from our two guests today to get you into the shopping season of giving mode. [00:01:30] Ricardo Belmar: Well, funny you should say that, Casey, because I bet many of our listeners are just like me and could use some insider knowledge on gifting and shopping ideas for the season. And by the way, did you start your shopping already, [00:01:42] Casey Golden: Of course I did. My grandmother taught me to shop for thoughtful gifts all year long, but there are always a few emergency pur purchases before, you know, black friday, of course. [00:01:52] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I should have known. So let's tell our listeners then all about our guests for today. Since we're not like other retail podcasts, we don't [00:02:00] just bring you a holiday special episode and talk about sales numbers for year over year stats for the season. No, no, no, of course we don't do that. [00:02:09] Casey Golden: Certainly not. I mean, if you just want those types of numbers, check out the reports on NR F'S website instead, we're bringing you some much needed insights into what retailers and consumers are, not just thinking. , but what they're actually doing so far this season. [00:02:25] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Today we will be chatting with Roshan Jhunja, the head of retail for Square, who will be sharing some valuable insights from their recently released holiday forecast and survey of merchants and consumers. [00:02:37] Casey Golden: And we also have Bridget Johns co-founder of To & From a premium multi-brand marketplace for gifts of all occasion. Who will share some interesting data about how consumers are shopping for gifts, and maybe she'll give us a few hints on what the hot presents really are this season. [00:02:54] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I could certainly use some help in that department, so let's not keep everybody waiting and dive right into our [00:03:00] discussion with Roshan and Bridget. [00:03:06] Holiday Special - Gifting [00:03:06] Casey Golden: welcome everyone. We all know that finding that perfect gift is no easy task. But our guests have been making holiday shopping a lot more productive for retailers to prepare for the holiday season and less stressful on our pocketbooks. Alarming stat, 41% of Americans are willing to take on debt to gift shop with a whopping 15.2 billion is the estimated total of unwanted presents. [00:03:35] This is worth the conversation. We all say we're starting out our holiday shopping early this year, but what are we buying? What are the trends in who's shopping where and with what? Let's unwrap the holiday gift shopping season. This is our 2023 holiday special report. [00:03:53] Ricardo Belmar: And of course when the retail razor show does a holiday special, we don't just run through all the usual stats everybody else talks about. [00:04:00] You know the ones, how much will sales increase year over year? What categories will underperform or overperform, all the usual suspects? No, we like to take a different approach and leverage some real world experts that have read the pulse of both retailers and consumers. [00:04:14] So to help us unwrap this holiday special extravaganza. We brought in two experts on the topic, Roshan Jhunja, head of retail at Square joins us today hot off the heels of releasing Square, and AfterPay's festive forecast report, Roshan will be sharing many facts and stats from that extensive merchant and consumer survey. [00:04:33] Welcome Roshan. [00:04:34] Roshan Jhunja: Thank you, Ricardo Casey. Glad to be here. [00:04:36] Casey Golden: And since it's the season of Gift Giving, we've also brought in Bridget Johns, co-founder of To and From a Premium Multi-brand marketplace for every occasion guest to share interesting facts and figures about how people are shopping, why they're shopping, and. What they're shopping for. As we learn why To and From's mission is to change how we feel about gift [00:05:00] giving and receiving. [00:05:01] Welcome Bridget. [00:05:02] Bridget Johns: thanks so much for having. [00:05:04] Ricardo Belmar: let's go to you first. We're gonna talk a lot about your Festive Forecast report in this episode because we're all about the data on this show. So why don't you start us off by telling us a little bit about your background and what you do at Square and Afterpay, and explain to us the methodology in the survey and you know, who are the respondents? [00:05:22] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. Glad to do that. So just to recap, square started with a purpose, which was to enable any individual or business to participate in the economy. And today, [00:05:31] 13 years after that, [00:05:31] founding, we've got a full ecosystem of commerce solutions from software to hardware, enabling merchants of every size type and complexity to run their business on Square. [00:05:39] That includes retailers, restaurants, beauty, personal care. And so my role at Square is looking after the retail vertical. So in particular, I'm the head of retail at Square. I've been at the company for six years. Before this I was largely in financial services, but kind of was interested in the mission and purpose of Square, and that's what sort of brought me and keeps me and, and my goal. [00:05:59] And I'm, I'm, you know, [00:06:00] the thing that keeps me excited and, and eager to get going every day is to empower retailers of all sizes to. By leveraging Square's platform. So I over oversee all the aspects of the vertical and we were really looking to create the best possible experience for retailers who run their businesses on square. terms of the methodology of this survey you know, like any good survey, it's important to make sure you've got a broad cross section. So we looked at both the consumer side 1000 consumers in the US as well as the seller side. So on the consumers, you know, we surveyed at the beginning of September, we made sure that we got equal gender representation. [00:06:33] We made sure that it was a broad demographic from, you know, the, the different regions in the us, northwest south, the Midwest, and, and. generationally, because that's increasingly an important access to look at. We made sure to include gen Z and millennials. In fact, you know, those kind of younger cohorts made up about 40% of the survey, but we also heard from Gen X, baby boomers and the postwar generation. [00:06:55] And so, you know, by doing so, we were able to draw out some meaningful distinctions between [00:07:00] how those different consumers operate. And then lastly, we also made sure to, to cover the seller side of the story. So we surveyed almost 600 square sellers in the us you know, of varying sizes, including some larger sellers. [00:07:11] And you know, one of the things that we did here was we looked year over year factoring, you know, some data that we have both on the square and after pay side. And yeah, eager to get into some of the the. [00:07:21] Ricardo Belmar: All right, fantastic. I'm looking forward to that. So Bridget, let's have you jump in here. You know, we've known each other for a long time now, but for listeners, why don't you tell us your background and what did you, and why did you get into the, the gifting side of the business and what makes gifting such a challenge? [00:07:34] And of course, what makes to and from unique. [00:07:37] Bridget Johns: Yeah. Thank you so much for asking. I've been in retail my entire life. I grew up on a farm and my first retail business was a corn stand when I was 10 years old. I moved on to more exciting retail. Worked for many years for brands like Ralph Lauren Home Collection, Tiffany and Co L'Oreal. And for the last 12 years as you know, Ricardo, I worked for Retail Next, which is an analytics company based in Silicon Valley, really focused [00:08:00] on brick and mortar data, data gathering of, of customer. [00:08:04] Action inside of brick and mortar stores. So as I started thinking about how I wanted to take my two sets of experience and bring them together to start my own company, gifting was obvious. It's my love language. It always has been. And I see a lot of pain points in today's gifting in the gifting world. [00:08:22] So those sort of break down into three categories that I talk about as discovery. It's hard for people to find good gifts. If you go to large marketplaces and you search for something, you are probably gonna be disappointed in those search results. there are No tools really for modern gifting. [00:08:45] On the digital side when you get outside of those large marketplaces. So there aren't things like widely adopted universal registry. There isn't a data set that really allows. Somebody to understand a consumer and their [00:09:00] preferences when it comes to when it comes to the people that are they're buying for and the occasions they're buying for them in their life. [00:09:06] And the third thing is, as Casey talked about, you know, 15.2 billion in returns of gifts, people don't like the gifts that they're getting. So our idea. That there is enough data in the market and that people will tell you about what they actually want as gifts, that if you bring it together intelligently and layer it in with some really good curation and some really awesome tools that help to just manage the day to day gifting that you can deliver a much better experience for consumers. [00:09:37] So that's what we're building at, to and from. [00:09:40] Casey Golden: It's great and it is all about consumers. So let's talk about the first step to any gift giving inspiration, stocking up on ideas and making a list. This is really where I see an opportunity for retailers to win customers over through product discovery. Where are shoppers getting their inspiration from holiday purchases? [00:09:59] Bridget? [00:09:59] Bridget Johns: That is [00:10:00] a great question and I think Roan will probably say the same. They get through inspiration everywhere and sometimes in the most unusual places. I have a 10 year old son who is a hockey player in a hockey mom's group on Facebook, and you would be shocked to see how much conversation is about hockey related. [00:10:21] For their hockey players. So I think, and it's like one of the things that we do at to and from is we get very precise about the occasion, the relationship, and the interests of the people who you're buying for so that you can get very targeted in really good gift recommendations. [00:10:38] Casey Golden: Roshan, your report has some interesting stats on this topic. What did your surveyed customers say about how they come up with their gift ideas? [00:10:46] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, well, you know, picking up directly from what Bridget was touching on earlier family and friends, right. So, you know, what we found was that about. 43% of consumers are looking to family and friends of their top sources of inspiration. You know, and I'm sure that includes, you know, [00:11:00] Facebook forums and whatnot that that hockey thing resonated. [00:11:03] My father-in-law is an avid Giants fan. And you know if I could find the right place to source more giants gifts for him, I absolutely would. I think I've kind of exhausted what's out there. But for sure family and friends followed by being in. And you know, this is where retailers really get a chance to cultivate some of the in-store experience and make sure that it's a great place to discover new products. [00:11:22] And then, you know, [00:11:23] following along after that would be websites, blogs, and forums. And so, You know, obviously social media's gotten a lot better with targeting. You know, a lot of folks in their, you know, as they're scrolling their feeds are gonna you know, be presented with lots of ideas there. [00:11:36] But one thing that I will mention that, that I found relevant is that, you know, almost 20% of shoppers really are preferring products that are sustainable or ethical. So that's a pretty important trend, and one by the way that I expect to continue, especially as you know, gen Z continues to come into more purchasing power and makes up a larger portion of the consumer base. [00:11:55] Casey Golden: Speaking of Mary Zema and Mary Exes, I think there's a bit . Our, our, our [00:12:00] target markets have actually quite changed recently. So I heard Gen Xers spend the most money on gifts and they feel like they receive the worst gifts with 44% of them disliking what they receive. So since they're impossible to please end up the forgotten generation, let's just talk about Mary Zema and Gen in Gen Z, , because this is very interesting as like a prime. [00:12:24] Consumer target for a lot of retailers right now is, is trying to capture those eyeballs. [00:12:29] Ricardo Belmar: And I think as I looked through the festive forecast report, one of the things I took away is it seems like one of the indicators that younger shoppers, let's say Gen Z and millennials, are really looking to create something meaningful with gift giving versus just finding something they think will be a super interesting gift or, or item that the other person wants, which I think tends to be the way Gen Xers look, look at that concept. So I'm, I'm curious lemme go to you first. I, are you seeing trends like that reflected in your data at, to and from? [00:12:59] Bridget Johns: [00:13:00] Yeah, a hundred percent. So we have deeply attributed all of the products that are on our, on our platform. So we have 5,000 products across 500 brands, and each of those products is attributed for all the normal things that you would expect, like size and function and form, and. All those things, but also we have attributed across values that people care about. [00:13:21] So you're able to, you know, search for black own businesses or female female owned companies, or sustainable, or B corporation or whatever it is. And what we see is that not only do we overindex on search. With those attributes. So people are very highly interested in gifts that have a social tag attached to them, as Roan was saying before. [00:13:46] So we're definitely seeing that. But then we also see that those products lead to when you can find the product that has that social attribute, it leads to higher conversion. So, not only are people searching them, but they're also buying [00:14:00] and we see that across Across all of our demographics. So as a proud Gen Xer gen Xers also I think are interested in finding those right those right products that match the values of themselves or for someone else. [00:14:14] As someone once told me, he said, you know, I might know, not know what my girlfriend would like for her birthday, but I know what she's interested in. Like I know the social causes she's interested in. So it becomes this trigger that can actually help. The gift making decision, the decision making around gifting. [00:14:32] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. That's super interesting. So, Roshan, what, what else can you tell us from the findings in the report about these generational differences in shopping and are, are there different expectations from in each demographic? [00:14:47] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. You know it's interesting because this is where a bunch of elements in the kind of the buyer journey may start to differ. I think, you know social media that I touched on earlier is certainly a more important influence for some of the, [00:15:00] the younger generations. I think 25% of shoppers, for example would spot gift ideas on Facebook or I. [00:15:05] I also think that it changes a little bit of the the buying timeline, whereas older generations are likely to get more of their holidays shopping earlier. We do have you know an emphasis on the younger generations trying to, and maybe waiting more towards promotional periods and, and sometimes even you know, pushing it right up until the holidays. [00:15:23] And so I do think that there's also a difference. Motivations, whereas older generations focus on value and making sure that the gifts are kinda targeted. There's more of an emphasis on the emotion from younger generations and kinda, you know the feelings that you know, they're creating meaningful connection. [00:15:39] And you know there's a, a sentimentality that's attached to. [00:15:42] Casey Golden: I like to hear that. So customers will look to family and friends for recommendations and in-store experiences and environments provide these high impact results for gift ideas. Sales may spur to get them to spend. Bridget, I can imagine disseminating customer behavior [00:16:00] during this season is difficult, and you mentioned that you have a lot of different types of tags and, and the way that you're indexing your catalogs and products. [00:16:09] How do you look at your assortment planning and really build those recommendation builders when it's not on the customer shopping, but who the customer's shopping for? I can imagine it's much more complex. [00:16:23] Bridget Johns: It's very complex and I think it's one of the reasons that gifting fails so often on the regular digital commerce experience. Like you don't have those normal tags that you would have in your regular life. Like we don't go shopping with our husbands anymore, like you. Walk around the mall and something catches your eye and you, your husband notices that something caught your eye just doesn't happen. [00:16:52] So we hear stories about husbands like creeping on their wives, fa Pinterest accounts, and , all of these wacky things that people do. But at the end [00:17:00] of the day, what you really need to do is you, I, well, the way we've approached it is, Assorted based on what we know as retailers. So a team of retail experts. [00:17:10] We've lived in brand, the brand, world merchandising world. Product world, understand the, you know, brands that we wanted to start with. And then we from there we've really led with the data, like what are customers telling us? How are they experiencing the platform? What are the things that are important to them? [00:17:29] You know, when we started, we didn't have a like mandate around values. And as we started doing a lot of consumer testing, one of the things that we heard time and time again was that consumers, as we've talked a little bit about really were leaning into the values of the brands that we were recommending. [00:17:47] So now I think. , probably 90% of our brands have some kind of a social tag attached to them. So if a customer is really wanting to shop their values, they're able to do that. And [00:18:00] it's the beauty of a digital business is that you can react really quickly. And we can flex up and down based on what we're hearing from our consumers and what their interests are at any given. [00:18:10] Casey Golden: And where does all of this excitement come from? You know, why are people gifting and, and how has that changed? You, your report mentioned kind of the, the purpose behind the why of this motivation for gift giving across these different demographics and the way that they look at it or feel about it. [00:18:31] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. You know, what I'd say here is, is just, you know, again, to revisit why people are looking forward to the holidays. You know, the, the social connection is actually right up at the top of, of motives, right? I think we, we see a lot, especially the younger generations interested to see friends and family you know, the celebratory atmosphere. [00:18:48] And so, you know, but to lesser extent, you know, there is a, an important component of holidays that, that is really about gifting. [00:18:56] The good news is that in my book, you know, it's actually kind of a minority [00:19:00] that's focusing on gifting because it's expected, because it's traditional. And, and what you have instead is a big focus on showing love and care, putting a smile on somebody's face, you know, the, the, the good feeling you get from giving a gift. [00:19:12] And so these are all things that are kind of driving some of the behaviors out there. And so, you know, I think it's, it's important for retailers to consider how they can actually enable those outcomes, right? How they can Effectively cultivate their product assortment that aligns with what will make people feel good and, and make them feel like they're able to convey that love and care. [00:19:31] Casey Golden: A hundred percent. The the why leads to the what. [00:19:35] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, exactly. And you know, as you, as you I hear you saying that, RO I'm, I'm thinking about the opportunity retailers have to really lean into their loyalty programs during this season to help drive some, of these gift purchases. you know, do, do you have any. Tips for retailers just based on the research findings in the study or on what you would tell 'em to do and how to leverage or how to best leverage their loyalty [00:20:00] program. [00:20:00] Any interesting examples from some of the merchants you work with? [00:20:03] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. You know, that's a great question. There's a couple of high level things I think that are going on especially this year, which is, you know, obviously we've had a lot of macro things going. On with inflation you know, and you know, symmetrically what, what our report found was. Despite what's going on out there, people are still interested in spending money for the holidays. [00:20:22] Consumers are gonna go out and the majority of them are gonna spend more. Some of them intend to spend, you know, quite a bit more. Still a very important time you know, for retailers to really think about how to reach those consumers now. But the, but the interesting aspect here is also that consumers are more than ever interested in. [00:20:38] Given that their money is, is you know, there might, it might not buy as much as it did before, really focusing in on what's gonna be a great value. And that's not always about the dollar. It sometimes comes down to things like return policies and, you know, a bunch of other value add components that retailers can add to kind of take some of the risk outta it and, and make sure that, you know, again, dealing with some of the the unwanted gift giving you know, there's, [00:21:00] there's ways to deal with that. [00:21:01] So, so as far as loyalty is concern I think this is a great time, especially for retailers that have oversupplied given some of the supply chain concerns and have just a lot of inventory sitting. There is a buyer out there for, for these things, right? But you may have to do a little bit more work to find them. [00:21:17] And so I think leaning into loyalty and marketing to make sure that you're kind of targeting the right people. And, and for some retailers that means doing so in different ways. Leaning into omnichannel, leaning into, you know, social channels to promote their items is gonna be super. So here, I would say that, you know, sending out marketing messages make sure that folks are, it's not just enough to, to have the sale. [00:21:37] People have to know about it. And, and there's, you know, a lot to choose from out there. So making sure that there's marketing messages that are promoting what's going on, keeping your brand top of mind. There was one seller that I would call out Sasha, who's the operations manager of the Chakra Shack, which is a spiritual gift shop in Laguna. [00:21:52] They're using Square for in person online this season. They're excited about using loyalty for the first time. It's something where, you know, they are really excited to [00:22:00] see what happens with customers in terms of, you know, how motivated are they by the rewards and the discounts? How's that gonna impact the business in the long term? [00:22:06] I really think that leaning into marketing, you know, especially with a lot of folks thinking about potential downturn next year, this is a really great time to kinda, you know focus. Refining your marketing approach because it's likely to be important for your business in the, in the coming months. [00:22:21] Bridget Johns: Yeah, and I would just, I would just add to that, that I think when you talk about loyalty, all of the things Rashaan said a hundred percent, but you also have to think about what's the value add for your consumer. And I'm surprised, especially in the, in the digital world, how few brands offer. Gift messaging and gift wrapping. [00:22:41] Two of the easiest things that you can do to really build loyalty for your customers and retailers, by and large fall short. Either the wrapping is terrible, there's no way to have a gift card, or it's so terrible that you wouldn't wanna use it anyhow. So just like think a little bit more [00:23:00] about what you would like as a consumer and build that into your loyalty program, I think could have a pretty tremendous impact. [00:23:06] Casey Golden: And just to validate that I do all of my Christmas shopping at one store. Because they offer free gift wrapping, beautiful note and free shipping [00:23:18] Ricardo Belmar: There you go. [00:23:19] Proof [00:23:19] Roshan Jhunja: That's amazing. I hope, I hope lots of retailers. Yeah. I hope the retailers hear [00:23:23] that. That's loyalty. If [00:23:24] Casey Golden: because I have a wonderful time shopping. I take it to the counter, I write my little notes and they gift wrap it and mail it out, and I'm done. And can go get a cappuccino and or a glass of wine [00:23:37] Bridget Johns: Yeah, really. [00:23:39] Ricardo Belmar: It's the way we all wanna shop [00:23:40] Casey Golden: not saying where I shop .It's not for everyone. [00:23:45] Ricardo Belmar: So I, I guess I, I want to kind of maybe switch a little bit here and talk about something, Roshan you touched on it a little bit a few moments ago, which is maybe the, in some ways the big elephant in the room for this season, which is, you know, everyone's worried about what impact of inflation may have on [00:24:00] shopping. [00:24:00] I think you've both kind of mentioned that if, if we go by what you're seeing so far, it actually maybe doesn't seem like it's causing consumers to shop less or to buy less at least so far at this stage in the holiday season. And I wanna talk a little bit about what, what the impact of buy now pay later has on [00:24:18] all of this , to be totally honest about it, right? Casey and I talked about this way back into our predictions episode at the start of the year, and we probably weren't the, the kindest people towards the, the category of type of payments and that, you know, our prediction was that there was gonna be a lot of consolidation in that space and that there was a risk that, you know, there may be regulators looking at what the impact on savings and consumers in general was gonna be, and I suppose you could make an argument that, you know, after pay becoming part of Square kind of speaks to that consolidation piece of it. But I think for the most part, all the other things we predicted on this one really haven't come to pass. And I think the momentum is still there behind buy now pay later. [00:24:54] So what I wanted to get into, and, and you have some interesting data on this in, in [00:25:00] the report, Roshan, on what impact, let's maybe start with the merchant side of it, you know, does offering B NPL to consumers, but both online and in store and across channels, what impact is that having this season on consumers either, either ability to buy their propensity to want to buy from a retailer that offers it, for example, versus one that's not? [00:25:20] Or what interesting trends are you seeing? [00:25:22] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, it's great. It's a great lead in to say that you know, there were some predictions about this particular service and you know, looking at how it's been faring, I think is honestly, you know, the most important. And that is It's only increasing in terms of its importance for consumers, you know, and I think most online shoppers you know, have heard about it at this point. [00:25:40] And increasing more online shoppers this year, plan to use by now, later compared to last year from the, from the seller's standpoint from people that are offering this as a service. A hundred percent. Believe that it's going to help them with the, the younger demographics. So like the Gen Z you know, who are more, have a higher propensity to use by now, pay later. [00:25:57] You know, those are consumers that are citing an [00:26:00] interest in budgeting and immediacy, right? So, so wanting to actually have the item in hand at the moment. So being able to reach newer shoppers and I. We have seen this with more traction online for sure. But a lot of in-store retailers, what they're finding is that the need to have a coherent experience, you know, across channels. [00:26:16] This is the kind promise of omnichannel and always has been, is that, you know, your, and your ability to transact. Extends across all the various, you know, in-store, omnichannel, social, you meet your customer where they're in a consistent way. They know what to expect from you. And so I think that's a really important translation to make sure that, you know, those customers that maybe found you online or discovered you on social you know, have the same experience when they come to visit your store. [00:26:39] And, and that's just, you know, a powerful consistency and, and coherence kinda. But in terms of discovery a hundred percent. You know, there's a, there's a really impactful, you know, for, for the fa the fans of B now pay later who are looking to discover more sellers. I think there's several tools including you know, with Square and Afterpay, where you can actually use buy now [00:26:58] after pay supporting sellers [00:27:00] to kind of filter and discover who else out there might be able to support you with this really powerful buying mechanism. [00:27:07] You know, I think the stats are, are pretty telling here. It did start in Australia there, you know, there was you know, it skyrocketed in terms of its penetration both for consumers and, and of course for sellers. And in the US it is continuing to take off. We have now one in eight shoppers that would sign up for a buy now pay later service. [00:27:23] Like I said earlier, you know, it's trending up in terms of the number of online shoppers planning to use buy now, pay later, like after pay. So again, it's it's, it's here. I think the inflation inflationary impacts are an extra tailwind because you know, more people are looking to smooth the, the impact of their purchases and, and it helps a lot with budget planning. [00:27:40] Ricardo Belmar: Let's move into, talking about sales channels , one of the biggest recent debates going on in, the media about retail has to do with e-commerce, of course, since the pandemic taking over in store shopping is, is it true, is it not true? What, what's happened with social commerce? How does this all compare to the numbers of [00:28:00] people shopping in store versus these other digital channels and, and which one is likely to come out on top as the dominant format? [00:28:07] Which in some ways, I think a lot of times what consumers want gets lost in the noise. When we read about all this, all these reports in the media. So Roshan lemme start with you on this one. You know, given that this popular narrative right now for so long, and again, because of the pandemic, is that e-commerce was just gonna leapfrog all this growth. [00:28:25] Massive growth stores would close and suffer. Of course, it turns out that didn't happen. consumers are still going to stores and I think we're seeing in, in a surge now in consumers wanting to. In store and get that experience. you had some interesting in the surveys to both consumers, I think, and to your, your merchants about this. [00:28:41] What, what can you tell us and about what's happening here? [00:28:44] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, I think you know, some of what we found in the survey was that Americans are most likely to get their gifts at online marketplace. You know, followed by discount department stores and superstores. One of the interesting things about this point you made about online is that in fact what we saw post pandemic was a lot of folks [00:29:00] interested to go back and reconnect with that in-store shopping experience. [00:29:03] And so, you know, while there was a very pronounced immediate shift when folks had no other option, we definitely saw it kinda rebound back to a place where people. Still value in store. Now, one of the most exciting trends to me personally is experiential retail, where, you know, interestingly from a staffing perspective, we've found that as brick and mortar retailers are adding staff to with in buyers to stores. [00:29:26] Who they're adding is actually, you know, baristas and, and more of this experiential aspect of, you know, coffee with your, your retail purchase. I know Casey values that, especially when she's done wrapping things up. You know, but, but it's kind of the, the retail store, the, the brick and mortar retail store as like a, a core component of your your neighborhood and your c. [00:29:46] And being a destination for folks you know, to get more than just a product. You know, also, you know, for bookstores doing book signings or, or music or, or coffee shops. And so I think that's in my mind one of the more powerful drivers of the channel mix is in store for discovery, [00:30:00] but also for experience. [00:30:01] But in terms of, you know, the, the, the buyer journey, this is an interesting one. It's not as cut and dry. You, you, you alluded to, you know, there's a lot of predictions out there in the media. It's not as cut and dry as you know, Hey, all, every, you know, online's gonna eat everything or social's gonna eat everything. [00:30:15] I think what we see instead is that discovery may happen in one place and that sometimes can be like social media More information often happens with, you know, researching, you know, product listings, maybe going in store to touch and feel and try something out, and the actual purchase may happen at yet a later time, whether that's via, you know, a conversational commerce with you know, the seller, like texting them, you know, what, I actually did decide to buy that thing. [00:30:38] Or, you know, maybe hitting the website. And so really it kind of this is, you know, the emergent omnichannel nature of, of shopping, right? It's kinda like your discovery to your. Finding more information to your ultimate purchase, and then even your return may all be at different places and at different times. [00:30:54] And so that's that kinda you know, in some senses muddies the waters, but but also make it more important to have a, [00:31:00] a coherent strategy of a presence across all the, your buyers wanted to. But in terms of the. The other point you raised on which social platform is it gonna be and, you know what's kind of most compelling? [00:31:12] I don't think that that there is a, a right answer to it. I think it has a lot to do with generational preference. I think there's always gonna be some social media platform or right around the corner, many of whom are trying to keep people on the platform. And by this I mean, if you are a retail seller one of the things that we're always encouraging folks to do is try to the grave you can to drive that purchase back to your site. [00:31:33] And the reason for this, Your ability to kind of have the customer information and to you know, be able to market to them is, is greatly diminished if, if it's, you know, entirely transacting outside of you know on a different e-commerce property. Right? And so there's also, there's a hundred percent powerful convenience, but this is where. [00:31:51] Being very deliberate about your strategy. Which products are you going to sell, and which channels and which marketplaces, and what, how then will you draw your [00:32:00] consumer back to learn more about your full assortment in, you know, on your website or in your store? I think that's an increasingly important strategy for, for all retailers to think about. [00:32:08] Casey Golden: are you seeing any trends around that buy online, pickup in store? I mean, I haven't had a lot of success with. That personally, but I know that it's been had huge growth over the, the pandemic and if it's carrying on here through holiday season. [00:32:22] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, I think it's one of these things that along with the shift to e-commerce, the, the buy line pickup in store, buy. Buy online and return in store as well are here to stay. I don't think again that they're at the levels of engagement when there was no other option. But for sure we see increasingly retailers asking for ways to support this and looking for solutions that help them support you know, that flexibility of buy online and, and, and coming back to. [00:32:46] Casey Golden: I found it quite interesting that the report found that like 53% of customers are planning to purchase gifts online compared to in-store. But it still sounds like. E-commerce matters just as much as in store and you almost can't [00:33:00] operate one without the other. How do you see this with your reports and then just experience with Square being able to understand how that customer's buying online and in store. [00:33:09] Is there like certain KPIs that this is increasing, that it's 50 50? Is it 30%? Just kind of curious what, what that looks like from an omnichannel perspective. [00:33:19] With Square you have a really unique visibility to how much omnichannel business is driving each other. [00:33:26] Being able to track that customer from in-store purchases, online purchases. What does it look like? in the past has been kind of like a black hole and we just make assumptions. But you have a unique perspective. [00:33:38] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. So what I would say here is I find that this varies a lot by the types of seller you know, with with our Square for retail offering, we tend to concentrate a lot on apparel. Where, where we see that a lot of discovery is happening online. We were just talking to hot Sam in Detroit. [00:33:51] A week or two ago, and they were describing how discovery online is a really important component of the, the buyer journey, but ultimately coming into the store [00:34:00] to engage with staff, to, to finalize that purchase, make sure that the, the fitting and whatnot is right. And, and that experience will be different for something that's a little bit more commoditized and not as bespoke. [00:34:10] You know, that requires kinda the assistance of an in store person. And so something like electronics or home goods, what we find is that there's a lot of folks who are willing to transact online. So the answer unfortunately isn't you know, as straightforward, although I, I will say that I, you know, they continue to be equally important channels. [00:34:27] You know, like you said before, you've got 53% of consumers planning to purchase. Gifts online compared to in store, that that's kinda an equal mix. And so really it, it goes back to that omnichannel journey that I mentioned where I think consumers really want a blend of online and in person experiences so they can purchase the way they want depending on what its, and you know, what they need in that moment. [00:34:47] Ricardo Belmar: So Bridget, obviously to and from focuses on the e-commerce experience and as you told us at, at the beginning of our session that, you know, you were looking to change things around [00:35:00] on, on solving discovery issues and gifting. , I'm sure you are now, you know, obviously well into the holiday season, seeing a increase in site visits and searches, et cetera. [00:35:09] What, what can you tell us about some of the unique trends you're seeing there? And I'm curious. How are consumers finding your site when they start their search for. [00:35:18] Bridget Johns: Yeah, so I think there are a few things that are important. I, you know, said before that you have to be where the consumer is. And for us that means being very precise about how we communicate to them. So we've talked a little bit about how we attribute and about how we organize our products to be able to. [00:35:35] Really dial into the occasion and the relationship and the preferences of the person receiving the gift. So because we've built our system to because we've built to and from, to allow for that, it allows us to be very precise in our marketing so we can very easily. Create a blog post about, you know, my sister who lives in a mid-century modern house who loves gardening. [00:35:58] So you can bring these [00:36:00] like disparate attributes together and create a very quickly create a list of gifts that will be appropriate for that person. And what that allows us to do is it allows us to meet the customer where they, where they are. To very specific Facebook group or whether it's a creator that's focused on a particular segment or topic or whatever it is. [00:36:20] And we've had a lot of success just being able to, to be so precise with the, the data and the assortment. [00:36:26] Ricardo Belmar: Okay, so you really do kind, kind of play on the whole discovery piece by creating these kind of interesting, inspirational moments of, of discovery. I, I would describe, [00:36:36] Bridget Johns: Yeah, and we do that across lots of different channels because customers are everywhere. So, you know, for one particular customer it might be a Facebook group for another customer, it might be a creator that's focused on gift wrapping and really like dialing into their audience and the. The types of people who like to follow their content, whatever it is. [00:36:55] So it's been like a really, a really interesting journey for me having lived my whole life in brick and [00:37:00] mortar to start being able to really dial into these little micro moments in a impactful way. [00:37:06] Ricardo Belmar: So Roshan mentioned this or touched on a little bit earlier and some of the sources of inspiration, I mentioned social media and that always makes me think about social commerce in general. So I, I'm curious, Bridget, what opportunity you see in the social commerce space in particular what you're doing at, to and from. [00:37:24] Bridget Johns: Yeah, I mean, it's been obviously a big important conversation for us, and I think there is so, so much interesting retail happening in the social commerce space, having, you know, Having studied retail for, you know, all of my career as, you know, I think being able to tap into that's critically important because it's such an important place for consumers and where they are and what they expect. [00:37:48] What we've done for this holiday season is we've allowed, we're allowing a beset of creators to create these custom gift lists that then they can kind of manage and share to their audience. So they can be pro, [00:38:00] you know, products from our assortment, but they can also be products that they. Think are interesting as gifts and we've given them some really good tools and the feedback has been very good so far. [00:38:10] We'll see through the holiday. Like I said, it's just a test we just launched in June, so we, you know, are still learning along the way. But we think [00:38:17] that, you know, giving tools to creators and, you know, having more visibility for social commerce, we think is important and will continue to be, you know, a growth area over time. [00:38:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I have to agree with that as a, as a growth area for. [00:38:30] Bridget Johns: Yeah, [00:38:31] Ricardo Belmar: so makes me think, you know, timing is everything. and so back in holiday 2020, I, I wrote an article for the Robin Report about the death of Black Friday. And yes, it was meant to shock readers quite a bit. but my point was that Black Friday didn't really need to live on the way we're all used to thinking of it given how consumers started shopping so much earlier in the season, and frankly, how that actually helps retailers manage their inventory better and, and their pricing and discount structure for the season, particularly when we keep running [00:39:00] into these never ending supply chain challenges. [00:39:02] Roha, let me ask you, I mean, one of the findings I noted in the report where that. Younger generations might kind of spring into action with Black Friday and, and, and maybe Cyber Monday as well and get more shopping done. Whereas maybe, you know, gen Xer is like myself and maybe older generations, we might move a little slower and leave the holiday shopping for later and, and end up, you know, doing a lot more of that shopping in December. [00:39:27] Is there really a difference in timing for when each generation starts shopping from the findings you have and, and how should retailers react to thi [00:39:35] Roshan Jhunja: s? [00:39:35] Yeah, it's a, it's a great question on the timing. You know, for a while I think we all know that there was a bit of concern that the, the windows kept stretching earlier and, and, you know, are we gonna eat Thanksgiving dinners or are we just gonna go straight to the stores that day? And so I think what's interesting here is that, you know, we know that three quarters of Americans are gonna have their holiday shopping. [00:39:53] By December 1st. And so there's, it's more crucial than ever to kind of get started. Here we are in November you know, almost [00:40:00] halfway through it. And you know, I think Casey said she was already done. So you know, there's definitely evidence for, for starting earlier. That's not to say that folks won't be purchasing later in the season. [00:40:08] We do know that one in six are gonna start purchasing in earlier December, but by the time you get to mid-December, it's only one in 12. One of the ways to think about this is it makes it crucial to start your marketing as early as possible and to, to target on the channels that you think are important to get visibility out there. [00:40:25] But also it all is not lost, right? Black Friday, I think the term originated from, you know, retailers, you know, that might be in the red all year. Finally get into the black as they get into the holiday season. And so, you know, all is not lost if you kind of miss those early windows. I think still in December what you get is a lot of last minute shopping folks are, are still, like I said, there's a lot of consumer purchasing power out there. [00:40:45] So there's still a big windows opportunity to think about, you know, what inventory you have that you were interested in moving during the holiday season. And again, just continue to lean into marketing and discounting and make sure that you can reach those consumers that are trying to finish up their. [00:40:59] Casey Golden: said that [00:41:00] we weren't gonna focus on like the typical holiday retail trends that everybody else talks about. But what can I say? Like, show me the money we have to say a little bit before we close on what sales expectations are. Right. Ro in the report it says that 44% of retailers expect sales to grow this season. [00:41:19] Another 20% expect everything to remain pretty flat. Putting you on the spot here, how much of this do you think is due to inflation prices? Especially considering the expectations of heavy discounting? What's, what's kind of your prediction here? [00:41:35] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, you know, It's, it's a good thing. You know, you let in with a follow of the money. Best I can tell folks are still spending and, and it's surprising in some ways because, you know, there is a lot going on. There's a lot of uncertainty and turbin in the world, but consumers are still spending. [00:41:49] And so really what I think, you know, in terms of retailers, they're kind of keyed into this and they know that you know, that there's still you know, transactions that folks are, are interested in. Some of the stats that we cited [00:42:00] earlier where there are significant portions of the consumer base that is going to spend more than last year. [00:42:04] Some of them ex expect to spend quite a bit more. You know, that right there is your inflationary answer. Even though those dollars are buying less, they're going to spend more of those dollars to make sure they can get the gifting done that they wanna do. And so, you know, yes, there's expectations in heavy discounting. [00:42:19] I would expect that to skew more towards the larger retailers. We've all seen headlines, whether it be Target, and you know you know, Some of the other folks that really leaned heavily into supply chain by overstocking. But I would say for smaller retailers, I don't know that there's gonna be as aggressive ing. [00:42:34] We do know that, you know, most folks in order to be moved by a discount, it needs to be 20% or more right. For them to even consider that changing their behavior. But here I would expect that I expect that retailers are still gonna see a lot of strong purchasing this holiday season. [00:42:48] Casey Golden: Bridget, I'm not gonna let you escape this one either. What is your overall hot take on sales this season? I come from a world of luxury, so there's no discounts on designer handbags. They're under the trees , [00:43:00] but. [00:43:03] Bridget Johns: Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting. I mean, I have been really impressed with actually the transparency from brands particularly the direct to consumer brands where they have. Not started their discounting, but they have told you they're going to start it. So you get an email that says, our friends and family or our Black Friday is going to start on this day, sign up to be on the list. [00:43:25] So it automatically puts it in your mind and you're like, okay. Like I, to me, that is one of the biggest shifts in email marketing. I haven't seen it and. Past years where you're getting like proactive notifications that the, you always know the sale is coming, but for D to C brands to be like, okay, next Friday we're gonna have 20% off, so be ready, or, you know, get early on the list. [00:43:47] I think it's super interesting this season. And I, I agree with Roshan. I like, I think it's going to be like flat to up. I don't think it's gonna be down. [00:43:56] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. I think everyone will be happy to hear [00:43:59] Bridget Johns: I [00:44:00] also don't, I also don't, but I also don't think it's gonna feel like a win [00:44:03] because I think retailers are gonna have to work so hard to get that flat up that it's gonna feel very painful. [00:44:11] Casey Golden: Very painful. I mean, we're not really used to this holiday rush. Right. And if they're. They're budgeting their staff and increasing their budgets on the experiential associates. In moments like baristas rather than store staff. I think we can expect that there's gonna be some longer lines. Longer hours, rather than hiring more staff. [00:44:30] Everybody's just gonna be working longer, so, Take it easy on everybody working in [00:44:35] stores this season. Be kind, find your patience. Bring your own hot cocoa [00:44:42] Ricardo Belmar: That's [00:44:42] right. [00:44:42] Casey Golden: if you have to. [00:44:43] Ricardo Belmar: telling stat, maybe what we're all gonna look at after the season is what was the margin pressure for retailers? So wherever the sales end up, I, I think even if we all say it's flat to up how, much of those dollars, you know, translated into [00:45:00] margin for retail, I think that's gonna be the, the big question. [00:45:02] So, to close this out today, Roshan, If you could leave our retailers retailing listeners your top holiday tip, what would it be. [00:45:11] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, look a lot of what we covered today, including omnichannel and wanting to meet buyers where they are as well as making sure that you're leveraging your discounting. I think you really have to lean into the data. Here the top tip I have is to make sure that your inventory management system, your, your catalog management is up to date. [00:45:29] You can lean heavily into those reports, right? So, you know, one of the things that Square's been doing to empower retailers is to make sure that we allow you to have insights into your data where, you know, to your point on margins, right, and your costs are good, sold. But also, you know, what's selling, you know, what are your velocities like, and, and what should you do as a result? [00:45:43] And maybe the things that are moving less quickly need more aggressive discounting. So I would say that the, the more you can leverage digitizing your catalog and inventory information, the less, like the more able you are to sell effectively online. The less likely you are to run out of inventory unexpectedly, right? [00:45:58] And, and those dreaded outta stock [00:46:00] moments. And most importantly, you can leverage that reporting. You can learn from what you're, if you've been doing this for a year, you can learn from last year to project, you know, how you need to run this holiday season. Or you can leverage what's happening now to predict the future. [00:46:11] And so I would say really emphasize leaning on your, your digital systems to kinda power you through this holiday. [00:46:18] Casey Golden: So to bring us back to the present. Pun intended. Bridget for everyone starting to shop. I mean, you've got quite a special destination for gifting at to and from, but what are the hottest items under the tree this season? What does everybody want? What are people buying? [00:46:35] Bridget Johns: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I have like the hot take. This is the gift because we're all about that personalized gift that's very specific to you. But we do see gifting breaking down into three very distinct categories. Val values led not value, but values led gifting. So what is important to the person you're gifting for? [00:46:56] I think the second area that we haven't really talked about, but I think is [00:47:00] very important, and it's. Been a bit of a trick I think from retailers is personalization. Cause you can't return something that's personalized. So I think like the personalization has been very key in finding ways to make those gifts feel even more special. [00:47:16] And then the third trend that we're seeing are gifts that really help you spend time together as a family. I think that's something that has continued post covid. Like people have learned that they actually like spending time with their family. And I think that trend. [00:47:30] Actually continues. Like I think that's not something that has gone away. [00:47:34] So I would say those are the three areas. And then, you know, if you're a mid-century modern lover who, you know, likes gardening, you're gonna get something very different than the hockey mom. [00:47:45] Ricardo Belmar: That's very true. Very true. Well, Bridget, Roshan, this has been a fantastic discussion. We can't thank you enough for joining us today for our holiday shopping special episode. We covered so much ground. I can't believe how time has run out on us so [00:48:00] quickly. [00:48:00] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, I had a fantastic time chatting with you all. Thanks for having me on. [00:48:04] Bridget Johns: Yeah, I really enjoyed it, so it was a lot of fun. [00:48:06] Casey Golden: Thank you both for joining us. This show is a wrap [00:48:10] Closing Wishes [00:48:10] Casey Golden: wrapping up this holiday special edition retail razor show and wishing our guests and listeners a very merry holiday. We hope you slay your sales targets and delight your customers this festive season. [00:48:22] Show Close [00:48:22] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:48:54] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore [00:49:00] Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:49:10] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:49:11] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. What will the holiday 2023 shopping season look like for retailers? How are consumers adjusting their shopping, buying, and gifting habits this holiday season given the current economic environment? It’s our Holiday Special episode and we’ve brought in two incredible experts to dive into what’s really happening this season and explore what we expect the season will bring retailers.

 

Meet Roshan Jhunja, Head of Retail for Square, who recently released their holiday Festive Forecast report based on surveying merchants and consumers, and Bridget Johns-Pavlopoulos, co-Founder of To&From, a premium multi-brand marketplace for gifts of all occasions.

 

Square/AfterPay Festive Forecast Report available here: https://bit.ly/3EwpqP2

To&From gifting marketplace: https://app.toandfrom.com/

 

News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show has been nominated for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during NRF 2023 in January in New York City! IF you’re a fan of the show, please give us your vote! You can vote here: https://bit.ly/VIPretail

 

News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review to be mentioned in upcoming episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/

 

Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.

 

Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!

 

Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Made It On Stream (Xmas), from the album Lo-Fi Christmas, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. Includes sound effects provided by Free Sounds Library.

 

The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

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Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod

 

Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar

 

Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey

 

 

TRANSCRIPT

S2E6 Holiday Special

[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar:

[00:00:20] Show Intro

[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to a very Merry and Joyous season two episode six of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo.

[00:00:28] Casey Golden: And I'm your holiday spirited cohost, Casey Golden. Welcome retail Razor Show listeners to retail's favorite jingle, bell filled podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.

[00:00:45] Ricardo Belmar: And if you didn't guess by our whimsical and seasonal intro, this is our holiday specials for 2023 episode of the show.

[00:00:54] Casey Golden: So Ricardo did. Did you start your holiday shopping or this season?

[00:00:58] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Actually, [00:01:00] no, not really. I mean, had every intention to, honestly, ever since that second Amazon Prime day that we're not supposed to call Prime Day, cuz apparently I'm one of the few people who did buy things on that sale, but they were mostly for me and it didn't really help me get the shopping started early.

[00:01:14] Casey Golden: Oh, shame on you, Well, didn't you know that every industry expert is saying customers started the season early? Maybe you just need to hear it from our two guests today to get you into the shopping season of giving mode.

[00:01:30] Ricardo Belmar: Well, funny you should say that, Casey, because I bet many of our listeners are just like me and could use some insider knowledge on gifting and shopping ideas for the season. And by the way, did you start your shopping already,

[00:01:42] Casey Golden: Of course I did. My grandmother taught me to shop for thoughtful gifts all year long, but there are always a few emergency pur purchases before, you know, black friday, of course.

[00:01:52] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I should have known. So let's tell our listeners then all about our guests for today. Since we're not like other retail podcasts, we don't [00:02:00] just bring you a holiday special episode and talk about sales numbers for year over year stats for the season. No, no, no, of course we don't do that.

[00:02:09] Casey Golden: Certainly not. I mean, if you just want those types of numbers, check out the reports on NR F'S website instead, we're bringing you some much needed insights into what retailers and consumers are, not just thinking. , but what they're actually doing so far this season.

[00:02:25] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Today we will be chatting with Roshan Jhunja, the head of retail for Square, who will be sharing some valuable insights from their recently released holiday forecast and survey of merchants and consumers.

[00:02:37] Casey Golden: And we also have Bridget Johns co-founder of To & From a premium multi-brand marketplace for gifts of all occasion. Who will share some interesting data about how consumers are shopping for gifts, and maybe she'll give us a few hints on what the hot presents really are this season.

[00:02:54] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I could certainly use some help in that department, so let's not keep everybody waiting and dive right into our [00:03:00] discussion with Roshan and Bridget.

[00:03:06] Holiday Special - Gifting

[00:03:06] Casey Golden: welcome everyone. We all know that finding that perfect gift is no easy task. But our guests have been making holiday shopping a lot more productive for retailers to prepare for the holiday season and less stressful on our pocketbooks. Alarming stat, 41% of Americans are willing to take on debt to gift shop with a whopping 15.2 billion is the estimated total of unwanted presents.

[00:03:35] This is worth the conversation. We all say we're starting out our holiday shopping early this year, but what are we buying? What are the trends in who's shopping where and with what? Let's unwrap the holiday gift shopping season. This is our 2023 holiday special report.

[00:03:53] Ricardo Belmar: And of course when the retail razor show does a holiday special, we don't just run through all the usual stats everybody else talks about. [00:04:00] You know the ones, how much will sales increase year over year? What categories will underperform or overperform, all the usual suspects? No, we like to take a different approach and leverage some real world experts that have read the pulse of both retailers and consumers.

[00:04:14] So to help us unwrap this holiday special extravaganza. We brought in two experts on the topic, Roshan Jhunja, head of retail at Square joins us today hot off the heels of releasing Square, and AfterPay's festive forecast report, Roshan will be sharing many facts and stats from that extensive merchant and consumer survey.

[00:04:33] Welcome Roshan.

[00:04:34] Roshan Jhunja: Thank you, Ricardo Casey. Glad to be here.

[00:04:36] Casey Golden: And since it's the season of Gift Giving, we've also brought in Bridget Johns, co-founder of To and From a Premium Multi-brand marketplace for every occasion guest to share interesting facts and figures about how people are shopping, why they're shopping, and. What they're shopping for. As we learn why To and From's mission is to change how we feel about gift [00:05:00] giving and receiving.

[00:05:01] Welcome Bridget.

[00:05:02] Bridget Johns: thanks so much for having.

[00:05:04] Ricardo Belmar: let's go to you first. We're gonna talk a lot about your Festive Forecast report in this episode because we're all about the data on this show. So why don't you start us off by telling us a little bit about your background and what you do at Square and Afterpay, and explain to us the methodology in the survey and you know, who are the respondents?

[00:05:22] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. Glad to do that. So just to recap, square started with a purpose, which was to enable any individual or business to participate in the economy. And today,

[00:05:31] 13 years after that,

[00:05:31] founding, we've got a full ecosystem of commerce solutions from software to hardware, enabling merchants of every size type and complexity to run their business on Square.

[00:05:39] That includes retailers, restaurants, beauty, personal care. And so my role at Square is looking after the retail vertical. So in particular, I'm the head of retail at Square. I've been at the company for six years. Before this I was largely in financial services, but kind of was interested in the mission and purpose of Square, and that's what sort of brought me and keeps me and, and my goal.

[00:05:59] And I'm, I'm, you know, [00:06:00] the thing that keeps me excited and, and eager to get going every day is to empower retailers of all sizes to. By leveraging Square's platform. So I over oversee all the aspects of the vertical and we were really looking to create the best possible experience for retailers who run their businesses on square. terms of the methodology of this survey you know, like any good survey, it's important to make sure you've got a broad cross section. So we looked at both the consumer side 1000 consumers in the US as well as the seller side. So on the consumers, you know, we surveyed at the beginning of September, we made sure that we got equal gender representation.

[00:06:33] We made sure that it was a broad demographic from, you know, the, the different regions in the us, northwest south, the Midwest, and, and. generationally, because that's increasingly an important access to look at. We made sure to include gen Z and millennials. In fact, you know, those kind of younger cohorts made up about 40% of the survey, but we also heard from Gen X, baby boomers and the postwar generation.

[00:06:55] And so, you know, by doing so, we were able to draw out some meaningful distinctions between [00:07:00] how those different consumers operate. And then lastly, we also made sure to, to cover the seller side of the story. So we surveyed almost 600 square sellers in the us you know, of varying sizes, including some larger sellers.

[00:07:11] And you know, one of the things that we did here was we looked year over year factoring, you know, some data that we have both on the square and after pay side. And yeah, eager to get into some of the the.

[00:07:21] Ricardo Belmar: All right, fantastic. I'm looking forward to that. So Bridget, let's have you jump in here. You know, we've known each other for a long time now, but for listeners, why don't you tell us your background and what did you, and why did you get into the, the gifting side of the business and what makes gifting such a challenge?

[00:07:34] And of course, what makes to and from unique.

[00:07:37] Bridget Johns: Yeah. Thank you so much for asking. I've been in retail my entire life. I grew up on a farm and my first retail business was a corn stand when I was 10 years old. I moved on to more exciting retail. Worked for many years for brands like Ralph Lauren Home Collection, Tiffany and Co L'Oreal. And for the last 12 years as you know, Ricardo, I worked for Retail Next, which is an analytics company based in Silicon Valley, really focused [00:08:00] on brick and mortar data, data gathering of, of customer.

[00:08:04] Action inside of brick and mortar stores. So as I started thinking about how I wanted to take my two sets of experience and bring them together to start my own company, gifting was obvious. It's my love language. It always has been. And I see a lot of pain points in today's gifting in the gifting world.

[00:08:22] So those sort of break down into three categories that I talk about as discovery. It's hard for people to find good gifts. If you go to large marketplaces and you search for something, you are probably gonna be disappointed in those search results. there are No tools really for modern gifting.

[00:08:45] On the digital side when you get outside of those large marketplaces. So there aren't things like widely adopted universal registry. There isn't a data set that really allows. Somebody to understand a consumer and their [00:09:00] preferences when it comes to when it comes to the people that are they're buying for and the occasions they're buying for them in their life.

[00:09:06] And the third thing is, as Casey talked about, you know, 15.2 billion in returns of gifts, people don't like the gifts that they're getting. So our idea. That there is enough data in the market and that people will tell you about what they actually want as gifts, that if you bring it together intelligently and layer it in with some really good curation and some really awesome tools that help to just manage the day to day gifting that you can deliver a much better experience for consumers.

[00:09:37] So that's what we're building at, to and from.

[00:09:40] Casey Golden: It's great and it is all about consumers. So let's talk about the first step to any gift giving inspiration, stocking up on ideas and making a list. This is really where I see an opportunity for retailers to win customers over through product discovery. Where are shoppers getting their inspiration from holiday purchases?

[00:09:59] Bridget?

[00:09:59] Bridget Johns: That is [00:10:00] a great question and I think Roan will probably say the same. They get through inspiration everywhere and sometimes in the most unusual places. I have a 10 year old son who is a hockey player in a hockey mom's group on Facebook, and you would be shocked to see how much conversation is about hockey related.

[00:10:21] For their hockey players. So I think, and it's like one of the things that we do at to and from is we get very precise about the occasion, the relationship, and the interests of the people who you're buying for so that you can get very targeted in really good gift recommendations.

[00:10:38] Casey Golden: Roshan, your report has some interesting stats on this topic. What did your surveyed customers say about how they come up with their gift ideas?

[00:10:46] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, well, you know, picking up directly from what Bridget was touching on earlier family and friends, right. So, you know, what we found was that about. 43% of consumers are looking to family and friends of their top sources of inspiration. You know, and I'm sure that includes, you know, [00:11:00] Facebook forums and whatnot that that hockey thing resonated.

[00:11:03] My father-in-law is an avid Giants fan. And you know if I could find the right place to source more giants gifts for him, I absolutely would. I think I've kind of exhausted what's out there. But for sure family and friends followed by being in. And you know, this is where retailers really get a chance to cultivate some of the in-store experience and make sure that it's a great place to discover new products.

[00:11:22] And then, you know,

[00:11:23] following along after that would be websites, blogs, and forums. And so, You know, obviously social media's gotten a lot better with targeting. You know, a lot of folks in their, you know, as they're scrolling their feeds are gonna you know, be presented with lots of ideas there.

[00:11:36] But one thing that I will mention that, that I found relevant is that, you know, almost 20% of shoppers really are preferring products that are sustainable or ethical. So that's a pretty important trend, and one by the way that I expect to continue, especially as you know, gen Z continues to come into more purchasing power and makes up a larger portion of the consumer base.

[00:11:55] Casey Golden: Speaking of Mary Zema and Mary Exes, I think there's a bit . Our, our, our [00:12:00] target markets have actually quite changed recently. So I heard Gen Xers spend the most money on gifts and they feel like they receive the worst gifts with 44% of them disliking what they receive. So since they're impossible to please end up the forgotten generation, let's just talk about Mary Zema and Gen in Gen Z, , because this is very interesting as like a prime.

[00:12:24] Consumer target for a lot of retailers right now is, is trying to capture those eyeballs.

[00:12:29] Ricardo Belmar: And I think as I looked through the festive forecast report, one of the things I took away is it seems like one of the indicators that younger shoppers, let's say Gen Z and millennials, are really looking to create something meaningful with gift giving versus just finding something they think will be a super interesting gift or, or item that the other person wants, which I think tends to be the way Gen Xers look, look at that concept. So I'm, I'm curious lemme go to you first. I, are you seeing trends like that reflected in your data at, to and from?

[00:12:59] Bridget Johns: [00:13:00] Yeah, a hundred percent. So we have deeply attributed all of the products that are on our, on our platform. So we have 5,000 products across 500 brands, and each of those products is attributed for all the normal things that you would expect, like size and function and form, and. All those things, but also we have attributed across values that people care about.

[00:13:21] So you're able to, you know, search for black own businesses or female female owned companies, or sustainable, or B corporation or whatever it is. And what we see is that not only do we overindex on search. With those attributes. So people are very highly interested in gifts that have a social tag attached to them, as Roan was saying before.

[00:13:46] So we're definitely seeing that. But then we also see that those products lead to when you can find the product that has that social attribute, it leads to higher conversion. So, not only are people searching them, but they're also buying [00:14:00] and we see that across Across all of our demographics. So as a proud Gen Xer gen Xers also I think are interested in finding those right those right products that match the values of themselves or for someone else.

[00:14:14] As someone once told me, he said, you know, I might know, not know what my girlfriend would like for her birthday, but I know what she's interested in. Like I know the social causes she's interested in. So it becomes this trigger that can actually help. The gift making decision, the decision making around gifting.

[00:14:32] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. That's super interesting. So, Roshan, what, what else can you tell us from the findings in the report about these generational differences in shopping and are, are there different expectations from in each demographic?

[00:14:47] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. You know it's interesting because this is where a bunch of elements in the kind of the buyer journey may start to differ. I think, you know social media that I touched on earlier is certainly a more important influence for some of the, [00:15:00] the younger generations. I think 25% of shoppers, for example would spot gift ideas on Facebook or I.

[00:15:05] I also think that it changes a little bit of the the buying timeline, whereas older generations are likely to get more of their holidays shopping earlier. We do have you know an emphasis on the younger generations trying to, and maybe waiting more towards promotional periods and, and sometimes even you know, pushing it right up until the holidays.

[00:15:23] And so I do think that there's also a difference. Motivations, whereas older generations focus on value and making sure that the gifts are kinda targeted. There's more of an emphasis on the emotion from younger generations and kinda, you know the feelings that you know, they're creating meaningful connection.

[00:15:39] And you know there's a, a sentimentality that's attached to.

[00:15:42] Casey Golden: I like to hear that. So customers will look to family and friends for recommendations and in-store experiences and environments provide these high impact results for gift ideas. Sales may spur to get them to spend. Bridget, I can imagine disseminating customer behavior [00:16:00] during this season is difficult, and you mentioned that you have a lot of different types of tags and, and the way that you're indexing your catalogs and products.

[00:16:09] How do you look at your assortment planning and really build those recommendation builders when it's not on the customer shopping, but who the customer's shopping for? I can imagine it's much more complex.

[00:16:23] Bridget Johns: It's very complex and I think it's one of the reasons that gifting fails so often on the regular digital commerce experience. Like you don't have those normal tags that you would have in your regular life. Like we don't go shopping with our husbands anymore, like you. Walk around the mall and something catches your eye and you, your husband notices that something caught your eye just doesn't happen.

[00:16:52] So we hear stories about husbands like creeping on their wives, fa Pinterest accounts, and , all of these wacky things that people do. But at the end [00:17:00] of the day, what you really need to do is you, I, well, the way we've approached it is, Assorted based on what we know as retailers. So a team of retail experts.

[00:17:10] We've lived in brand, the brand, world merchandising world. Product world, understand the, you know, brands that we wanted to start with. And then we from there we've really led with the data, like what are customers telling us? How are they experiencing the platform? What are the things that are important to them?

[00:17:29] You know, when we started, we didn't have a like mandate around values. And as we started doing a lot of consumer testing, one of the things that we heard time and time again was that consumers, as we've talked a little bit about really were leaning into the values of the brands that we were recommending.

[00:17:47] So now I think. , probably 90% of our brands have some kind of a social tag attached to them. So if a customer is really wanting to shop their values, they're able to do that. And [00:18:00] it's the beauty of a digital business is that you can react really quickly. And we can flex up and down based on what we're hearing from our consumers and what their interests are at any given.

[00:18:10] Casey Golden: And where does all of this excitement come from? You know, why are people gifting and, and how has that changed? You, your report mentioned kind of the, the purpose behind the why of this motivation for gift giving across these different demographics and the way that they look at it or feel about it.

[00:18:31] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. You know, what I'd say here is, is just, you know, again, to revisit why people are looking forward to the holidays. You know, the, the social connection is actually right up at the top of, of motives, right? I think we, we see a lot, especially the younger generations interested to see friends and family you know, the celebratory atmosphere.

[00:18:48] And so, you know, but to lesser extent, you know, there is a, an important component of holidays that, that is really about gifting.

[00:18:56] The good news is that in my book, you know, it's actually kind of a minority [00:19:00] that's focusing on gifting because it's expected, because it's traditional. And, and what you have instead is a big focus on showing love and care, putting a smile on somebody's face, you know, the, the, the good feeling you get from giving a gift.

[00:19:12] And so these are all things that are kind of driving some of the behaviors out there. And so, you know, I think it's, it's important for retailers to consider how they can actually enable those outcomes, right? How they can Effectively cultivate their product assortment that aligns with what will make people feel good and, and make them feel like they're able to convey that love and care.

[00:19:31] Casey Golden: A hundred percent. The the why leads to the what.

[00:19:35] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, exactly. And you know, as you, as you I hear you saying that, RO I'm, I'm thinking about the opportunity retailers have to really lean into their loyalty programs during this season to help drive some, of these gift purchases. you know, do, do you have any. Tips for retailers just based on the research findings in the study or on what you would tell 'em to do and how to leverage or how to best leverage their loyalty [00:20:00] program.

[00:20:00] Any interesting examples from some of the merchants you work with?

[00:20:03] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. You know, that's a great question. There's a couple of high level things I think that are going on especially this year, which is, you know, obviously we've had a lot of macro things going. On with inflation you know, and you know, symmetrically what, what our report found was. Despite what's going on out there, people are still interested in spending money for the holidays.

[00:20:22] Consumers are gonna go out and the majority of them are gonna spend more. Some of them intend to spend, you know, quite a bit more. Still a very important time you know, for retailers to really think about how to reach those consumers now. But the, but the interesting aspect here is also that consumers are more than ever interested in.

[00:20:38] Given that their money is, is you know, there might, it might not buy as much as it did before, really focusing in on what's gonna be a great value. And that's not always about the dollar. It sometimes comes down to things like return policies and, you know, a bunch of other value add components that retailers can add to kind of take some of the risk outta it and, and make sure that, you know, again, dealing with some of the the unwanted gift giving you know, there's, [00:21:00] there's ways to deal with that.

[00:21:01] So, so as far as loyalty is concern I think this is a great time, especially for retailers that have oversupplied given some of the supply chain concerns and have just a lot of inventory sitting. There is a buyer out there for, for these things, right? But you may have to do a little bit more work to find them.

[00:21:17] And so I think leaning into loyalty and marketing to make sure that you're kind of targeting the right people. And, and for some retailers that means doing so in different ways. Leaning into omnichannel, leaning into, you know, social channels to promote their items is gonna be super. So here, I would say that, you know, sending out marketing messages make sure that folks are, it's not just enough to, to have the sale.

[00:21:37] People have to know about it. And, and there's, you know, a lot to choose from out there. So making sure that there's marketing messages that are promoting what's going on, keeping your brand top of mind. There was one seller that I would call out Sasha, who's the operations manager of the Chakra Shack, which is a spiritual gift shop in Laguna.

[00:21:52] They're using Square for in person online this season. They're excited about using loyalty for the first time. It's something where, you know, they are really excited to [00:22:00] see what happens with customers in terms of, you know, how motivated are they by the rewards and the discounts? How's that gonna impact the business in the long term?

[00:22:06] I really think that leaning into marketing, you know, especially with a lot of folks thinking about potential downturn next year, this is a really great time to kinda, you know focus. Refining your marketing approach because it's likely to be important for your business in the, in the coming months.

[00:22:21] Bridget Johns: Yeah, and I would just, I would just add to that, that I think when you talk about loyalty, all of the things Rashaan said a hundred percent, but you also have to think about what's the value add for your consumer. And I'm surprised, especially in the, in the digital world, how few brands offer. Gift messaging and gift wrapping.

[00:22:41] Two of the easiest things that you can do to really build loyalty for your customers and retailers, by and large fall short. Either the wrapping is terrible, there's no way to have a gift card, or it's so terrible that you wouldn't wanna use it anyhow. So just like think a little bit more [00:23:00] about what you would like as a consumer and build that into your loyalty program, I think could have a pretty tremendous impact.

[00:23:06] Casey Golden: And just to validate that I do all of my Christmas shopping at one store. Because they offer free gift wrapping, beautiful note and free shipping

[00:23:18] Ricardo Belmar: There you go.

[00:23:19] Proof

[00:23:19] Roshan Jhunja: That's amazing. I hope, I hope lots of retailers. Yeah. I hope the retailers hear

[00:23:23] that. That's loyalty. If

[00:23:24] Casey Golden: because I have a wonderful time shopping. I take it to the counter, I write my little notes and they gift wrap it and mail it out, and I'm done. And can go get a cappuccino and or a glass of wine

[00:23:37] Bridget Johns: Yeah, really.

[00:23:39] Ricardo Belmar: It's the way we all wanna shop

[00:23:40] Casey Golden: not saying where I shop .It's not for everyone.

[00:23:45] Ricardo Belmar: So I, I guess I, I want to kind of maybe switch a little bit here and talk about something, Roshan you touched on it a little bit a few moments ago, which is maybe the, in some ways the big elephant in the room for this season, which is, you know, everyone's worried about what impact of inflation may have on [00:24:00] shopping.

[00:24:00] I think you've both kind of mentioned that if, if we go by what you're seeing so far, it actually maybe doesn't seem like it's causing consumers to shop less or to buy less at least so far at this stage in the holiday season. And I wanna talk a little bit about what, what the impact of buy now pay later has on

[00:24:18] all of this , to be totally honest about it, right? Casey and I talked about this way back into our predictions episode at the start of the year, and we probably weren't the, the kindest people towards the, the category of type of payments and that, you know, our prediction was that there was gonna be a lot of consolidation in that space and that there was a risk that, you know, there may be regulators looking at what the impact on savings and consumers in general was gonna be, and I suppose you could make an argument that, you know, after pay becoming part of Square kind of speaks to that consolidation piece of it. But I think for the most part, all the other things we predicted on this one really haven't come to pass. And I think the momentum is still there behind buy now pay later.

[00:24:54] So what I wanted to get into, and, and you have some interesting data on this in, in [00:25:00] the report, Roshan, on what impact, let's maybe start with the merchant side of it, you know, does offering B NPL to consumers, but both online and in store and across channels, what impact is that having this season on consumers either, either ability to buy their propensity to want to buy from a retailer that offers it, for example, versus one that's not?

[00:25:20] Or what interesting trends are you seeing?

[00:25:22] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, it's great. It's a great lead in to say that you know, there were some predictions about this particular service and you know, looking at how it's been faring, I think is honestly, you know, the most important. And that is It's only increasing in terms of its importance for consumers, you know, and I think most online shoppers you know, have heard about it at this point.

[00:25:40] And increasing more online shoppers this year, plan to use by now, later compared to last year from the, from the seller's standpoint from people that are offering this as a service. A hundred percent. Believe that it's going to help them with the, the younger demographics. So like the Gen Z you know, who are more, have a higher propensity to use by now, pay later.

[00:25:57] You know, those are consumers that are citing an [00:26:00] interest in budgeting and immediacy, right? So, so wanting to actually have the item in hand at the moment. So being able to reach newer shoppers and I. We have seen this with more traction online for sure. But a lot of in-store retailers, what they're finding is that the need to have a coherent experience, you know, across channels.

[00:26:16] This is the kind promise of omnichannel and always has been, is that, you know, your, and your ability to transact. Extends across all the various, you know, in-store, omnichannel, social, you meet your customer where they're in a consistent way. They know what to expect from you. And so I think that's a really important translation to make sure that, you know, those customers that maybe found you online or discovered you on social you know, have the same experience when they come to visit your store.

[00:26:39] And, and that's just, you know, a powerful consistency and, and coherence kinda. But in terms of discovery a hundred percent. You know, there's a, there's a really impactful, you know, for, for the fa the fans of B now pay later who are looking to discover more sellers. I think there's several tools including you know, with Square and Afterpay, where you can actually use buy now

[00:26:58] after pay supporting sellers [00:27:00] to kind of filter and discover who else out there might be able to support you with this really powerful buying mechanism.

[00:27:07] You know, I think the stats are, are pretty telling here. It did start in Australia there, you know, there was you know, it skyrocketed in terms of its penetration both for consumers and, and of course for sellers. And in the US it is continuing to take off. We have now one in eight shoppers that would sign up for a buy now pay later service.

[00:27:23] Like I said earlier, you know, it's trending up in terms of the number of online shoppers planning to use buy now, pay later, like after pay. So again, it's it's, it's here. I think the inflation inflationary impacts are an extra tailwind because you know, more people are looking to smooth the, the impact of their purchases and, and it helps a lot with budget planning.

[00:27:40] Ricardo Belmar: Let's move into, talking about sales channels , one of the biggest recent debates going on in, the media about retail has to do with e-commerce, of course, since the pandemic taking over in store shopping is, is it true, is it not true? What, what's happened with social commerce? How does this all compare to the numbers of [00:28:00] people shopping in store versus these other digital channels and, and which one is likely to come out on top as the dominant format?

[00:28:07] Which in some ways, I think a lot of times what consumers want gets lost in the noise. When we read about all this, all these reports in the media. So Roshan lemme start with you on this one. You know, given that this popular narrative right now for so long, and again, because of the pandemic, is that e-commerce was just gonna leapfrog all this growth.

[00:28:25] Massive growth stores would close and suffer. Of course, it turns out that didn't happen. consumers are still going to stores and I think we're seeing in, in a surge now in consumers wanting to. In store and get that experience. you had some interesting in the surveys to both consumers, I think, and to your, your merchants about this.

[00:28:41] What, what can you tell us and about what's happening here?

[00:28:44] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, I think you know, some of what we found in the survey was that Americans are most likely to get their gifts at online marketplace. You know, followed by discount department stores and superstores. One of the interesting things about this point you made about online is that in fact what we saw post pandemic was a lot of folks [00:29:00] interested to go back and reconnect with that in-store shopping experience.

[00:29:03] And so, you know, while there was a very pronounced immediate shift when folks had no other option, we definitely saw it kinda rebound back to a place where people. Still value in store. Now, one of the most exciting trends to me personally is experiential retail, where, you know, interestingly from a staffing perspective, we've found that as brick and mortar retailers are adding staff to with in buyers to stores.

[00:29:26] Who they're adding is actually, you know, baristas and, and more of this experiential aspect of, you know, coffee with your, your retail purchase. I know Casey values that, especially when she's done wrapping things up. You know, but, but it's kind of the, the retail store, the, the brick and mortar retail store as like a, a core component of your your neighborhood and your c.

[00:29:46] And being a destination for folks you know, to get more than just a product. You know, also, you know, for bookstores doing book signings or, or music or, or coffee shops. And so I think that's in my mind one of the more powerful drivers of the channel mix is in store for discovery, [00:30:00] but also for experience.

[00:30:01] But in terms of, you know, the, the, the buyer journey, this is an interesting one. It's not as cut and dry. You, you, you alluded to, you know, there's a lot of predictions out there in the media. It's not as cut and dry as you know, Hey, all, every, you know, online's gonna eat everything or social's gonna eat everything.

[00:30:15] I think what we see instead is that discovery may happen in one place and that sometimes can be like social media More information often happens with, you know, researching, you know, product listings, maybe going in store to touch and feel and try something out, and the actual purchase may happen at yet a later time, whether that's via, you know, a conversational commerce with you know, the seller, like texting them, you know, what, I actually did decide to buy that thing.

[00:30:38] Or, you know, maybe hitting the website. And so really it kind of this is, you know, the emergent omnichannel nature of, of shopping, right? It's kinda like your discovery to your. Finding more information to your ultimate purchase, and then even your return may all be at different places and at different times.

[00:30:54] And so that's that kinda you know, in some senses muddies the waters, but but also make it more important to have a, [00:31:00] a coherent strategy of a presence across all the, your buyers wanted to. But in terms of the. The other point you raised on which social platform is it gonna be and, you know what's kind of most compelling?

[00:31:12] I don't think that that there is a, a right answer to it. I think it has a lot to do with generational preference. I think there's always gonna be some social media platform or right around the corner, many of whom are trying to keep people on the platform. And by this I mean, if you are a retail seller one of the things that we're always encouraging folks to do is try to the grave you can to drive that purchase back to your site.

[00:31:33] And the reason for this, Your ability to kind of have the customer information and to you know, be able to market to them is, is greatly diminished if, if it's, you know, entirely transacting outside of you know on a different e-commerce property. Right? And so there's also, there's a hundred percent powerful convenience, but this is where.

[00:31:51] Being very deliberate about your strategy. Which products are you going to sell, and which channels and which marketplaces, and what, how then will you draw your [00:32:00] consumer back to learn more about your full assortment in, you know, on your website or in your store? I think that's an increasingly important strategy for, for all retailers to think about.

[00:32:08] Casey Golden: are you seeing any trends around that buy online, pickup in store? I mean, I haven't had a lot of success with. That personally, but I know that it's been had huge growth over the, the pandemic and if it's carrying on here through holiday season.

[00:32:22] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, I think it's one of these things that along with the shift to e-commerce, the, the buy line pickup in store, buy. Buy online and return in store as well are here to stay. I don't think again that they're at the levels of engagement when there was no other option. But for sure we see increasingly retailers asking for ways to support this and looking for solutions that help them support you know, that flexibility of buy online and, and, and coming back to.

[00:32:46] Casey Golden: I found it quite interesting that the report found that like 53% of customers are planning to purchase gifts online compared to in-store. But it still sounds like. E-commerce matters just as much as in store and you almost can't [00:33:00] operate one without the other. How do you see this with your reports and then just experience with Square being able to understand how that customer's buying online and in store.

[00:33:09] Is there like certain KPIs that this is increasing, that it's 50 50? Is it 30%? Just kind of curious what, what that looks like from an omnichannel perspective.

[00:33:19] With Square you have a really unique visibility to how much omnichannel business is driving each other.

[00:33:26] Being able to track that customer from in-store purchases, online purchases. What does it look like? in the past has been kind of like a black hole and we just make assumptions. But you have a unique perspective.

[00:33:38] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah. So what I would say here is I find that this varies a lot by the types of seller you know, with with our Square for retail offering, we tend to concentrate a lot on apparel. Where, where we see that a lot of discovery is happening online. We were just talking to hot Sam in Detroit.

[00:33:51] A week or two ago, and they were describing how discovery online is a really important component of the, the buyer journey, but ultimately coming into the store [00:34:00] to engage with staff, to, to finalize that purchase, make sure that the, the fitting and whatnot is right. And, and that experience will be different for something that's a little bit more commoditized and not as bespoke.

[00:34:10] You know, that requires kinda the assistance of an in store person. And so something like electronics or home goods, what we find is that there's a lot of folks who are willing to transact online. So the answer unfortunately isn't you know, as straightforward, although I, I will say that I, you know, they continue to be equally important channels.

[00:34:27] You know, like you said before, you've got 53% of consumers planning to purchase. Gifts online compared to in store, that that's kinda an equal mix. And so really it, it goes back to that omnichannel journey that I mentioned where I think consumers really want a blend of online and in person experiences so they can purchase the way they want depending on what its, and you know, what they need in that moment.

[00:34:47] Ricardo Belmar: So Bridget, obviously to and from focuses on the e-commerce experience and as you told us at, at the beginning of our session that, you know, you were looking to change things around [00:35:00] on, on solving discovery issues and gifting. , I'm sure you are now, you know, obviously well into the holiday season, seeing a increase in site visits and searches, et cetera.

[00:35:09] What, what can you tell us about some of the unique trends you're seeing there? And I'm curious. How are consumers finding your site when they start their search for.

[00:35:18] Bridget Johns: Yeah, so I think there are a few things that are important. I, you know, said before that you have to be where the consumer is. And for us that means being very precise about how we communicate to them. So we've talked a little bit about how we attribute and about how we organize our products to be able to.

[00:35:35] Really dial into the occasion and the relationship and the preferences of the person receiving the gift. So because we've built our system to because we've built to and from, to allow for that, it allows us to be very precise in our marketing so we can very easily. Create a blog post about, you know, my sister who lives in a mid-century modern house who loves gardening.

[00:35:58] So you can bring these [00:36:00] like disparate attributes together and create a very quickly create a list of gifts that will be appropriate for that person. And what that allows us to do is it allows us to meet the customer where they, where they are. To very specific Facebook group or whether it's a creator that's focused on a particular segment or topic or whatever it is.

[00:36:20] And we've had a lot of success just being able to, to be so precise with the, the data and the assortment.

[00:36:26] Ricardo Belmar: Okay, so you really do kind, kind of play on the whole discovery piece by creating these kind of interesting, inspirational moments of, of discovery. I, I would describe,

[00:36:36] Bridget Johns: Yeah, and we do that across lots of different channels because customers are everywhere. So, you know, for one particular customer it might be a Facebook group for another customer, it might be a creator that's focused on gift wrapping and really like dialing into their audience and the. The types of people who like to follow their content, whatever it is.

[00:36:55] So it's been like a really, a really interesting journey for me having lived my whole life in brick and [00:37:00] mortar to start being able to really dial into these little micro moments in a impactful way.

[00:37:06] Ricardo Belmar: So Roshan mentioned this or touched on a little bit earlier and some of the sources of inspiration, I mentioned social media and that always makes me think about social commerce in general. So I, I'm curious, Bridget, what opportunity you see in the social commerce space in particular what you're doing at, to and from.

[00:37:24] Bridget Johns: Yeah, I mean, it's been obviously a big important conversation for us, and I think there is so, so much interesting retail happening in the social commerce space, having, you know, Having studied retail for, you know, all of my career as, you know, I think being able to tap into that's critically important because it's such an important place for consumers and where they are and what they expect.

[00:37:48] What we've done for this holiday season is we've allowed, we're allowing a beset of creators to create these custom gift lists that then they can kind of manage and share to their audience. So they can be pro, [00:38:00] you know, products from our assortment, but they can also be products that they. Think are interesting as gifts and we've given them some really good tools and the feedback has been very good so far.

[00:38:10] We'll see through the holiday. Like I said, it's just a test we just launched in June, so we, you know, are still learning along the way. But we think

[00:38:17] that, you know, giving tools to creators and, you know, having more visibility for social commerce, we think is important and will continue to be, you know, a growth area over time.

[00:38:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I have to agree with that as a, as a growth area for.

[00:38:30] Bridget Johns: Yeah,

[00:38:31] Ricardo Belmar: so makes me think, you know, timing is everything. and so back in holiday 2020, I, I wrote an article for the Robin Report about the death of Black Friday. And yes, it was meant to shock readers quite a bit. but my point was that Black Friday didn't really need to live on the way we're all used to thinking of it given how consumers started shopping so much earlier in the season, and frankly, how that actually helps retailers manage their inventory better and, and their pricing and discount structure for the season, particularly when we keep running [00:39:00] into these never ending supply chain challenges.

[00:39:02] Roha, let me ask you, I mean, one of the findings I noted in the report where that. Younger generations might kind of spring into action with Black Friday and, and, and maybe Cyber Monday as well and get more shopping done. Whereas maybe, you know, gen Xer is like myself and maybe older generations, we might move a little slower and leave the holiday shopping for later and, and end up, you know, doing a lot more of that shopping in December.

[00:39:27] Is there really a difference in timing for when each generation starts shopping from the findings you have and, and how should retailers react to thi

[00:39:35] Roshan Jhunja: s?

[00:39:35] Yeah, it's a, it's a great question on the timing. You know, for a while I think we all know that there was a bit of concern that the, the windows kept stretching earlier and, and, you know, are we gonna eat Thanksgiving dinners or are we just gonna go straight to the stores that day? And so I think what's interesting here is that, you know, we know that three quarters of Americans are gonna have their holiday shopping.

[00:39:53] By December 1st. And so there's, it's more crucial than ever to kind of get started. Here we are in November you know, almost [00:40:00] halfway through it. And you know, I think Casey said she was already done. So you know, there's definitely evidence for, for starting earlier. That's not to say that folks won't be purchasing later in the season.

[00:40:08] We do know that one in six are gonna start purchasing in earlier December, but by the time you get to mid-December, it's only one in 12. One of the ways to think about this is it makes it crucial to start your marketing as early as possible and to, to target on the channels that you think are important to get visibility out there.

[00:40:25] But also it all is not lost, right? Black Friday, I think the term originated from, you know, retailers, you know, that might be in the red all year. Finally get into the black as they get into the holiday season. And so, you know, all is not lost if you kind of miss those early windows. I think still in December what you get is a lot of last minute shopping folks are, are still, like I said, there's a lot of consumer purchasing power out there.

[00:40:45] So there's still a big windows opportunity to think about, you know, what inventory you have that you were interested in moving during the holiday season. And again, just continue to lean into marketing and discounting and make sure that you can reach those consumers that are trying to finish up their.

[00:40:59] Casey Golden: said that [00:41:00] we weren't gonna focus on like the typical holiday retail trends that everybody else talks about. But what can I say? Like, show me the money we have to say a little bit before we close on what sales expectations are. Right. Ro in the report it says that 44% of retailers expect sales to grow this season.

[00:41:19] Another 20% expect everything to remain pretty flat. Putting you on the spot here, how much of this do you think is due to inflation prices? Especially considering the expectations of heavy discounting? What's, what's kind of your prediction here?

[00:41:35] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, you know, It's, it's a good thing. You know, you let in with a follow of the money. Best I can tell folks are still spending and, and it's surprising in some ways because, you know, there is a lot going on. There's a lot of uncertainty and turbin in the world, but consumers are still spending.

[00:41:49] And so really what I think, you know, in terms of retailers, they're kind of keyed into this and they know that you know, that there's still you know, transactions that folks are, are interested in. Some of the stats that we cited [00:42:00] earlier where there are significant portions of the consumer base that is going to spend more than last year.

[00:42:04] Some of them ex expect to spend quite a bit more. You know, that right there is your inflationary answer. Even though those dollars are buying less, they're going to spend more of those dollars to make sure they can get the gifting done that they wanna do. And so, you know, yes, there's expectations in heavy discounting.

[00:42:19] I would expect that to skew more towards the larger retailers. We've all seen headlines, whether it be Target, and you know you know, Some of the other folks that really leaned heavily into supply chain by overstocking. But I would say for smaller retailers, I don't know that there's gonna be as aggressive ing.

[00:42:34] We do know that, you know, most folks in order to be moved by a discount, it needs to be 20% or more right. For them to even consider that changing their behavior. But here I would expect that I expect that retailers are still gonna see a lot of strong purchasing this holiday season.

[00:42:48] Casey Golden: Bridget, I'm not gonna let you escape this one either. What is your overall hot take on sales this season? I come from a world of luxury, so there's no discounts on designer handbags. They're under the trees , [00:43:00] but.

[00:43:03] Bridget Johns: Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting. I mean, I have been really impressed with actually the transparency from brands particularly the direct to consumer brands where they have. Not started their discounting, but they have told you they're going to start it. So you get an email that says, our friends and family or our Black Friday is going to start on this day, sign up to be on the list.

[00:43:25] So it automatically puts it in your mind and you're like, okay. Like I, to me, that is one of the biggest shifts in email marketing. I haven't seen it and. Past years where you're getting like proactive notifications that the, you always know the sale is coming, but for D to C brands to be like, okay, next Friday we're gonna have 20% off, so be ready, or, you know, get early on the list.

[00:43:47] I think it's super interesting this season. And I, I agree with Roshan. I like, I think it's going to be like flat to up. I don't think it's gonna be down.

[00:43:56] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. I think everyone will be happy to hear

[00:43:59] Bridget Johns: I [00:44:00] also don't, I also don't, but I also don't think it's gonna feel like a win

[00:44:03] because I think retailers are gonna have to work so hard to get that flat up that it's gonna feel very painful.

[00:44:11] Casey Golden: Very painful. I mean, we're not really used to this holiday rush. Right. And if they're. They're budgeting their staff and increasing their budgets on the experiential associates. In moments like baristas rather than store staff. I think we can expect that there's gonna be some longer lines. Longer hours, rather than hiring more staff.

[00:44:30] Everybody's just gonna be working longer, so, Take it easy on everybody working in

[00:44:35] stores this season. Be kind, find your patience. Bring your own hot cocoa

[00:44:42] Ricardo Belmar: That's

[00:44:42] right.

[00:44:42] Casey Golden: if you have to.

[00:44:43] Ricardo Belmar: telling stat, maybe what we're all gonna look at after the season is what was the margin pressure for retailers? So wherever the sales end up, I, I think even if we all say it's flat to up how, much of those dollars, you know, translated into [00:45:00] margin for retail, I think that's gonna be the, the big question.

[00:45:02] So, to close this out today, Roshan, If you could leave our retailers retailing listeners your top holiday tip, what would it be.

[00:45:11] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, look a lot of what we covered today, including omnichannel and wanting to meet buyers where they are as well as making sure that you're leveraging your discounting. I think you really have to lean into the data. Here the top tip I have is to make sure that your inventory management system, your, your catalog management is up to date.

[00:45:29] You can lean heavily into those reports, right? So, you know, one of the things that Square's been doing to empower retailers is to make sure that we allow you to have insights into your data where, you know, to your point on margins, right, and your costs are good, sold. But also, you know, what's selling, you know, what are your velocities like, and, and what should you do as a result?

[00:45:43] And maybe the things that are moving less quickly need more aggressive discounting. So I would say that the, the more you can leverage digitizing your catalog and inventory information, the less, like the more able you are to sell effectively online. The less likely you are to run out of inventory unexpectedly, right?

[00:45:58] And, and those dreaded outta stock [00:46:00] moments. And most importantly, you can leverage that reporting. You can learn from what you're, if you've been doing this for a year, you can learn from last year to project, you know, how you need to run this holiday season. Or you can leverage what's happening now to predict the future.

[00:46:11] And so I would say really emphasize leaning on your, your digital systems to kinda power you through this holiday.

[00:46:18] Casey Golden: So to bring us back to the present. Pun intended. Bridget for everyone starting to shop. I mean, you've got quite a special destination for gifting at to and from, but what are the hottest items under the tree this season? What does everybody want? What are people buying?

[00:46:35] Bridget Johns: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I have like the hot take. This is the gift because we're all about that personalized gift that's very specific to you. But we do see gifting breaking down into three very distinct categories. Val values led not value, but values led gifting. So what is important to the person you're gifting for?

[00:46:56] I think the second area that we haven't really talked about, but I think is [00:47:00] very important, and it's. Been a bit of a trick I think from retailers is personalization. Cause you can't return something that's personalized. So I think like the personalization has been very key in finding ways to make those gifts feel even more special.

[00:47:16] And then the third trend that we're seeing are gifts that really help you spend time together as a family. I think that's something that has continued post covid. Like people have learned that they actually like spending time with their family. And I think that trend.

[00:47:30] Actually continues. Like I think that's not something that has gone away.

[00:47:34] So I would say those are the three areas. And then, you know, if you're a mid-century modern lover who, you know, likes gardening, you're gonna get something very different than the hockey mom.

[00:47:45] Ricardo Belmar: That's very true. Very true. Well, Bridget, Roshan, this has been a fantastic discussion. We can't thank you enough for joining us today for our holiday shopping special episode. We covered so much ground. I can't believe how time has run out on us so [00:48:00] quickly.

[00:48:00] Roshan Jhunja: Yeah, I had a fantastic time chatting with you all. Thanks for having me on.

[00:48:04] Bridget Johns: Yeah, I really enjoyed it, so it was a lot of fun.

[00:48:06] Casey Golden: Thank you both for joining us. This show is a wrap

[00:48:10] Closing Wishes

[00:48:10] Casey Golden: wrapping up this holiday special edition retail razor show and wishing our guests and listeners a very merry holiday. We hope you slay your sales targets and delight your customers this festive season.

[00:48:22] Show Close

[00:48:22] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden.

[00:48:54] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore [00:49:00] Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:49:10] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:49:11] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show.

]]> <p>What will the holiday 2023 shopping season look like for retailers? How are consumers adjusting their shopping, buying, and gifting habits this holiday season given the current economic environment? It’s our Holiday Special episode and we’ve brought in two incredible experts to dive into what’s really happening this season and explore what we expect the season will bring retailers.</p><p> </p><p>Meet <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjhunja/" rel="nofollow">Roshan Jhunja</a>, Head of Retail for Square, who recently released their holiday <a href="https://assets.ctfassets.net/2d5q1td6cyxq/2s4bYZBvEuwxOZWUXpOD68/a1d1a421fe76bcc078c3ec4668bce180/AP_Festive_Forecast_Report_-_FINAL.pdf" rel="nofollow">Festive Forecast</a> report based on surveying merchants and consumers, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/bridget-johns-pavlopoulos/" rel="nofollow">Bridget Johns-Pavlopoulos</a>, co-Founder of <a href="https://app.toandfrom.com/" rel="nofollow">To&amp;From</a>, a premium multi-brand marketplace for gifts of all occasions.</p><p> </p><p><em>Square/AfterPay Festive Forecast Report</em> available here: <a href="https://bit.ly/3EwpqP2" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/3EwpqP2</a></p><p>To&amp;From gifting marketplace: <a href="https://app.toandfrom.com/" rel="nofollow">https://app.toandfrom.com/</a></p><p> </p><p>News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show has been nominated for <a href="https://bit.ly/VIPretail" rel="nofollow">The Retail Voice Award</a> at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during NRF 2023 in January in New York City! IF you’re a fan of the show, please give us your vote! You can vote here: https://bit.ly/VIPretail</p><p> </p><p>News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #19 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review to be mentioned in upcoming episodes! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p> </p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p> </p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p> </p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Made It On Stream (Xmas)</em>, from the album <em>Lo-Fi Christmas</em>, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. Includes sound effects provided by Free Sounds Library.</p><p> </p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p> </p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p> </p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p> </p><p> </p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>S2E6 Holiday Special</strong></p><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong></p><h3>[00:00:20] Show Intro</h3><p>[00:00:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello and welcome to a very Merry and Joyous season two episode six of the Retail Razor Show. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo.</p><p>[00:00:28] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your holiday spirited cohost, Casey Golden. Welcome retail Razor Show listeners to retail&#39;s favorite jingle, bell filled podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.</p><p>[00:00:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you didn&#39;t guess by our whimsical and seasonal intro, this is our holiday specials for 2023 episode of the show.</p><p>[00:00:54] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So Ricardo did. Did you start your holiday shopping or this season?</p><p>[00:00:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. Actually, [00:01:00] no, not really. I mean, had every intention to, honestly, ever since that second Amazon Prime day that we&#39;re not supposed to call Prime Day, cuz apparently I&#39;m one of the few people who did buy things on that sale, but they were mostly for me and it didn&#39;t really help me get the shopping started early.</p><p>[00:01:14] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Oh, shame on you, Well, didn&#39;t you know that every industry expert is saying customers started the season early? Maybe you just need to hear it from our two guests today to get you into the shopping season of giving mode.</p><p>[00:01:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, funny you should say that, Casey, because I bet many of our listeners are just like me and could use some insider knowledge on gifting and shopping ideas for the season. And by the way, did you start your shopping already,</p><p>[00:01:42] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Of course I did. My grandmother taught me to shop for thoughtful gifts all year long, but there are always a few emergency pur purchases before, you know, black friday, of course.</p><p>[00:01:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, I should have known. So let&#39;s tell our listeners then all about our guests for today. Since we&#39;re not like other retail podcasts, we don&#39;t [00:02:00] just bring you a holiday special episode and talk about sales numbers for year over year stats for the season. No, no, no, of course we don&#39;t do that.</p><p>[00:02:09] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Certainly not. I mean, if you just want those types of numbers, check out the reports on NR F&#39;S website instead, we&#39;re bringing you some much needed insights into what retailers and consumers are, not just thinking. , but what they&#39;re actually doing so far this season.</p><p>[00:02:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. Today we will be chatting with Roshan Jhunja, the head of retail for Square, who will be sharing some valuable insights from their recently released holiday forecast and survey of merchants and consumers.</p><p>[00:02:37] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And we also have Bridget Johns co-founder of To &amp; From a premium multi-brand marketplace for gifts of all occasion. Who will share some interesting data about how consumers are shopping for gifts, and maybe she&#39;ll give us a few hints on what the hot presents really are this season.</p><p>[00:02:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, I could certainly use some help in that department, so let&#39;s not keep everybody waiting and dive right into our [00:03:00] discussion with Roshan and Bridget.</p><h3>[00:03:06] Holiday Special - Gifting</h3><p>[00:03:06] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> welcome everyone. We all know that finding that perfect gift is no easy task. But our guests have been making holiday shopping a lot more productive for retailers to prepare for the holiday season and less stressful on our pocketbooks. Alarming stat, 41% of Americans are willing to take on debt to gift shop with a whopping 15.2 billion is the estimated total of unwanted presents.</p><p>[00:03:35] This is worth the conversation. We all say we&#39;re starting out our holiday shopping early this year, but what are we buying? What are the trends in who&#39;s shopping where and with what? Let&#39;s unwrap the holiday gift shopping season. This is our 2023 holiday special report.</p><p>[00:03:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And of course when the retail razor show does a holiday special, we don&#39;t just run through all the usual stats everybody else talks about. [00:04:00] You know the ones, how much will sales increase year over year? What categories will underperform or overperform, all the usual suspects? No, we like to take a different approach and leverage some real world experts that have read the pulse of both retailers and consumers.</p><p>[00:04:14] So to help us unwrap this holiday special extravaganza. We brought in two experts on the topic, Roshan Jhunja, head of retail at Square joins us today hot off the heels of releasing Square, and AfterPay&#39;s festive forecast report, Roshan will be sharing many facts and stats from that extensive merchant and consumer survey.</p><p>[00:04:33] Welcome Roshan.</p><p>[00:04:34] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> Thank you, Ricardo Casey. Glad to be here.</p><p>[00:04:36] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And since it&#39;s the season of Gift Giving, we&#39;ve also brought in Bridget Johns, co-founder of To and From a Premium Multi-brand marketplace for every occasion guest to share interesting facts and figures about how people are shopping, why they&#39;re shopping, and. What they&#39;re shopping for. As we learn why To and From&#39;s mission is to change how we feel about gift [00:05:00] giving and receiving.</p><p>[00:05:01] Welcome Bridget.</p><p>[00:05:02] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> thanks so much for having.</p><p>[00:05:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> let&#39;s go to you first. We&#39;re gonna talk a lot about your Festive Forecast report in this episode because we&#39;re all about the data on this show. So why don&#39;t you start us off by telling us a little bit about your background and what you do at Square and Afterpay, and explain to us the methodology in the survey and you know, who are the respondents?</p><p>[00:05:22] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> Yeah. Glad to do that. So just to recap, square started with a purpose, which was to enable any individual or business to participate in the economy. And today,</p><p>[00:05:31] 13 years after that,</p><p>[00:05:31] founding, we&#39;ve got a full ecosystem of commerce solutions from software to hardware, enabling merchants of every size type and complexity to run their business on Square.</p><p>[00:05:39] That includes retailers, restaurants, beauty, personal care. And so my role at Square is looking after the retail vertical. So in particular, I&#39;m the head of retail at Square. I&#39;ve been at the company for six years. Before this I was largely in financial services, but kind of was interested in the mission and purpose of Square, and that&#39;s what sort of brought me and keeps me and, and my goal.</p><p>[00:05:59] And I&#39;m, I&#39;m, you know, [00:06:00] the thing that keeps me excited and, and eager to get going every day is to empower retailers of all sizes to. By leveraging Square&#39;s platform. So I over oversee all the aspects of the vertical and we were really looking to create the best possible experience for retailers who run their businesses on square. terms of the methodology of this survey you know, like any good survey, it&#39;s important to make sure you&#39;ve got a broad cross section. So we looked at both the consumer side 1000 consumers in the US as well as the seller side. So on the consumers, you know, we surveyed at the beginning of September, we made sure that we got equal gender representation.</p><p>[00:06:33] We made sure that it was a broad demographic from, you know, the, the different regions in the us, northwest south, the Midwest, and, and. generationally, because that&#39;s increasingly an important access to look at. We made sure to include gen Z and millennials. In fact, you know, those kind of younger cohorts made up about 40% of the survey, but we also heard from Gen X, baby boomers and the postwar generation.</p><p>[00:06:55] And so, you know, by doing so, we were able to draw out some meaningful distinctions between [00:07:00] how those different consumers operate. And then lastly, we also made sure to, to cover the seller side of the story. So we surveyed almost 600 square sellers in the us you know, of varying sizes, including some larger sellers.</p><p>[00:07:11] And you know, one of the things that we did here was we looked year over year factoring, you know, some data that we have both on the square and after pay side. And yeah, eager to get into some of the the.</p><p>[00:07:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right, fantastic. I&#39;m looking forward to that. So Bridget, let&#39;s have you jump in here. You know, we&#39;ve known each other for a long time now, but for listeners, why don&#39;t you tell us your background and what did you, and why did you get into the, the gifting side of the business and what makes gifting such a challenge?</p><p>[00:07:34] And of course, what makes to and from unique.</p><p>[00:07:37] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> Yeah. Thank you so much for asking. I&#39;ve been in retail my entire life. I grew up on a farm and my first retail business was a corn stand when I was 10 years old. I moved on to more exciting retail. Worked for many years for brands like Ralph Lauren Home Collection, Tiffany and Co L&#39;Oreal. And for the last 12 years as you know, Ricardo, I worked for Retail Next, which is an analytics company based in Silicon Valley, really focused [00:08:00] on brick and mortar data, data gathering of, of customer.</p><p>[00:08:04] Action inside of brick and mortar stores. So as I started thinking about how I wanted to take my two sets of experience and bring them together to start my own company, gifting was obvious. It&#39;s my love language. It always has been. And I see a lot of pain points in today&#39;s gifting in the gifting world.</p><p>[00:08:22] So those sort of break down into three categories that I talk about as discovery. It&#39;s hard for people to find good gifts. If you go to large marketplaces and you search for something, you are probably gonna be disappointed in those search results. there are No tools really for modern gifting.</p><p>[00:08:45] On the digital side when you get outside of those large marketplaces. So there aren&#39;t things like widely adopted universal registry. There isn&#39;t a data set that really allows. Somebody to understand a consumer and their [00:09:00] preferences when it comes to when it comes to the people that are they&#39;re buying for and the occasions they&#39;re buying for them in their life.</p><p>[00:09:06] And the third thing is, as Casey talked about, you know, 15.2 billion in returns of gifts, people don&#39;t like the gifts that they&#39;re getting. So our idea. That there is enough data in the market and that people will tell you about what they actually want as gifts, that if you bring it together intelligently and layer it in with some really good curation and some really awesome tools that help to just manage the day to day gifting that you can deliver a much better experience for consumers.</p><p>[00:09:37] So that&#39;s what we&#39;re building at, to and from.</p><p>[00:09:40] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It&#39;s great and it is all about consumers. So let&#39;s talk about the first step to any gift giving inspiration, stocking up on ideas and making a list. This is really where I see an opportunity for retailers to win customers over through product discovery. Where are shoppers getting their inspiration from holiday purchases?</p><p>[00:09:59] Bridget?</p><p>[00:09:59] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> That is [00:10:00] a great question and I think Roan will probably say the same. They get through inspiration everywhere and sometimes in the most unusual places. I have a 10 year old son who is a hockey player in a hockey mom&#39;s group on Facebook, and you would be shocked to see how much conversation is about hockey related.</p><p>[00:10:21] For their hockey players. So I think, and it&#39;s like one of the things that we do at to and from is we get very precise about the occasion, the relationship, and the interests of the people who you&#39;re buying for so that you can get very targeted in really good gift recommendations.</p><p>[00:10:38] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Roshan, your report has some interesting stats on this topic. What did your surveyed customers say about how they come up with their gift ideas?</p><p>[00:10:46] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> Yeah, well, you know, picking up directly from what Bridget was touching on earlier family and friends, right. So, you know, what we found was that about. 43% of consumers are looking to family and friends of their top sources of inspiration. You know, and I&#39;m sure that includes, you know, [00:11:00] Facebook forums and whatnot that that hockey thing resonated.</p><p>[00:11:03] My father-in-law is an avid Giants fan. And you know if I could find the right place to source more giants gifts for him, I absolutely would. I think I&#39;ve kind of exhausted what&#39;s out there. But for sure family and friends followed by being in. And you know, this is where retailers really get a chance to cultivate some of the in-store experience and make sure that it&#39;s a great place to discover new products.</p><p>[00:11:22] And then, you know,</p><p>[00:11:23] following along after that would be websites, blogs, and forums. And so, You know, obviously social media&#39;s gotten a lot better with targeting. You know, a lot of folks in their, you know, as they&#39;re scrolling their feeds are gonna you know, be presented with lots of ideas there.</p><p>[00:11:36] But one thing that I will mention that, that I found relevant is that, you know, almost 20% of shoppers really are preferring products that are sustainable or ethical. So that&#39;s a pretty important trend, and one by the way that I expect to continue, especially as you know, gen Z continues to come into more purchasing power and makes up a larger portion of the consumer base.</p><p>[00:11:55] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Speaking of Mary Zema and Mary Exes, I think there&#39;s a bit . Our, our, our [00:12:00] target markets have actually quite changed recently. So I heard Gen Xers spend the most money on gifts and they feel like they receive the worst gifts with 44% of them disliking what they receive. So since they&#39;re impossible to please end up the forgotten generation, let&#39;s just talk about Mary Zema and Gen in Gen Z, , because this is very interesting as like a prime.</p><p>[00:12:24] Consumer target for a lot of retailers right now is, is trying to capture those eyeballs.</p><p>[00:12:29] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And I think as I looked through the festive forecast report, one of the things I took away is it seems like one of the indicators that younger shoppers, let&#39;s say Gen Z and millennials, are really looking to create something meaningful with gift giving versus just finding something they think will be a super interesting gift or, or item that the other person wants, which I think tends to be the way Gen Xers look, look at that concept. So I&#39;m, I&#39;m curious lemme go to you first. I, are you seeing trends like that reflected in your data at, to and from?</p><p>[00:12:59] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> [00:13:00] Yeah, a hundred percent. So we have deeply attributed all of the products that are on our, on our platform. So we have 5,000 products across 500 brands, and each of those products is attributed for all the normal things that you would expect, like size and function and form, and. All those things, but also we have attributed across values that people care about.</p><p>[00:13:21] So you&#39;re able to, you know, search for black own businesses or female female owned companies, or sustainable, or B corporation or whatever it is. And what we see is that not only do we overindex on search. With those attributes. So people are very highly interested in gifts that have a social tag attached to them, as Roan was saying before.</p><p>[00:13:46] So we&#39;re definitely seeing that. But then we also see that those products lead to when you can find the product that has that social attribute, it leads to higher conversion. So, not only are people searching them, but they&#39;re also buying [00:14:00] and we see that across Across all of our demographics. So as a proud Gen Xer gen Xers also I think are interested in finding those right those right products that match the values of themselves or for someone else.</p><p>[00:14:14] As someone once told me, he said, you know, I might know, not know what my girlfriend would like for her birthday, but I know what she&#39;s interested in. Like I know the social causes she&#39;s interested in. So it becomes this trigger that can actually help. The gift making decision, the decision making around gifting.</p><p>[00:14:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. That&#39;s super interesting. So, Roshan, what, what else can you tell us from the findings in the report about these generational differences in shopping and are, are there different expectations from in each demographic?</p><p>[00:14:47] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> Yeah. You know it&#39;s interesting because this is where a bunch of elements in the kind of the buyer journey may start to differ. I think, you know social media that I touched on earlier is certainly a more important influence for some of the, [00:15:00] the younger generations. I think 25% of shoppers, for example would spot gift ideas on Facebook or I.</p><p>[00:15:05] I also think that it changes a little bit of the the buying timeline, whereas older generations are likely to get more of their holidays shopping earlier. We do have you know an emphasis on the younger generations trying to, and maybe waiting more towards promotional periods and, and sometimes even you know, pushing it right up until the holidays.</p><p>[00:15:23] And so I do think that there&#39;s also a difference. Motivations, whereas older generations focus on value and making sure that the gifts are kinda targeted. There&#39;s more of an emphasis on the emotion from younger generations and kinda, you know the feelings that you know, they&#39;re creating meaningful connection.</p><p>[00:15:39] And you know there&#39;s a, a sentimentality that&#39;s attached to.</p><p>[00:15:42] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I like to hear that. So customers will look to family and friends for recommendations and in-store experiences and environments provide these high impact results for gift ideas. Sales may spur to get them to spend. Bridget, I can imagine disseminating customer behavior [00:16:00] during this season is difficult, and you mentioned that you have a lot of different types of tags and, and the way that you&#39;re indexing your catalogs and products.</p><p>[00:16:09] How do you look at your assortment planning and really build those recommendation builders when it&#39;s not on the customer shopping, but who the customer&#39;s shopping for? I can imagine it&#39;s much more complex.</p><p>[00:16:23] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> It&#39;s very complex and I think it&#39;s one of the reasons that gifting fails so often on the regular digital commerce experience. Like you don&#39;t have those normal tags that you would have in your regular life. Like we don&#39;t go shopping with our husbands anymore, like you. Walk around the mall and something catches your eye and you, your husband notices that something caught your eye just doesn&#39;t happen.</p><p>[00:16:52] So we hear stories about husbands like creeping on their wives, fa Pinterest accounts, and , all of these wacky things that people do. But at the end [00:17:00] of the day, what you really need to do is you, I, well, the way we&#39;ve approached it is, Assorted based on what we know as retailers. So a team of retail experts.</p><p>[00:17:10] We&#39;ve lived in brand, the brand, world merchandising world. Product world, understand the, you know, brands that we wanted to start with. And then we from there we&#39;ve really led with the data, like what are customers telling us? How are they experiencing the platform? What are the things that are important to them?</p><p>[00:17:29] You know, when we started, we didn&#39;t have a like mandate around values. And as we started doing a lot of consumer testing, one of the things that we heard time and time again was that consumers, as we&#39;ve talked a little bit about really were leaning into the values of the brands that we were recommending.</p><p>[00:17:47] So now I think. , probably 90% of our brands have some kind of a social tag attached to them. So if a customer is really wanting to shop their values, they&#39;re able to do that. And [00:18:00] it&#39;s the beauty of a digital business is that you can react really quickly. And we can flex up and down based on what we&#39;re hearing from our consumers and what their interests are at any given.</p><p>[00:18:10] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And where does all of this excitement come from? You know, why are people gifting and, and how has that changed? You, your report mentioned kind of the, the purpose behind the why of this motivation for gift giving across these different demographics and the way that they look at it or feel about it.</p><p>[00:18:31] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> Yeah. You know, what I&#39;d say here is, is just, you know, again, to revisit why people are looking forward to the holidays. You know, the, the social connection is actually right up at the top of, of motives, right? I think we, we see a lot, especially the younger generations interested to see friends and family you know, the celebratory atmosphere.</p><p>[00:18:48] And so, you know, but to lesser extent, you know, there is a, an important component of holidays that, that is really about gifting.</p><p>[00:18:56] The good news is that in my book, you know, it&#39;s actually kind of a minority [00:19:00] that&#39;s focusing on gifting because it&#39;s expected, because it&#39;s traditional. And, and what you have instead is a big focus on showing love and care, putting a smile on somebody&#39;s face, you know, the, the, the good feeling you get from giving a gift.</p><p>[00:19:12] And so these are all things that are kind of driving some of the behaviors out there. And so, you know, I think it&#39;s, it&#39;s important for retailers to consider how they can actually enable those outcomes, right? How they can Effectively cultivate their product assortment that aligns with what will make people feel good and, and make them feel like they&#39;re able to convey that love and care.</p><p>[00:19:31] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> A hundred percent. The the why leads to the what.</p><p>[00:19:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, exactly. And you know, as you, as you I hear you saying that, RO I&#39;m, I&#39;m thinking about the opportunity retailers have to really lean into their loyalty programs during this season to help drive some, of these gift purchases. you know, do, do you have any. Tips for retailers just based on the research findings in the study or on what you would tell &#39;em to do and how to leverage or how to best leverage their loyalty [00:20:00] program.</p><p>[00:20:00] Any interesting examples from some of the merchants you work with?</p><p>[00:20:03] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> Yeah. You know, that&#39;s a great question. There&#39;s a couple of high level things I think that are going on especially this year, which is, you know, obviously we&#39;ve had a lot of macro things going. On with inflation you know, and you know, symmetrically what, what our report found was. Despite what&#39;s going on out there, people are still interested in spending money for the holidays.</p><p>[00:20:22] Consumers are gonna go out and the majority of them are gonna spend more. Some of them intend to spend, you know, quite a bit more. Still a very important time you know, for retailers to really think about how to reach those consumers now. But the, but the interesting aspect here is also that consumers are more than ever interested in.</p><p>[00:20:38] Given that their money is, is you know, there might, it might not buy as much as it did before, really focusing in on what&#39;s gonna be a great value. And that&#39;s not always about the dollar. It sometimes comes down to things like return policies and, you know, a bunch of other value add components that retailers can add to kind of take some of the risk outta it and, and make sure that, you know, again, dealing with some of the the unwanted gift giving you know, there&#39;s, [00:21:00] there&#39;s ways to deal with that.</p><p>[00:21:01] So, so as far as loyalty is concern I think this is a great time, especially for retailers that have oversupplied given some of the supply chain concerns and have just a lot of inventory sitting. There is a buyer out there for, for these things, right? But you may have to do a little bit more work to find them.</p><p>[00:21:17] And so I think leaning into loyalty and marketing to make sure that you&#39;re kind of targeting the right people. And, and for some retailers that means doing so in different ways. Leaning into omnichannel, leaning into, you know, social channels to promote their items is gonna be super. So here, I would say that, you know, sending out marketing messages make sure that folks are, it&#39;s not just enough to, to have the sale.</p><p>[00:21:37] People have to know about it. And, and there&#39;s, you know, a lot to choose from out there. So making sure that there&#39;s marketing messages that are promoting what&#39;s going on, keeping your brand top of mind. There was one seller that I would call out Sasha, who&#39;s the operations manager of the Chakra Shack, which is a spiritual gift shop in Laguna.</p><p>[00:21:52] They&#39;re using Square for in person online this season. They&#39;re excited about using loyalty for the first time. It&#39;s something where, you know, they are really excited to [00:22:00] see what happens with customers in terms of, you know, how motivated are they by the rewards and the discounts? How&#39;s that gonna impact the business in the long term?</p><p>[00:22:06] I really think that leaning into marketing, you know, especially with a lot of folks thinking about potential downturn next year, this is a really great time to kinda, you know focus. Refining your marketing approach because it&#39;s likely to be important for your business in the, in the coming months.</p><p>[00:22:21] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> Yeah, and I would just, I would just add to that, that I think when you talk about loyalty, all of the things Rashaan said a hundred percent, but you also have to think about what&#39;s the value add for your consumer. And I&#39;m surprised, especially in the, in the digital world, how few brands offer. Gift messaging and gift wrapping.</p><p>[00:22:41] Two of the easiest things that you can do to really build loyalty for your customers and retailers, by and large fall short. Either the wrapping is terrible, there&#39;s no way to have a gift card, or it&#39;s so terrible that you wouldn&#39;t wanna use it anyhow. So just like think a little bit more [00:23:00] about what you would like as a consumer and build that into your loyalty program, I think could have a pretty tremendous impact.</p><p>[00:23:06] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And just to validate that I do all of my Christmas shopping at one store. Because they offer free gift wrapping, beautiful note and free shipping</p><p>[00:23:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> There you go.</p><p>[00:23:19] Proof</p><p>[00:23:19] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> That&#39;s amazing. I hope, I hope lots of retailers. Yeah. I hope the retailers hear</p><p>[00:23:23] that. That&#39;s loyalty. If</p><p>[00:23:24] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> because I have a wonderful time shopping. I take it to the counter, I write my little notes and they gift wrap it and mail it out, and I&#39;m done. And can go get a cappuccino and or a glass of wine</p><p>[00:23:37] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> Yeah, really.</p><p>[00:23:39] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It&#39;s the way we all wanna shop</p><p>[00:23:40] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> not saying where I shop .It&#39;s not for everyone.</p><p>[00:23:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So I, I guess I, I want to kind of maybe switch a little bit here and talk about something, Roshan you touched on it a little bit a few moments ago, which is maybe the, in some ways the big elephant in the room for this season, which is, you know, everyone&#39;s worried about what impact of inflation may have on [00:24:00] shopping.</p><p>[00:24:00] I think you&#39;ve both kind of mentioned that if, if we go by what you&#39;re seeing so far, it actually maybe doesn&#39;t seem like it&#39;s causing consumers to shop less or to buy less at least so far at this stage in the holiday season. And I wanna talk a little bit about what, what the impact of buy now pay later has on</p><p>[00:24:18] all of this , to be totally honest about it, right? Casey and I talked about this way back into our predictions episode at the start of the year, and we probably weren&#39;t the, the kindest people towards the, the category of type of payments and that, you know, our prediction was that there was gonna be a lot of consolidation in that space and that there was a risk that, you know, there may be regulators looking at what the impact on savings and consumers in general was gonna be, and I suppose you could make an argument that, you know, after pay becoming part of Square kind of speaks to that consolidation piece of it. But I think for the most part, all the other things we predicted on this one really haven&#39;t come to pass. And I think the momentum is still there behind buy now pay later.</p><p>[00:24:54] So what I wanted to get into, and, and you have some interesting data on this in, in [00:25:00] the report, Roshan, on what impact, let&#39;s maybe start with the merchant side of it, you know, does offering B NPL to consumers, but both online and in store and across channels, what impact is that having this season on consumers either, either ability to buy their propensity to want to buy from a retailer that offers it, for example, versus one that&#39;s not?</p><p>[00:25:20] Or what interesting trends are you seeing?</p><p>[00:25:22] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> Yeah, it&#39;s great. It&#39;s a great lead in to say that you know, there were some predictions about this particular service and you know, looking at how it&#39;s been faring, I think is honestly, you know, the most important. And that is It&#39;s only increasing in terms of its importance for consumers, you know, and I think most online shoppers you know, have heard about it at this point.</p><p>[00:25:40] And increasing more online shoppers this year, plan to use by now, later compared to last year from the, from the seller&#39;s standpoint from people that are offering this as a service. A hundred percent. Believe that it&#39;s going to help them with the, the younger demographics. So like the Gen Z you know, who are more, have a higher propensity to use by now, pay later.</p><p>[00:25:57] You know, those are consumers that are citing an [00:26:00] interest in budgeting and immediacy, right? So, so wanting to actually have the item in hand at the moment. So being able to reach newer shoppers and I. We have seen this with more traction online for sure. But a lot of in-store retailers, what they&#39;re finding is that the need to have a coherent experience, you know, across channels.</p><p>[00:26:16] This is the kind promise of omnichannel and always has been, is that, you know, your, and your ability to transact. Extends across all the various, you know, in-store, omnichannel, social, you meet your customer where they&#39;re in a consistent way. They know what to expect from you. And so I think that&#39;s a really important translation to make sure that, you know, those customers that maybe found you online or discovered you on social you know, have the same experience when they come to visit your store.</p><p>[00:26:39] And, and that&#39;s just, you know, a powerful consistency and, and coherence kinda. But in terms of discovery a hundred percent. You know, there&#39;s a, there&#39;s a really impactful, you know, for, for the fa the fans of B now pay later who are looking to discover more sellers. I think there&#39;s several tools including you know, with Square and Afterpay, where you can actually use buy now</p><p>[00:26:58] after pay supporting sellers [00:27:00] to kind of filter and discover who else out there might be able to support you with this really powerful buying mechanism.</p><p>[00:27:07] You know, I think the stats are, are pretty telling here. It did start in Australia there, you know, there was you know, it skyrocketed in terms of its penetration both for consumers and, and of course for sellers. And in the US it is continuing to take off. We have now one in eight shoppers that would sign up for a buy now pay later service.</p><p>[00:27:23] Like I said earlier, you know, it&#39;s trending up in terms of the number of online shoppers planning to use buy now, pay later, like after pay. So again, it&#39;s it&#39;s, it&#39;s here. I think the inflation inflationary impacts are an extra tailwind because you know, more people are looking to smooth the, the impact of their purchases and, and it helps a lot with budget planning.</p><p>[00:27:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Let&#39;s move into, talking about sales channels , one of the biggest recent debates going on in, the media about retail has to do with e-commerce, of course, since the pandemic taking over in store shopping is, is it true, is it not true? What, what&#39;s happened with social commerce? How does this all compare to the numbers of [00:28:00] people shopping in store versus these other digital channels and, and which one is likely to come out on top as the dominant format?</p><p>[00:28:07] Which in some ways, I think a lot of times what consumers want gets lost in the noise. When we read about all this, all these reports in the media. So Roshan lemme start with you on this one. You know, given that this popular narrative right now for so long, and again, because of the pandemic, is that e-commerce was just gonna leapfrog all this growth.</p><p>[00:28:25] Massive growth stores would close and suffer. Of course, it turns out that didn&#39;t happen. consumers are still going to stores and I think we&#39;re seeing in, in a surge now in consumers wanting to. In store and get that experience. you had some interesting in the surveys to both consumers, I think, and to your, your merchants about this.</p><p>[00:28:41] What, what can you tell us and about what&#39;s happening here?</p><p>[00:28:44] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> Yeah, I think you know, some of what we found in the survey was that Americans are most likely to get their gifts at online marketplace. You know, followed by discount department stores and superstores. One of the interesting things about this point you made about online is that in fact what we saw post pandemic was a lot of folks [00:29:00] interested to go back and reconnect with that in-store shopping experience.</p><p>[00:29:03] And so, you know, while there was a very pronounced immediate shift when folks had no other option, we definitely saw it kinda rebound back to a place where people. Still value in store. Now, one of the most exciting trends to me personally is experiential retail, where, you know, interestingly from a staffing perspective, we&#39;ve found that as brick and mortar retailers are adding staff to with in buyers to stores.</p><p>[00:29:26] Who they&#39;re adding is actually, you know, baristas and, and more of this experiential aspect of, you know, coffee with your, your retail purchase. I know Casey values that, especially when she&#39;s done wrapping things up. You know, but, but it&#39;s kind of the, the retail store, the, the brick and mortar retail store as like a, a core component of your your neighborhood and your c.</p><p>[00:29:46] And being a destination for folks you know, to get more than just a product. You know, also, you know, for bookstores doing book signings or, or music or, or coffee shops. And so I think that&#39;s in my mind one of the more powerful drivers of the channel mix is in store for discovery, [00:30:00] but also for experience.</p><p>[00:30:01] But in terms of, you know, the, the, the buyer journey, this is an interesting one. It&#39;s not as cut and dry. You, you, you alluded to, you know, there&#39;s a lot of predictions out there in the media. It&#39;s not as cut and dry as you know, Hey, all, every, you know, online&#39;s gonna eat everything or social&#39;s gonna eat everything.</p><p>[00:30:15] I think what we see instead is that discovery may happen in one place and that sometimes can be like social media More information often happens with, you know, researching, you know, product listings, maybe going in store to touch and feel and try something out, and the actual purchase may happen at yet a later time, whether that&#39;s via, you know, a conversational commerce with you know, the seller, like texting them, you know, what, I actually did decide to buy that thing.</p><p>[00:30:38] Or, you know, maybe hitting the website. And so really it kind of this is, you know, the emergent omnichannel nature of, of shopping, right? It&#39;s kinda like your discovery to your. Finding more information to your ultimate purchase, and then even your return may all be at different places and at different times.</p><p>[00:30:54] And so that&#39;s that kinda you know, in some senses muddies the waters, but but also make it more important to have a, [00:31:00] a coherent strategy of a presence across all the, your buyers wanted to. But in terms of the. The other point you raised on which social platform is it gonna be and, you know what&#39;s kind of most compelling?</p><p>[00:31:12] I don&#39;t think that that there is a, a right answer to it. I think it has a lot to do with generational preference. I think there&#39;s always gonna be some social media platform or right around the corner, many of whom are trying to keep people on the platform. And by this I mean, if you are a retail seller one of the things that we&#39;re always encouraging folks to do is try to the grave you can to drive that purchase back to your site.</p><p>[00:31:33] And the reason for this, Your ability to kind of have the customer information and to you know, be able to market to them is, is greatly diminished if, if it&#39;s, you know, entirely transacting outside of you know on a different e-commerce property. Right? And so there&#39;s also, there&#39;s a hundred percent powerful convenience, but this is where.</p><p>[00:31:51] Being very deliberate about your strategy. Which products are you going to sell, and which channels and which marketplaces, and what, how then will you draw your [00:32:00] consumer back to learn more about your full assortment in, you know, on your website or in your store? I think that&#39;s an increasingly important strategy for, for all retailers to think about.</p><p>[00:32:08] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> are you seeing any trends around that buy online, pickup in store? I mean, I haven&#39;t had a lot of success with. That personally, but I know that it&#39;s been had huge growth over the, the pandemic and if it&#39;s carrying on here through holiday season.</p><p>[00:32:22] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> Yeah, I think it&#39;s one of these things that along with the shift to e-commerce, the, the buy line pickup in store, buy. Buy online and return in store as well are here to stay. I don&#39;t think again that they&#39;re at the levels of engagement when there was no other option. But for sure we see increasingly retailers asking for ways to support this and looking for solutions that help them support you know, that flexibility of buy online and, and, and coming back to.</p><p>[00:32:46] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I found it quite interesting that the report found that like 53% of customers are planning to purchase gifts online compared to in-store. But it still sounds like. E-commerce matters just as much as in store and you almost can&#39;t [00:33:00] operate one without the other. How do you see this with your reports and then just experience with Square being able to understand how that customer&#39;s buying online and in store.</p><p>[00:33:09] Is there like certain KPIs that this is increasing, that it&#39;s 50 50? Is it 30%? Just kind of curious what, what that looks like from an omnichannel perspective.</p><p>[00:33:19] With Square you have a really unique visibility to how much omnichannel business is driving each other.</p><p>[00:33:26] Being able to track that customer from in-store purchases, online purchases. What does it look like? in the past has been kind of like a black hole and we just make assumptions. But you have a unique perspective.</p><p>[00:33:38] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> Yeah. So what I would say here is I find that this varies a lot by the types of seller you know, with with our Square for retail offering, we tend to concentrate a lot on apparel. Where, where we see that a lot of discovery is happening online. We were just talking to hot Sam in Detroit.</p><p>[00:33:51] A week or two ago, and they were describing how discovery online is a really important component of the, the buyer journey, but ultimately coming into the store [00:34:00] to engage with staff, to, to finalize that purchase, make sure that the, the fitting and whatnot is right. And, and that experience will be different for something that&#39;s a little bit more commoditized and not as bespoke.</p><p>[00:34:10] You know, that requires kinda the assistance of an in store person. And so something like electronics or home goods, what we find is that there&#39;s a lot of folks who are willing to transact online. So the answer unfortunately isn&#39;t you know, as straightforward, although I, I will say that I, you know, they continue to be equally important channels.</p><p>[00:34:27] You know, like you said before, you&#39;ve got 53% of consumers planning to purchase. Gifts online compared to in store, that that&#39;s kinda an equal mix. And so really it, it goes back to that omnichannel journey that I mentioned where I think consumers really want a blend of online and in person experiences so they can purchase the way they want depending on what its, and you know, what they need in that moment.</p><p>[00:34:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So Bridget, obviously to and from focuses on the e-commerce experience and as you told us at, at the beginning of our session that, you know, you were looking to change things around [00:35:00] on, on solving discovery issues and gifting. , I&#39;m sure you are now, you know, obviously well into the holiday season, seeing a increase in site visits and searches, et cetera.</p><p>[00:35:09] What, what can you tell us about some of the unique trends you&#39;re seeing there? And I&#39;m curious. How are consumers finding your site when they start their search for.</p><p>[00:35:18] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> Yeah, so I think there are a few things that are important. I, you know, said before that you have to be where the consumer is. And for us that means being very precise about how we communicate to them. So we&#39;ve talked a little bit about how we attribute and about how we organize our products to be able to.</p><p>[00:35:35] Really dial into the occasion and the relationship and the preferences of the person receiving the gift. So because we&#39;ve built our system to because we&#39;ve built to and from, to allow for that, it allows us to be very precise in our marketing so we can very easily. Create a blog post about, you know, my sister who lives in a mid-century modern house who loves gardening.</p><p>[00:35:58] So you can bring these [00:36:00] like disparate attributes together and create a very quickly create a list of gifts that will be appropriate for that person. And what that allows us to do is it allows us to meet the customer where they, where they are. To very specific Facebook group or whether it&#39;s a creator that&#39;s focused on a particular segment or topic or whatever it is.</p><p>[00:36:20] And we&#39;ve had a lot of success just being able to, to be so precise with the, the data and the assortment.</p><p>[00:36:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay, so you really do kind, kind of play on the whole discovery piece by creating these kind of interesting, inspirational moments of, of discovery. I, I would describe,</p><p>[00:36:36] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> Yeah, and we do that across lots of different channels because customers are everywhere. So, you know, for one particular customer it might be a Facebook group for another customer, it might be a creator that&#39;s focused on gift wrapping and really like dialing into their audience and the. The types of people who like to follow their content, whatever it is.</p><p>[00:36:55] So it&#39;s been like a really, a really interesting journey for me having lived my whole life in brick and [00:37:00] mortar to start being able to really dial into these little micro moments in a impactful way.</p><p>[00:37:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So Roshan mentioned this or touched on a little bit earlier and some of the sources of inspiration, I mentioned social media and that always makes me think about social commerce in general. So I, I&#39;m curious, Bridget, what opportunity you see in the social commerce space in particular what you&#39;re doing at, to and from.</p><p>[00:37:24] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> Yeah, I mean, it&#39;s been obviously a big important conversation for us, and I think there is so, so much interesting retail happening in the social commerce space, having, you know, Having studied retail for, you know, all of my career as, you know, I think being able to tap into that&#39;s critically important because it&#39;s such an important place for consumers and where they are and what they expect.</p><p>[00:37:48] What we&#39;ve done for this holiday season is we&#39;ve allowed, we&#39;re allowing a beset of creators to create these custom gift lists that then they can kind of manage and share to their audience. So they can be pro, [00:38:00] you know, products from our assortment, but they can also be products that they. Think are interesting as gifts and we&#39;ve given them some really good tools and the feedback has been very good so far.</p><p>[00:38:10] We&#39;ll see through the holiday. Like I said, it&#39;s just a test we just launched in June, so we, you know, are still learning along the way. But we think</p><p>[00:38:17] that, you know, giving tools to creators and, you know, having more visibility for social commerce, we think is important and will continue to be, you know, a growth area over time.</p><p>[00:38:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I have to agree with that as a, as a growth area for.</p><p>[00:38:30] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:38:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> so makes me think, you know, timing is everything. and so back in holiday 2020, I, I wrote an article for the Robin Report about the death of Black Friday. And yes, it was meant to shock readers quite a bit. but my point was that Black Friday didn&#39;t really need to live on the way we&#39;re all used to thinking of it given how consumers started shopping so much earlier in the season, and frankly, how that actually helps retailers manage their inventory better and, and their pricing and discount structure for the season, particularly when we keep running [00:39:00] into these never ending supply chain challenges.</p><p>[00:39:02] Roha, let me ask you, I mean, one of the findings I noted in the report where that. Younger generations might kind of spring into action with Black Friday and, and, and maybe Cyber Monday as well and get more shopping done. Whereas maybe, you know, gen Xer is like myself and maybe older generations, we might move a little slower and leave the holiday shopping for later and, and end up, you know, doing a lot more of that shopping in December.</p><p>[00:39:27] Is there really a difference in timing for when each generation starts shopping from the findings you have and, and how should retailers react to thi</p><p>[00:39:35] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> s?</p><p>[00:39:35] Yeah, it&#39;s a, it&#39;s a great question on the timing. You know, for a while I think we all know that there was a bit of concern that the, the windows kept stretching earlier and, and, you know, are we gonna eat Thanksgiving dinners or are we just gonna go straight to the stores that day? And so I think what&#39;s interesting here is that, you know, we know that three quarters of Americans are gonna have their holiday shopping.</p><p>[00:39:53] By December 1st. And so there&#39;s, it&#39;s more crucial than ever to kind of get started. Here we are in November you know, almost [00:40:00] halfway through it. And you know, I think Casey said she was already done. So you know, there&#39;s definitely evidence for, for starting earlier. That&#39;s not to say that folks won&#39;t be purchasing later in the season.</p><p>[00:40:08] We do know that one in six are gonna start purchasing in earlier December, but by the time you get to mid-December, it&#39;s only one in 12. One of the ways to think about this is it makes it crucial to start your marketing as early as possible and to, to target on the channels that you think are important to get visibility out there.</p><p>[00:40:25] But also it all is not lost, right? Black Friday, I think the term originated from, you know, retailers, you know, that might be in the red all year. Finally get into the black as they get into the holiday season. And so, you know, all is not lost if you kind of miss those early windows. I think still in December what you get is a lot of last minute shopping folks are, are still, like I said, there&#39;s a lot of consumer purchasing power out there.</p><p>[00:40:45] So there&#39;s still a big windows opportunity to think about, you know, what inventory you have that you were interested in moving during the holiday season. And again, just continue to lean into marketing and discounting and make sure that you can reach those consumers that are trying to finish up their.</p><p>[00:40:59] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> said that [00:41:00] we weren&#39;t gonna focus on like the typical holiday retail trends that everybody else talks about. But what can I say? Like, show me the money we have to say a little bit before we close on what sales expectations are. Right. Ro in the report it says that 44% of retailers expect sales to grow this season.</p><p>[00:41:19] Another 20% expect everything to remain pretty flat. Putting you on the spot here, how much of this do you think is due to inflation prices? Especially considering the expectations of heavy discounting? What&#39;s, what&#39;s kind of your prediction here?</p><p>[00:41:35] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> Yeah, you know, It&#39;s, it&#39;s a good thing. You know, you let in with a follow of the money. Best I can tell folks are still spending and, and it&#39;s surprising in some ways because, you know, there is a lot going on. There&#39;s a lot of uncertainty and turbin in the world, but consumers are still spending.</p><p>[00:41:49] And so really what I think, you know, in terms of retailers, they&#39;re kind of keyed into this and they know that you know, that there&#39;s still you know, transactions that folks are, are interested in. Some of the stats that we cited [00:42:00] earlier where there are significant portions of the consumer base that is going to spend more than last year.</p><p>[00:42:04] Some of them ex expect to spend quite a bit more. You know, that right there is your inflationary answer. Even though those dollars are buying less, they&#39;re going to spend more of those dollars to make sure they can get the gifting done that they wanna do. And so, you know, yes, there&#39;s expectations in heavy discounting.</p><p>[00:42:19] I would expect that to skew more towards the larger retailers. We&#39;ve all seen headlines, whether it be Target, and you know you know, Some of the other folks that really leaned heavily into supply chain by overstocking. But I would say for smaller retailers, I don&#39;t know that there&#39;s gonna be as aggressive ing.</p><p>[00:42:34] We do know that, you know, most folks in order to be moved by a discount, it needs to be 20% or more right. For them to even consider that changing their behavior. But here I would expect that I expect that retailers are still gonna see a lot of strong purchasing this holiday season.</p><p>[00:42:48] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Bridget, I&#39;m not gonna let you escape this one either. What is your overall hot take on sales this season? I come from a world of luxury, so there&#39;s no discounts on designer handbags. They&#39;re under the trees , [00:43:00] but.</p><p>[00:43:03] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> Yeah, I think it&#39;s, it&#39;s interesting. I mean, I have been really impressed with actually the transparency from brands particularly the direct to consumer brands where they have. Not started their discounting, but they have told you they&#39;re going to start it. So you get an email that says, our friends and family or our Black Friday is going to start on this day, sign up to be on the list.</p><p>[00:43:25] So it automatically puts it in your mind and you&#39;re like, okay. Like I, to me, that is one of the biggest shifts in email marketing. I haven&#39;t seen it and. Past years where you&#39;re getting like proactive notifications that the, you always know the sale is coming, but for D to C brands to be like, okay, next Friday we&#39;re gonna have 20% off, so be ready, or, you know, get early on the list.</p><p>[00:43:47] I think it&#39;s super interesting this season. And I, I agree with Roshan. I like, I think it&#39;s going to be like flat to up. I don&#39;t think it&#39;s gonna be down.</p><p>[00:43:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. I think everyone will be happy to hear</p><p>[00:43:59] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> I [00:44:00] also don&#39;t, I also don&#39;t, but I also don&#39;t think it&#39;s gonna feel like a win</p><p>[00:44:03] because I think retailers are gonna have to work so hard to get that flat up that it&#39;s gonna feel very painful.</p><p>[00:44:11] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Very painful. I mean, we&#39;re not really used to this holiday rush. Right. And if they&#39;re. They&#39;re budgeting their staff and increasing their budgets on the experiential associates. In moments like baristas rather than store staff. I think we can expect that there&#39;s gonna be some longer lines. Longer hours, rather than hiring more staff.</p><p>[00:44:30] Everybody&#39;s just gonna be working longer, so, Take it easy on everybody working in</p><p>[00:44:35] stores this season. Be kind, find your patience. Bring your own hot cocoa</p><p>[00:44:42] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s</p><p>[00:44:42] right.</p><p>[00:44:42] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> if you have to.</p><p>[00:44:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> telling stat, maybe what we&#39;re all gonna look at after the season is what was the margin pressure for retailers? So wherever the sales end up, I, I think even if we all say it&#39;s flat to up how, much of those dollars, you know, translated into [00:45:00] margin for retail, I think that&#39;s gonna be the, the big question.</p><p>[00:45:02] So, to close this out today, Roshan, If you could leave our retailers retailing listeners your top holiday tip, what would it be.</p><p>[00:45:11] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> Yeah, look a lot of what we covered today, including omnichannel and wanting to meet buyers where they are as well as making sure that you&#39;re leveraging your discounting. I think you really have to lean into the data. Here the top tip I have is to make sure that your inventory management system, your, your catalog management is up to date.</p><p>[00:45:29] You can lean heavily into those reports, right? So, you know, one of the things that Square&#39;s been doing to empower retailers is to make sure that we allow you to have insights into your data where, you know, to your point on margins, right, and your costs are good, sold. But also, you know, what&#39;s selling, you know, what are your velocities like, and, and what should you do as a result?</p><p>[00:45:43] And maybe the things that are moving less quickly need more aggressive discounting. So I would say that the, the more you can leverage digitizing your catalog and inventory information, the less, like the more able you are to sell effectively online. The less likely you are to run out of inventory unexpectedly, right?</p><p>[00:45:58] And, and those dreaded outta stock [00:46:00] moments. And most importantly, you can leverage that reporting. You can learn from what you&#39;re, if you&#39;ve been doing this for a year, you can learn from last year to project, you know, how you need to run this holiday season. Or you can leverage what&#39;s happening now to predict the future.</p><p>[00:46:11] And so I would say really emphasize leaning on your, your digital systems to kinda power you through this holiday.</p><p>[00:46:18] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So to bring us back to the present. Pun intended. Bridget for everyone starting to shop. I mean, you&#39;ve got quite a special destination for gifting at to and from, but what are the hottest items under the tree this season? What does everybody want? What are people buying?</p><p>[00:46:35] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> Yeah, I mean, I don&#39;t know if I have like the hot take. This is the gift because we&#39;re all about that personalized gift that&#39;s very specific to you. But we do see gifting breaking down into three very distinct categories. Val values led not value, but values led gifting. So what is important to the person you&#39;re gifting for?</p><p>[00:46:56] I think the second area that we haven&#39;t really talked about, but I think is [00:47:00] very important, and it&#39;s. Been a bit of a trick I think from retailers is personalization. Cause you can&#39;t return something that&#39;s personalized. So I think like the personalization has been very key in finding ways to make those gifts feel even more special.</p><p>[00:47:16] And then the third trend that we&#39;re seeing are gifts that really help you spend time together as a family. I think that&#39;s something that has continued post covid. Like people have learned that they actually like spending time with their family. And I think that trend.</p><p>[00:47:30] Actually continues. Like I think that&#39;s not something that has gone away.</p><p>[00:47:34] So I would say those are the three areas. And then, you know, if you&#39;re a mid-century modern lover who, you know, likes gardening, you&#39;re gonna get something very different than the hockey mom.</p><p>[00:47:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s very true. Very true. Well, Bridget, Roshan, this has been a fantastic discussion. We can&#39;t thank you enough for joining us today for our holiday shopping special episode. We covered so much ground. I can&#39;t believe how time has run out on us so [00:48:00] quickly.</p><p>[00:48:00] <strong>Roshan Jhunja:</strong> Yeah, I had a fantastic time chatting with you all. Thanks for having me on.</p><p>[00:48:04] <strong>Bridget Johns:</strong> Yeah, I really enjoyed it, so it was a lot of fun.</p><p>[00:48:06] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thank you both for joining us. This show is a wrap</p><h3>[00:48:10] Closing Wishes</h3><p>[00:48:10] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> wrapping up this holiday special edition retail razor show and wishing our guests and listeners a very merry holiday. We hope you slay your sales targets and delight your customers this festive season.</p><h3>[00:48:22] Show Close</h3><p>[00:48:22] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We hope you enjoyed our show and we can&#39;t ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don&#39;t wanna miss a minute of what&#39;s next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don&#39;t forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden.</p><p>[00:48:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore [00:49:00] Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:49:10] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:49:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show.</p> 4f5c4962-8e8c-4051-a678-0a358ef3f31e https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 23 Nov 2022 16:15:00 +0000 2972 no full S2E5 - Retail Transformers - Polly Wong S2E5 - Retail Transformers - Polly Wong 5 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E5 - Retail Transformers - Polly Wong Direct-to-consumer. DTC. What emotional response do those words conjure for you? The formula for DTC used to be simple – spend marketing dollars to acquire new customers. Today, customer acquisition costs can be 10X higher than they used to be, so what should be the new strategy in these challenging, post-pandemic economic times? Polly Wong, president of Bellardi Wong, and our latest Retail Transformer, has the answers. Polly’s agency works with the best, most successful DTC brands and she is sharing the best practices every DTC founder, brand manager, and category manager need to know to be successful in this episode! Should you open stores? Leverage print? Catalogs? Is Facebook still worthwhile? What about TikTok? Listen and find out! News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show has been nominated for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during NRF 2023 in January in New York City! IF you’re a fan of the show, please give us your vote! You can vote here: https://bit.ly/VIPretail News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review to be mentioned in upcoming episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E5 Polly Wong [00:00:00] Pre-Intro [00:00:00] Casey Golden: Ricardo, I've got one word for you to describe this week's show. Dtc. [00:00:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, so Casey, I'm thinking that's technically three words, but, but nevermind that. Um, I don't think we've done an entire show focused on DTC before, have we? [00:00:13] Casey Golden: Hey, I didn't write the script. So [00:00:21] So this is exciting and. I'm especially pumped for all [00:00:24] the DTC founders out there tuning in. This one is for you. [00:00:28] Ricardo Belmar: That's true, and honestly, if you're a direct to consumer founder listening or, or watching us on YouTube, stop right now. Go grab a pen and paper or your iPad or whatever you like to use to take notes, because believe me, you are going to be writing things down nonstop in a mad fury throughout this episode. [00:00:45] Casey Golden: Oh yeah. The tips and tricks are going to be flying. And you just don't wanna miss a [00:00:50] minute. [00:00:51] Ricardo Belmar: So should we just start the show or should we make listeners suffer a little bit more first, with more of our carefree and eloquent banter, [00:00:56] Casey Golden: Oh, you're so cruel. Let's get to the music already. [00:00:59] [00:01:19] Show Intro [00:01:19] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to season two, episode five of The Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:01:25] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show listeners, retail's unapologetically authentic podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and tech alike. [00:01:39] Ricardo Belmar: We are [00:01:40] back with another [00:01:41] episode in our Retail Transformers series, and honestly, if you thought last episode's guest, Alan Smithson was an absolutely incredible, never ending source of value on the Metaverse, wow are you gonna be blown away with today's guest and topic! [00:01:54] Casey Golden: Yeah. As a founder, I'm so excited we're going to dive into this world of D to C and talk with amazing expert that's working with most of the top D to C brands out there. You would not believe how much knowledge she has to share, and that could really impact your DTC business by multiples [00:02:16] Ricardo Belmar: Indeed! Faithful followers, you will learn exactly why Polly Wong is more than meets the eye. This may go down as one of our most listened to episodes. We're gonna hear about what the right marketing and media spend mix should be for customer acquisition today. Because honestly, if you think it's the same as it was in the early days of D to C, boy are you in for a shock. [00:02:35] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, did you even consider print, like say catalogs? I bet you didn't. You will after this episode. [00:02:44] Ricardo Belmar: And then there's all the tips you're gonna hear [00:02:46] on growth strategies, how to activate your CRM for more profitable growth, retargeting those customers. And what about opening stores? Have you thought about where to open stores? [00:02:55] Casey Golden: There's just so much we could list. I mean, you're going to hear so many incredible [00:03:00] nuggets on marketing, roi, ROAS, and just so much more. [00:03:04] Ricardo Belmar: All right, then let's get to it. [00:03:06] Casey Golden: Let's roll. [00:03:07] [00:03:12] Polly Wong Interview [00:03:12] Ricardo Belmar: And we're here with our special guest and latest retail transformer to visit the show. Polly Wong, President of Belardi Wong, which some people may know as a direct to consumer marketing agency. But more on that in a moment. First of all, welcome Polly. [00:03:26] Polly Wong: Thank you for having me. [00:03:27] Casey Golden: It's great to have you on the show. Since we first met you, we've both been looking forward to this conversation and really digging in. So excited [00:03:36] Ricardo Belmar: Polly just to get us started, why don't you give us a more complete introduction of yourself and tell us about your company and what you do. [00:03:42] Polly Wong: You know, I've been in retail for 25 years. I've had an incredible amount of experience. Really. It's both on the client side at some major retailers. I started 25 years ago at eddiebower.com. I was fortunate to work at Williams Sonoma Inc across their portfolio of brands before jumping to the dark side to the agency side, which is a lot of fun and an incredible learning curve. [00:04:06] It's like learning on steroids, I like to say. Today at Belardi Wong, we have 400 active clients, about 90% D TO C brands. Of course, D to C brands have stores as well. And then some very large retail brands that that all of you would know as well. A tremendous amount of experience in fashion, at home decor, furnishings also in some niche categories as well. [00:04:28] We definitely do tend to work with premium brands targeting an affluent consumer. So much of the vantage point that I have to share with you today is really from that angle of brands who are really targeting, you know, an affluent consumer. The folks out there buying, you know, two or $300 sweaters and expensive shoes and $5,000 sofa. [00:04:47] So I, I like to make that clearer, but we're really privileged just to have an incredible vantage point into the industry. [00:04:53] Casey Golden: Really excited to dig deeper in this. As I mentioned before, I'm very intrigued in, in, into the side of the business of marketing. Compared to a lot of the more traditional route that have been taken over the last decade. So clearly you're focused on direct to consumer brands, both old and new, but certainly more established brands. [00:05:10] I think based off of what you said, one of the areas getting a lot of press lately in the D to C space is really how the marketing spend is being shifted from Facebook, Google, versus other mediums. Can you tell us a little bit about what's happening here with D to C brands and how that's changing this marketing mix? [00:05:30] Polly Wong: Sure. So it's been a really fascinating year to watch how the Apple platform changes have really impacted all of the digital platforms. Specifically meta we've found, as an aside, we've found that really Google is quite a resilient, steady, reliable channel. You know, Google continues to make enhancements that work for advertisers. [00:05:52] Performance Max on Google has worked very well for our clients over the last several months, so, so Google's very kind of reliable and steady. Google has had 10 to 50% increase, 10 to 15% increases. And, you know, costs, but really in line with kind of all the cost increases we're seeing across the p and l as a brand or as a retailer. [00:06:12] So really the challenge on the digital side in the last year has really come from meta and the Apple platform changes basically led. To less effective targeting and less effective measurement. And at the same time that our clients have seen a less effective measurement and less effective targeting on meta, they've also seen some pretty steep double digit increases on CPMs, on meta or Facebook, if you will. [00:06:38] And so we've seen dramatic underperformance in the last year, specifically in the social landscape. And so, you know, D to C brands inherently were built on Facebook and Google. The inherent DNA, if you will, of, of D to C brands is that one, they're performance based marketers, and two, you know, they're just wholeheartedly focused on new customer acquisition. [00:07:01] And so now you've seen that this Facebook channel just, you know, one of the top two most critical channels for new customer acquisition for DTC brands has really begun to plummet in the last year. I know across our client base through August, our clients have spent 19% less this year versus last year on Meta. [00:07:21] And that's because of the significant underperformance. But obviously Meta has taken the lion share of most of the marketing dollars for D2C brands. So, the question is, where is it going? You know, where are they shifting marketing spend? And that's been really interesting to [00:07:35] Casey Golden: That's great, and you really mention it as like a CRM strategy. [00:07:39] Is that, Is that right? [00:07:40] Spending shifts and pivots [00:07:40] Polly Wong: Yeah, so I think, well, I think we can talk about kind of where they're shifting their spend, but also, you know, what are some of the, the pivots that D to C brands need to make in order to be successful. And I think most D2C brands have not realized yet that the most incredible asset that they have is the customer file, the customer database. [00:08:01] That they've built up over the last five to 10 years. Now they've spent millions and millions of dollars building their customer file. New customer acquisition always comes at a cost. It's an investment. You cannot have a profitable business when you are only focused on acquisition as a fact. [00:08:15] Casey Golden: Oh my God, can you just like, say that [00:08:17] Ricardo Belmar: we should just frame that just to make that clear for, for everyone who's doubting that [00:08:22] Casey Golden: We're putting that in bold print. [00:08:24] Polly Wong: Yes. Also I'll just go out on a limb and also say you can't have a large, scalable, sustainable business when you only have a handful of product as well, we can get to that later. But definitely you can't just single handidly focus on new customer acquisition so I actually see, you know, there's a lot of headwinds right now, but I see a major tailwind that D to C brands could lean into is really crm, right? You know, I've talked to many, many brands over the years that when you ask them, they say they spent a hundred percent of their marketing budget on acquisition, and it's almost like crm, customer retention management. It's just an afterthought, right? [00:08:59] Like, Oh, we have email now, of course they'll say, We have email and sms. But there are really five major channels in the CRM toolbox, and we don't see D to C brands leaning into that. It's a discipline and a skill set they need to evolve to very quickly because that's where the profit is going to come, as we kind of stare down some economic uncertainty. [00:09:18] So the five channels that we really think about, obviously e email. Second is sms. Some clients have leaned into it very quickly. Some have not. It's still a huge opportunity. I, for one, wondered at the beginning if really SMS would just be shifting sales from email, but we do find that SMS is an incremental revenue driver. [00:09:37] So you've got email and sms. Obviously D to C brands are pretty good at targeting their customer file on Facebook, but they let it work too often on its own. And you really have to think about the segmentation and targeting of lapse customers. You have to carve out specific marketing dollars at targeting customers who've not bought from you in over a year. [00:09:58] There's still a better focus for your marketing dollar than pure new customer acquisition. And so you really wanna target your lapse customer file, on Facebook, and you wanna make sure you're looking at the frequency and the messaging and the targeting and the testing against that segment. [00:10:13] So now hopefully you've got brands, you know, leveraging and leaning into reactivation on social. I think what we don't find enough is actually proactive spending on search with your lapse customers. Let's say that Mary Jane bought a sweater from you a year and a half ago, and now Mary Jane is on Google searching for a turquoise turtleneck sweater. [00:10:36] You should be there targeting her. You should be buying that ad against Mary's search, right? Her click, you should be targeting her. And so really targeting lapse customers when they're searching for your product is a huge opportunity. We don't see clients carving out marketing dollars to really have that kind of proactive approach at customer reactivation on search, so I think that's a low hanging opportunity. [00:11:00] And then for definitely print. So all 400, you know, retailers and brands here, at Belardi Wong, are in the mail. They're leveraging direct mail and catalogs for customer retention. It's extremely effective. And driving up purchase frequency and revenue per customer and overall lifetime value. The great thing about print is that, you know, you've got a hundred percent reach. [00:11:22] So if you want to target Mary Jane who bought from you a year and a half ago she's gotta at least touch the piece to recycle it, so you've got a hundred percent reach. All of our data over the last year as we've looked at it, we've found that if you want to target a specific customer at a specific time within social, you've got about an 18% chance. [00:11:43] Basically, you've got an 18% chance of reaching who you want. When you want to on Facebook, and that's because you're competing with other advertisers for her impression. Mary Jane your customer only has so much impressions and frequency on Facebook and you're competing with other advertisers, and especially in our case, as I said, our clients tend to target, you know, affluent consumers and so Mary Jane is a great shopper and there's a lot of advertisers who want her impressions, and so you can't be sure that you're going to reach her. [00:12:13] And on email, you know, maybe you're lucky if you've got a 20, 25% open rate, but once you start looking at your lapse customers, maybe you've got a 10 or 15% open rate. And so the only way that you could make sure that you get a hundred percent reach is in the mail. And so we see this CRM toolbox with email, sms, social, search and print really is a major opportunity for D to C brands who built very expensive customer files at this point, to really lean into that as a major growth strategy. [00:12:42] Casey Golden: It seems so basic, but yet at the same time, like, but nobody's doing it. , Right. Is to like really go back into that core of, of all those customers. [00:12:54] Ricardo Belmar: And I, and I thought that a lot of these DTC would have used search when. came up, right, to try to get that initial customer acquisition. So I, I find it kind of curious that if, maybe I'm wrong about that, but I, it seems to me that that's one of the original tactics I expect to see DTC brands use at the start, maybe they don't come back to it, to your point. [00:13:15] Polly Wong: You know, we don't see a fine level of segmentation and targeting honestly, within digital media buying. You know, I, I think about digital media agencies and I think of them as master tinkerers, and I can almost just see all the people behind the scenes, almost like behind a clock, you know, turning the dial a little bit this way and a little bit that way. [00:13:33] And it's really about bids and CPMs and it's about creative and frequency and the type of ad. It's really not about. Okay, This is our cheerleader cohort. This is our loyalist cohort. This is our, you know, former cheerleader cohort meeting. This used to be a best customer, and now she's not a best customer. [00:13:52] What percent of our spend are we going to target against her? What should be the target cost to retain? You know, the industry talks about the target cost of acquisition, you know, the cost to acquire a new customer, but you never hear anyone talk about the cost to retain a customer. And I think we're gonna have to see a major shift in how people think. [00:14:11] I think that's the one thing in my, my 25 years in retail. I think there has to be an inherent pivot for D to C brands to embrace some of the real kind of retail operation discipline that has existed, you know, for many years and has allowed companies to exist for decades and to become billion dollar retailers. [00:14:30] And that definitely includes financial planning. It includes inventory planning, merchandise planning, and definitely really thinking about, you know, your target customer and your segmentation and CRM and how you're allocating those dollars. [00:14:46] Casey Golden: I always say, if you spent [00:14:49] half as much time retaining your customers as you spent all of these resources on acquiring them, you'd have a completely different business. [00:14:58] Polly Wong: Yeah. You know, and I think we we're seeing, I think it's actually kind of exciting. There are definitely always some D to C brands who are leading in the space and we see. Really three major growth strategies and definitely activating more channels for both CRM and for active acquisition. You know, testing TikTok, testing connected TV or streaming tv, leaning into print for both acquisition and crm. [00:15:22] And so definitely activating more marketing channels is an important opportunity for D to C brands. But also, I can emphasize enough, and I touched on this earlier, as a matter of fact, the more product you put in front of. Across categories and price points, the more revenue you will drive from her. And I always tell people, I learned two things in my years, at Williams Sonoma Inc. [00:15:45] When I was on the client side. The first is that the best way to drive response rates is to have a range of product across categories and price points. So, okay, you know, she bought a sofa from you, what is she gonna buy next? And that's why you see these types of brands have an incredible assortment in tabletop and seasonal decor and all of those other categories, bed and bath. [00:16:06] The second thing I learned at Williams Sonoma I tell people, is that on my second day on the job Chuck Williams himself, so I'm dating myself a little bit, he said to me, Polly, you know how you sell a $200 toaster? You put a $400 toaster next to it? And I never forgot that [00:16:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And, it completely makes sense. I mean, I to, I have to give credit to William Sonoma, right? Who has, mastered that technique of positioning and curating the right selection at different price points to drive a particular one that you might wanna drive, I think they, I've an amazing job at doing that, and that's certainly a lesson a lot of DTC brands would need to learn. [00:16:40] And, and also kind of speaks. Theory, I've always put out that, you know, so many of these DTC brands that came to be, know, is digitally native, know, wanted to just disrupt one particular product they started with that one product and I always felt that, you know, the one question that does not get asked when they're seeing some initial success, right? [00:17:02] They're getting a lot of new customers, they weren't thinking through, okay, what's the frequency with which these customers I've paid to [00:17:10] Polly Wong: Yes. [00:17:11] Ricardo Belmar: now in some way are going to buy again the [00:17:14] Polly Wong: Yes, exactly. [00:17:17] How often? , [00:17:18] Ricardo Belmar: most things people don't buy every week. [00:17:20] Polly Wong: Absolutely. So how often do you need to buy a mattress and how often do you need to buy a suitcase? Right? Thinking [00:17:26] Ricardo Belmar: Two. two, good examples. [00:17:27] Polly Wong: popular, [00:17:28] Ricardo Belmar: good examples. [00:17:28] Adopting Basic Retail Operations [00:17:28] Polly Wong: Brands that we've seen now struggle to grow. Absolutely. You know there are some really great smart brands out there. You know, we've seen a lot of the really high growth soft goods companies, so bedding companies, you know, there's a reason why they launch into lounge wear, right? [00:17:43] There's a reason why they launch into bath, right? So you see these bedding soft good companies launch into other categories because, okay, so I bought a set of sheets. I bought, you know, a beautiful comforter, but what am I gonna buy next from you? And you've seen home brands lean into apparel. [00:18:00] You've seen apparel brands lean into home. You know, we're going to continue to see that. Absolutely. But honestly, you know, we were just putting together some strategies internally for clients cuz there are, as I said earlier, a significant amount of headwinds, I think facing brands and retailers in the next six to 12 months. [00:18:18] There's a lot of really inexpensive ways that don't require a lot of research and development that don't require a lot of product development and long timelines. We were doing an assessment for a women's apparel company. And we were looking at their tops and we were looking at tops and the price points and the sizes and the colors of their competitive set. [00:18:38] And as we were looking at the tops, we realized, you know, you sell that long sleeve basic tee in four colors, but on average your competitors sell their long sleeve basic tee in eight to 10 colors. And also you sell yours for $8 more on average. And so maybe if you could take and just add color ways, take your top selling. [00:18:59] Products and add new colorways. Think about, you know, how much would a four, $6 price cut to be competitive? What kind of incremental revenue would that bring? And I think it's that type of merchandise analysis and merchandise planning and inventory management that honestly is a discipline that D to C brands don't inherently have. [00:19:17] So it's time, as I said earlier, to hire some good old fashioned retail operations [00:19:21] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's an [00:19:22] That. an excellent point and [00:19:23] it's one that I think that has never been quite so obvious, right, to the DTC brands, because they had that single minded, I have this one product that we're gonna disrupt. It's this one product category, this one selection we're gonna disrupt. And there wasn't enough thought to, Well, what happens next? After you've done that? [00:19:37] I, do wanna ask you one question because you know, when Casey and I were thinking of, what we, we were gonna learn from you in this episode, and we thought, it really tells a story about that we think of as, you know, making old media, new media in a way, in a sense that as you've been describing to us now, different marketing mix and moving from a lot of pure. [00:19:57] Digital marketing spend to other perhaps more, more traditional, maybe some non-traditional, because I heard connected TV in there as well. But I'm really intrigued by the success your clients are having in print and with catalogs, which call that maybe the most traditional option a lot of brands can go with. [00:20:14] and when we've spoken to you before, you've mentioned that. When people hear catalog, sort of have an idea in their head of what that might look like. But what you're now with your, your, your clients is not exactly the same kind of format. I, I think it's a much. And maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what's evolved in this, in the print catalog space. [00:20:33] Polly Wong: Yeah. They're not your mother's catalogs anymore. You know, it used to be that you have a hundred page catalog and you've got, you know, five to 10 items per page and you put the whole store inside the catalog. And it used to be that, 80% of catalogs went to women over 55. And she only bought what she saw on the page. [00:20:51] And there's been just really a fundamental shift. First of all, there is a significant amount of print pieces folded pieces, catalogs going in home, The 20 year olds, 30 year olds, 40 year olds. And so now the catalog isn't something you, you shop from the, the catalog or the direct mail piece is a channel driver and it's driving her to the store to buy or is driving her to e-commerce to buy. [00:21:15] And over the years, as we've analyzed the results, we've seen and found that actually only about a third of the product that she buys after she gets the piece was depicted in the piece, meaning that two outta three times what she buys was not in the actual piece, but it drove her to the site or it drove her to the store. [00:21:34] So she thought she wanted one sweater, she got to the site, she bought a different sweater, So as we began to understand that there was a new purpose to print that really it was to drive her to a channel to engage and then to buy, right? Always measuring, of course, the ROAS, actually, I think it's ironic, catalogers were really the original D to C brands and catalogers were always performance based marketers. [00:21:57] So I like to throw that out there. But today, especially for our fashion clients and our home brand clients, definitely catalogs look more like look books they're more aspirational, more lifestyle photography, more storytelling. You know, we actually one of the most successful catalogs in history and the thousands and thousands and thousands of campaigns we measured, when you open up this catalog, the first two spreads are actually just really an aspirational story. [00:22:25] And yet it was extremely productive as measured by sales. And so really you're here to engage the customer and to drive her to a channel to buy, and that is the ultimate goal. Now, what we've found, depending on the product assortment, depending on the price point, depending on the target consumer, First of all, you don't have to send a full, so full, huge catalog anymore, right? [00:22:46] So most of our clients are sending catalogs that are maybe 28 or 36 pages, but not, you know, 80 plus pages. So you don't have to send her as many pages. You don't have to put the whole store. In the catalog, you wanna just say, Here's our our new products, here's our best sellers, and you wanna be compelling and you wanna send her to the channel to buy that she wants to buy in. [00:23:08] And then also we've seen a whole new lifeline because print is acting as this channel driver and you don't have to put the full assortment in front of her. We've seen an incredible amount of success with folded pieces. You know, here is our top five new products of the season. Check it out online, check it out in store. [00:23:25] And so we've found that there's a different messaging and creative strategy also because of this kind of new purpose and how consumers are interacting with print. And I should say that it, it has been an amazing ride. Really just, you know, hundreds of new brands in the mail the last couple of years. [00:23:42] But, you know, starting over a decade ago, we launched brands like Shutterfly, Minted, Revolve, Zappos, One Kings Lane. You know, we Allbirds, right? We started with Allbirds had zero customers. You know, over a decade ago we launched all of these brands into the mail. And so some folks I think already could see it, you know, early on. [00:24:03] I think what's happened is that the cost of digital marketing has become extremely competitive and saturated and promotional and expensive, and you can't always reach who you wanna reach. There's an amazing amount of real estate in print to tell your story and to put your product, and also it's effective for both. [00:24:20] Crm. I would say that mailing customers is like printing money, but also for new customer acquisition. We tend to work with premium brands and you know, to get someone to buy a $300 sweater from you when they've never heard of your brand before, the amount of real estate goes a long way in convincing new customers to buy. [00:24:36] Ricardo Belmar: That's a good point cuz in those scenarios, right, you're really asking that new customer to buy your story as much as your product. [00:24:43] Polly Wong: Absolutely. And you know, I think there's an amount of credibility and authority just as stores give D to C brands credibility. I think the same is can be set of print and I like to say that millennials can spot a manufactured brand from a mile away. And I think that there's an amount of real estate that you have to tell your story. [00:25:03] And if it's authentic, like we have clients, brands like Outer known who just have incredible, authentic story around sustainability and apparel. And a really, you know, just a huge commitment to that as a business. And they're able to build that story with their community through print [00:25:19] On Opening Stores [00:25:19] Casey Golden: one of the initiatives that's been happening lately that has me very excited, just cuz I think we all kind of started in stores, is more of these digitally native brands or pure play brands actually opening up stores and more pop up. I'm a big advocate of the in-store experience. Not that many of us have had one lately, but with the world closed for a little bit. [00:25:42] But I think it's a great opportunity to actually connect. Are you, are you helping them essentially kind of understand where they should be potentially opening up stores or opening up popups or working on that strategy based on, because you guys know so much about where the consumer lives and that community, [00:26:02] Polly Wong: Certainly you can build models regarding, you know, around trade areas to understand where your customers are at today and where your perspective best customers are at. I think to answer your original question though, you know, around just this kind of continued push of D to C brands in stores, honestly, it's really, really very simple. [00:26:26] in any category, more than 50% of sales are still in physical stores. So if you're not selling either in your own stores or on the floor at Nordstrom's, for example, if you're not building your wholesale network, then you're missing out on 50% of your market. And so that's really what it comes down to. I think one of the things that I find more encouraging today about the retail landscape than I did before the pandemic. [00:26:54] Before the pandemic. You just saw almost an absurd level of store openings from DTC brands. Brands that were suddenly opening 20, 30, 40 stores a year. When you open stores that quickly, you're not going into just a markets, you're not negotiating the best real estate deals. You aren't taking the time to build the models to understand where your customers are and where your best. [00:27:17] New perspective customers are, but I think what's great to see is I'm seeing a more cautious approach. I'm seeing the D to C brands understand they need to have a physical footprint and that maybe at the same time, now they're only opening up five to seven stores a year. They're also exploring partnerships with department stores and other retailers to be on their floor. [00:27:38] We have so many brands that we work with who sell on the floor at Anthropology, for example. And so I think that most of our clients have realized you have to have that physical presence in order to reach your customer where she's at when she's shopping, and also because it's a significant business opportunity. [00:27:55] I also think, I mean, there's no question, you know, there is, I think, better real estate deals to be had in 'A' markets because of the amount of store closings in the last couple of years, I think there are still some significant opportunities in terms of finding the right space, the right price with the right consumer. [00:28:12] And so I think that's very encouraging. I think from what I've last seen, this is gonna be the first year in a very, very long time where the number of store openings will actually outpace the number of store closings [00:28:22] Casey Golden: Yeah. I kind of saw, you know, it's nice to see that this, this natural transition, essentially it's all coming back to all these different channels and touch points where there was that moment. where it's just like you just need to be online and everybody else is doing it wrong, and then you just see it come full circle where they're starting to join. We've already went through this cycle. [00:28:45] Polly Wong: Well, you said it yourself. Yeah, you said it yourself. What's old is new again, honestly, to me, advertising on podcasts, it's radio. to me, connected TV is TV advertising, right? Like it's all we've been through these channels. Even outdoor media is having a huge resurgence right out of home media. And so I think that, you know, what it really comes down to is that the most sophisticated marketers have realized that you need a channel mix. [00:29:13] Online, offline, you need to be where your customer is at. You need to have multiple distribution channels, you need to have multiple products. And I think that the high growth brands, you know, have realized that, and I think everyone else is beginning to learn as well. [00:29:25] On marketplaces [00:29:25] Ricardo Belmar: So let me ask you too, on, on, that Polly, one of the areas that I, I think is also interesting here is how these brands leverage different marketplaces you know, within that channel mix. I mean, what, what are your thoughts there and how do you advise brands around marketplaces? [00:29:39] Polly Wong: Definitely D to C brands have had a lot of, you know, trepidation around the marketplaces. I definitely think though that they're going to be forced to consider it. we've already found is, we've just discussed that you can't have an e-commerce only business. And so we saw these e-commerce brands open up stores, and then we saw them add wholesale partners. And so now really the last major distribution channel as a source of revenue growth is the marketplaces. [00:30:03] And historically, D to C brands have been very protective of their brand's message and of their new customers. And they don't want to let anyone kind of expose their brand other than how they want it presented. However, I do think that the pressure to continue to drive revenue with all of these headwinds and because the reality is that all consumers are on the marketplaces, and you know, now we've got Macy's leaning into their marketplace. [00:30:30] I mean, every single major retailer is going to have their own marketplace online as well. I think you have to be there. I think, you know, we're finding clients kind of tiptoe into it. They're testing different strategies. They might only put part of their assortment within the marketplaces. They might actually develop a specific collection for the marketplaces. [00:30:50] So definitely I think they're cautious. But I think that they're going to be forced to consider trying it in ways they might not have a few years ago because they've gotta drive revenue growth. And because there are so many, you know, headwinds, unfortunately at the moment, [00:31:05] Retail Media Networks [00:31:05] Ricardo Belmar: So one of the other big trends that we're talking about this season on our show are retail media networks. We've, dedicated an episode on it. I was just at the grocery shop event and that was a huge, huge trend there as well. [00:31:17] So I'm curious, what, what's your recommendation for brands around you know, whether it's with the marketplaces that they may be new to or as they're getting into stores and, and wholesale agreements there? How are you advising DTC brands around retail media networks? [00:31:31] Polly Wong: You know, it's interesting. I don't think that we'll see D to C brands leverage their own assets and their own impressions and their own emails and their own social for advertising income and revenue. Because D to C brands usually are not big enough to actually make it worthwhile to suddenly open up their own assets for advertising, but certainly as it relates to the really large retailers and the real large marketplaces, I don't know why you wouldn't choose to advertise there. [00:32:01] You know, in order to make that advertising work, those platforms have to offer the level of targeting and segmentation that will drive the performance to justify the CPMs and the media spend. Why would you not test it? I mean one, I think really positive quality of DTC brands is that usually they're willing to test anything. [00:32:19] And I think in this case, not only why would you not test it and consider it, as long as you know that your target consumer is there from a sociodemographic profile perspective. But in some cases, if you are going to play, for example, on the marketplaces, you have to buy media on the marketplaces. It's not like if you build that, they will come. [00:32:37] You've gotta have the advertising dollars to actually support your sales on the marketing place on the marketplace. [00:32:42] Casey Golden: for a lot of our listeners. I'm sure they've been nodding their heads as as you speak. There's a lot of question marks though still [00:32:49] for anybody who hasn't been looking at their, their media spend in this way. What should brands be looking at a D to C or D to C brands? Be looking at a media spend breakdown. [00:33:01] You know, what portion are you seeing more of a trend? Because we see it's so scary to move a portion of your business over to something new, even if it's starting to break, There's what are, what do you see more as a breakdown? Just so people can go ahead and make the shift and just close their eyes and go [00:33:21] Polly Wong: Yeah. large brands that we see, large brands and retailers that we see doing well, that are significant in size and have e-commerce and have stores, they've really shifted to almost a 40, 40 20 marketing mix where 40% of their spend is digital marketing. 40% is offline, which could include actually tv, radio, print, out of home media. [00:33:47] And then 20% is really PR partnerships, sponsorships, influencers, you know, things around content and community. So, You know, to 40% across the digital channels, 40% across all kind of other, you know non-digital channels. And then what's really encouraging to see and smaller brands can't afford often to spend, you know, top of funnel. [00:34:12] But as a matter of fact, high growth brands do spend top of funnel. And so you'll see the. Companies are beginning to carve out 10 to 20% of their spend. So they get the pr, they get the influencers, they get the sponsorships and the partnerships that allows them to build community. [00:34:27] Launching Direct Mail [00:34:27] Casey Golden: So if there's a, if there's a direct to consumer brand right now that's listening what's the ballpark range they'd need to be? Looking at for budgeting to launch a campaign a, a direct mail campaign. [00:34:40] Polly Wong: Okay. Well, I thought you were gonna ask a bigger picture question. What percent of top line revenue do you have to spend high growth, emerging brands are spending, you know, 20 to 25% of top line revenue on marketing. Mature businesses spend closer to 10 to 15% of top line revenue on marketing and big retailers and wholesale brands might only spend, you know, six to 10% of their top line revenue on marketing. [00:35:10] But definitely if you're an emerging DTC brand today, you're definitely spending 20 to 25% of your top line revenue. So for every hundred dollars, you're spending 20 to 25 dollars. To get that. So just in terms of what you have to spend as an emerging brand to get traction. Absolutely. If you think you can build a brand from scratch that's spending, you know, $10 on the a hundred dollars, it'll never happen. [00:35:34] Unfortunately, those days are, are past us in terms of, you know, really testing print, well here at Ballardi Wong, we only, you know, we run the largest, you know, Scalable, sophisticated programs in the country. So we don't do anything small, cheaper, schlossky. So we're, we're a little bit more on the premium side here . Really to get. [00:35:52] A solid proof of concept with all of the industry best practices in place for both CRM and acquisition. You're looking at about a 75 to a hundred thousand dollars test in print and we've launched over 250 DTC brands into the mail successfully. And even little baby ones with a few thousand customers and they're all spending that much money. [00:36:11] So on their first campaign still less expensive, you know, still half as much as a three week TV campaign. So, [00:36:18] Casey Golden: mean hey, I mean, I mean that could just be one post by a tick, a certain, a couple TikTok influencers too. So, I [00:36:25] mean, you [00:36:26] know, [00:36:26] Polly Wong: That's the, you know, here's the ironic thing. You can put a beautiful full size catalog in front of a consumer for 85 cents. Your cost per click nowadays is, you know, two or $3. So the thing that's really crazy is that you can mail. 4, 5, 6 catalogs to a highly targeted audience for the cost of one click. [00:36:47] So I think that that's, you know, it seems expensive, but actually, quality touch, yes, it's [00:36:54] Casey Golden: I agree. And it's really just being able to say like, instead of spending that hundred k, the 200,000 on this, let's just go ahead and move it over here and run a test. Because I think everything that you've really kind of ran through through this conversation and what you guys are doing is just, it's, it's incredibly compelling. And it's a lot of things that potentially these customer bases or the brands are just not as familiar with because they don't have a lot of seasoned retailers in their company orgs. And so a lot of it, we see somebody doing something or like, you really only have one product. Like you do realize that there's like issues with this who gave you. You know, and then now those [00:37:43] conversations [00:37:44] Polly Wong: think, well, you know what's gonna be really interesting to see is that it's not gonna be very easy. We're already finding this. We actually do due diligence on D to C transactions because of all of our experience at Belardi Wong. And not this summer, but last summer we worked on six transactions, and this summer we didn't work on any transactions. [00:38:03] I think very quickly. It's going to be a very tough landscape for raising dollars at this moment in time. And already the industry has become a little bit weary because some of the evaluations and the losses that have happened over the last couple of years. And so I think companies are gonna have to be scrappier and smarter because it's not gonna be so easy to get someone to give you, you know, 20, $30 million just like that. [00:38:25] Casey Golden: Yeah. no, I mean yeah, I think it's great. I mean, I, I think that this is, I'm really excited to see some comments once this kind of goes, gets pushed out because I know that this is gonna be some new content that they haven't really thought about as even an option think it's [00:38:39] Using Influencers [00:38:39] Ricardo Belmar: I I, do wanna go back to one thing that you mentioned in the 40 40 20 split where you had in that 20%, you know, kind of lump together in, in pr, things like influencers, and that tends to get a lot of attention. Around, you know, what brands are spending with influencers and how they're using them. [00:38:56] Are they on TikTok yet? What? are you seeing there that's actually successful? [00:39:01] Polly Wong: You know, the truth is, is that for most clients you know, influencers can reach a small target community. But we haven't seen for most clients a huge amount of scale unless you're willing to spend, a few hundred thousand dollars, with an influencer who really has significant reach and real influence on what consumers are buying. [00:39:25] We just haven't found that for most of our clients, that actually influencers can drive any kind of sustainable scale. So maybe you pay a lot of money and you know, Mary Jane, the influencer does a series of posts maybe over two weeks about some of your new product. Maybe you get a momentary surge in sales, but it's not sustainable and you can't continue to spend those kinds of dollars for those really high touch posts. And so the one challenge that we do find with influencer marketing is it takes a lot of leg work to implement and it is often not truly scalable. It's also kind of interesting to see what's going on on TikTok, because definitely, you know, that that cut meta spend is shifting to TikTok. But TikTok is also hard to measure for the same reasons that it's hard to measure meta, right? Because of platform changes and challenges. And for the most part, because it's hard to measure the return on ad spend, on TikTok, it tends to be a top of funnel channel. Well, I can tell you that in a recession the money for top of funnel marketing is going to dry up very quickly. [00:40:37] And so you're gonna be focused on those channels that can drive real performance and ROAS because you just don't have enough funding to, to, to, to spend on those top channels. So it'll be really interesting to see, over the next six months how advertising dollars shift around. I usually feel pretty comfortable giving my predictions for retail sales and e-commerce sales, but honestly, at this point, just hand me an ball. I have [00:41:01] Ricardo Belmar: I think that's where [00:41:02] Polly Wong: I'm gonna continue to be I'm gonna continue to cross my fingers and my toes and hope that at least for our clients, that affluent consumers are still spending [00:41:09] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And so, so on what you just said, right around top of funnel and those, is there an argument to be made that if you're going to spend on influencers or TikTok, that you're, you might wanna save that for when you have a new product launch versus just trying to drive sales of an existing product? [00:41:27] Polly Wong: Absolutely. It's not something [00:41:29] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Because you scale it right [00:41:31] Polly Wong: you're gonna turn it on. You can't, you're gonna, you're gonna turn it on maybe three or four times. You know, in the world of retail, we think about five seasons winter. Spring, summer, fall, and holiday. And so you're really going to lean in just a few weeks of each season into your influencer marketing and that spend and really, lean into your peak sales curve to drive those new product sales and to get that reach. [00:41:55] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. If that makes sense. That makes complete sense. So, so last question for you Polly, and if, someone were to come and ask you right now, what's your top recommendation when you think about growth strategies for a DTC brand, what would you tell 'em? [00:42:07] Polly Wong: Considering the economic uncertainty, the headwinds and the rising costs across the entire p and l, I would say that my top two recommendations are to one, lean into crm. Make sure that you're activating all five channels targeting your existing customer base, and then two, Because you're targeting your existing customers, continue to focus on your product category expansion, you know, what is your range of product across categories and price points. [00:42:37] Consumers may start spending down they may be more value focused than ever. So, you know, what is your good, better, best merchandise strategy, right? Not only are you adding simple things like more color skews to your long sleeve t-shirt, but you know, is there a good, better, best strategy for your product? [00:42:53] Motorcycle clients we've have worked with have done this extremely well. There's a good, better, best motorcycle helmet and the best one has got bluetooth and all kinds of fun things in it. And in, in addition to keeping your, your, your head safe. So definitely I think, leaning into your customer file is a tremendous, profitable asset. [00:43:11] And then just giving existing customers more to buy. I do think there's plenty of time to lean into new customer acquisi. You know, as we begin to see some of the, the economic uncertainty clear up, hopefully by spring, I actually am quite confident that I do think things will level out and I think we'll be back sailing along by spring of 2023 is, is my hope. [00:43:33] So fingers crossed. [00:43:34] Ricardo Belmar: I think you maybe, may be right about that. And it kind of says that if I kind of read into, the two areas you highlighted for a lot of DTC brands, there's probably some new hires they need to look for to help them with those strategies, particularly around merchandising those new products. [00:43:47] Products like you talked about earlier. [00:43:49] Polly Wong: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think you have to, and also to pay attention to the competition. You know, it's amazing to me. I think brands do tend to be inwardly focused and. You know, maybe now people will have the time and to kind of step back and say, how does my assortment look compared to my competitors? [00:44:06] What are my price points? What are my size ranges? What are my number of colors? You know what is my returns policy? You know, how do I stand up against the competition? Everybody's gonna have to just be a little bit smarter. [00:44:16] Ricardo Belmar: I think that's another great point. I mean, I, even on for traditional retailers, I, I can't count how many times in the past I've been in, in a room with retailers and asked them, Well, when was the last time you walked one of your competitors' stores to see what they were doing? you know, I, I, I don't know sometimes whether I wanted to laugh or cry at the fact that they were just crickets in the room and nobody responded when I asked that question. [00:44:38] so there's definitely some truth to that. [00:44:40] Polly Wong: Absolutely. [00:44:43] Ricardo Belmar: Well, thank you So [00:44:44] discuss. I'm probably gonna go down as one of the, our, our most commented episodes with so much in good information and, and advice and I think really unique details that you've helped surface here for, for DTC brands as they grow into, I would call becoming a, full channel retailer in a sense. [00:45:03] and really didn't, know, cover a lot of ground around making old media, new media, like we started to talk about earlier. [00:45:09] Polly Wong: Great. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been fun this afternoon to connect with you and I, I hope you both have a, a lovely fall season. [00:45:16] Casey Golden: Definitely. For our listeners who have been furiously taking notes during this episode, what's the best reach way for them to reach out to you or follow your company? [00:45:26] Polly Wong: Yeah, obviously we're on the social channels, but if you wanna reach out through the contact us page at Belardi Wong, if you would like to talk to me directly or have any questions or comments for me directly, I know that they'll, they'll make their way to me and I'm always happy to chat and connect. [00:45:39] Casey Golden: Great. [00:45:40] Ricardo Belmar: Well, thank you again, Polly, for joining us. We hope to have you back soon. [00:45:43] Polly Wong: Thank you so much. Have a great one. [00:45:45] Casey Golden: You too. That's a wrap, Ricardo. [00:45:48] Show Closing [00:45:48] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:46:18] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:46:35] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:46:36] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. Direct-to-consumer. DTC. What emotional response do those words conjure for you? The formula for DTC used to be simple – spend marketing dollars to acquire new customers. Today, customer acquisition costs can be 10X higher than they used to be, so what should be the new strategy in these challenging, post-pandemic economic times? Polly Wong, president of Bellardi Wong, and our latest Retail Transformer, has the answers. Polly’s agency works with the best, most successful DTC brands and she is sharing the best practices every DTC founder, brand manager, and category manager need to know to be successful in this episode! Should you open stores? Leverage print? Catalogs? Is Facebook still worthwhile? What about TikTok? Listen and find out!


News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show has been nominated for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during NRF 2023 in January in New York City! IF you’re a fan of the show, please give us your vote! You can vote here: https://bit.ly/VIPretail 


News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review to be mentioned in upcoming episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

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TRANSCRIPT

S2E5 Retail Transformers - Polly Wong

[00:00:00] Pre-Intro

[00:00:00] Casey Golden: Ricardo, I've got one word for you to describe this week's show. Dtc. 

[00:00:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, so Casey, I'm thinking that's technically three words, but, but nevermind that. Um, I don't think we've done an entire show focused on DTC before, have we?

[00:00:13] Casey Golden: Hey, I didn't write the script. So

[00:00:21] So this is exciting and. I'm especially pumped for all 

[00:00:24] the DTC founders out there tuning in. This one is for you.

[00:00:28] Ricardo Belmar: That's true, and honestly, if you're a direct to consumer founder listening or, or watching us on YouTube, stop right now. Go grab a pen and paper or your iPad or whatever you like to use to take notes, because believe me, you are going to be writing things down nonstop in a mad fury throughout this episode.

[00:00:45] Casey Golden: Oh yeah. The tips and tricks are going to be flying. And you just don't wanna miss a

[00:00:50] minute.

[00:00:51] Ricardo Belmar: So should we just start the show or should we make listeners suffer a little bit more first, with more of our carefree and eloquent banter,

[00:00:56] Casey Golden: Oh, you're so cruel. Let's get to the music already. 

[00:00:59]

[00:01:19] Show Intro

[00:01:19] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to season two, episode five of The Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:01:25] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show listeners, retail's unapologetically authentic podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and tech alike. 

[00:01:39] Ricardo Belmar: We are 

[00:01:40] back with another 

[00:01:41] episode in our Retail Transformers series, and honestly, if you thought last episode's guest, Alan Smithson was an absolutely incredible, never ending source of value on the Metaverse, wow are you gonna be blown away with today's guest and topic!

[00:01:54] Casey Golden: Yeah. As a founder, I'm so excited we're going to dive into this world of D to C and talk with amazing expert that's working with most of the top D to C brands out there. You would not believe how much knowledge she has to share, and that could really impact your DTC business by multiples 

[00:02:16] Ricardo Belmar: Indeed! Faithful followers, you will learn exactly why Polly Wong is more than meets the eye. This may go down as one of our most listened to episodes. We're gonna hear about what the right marketing and media spend mix should be for customer acquisition today. Because honestly, if you think it's the same as it was in the early days of D to C, boy are you in for a shock.

[00:02:35] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, did you even consider print, like say catalogs? I bet you didn't. You will after this episode.

[00:02:44] Ricardo Belmar: And then there's all the tips you're gonna hear 

[00:02:46] on growth strategies, how to activate your CRM for more profitable growth, retargeting those customers. And what about opening stores? Have you thought about where to open stores? 

[00:02:55] Casey Golden: There's just so much we could list. I mean, you're going to hear so many incredible 

[00:03:00] nuggets on marketing, roi, ROAS, and just so much more. 

[00:03:04] Ricardo Belmar: All right, then let's get to it. 

[00:03:06] Casey Golden: Let's roll.

[00:03:07]

[00:03:12] Polly Wong Interview

[00:03:12] Ricardo Belmar: And we're here with our special guest and latest retail transformer to visit the show. Polly Wong, President of Belardi Wong, which some people may know as a direct to consumer marketing agency. But more on that in a moment. First of all, welcome Polly.

[00:03:26] Polly Wong: Thank you for having me.

[00:03:27] Casey Golden: It's great to have you on the show. Since we first met you, we've both been looking forward to this conversation and really digging in. So excited 

[00:03:36] Ricardo Belmar: Polly just to get us started, why don't you give us a more complete introduction of yourself and tell us about your company and what you do.

[00:03:42] Polly Wong: You know, I've been in retail for 25 years. I've had an incredible amount of experience. Really. It's both on the client side at some major retailers. I started 25 years ago at eddiebower.com. I was fortunate to work at Williams Sonoma Inc across their portfolio of brands before jumping to the dark side to the agency side, which is a lot of fun and an incredible learning curve.

[00:04:06] It's like learning on steroids, I like to say. Today at Belardi Wong, we have 400 active clients, about 90% D TO C brands. Of course, D to C brands have stores as well. And then some very large retail brands that that all of you would know as well. A tremendous amount of experience in fashion, at home decor, furnishings also in some niche categories as well.

[00:04:28] We definitely do tend to work with premium brands targeting an affluent consumer. So much of the vantage point that I have to share with you today is really from that angle of brands who are really targeting, you know, an affluent consumer. The folks out there buying, you know, two or $300 sweaters and expensive shoes and $5,000 sofa.

[00:04:47] So I, I like to make that clearer, but we're really privileged just to have an incredible vantage point into the industry. 

[00:04:53] Casey Golden: Really excited to dig deeper in this. As I mentioned before, I'm very intrigued in, in, into the side of the business of marketing. Compared to a lot of the more traditional route that have been taken over the last decade. So clearly you're focused on direct to consumer brands, both old and new, but certainly more established brands.

[00:05:10] I think based off of what you said, one of the areas getting a lot of press lately in the D to C space is really how the marketing spend is being shifted from Facebook, Google, versus other mediums. Can you tell us a little bit about what's happening here with D to C brands and how that's changing this marketing mix?

[00:05:30] Polly Wong: Sure. So it's been a really fascinating year to watch how the Apple platform changes have really impacted all of the digital platforms. Specifically meta we've found, as an aside, we've found that really Google is quite a resilient, steady, reliable channel. You know, Google continues to make enhancements that work for advertisers.

[00:05:52] Performance Max on Google has worked very well for our clients over the last several months, so, so Google's very kind of reliable and steady. Google has had 10 to 50% increase, 10 to 15% increases. And, you know, costs, but really in line with kind of all the cost increases we're seeing across the p and l as a brand or as a retailer.

[00:06:12] So really the challenge on the digital side in the last year has really come from meta and the Apple platform changes basically led. To less effective targeting and less effective measurement. And at the same time that our clients have seen a less effective measurement and less effective targeting on meta, they've also seen some pretty steep double digit increases on CPMs, on meta or Facebook, if you will.

[00:06:38] And so we've seen dramatic underperformance in the last year, specifically in the social landscape. And so, you know, D to C brands inherently were built on Facebook and Google. The inherent DNA, if you will, of, of D to C brands is that one, they're performance based marketers, and two, you know, they're just wholeheartedly focused on new customer acquisition.

[00:07:01] And so now you've seen that this Facebook channel just, you know, one of the top two most critical channels for new customer acquisition for DTC brands has really begun to plummet in the last year. I know across our client base through August, our clients have spent 19% less this year versus last year on Meta.

[00:07:21] And that's because of the significant underperformance. But obviously Meta has taken the lion share of most of the marketing dollars for D2C brands. So, the question is, where is it going? You know, where are they shifting marketing spend? And that's been really interesting to 

[00:07:35] Casey Golden: That's great, and you really mention it as like a CRM strategy. 

[00:07:39] Is that, Is that right? 

[00:07:40] Spending shifts and pivots

[00:07:40] Polly Wong: Yeah, so I think, well, I think we can talk about kind of where they're shifting their spend, but also, you know, what are some of the, the pivots that D to C brands need to make in order to be successful. And I think most D2C brands have not realized yet that the most incredible asset that they have is the customer file, the customer database.

[00:08:01] That they've built up over the last five to 10 years. Now they've spent millions and millions of dollars building their customer file. New customer acquisition always comes at a cost. It's an investment. You cannot have a profitable business when you are only focused on acquisition as a fact.

[00:08:15] Casey Golden: Oh my God, can you just like, say that 

[00:08:17] Ricardo Belmar: we should just frame that just to make that clear for, for everyone who's doubting that 

[00:08:22] Casey Golden: We're putting that in bold print.

[00:08:24] Polly Wong: Yes. Also I'll just go out on a limb and also say you can't have a large, scalable, sustainable business when you only have a handful of product as well, we can get to that later. But definitely you can't just single handidly focus on new customer acquisition so I actually see, you know, there's a lot of headwinds right now, but I see a major tailwind that D to C brands could lean into is really crm, right? You know, I've talked to many, many brands over the years that when you ask them, they say they spent a hundred percent of their marketing budget on acquisition, and it's almost like crm, customer retention management. It's just an afterthought, right?

[00:08:59] Like, Oh, we have email now, of course they'll say, We have email and sms. But there are really five major channels in the CRM toolbox, and we don't see D to C brands leaning into that. It's a discipline and a skill set they need to evolve to very quickly because that's where the profit is going to come, as we kind of stare down some economic uncertainty.

[00:09:18] So the five channels that we really think about, obviously e email. Second is sms. Some clients have leaned into it very quickly. Some have not. It's still a huge opportunity. I, for one, wondered at the beginning if really SMS would just be shifting sales from email, but we do find that SMS is an incremental revenue driver.

[00:09:37] So you've got email and sms. Obviously D to C brands are pretty good at targeting their customer file on Facebook, but they let it work too often on its own. And you really have to think about the segmentation and targeting of lapse customers. You have to carve out specific marketing dollars at targeting customers who've not bought from you in over a year.

[00:09:58] There's still a better focus for your marketing dollar than pure new customer acquisition. And so you really wanna target your lapse customer file, on Facebook, and you wanna make sure you're looking at the frequency and the messaging and the targeting and the testing against that segment. 

[00:10:13] So now hopefully you've got brands, you know, leveraging and leaning into reactivation on social. I think what we don't find enough is actually proactive spending on search with your lapse customers. Let's say that Mary Jane bought a sweater from you a year and a half ago, and now Mary Jane is on Google searching for a turquoise turtleneck sweater.

[00:10:36] You should be there targeting her. You should be buying that ad against Mary's search, right? Her click, you should be targeting her. And so really targeting lapse customers when they're searching for your product is a huge opportunity. We don't see clients carving out marketing dollars to really have that kind of proactive approach at customer reactivation on search, so I think that's a low hanging opportunity.

[00:11:00] And then for definitely print. So all 400, you know, retailers and brands here, at Belardi Wong, are in the mail. They're leveraging direct mail and catalogs for customer retention. It's extremely effective. And driving up purchase frequency and revenue per customer and overall lifetime value. The great thing about print is that, you know, you've got a hundred percent reach.

[00:11:22] So if you want to target Mary Jane who bought from you a year and a half ago she's gotta at least touch the piece to recycle it, so you've got a hundred percent reach. All of our data over the last year as we've looked at it, we've found that if you want to target a specific customer at a specific time within social, you've got about an 18% chance.

[00:11:43] Basically, you've got an 18% chance of reaching who you want. When you want to on Facebook, and that's because you're competing with other advertisers for her impression. Mary Jane your customer only has so much impressions and frequency on Facebook and you're competing with other advertisers, and especially in our case, as I said, our clients tend to target, you know, affluent consumers and so Mary Jane is a great shopper and there's a lot of advertisers who want her impressions, and so you can't be sure that you're going to reach her.

[00:12:13] And on email, you know, maybe you're lucky if you've got a 20, 25% open rate, but once you start looking at your lapse customers, maybe you've got a 10 or 15% open rate. And so the only way that you could make sure that you get a hundred percent reach is in the mail. And so we see this CRM toolbox with email, sms, social, search and print really is a major opportunity for D to C brands who built very expensive customer files at this point, to really lean into that as a major growth strategy.

[00:12:42] Casey Golden: It seems so basic, but yet at the same time, like, but nobody's doing it. , Right. Is to like really go back into that core of, of all those customers.

[00:12:54] Ricardo Belmar: And I, and I thought that a lot of these DTC would have used search when. came up, right, to try to get that initial customer acquisition. So I, I find it kind of curious that if, maybe I'm wrong about that, but I, it seems to me that that's one of the original tactics I expect to see DTC brands use at the start, maybe they don't come back to it, to your point.

[00:13:15] Polly Wong: You know, we don't see a fine level of segmentation and targeting honestly, within digital media buying. You know, I, I think about digital media agencies and I think of them as master tinkerers, and I can almost just see all the people behind the scenes, almost like behind a clock, you know, turning the dial a little bit this way and a little bit that way.

[00:13:33] And it's really about bids and CPMs and it's about creative and frequency and the type of ad. It's really not about. Okay, This is our cheerleader cohort. This is our loyalist cohort. This is our, you know, former cheerleader cohort meeting. This used to be a best customer, and now she's not a best customer.

[00:13:52] What percent of our spend are we going to target against her? What should be the target cost to retain? You know, the industry talks about the target cost of acquisition, you know, the cost to acquire a new customer, but you never hear anyone talk about the cost to retain a customer. And I think we're gonna have to see a major shift in how people think.

[00:14:11] I think that's the one thing in my, my 25 years in retail. I think there has to be an inherent pivot for D to C brands to embrace some of the real kind of retail operation discipline that has existed, you know, for many years and has allowed companies to exist for decades and to become billion dollar retailers.

[00:14:30] And that definitely includes financial planning. It includes inventory planning, merchandise planning, and definitely really thinking about, you know, your target customer and your segmentation and CRM and how you're allocating those dollars.

[00:14:46] Casey Golden: I always say, if you spent 

[00:14:49] half as much time retaining your customers as you spent all of these resources on acquiring them, you'd have a completely different business.

[00:14:58] Polly Wong: Yeah. You know, and I think we we're seeing, I think it's actually kind of exciting. There are definitely always some D to C brands who are leading in the space and we see. Really three major growth strategies and definitely activating more channels for both CRM and for active acquisition. You know, testing TikTok, testing connected TV or streaming tv, leaning into print for both acquisition and crm.

[00:15:22] And so definitely activating more marketing channels is an important opportunity for D to C brands. But also, I can emphasize enough, and I touched on this earlier, as a matter of fact, the more product you put in front of. Across categories and price points, the more revenue you will drive from her. And I always tell people, I learned two things in my years, at Williams Sonoma Inc.

[00:15:45] When I was on the client side. The first is that the best way to drive response rates is to have a range of product across categories and price points. So, okay, you know, she bought a sofa from you, what is she gonna buy next? And that's why you see these types of brands have an incredible assortment in tabletop and seasonal decor and all of those other categories, bed and bath.

[00:16:06] The second thing I learned at Williams Sonoma I tell people, is that on my second day on the job Chuck Williams himself, so I'm dating myself a little bit, he said to me, Polly, you know how you sell a $200 toaster? You put a $400 toaster next to it? And I never forgot that 

[00:16:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And, it completely makes sense. I mean, I to, I have to give credit to William Sonoma, right? Who has, mastered that technique of positioning and curating the right selection at different price points to drive a particular one that you might wanna drive, I think they, I've an amazing job at doing that, and that's certainly a lesson a lot of DTC brands would need to learn.

[00:16:40] And, and also kind of speaks. Theory, I've always put out that, you know, so many of these DTC brands that came to be, know, is digitally native, know, wanted to just disrupt one particular product they started with that one product and I always felt that, you know, the one question that does not get asked when they're seeing some initial success, right?

[00:17:02] They're getting a lot of new customers, they weren't thinking through, okay, what's the frequency with which these customers I've paid to 

[00:17:10] Polly Wong: Yes. 

[00:17:11] Ricardo Belmar: now in some way are going to buy again the 

[00:17:14] Polly Wong: Yes, exactly. 

[00:17:17] How often? ,

[00:17:18] Ricardo Belmar: most things people don't buy every week.

[00:17:20] Polly Wong: Absolutely. So how often do you need to buy a mattress and how often do you need to buy a suitcase? Right? Thinking 

[00:17:26] Ricardo Belmar: Two. two, good examples.

[00:17:27] Polly Wong: popular, 

[00:17:28] Ricardo Belmar: good examples. 

[00:17:28] Adopting Basic Retail Operations

[00:17:28] Polly Wong: Brands that we've seen now struggle to grow. Absolutely. You know there are some really great smart brands out there. You know, we've seen a lot of the really high growth soft goods companies, so bedding companies, you know, there's a reason why they launch into lounge wear, right?

[00:17:43] There's a reason why they launch into bath, right? So you see these bedding soft good companies launch into other categories because, okay, so I bought a set of sheets. I bought, you know, a beautiful comforter, but what am I gonna buy next from you? And you've seen home brands lean into apparel.

[00:18:00] You've seen apparel brands lean into home. You know, we're going to continue to see that. Absolutely. But honestly, you know, we were just putting together some strategies internally for clients cuz there are, as I said earlier, a significant amount of headwinds, I think facing brands and retailers in the next six to 12 months.

[00:18:18] There's a lot of really inexpensive ways that don't require a lot of research and development that don't require a lot of product development and long timelines. We were doing an assessment for a women's apparel company. And we were looking at their tops and we were looking at tops and the price points and the sizes and the colors of their competitive set.

[00:18:38] And as we were looking at the tops, we realized, you know, you sell that long sleeve basic tee in four colors, but on average your competitors sell their long sleeve basic tee in eight to 10 colors. And also you sell yours for $8 more on average. And so maybe if you could take and just add color ways, take your top selling.

[00:18:59] Products and add new colorways. Think about, you know, how much would a four, $6 price cut to be competitive? What kind of incremental revenue would that bring? And I think it's that type of merchandise analysis and merchandise planning and inventory management that honestly is a discipline that D to C brands don't inherently have.

[00:19:17] So it's time, as I said earlier, to hire some good old fashioned retail operations 

[00:19:21] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's an 

[00:19:22] That. an excellent point and 

[00:19:23] it's one that I think that has never been quite so obvious, right, to the DTC brands, because they had that single minded, I have this one product that we're gonna disrupt. It's this one product category, this one selection we're gonna disrupt. And there wasn't enough thought to, Well, what happens next? After you've done that? 

[00:19:37] I, do wanna ask you one question because you know, when Casey and I were thinking of, what we, we were gonna learn from you in this episode, and we thought, it really tells a story about that we think of as, you know, making old media, new media in a way, in a sense that as you've been describing to us now, different marketing mix and moving from a lot of pure.

[00:19:57] Digital marketing spend to other perhaps more, more traditional, maybe some non-traditional, because I heard connected TV in there as well. But I'm really intrigued by the success your clients are having in print and with catalogs, which call that maybe the most traditional option a lot of brands can go with.

[00:20:14] and when we've spoken to you before, you've mentioned that. When people hear catalog, sort of have an idea in their head of what that might look like. But what you're now with your, your, your clients is not exactly the same kind of format. I, I think it's a much. And maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what's evolved in this, in the print catalog space.

[00:20:33] Polly Wong: Yeah. They're not your mother's catalogs anymore. You know, it used to be that you have a hundred page catalog and you've got, you know, five to 10 items per page and you put the whole store inside the catalog. And it used to be that, 80% of catalogs went to women over 55. And she only bought what she saw on the page.

[00:20:51] And there's been just really a fundamental shift. First of all, there is a significant amount of print pieces folded pieces, catalogs going in home, The 20 year olds, 30 year olds, 40 year olds. And so now the catalog isn't something you, you shop from the, the catalog or the direct mail piece is a channel driver and it's driving her to the store to buy or is driving her to e-commerce to buy.

[00:21:15] And over the years, as we've analyzed the results, we've seen and found that actually only about a third of the product that she buys after she gets the piece was depicted in the piece, meaning that two outta three times what she buys was not in the actual piece, but it drove her to the site or it drove her to the store.

[00:21:34] So she thought she wanted one sweater, she got to the site, she bought a different sweater, So as we began to understand that there was a new purpose to print that really it was to drive her to a channel to engage and then to buy, right? Always measuring, of course, the ROAS, actually, I think it's ironic, catalogers were really the original D to C brands and catalogers were always performance based marketers.

[00:21:57] So I like to throw that out there. But today, especially for our fashion clients and our home brand clients, definitely catalogs look more like look books they're more aspirational, more lifestyle photography, more storytelling. You know, we actually one of the most successful catalogs in history and the thousands and thousands and thousands of campaigns we measured, when you open up this catalog, the first two spreads are actually just really an aspirational story.

[00:22:25] And yet it was extremely productive as measured by sales. And so really you're here to engage the customer and to drive her to a channel to buy, and that is the ultimate goal. Now, what we've found, depending on the product assortment, depending on the price point, depending on the target consumer, First of all, you don't have to send a full, so full, huge catalog anymore, right?

[00:22:46] So most of our clients are sending catalogs that are maybe 28 or 36 pages, but not, you know, 80 plus pages. So you don't have to send her as many pages. You don't have to put the whole store. In the catalog, you wanna just say, Here's our our new products, here's our best sellers, and you wanna be compelling and you wanna send her to the channel to buy that she wants to buy in.

[00:23:08] And then also we've seen a whole new lifeline because print is acting as this channel driver and you don't have to put the full assortment in front of her. We've seen an incredible amount of success with folded pieces. You know, here is our top five new products of the season. Check it out online, check it out in store.

[00:23:25] And so we've found that there's a different messaging and creative strategy also because of this kind of new purpose and how consumers are interacting with print. And I should say that it, it has been an amazing ride. Really just, you know, hundreds of new brands in the mail the last couple of years.

[00:23:42] But, you know, starting over a decade ago, we launched brands like Shutterfly, Minted, Revolve, Zappos, One Kings Lane. You know, we Allbirds, right? We started with Allbirds had zero customers. You know, over a decade ago we launched all of these brands into the mail. And so some folks I think already could see it, you know, early on.

[00:24:03] I think what's happened is that the cost of digital marketing has become extremely competitive and saturated and promotional and expensive, and you can't always reach who you wanna reach. There's an amazing amount of real estate in print to tell your story and to put your product, and also it's effective for both.

[00:24:20] Crm. I would say that mailing customers is like printing money, but also for new customer acquisition. We tend to work with premium brands and you know, to get someone to buy a $300 sweater from you when they've never heard of your brand before, the amount of real estate goes a long way in convincing new customers to buy.

[00:24:36] Ricardo Belmar: That's a good point cuz in those scenarios, right, you're really asking that new customer to buy your story as much as your product.

[00:24:43] Polly Wong: Absolutely. And you know, I think there's an amount of credibility and authority just as stores give D to C brands credibility. I think the same is can be set of print and I like to say that millennials can spot a manufactured brand from a mile away. And I think that there's an amount of real estate that you have to tell your story.

[00:25:03] And if it's authentic, like we have clients, brands like Outer known who just have incredible, authentic story around sustainability and apparel. And a really, you know, just a huge commitment to that as a business. And they're able to build that story with their community through print 

[00:25:19] On Opening Stores

[00:25:19] Casey Golden: one of the initiatives that's been happening lately that has me very excited, just cuz I think we all kind of started in stores, is more of these digitally native brands or pure play brands actually opening up stores and more pop up. I'm a big advocate of the in-store experience. Not that many of us have had one lately, but with the world closed for a little bit.

[00:25:42] But I think it's a great opportunity to actually connect. Are you, are you helping them essentially kind of understand where they should be potentially opening up stores or opening up popups or working on that strategy based on, because you guys know so much about where the consumer lives and that community, 

[00:26:02] Polly Wong: Certainly you can build models regarding, you know, around trade areas to understand where your customers are at today and where your perspective best customers are at. I think to answer your original question though, you know, around just this kind of continued push of D to C brands in stores, honestly, it's really, really very simple.

[00:26:26] in any category, more than 50% of sales are still in physical stores. So if you're not selling either in your own stores or on the floor at Nordstrom's, for example, if you're not building your wholesale network, then you're missing out on 50% of your market. And so that's really what it comes down to. I think one of the things that I find more encouraging today about the retail landscape than I did before the pandemic.

[00:26:54] Before the pandemic. You just saw almost an absurd level of store openings from DTC brands. Brands that were suddenly opening 20, 30, 40 stores a year. When you open stores that quickly, you're not going into just a markets, you're not negotiating the best real estate deals. You aren't taking the time to build the models to understand where your customers are and where your best.

[00:27:17] New perspective customers are, but I think what's great to see is I'm seeing a more cautious approach. I'm seeing the D to C brands understand they need to have a physical footprint and that maybe at the same time, now they're only opening up five to seven stores a year. They're also exploring partnerships with department stores and other retailers to be on their floor.

[00:27:38] We have so many brands that we work with who sell on the floor at Anthropology, for example. And so I think that most of our clients have realized you have to have that physical presence in order to reach your customer where she's at when she's shopping, and also because it's a significant business opportunity.

[00:27:55] I also think, I mean, there's no question, you know, there is, I think, better real estate deals to be had in 'A' markets because of the amount of store closings in the last couple of years, I think there are still some significant opportunities in terms of finding the right space, the right price with the right consumer.

[00:28:12] And so I think that's very encouraging. I think from what I've last seen, this is gonna be the first year in a very, very long time where the number of store openings will actually outpace the number of store closings 

[00:28:22] Casey Golden: Yeah. I kind of saw, you know, it's nice to see that this, this natural transition, essentially it's all coming back to all these different channels and touch points where there was that moment. where it's just like you just need to be online and everybody else is doing it wrong, and then you just see it come full circle where they're starting to join. We've already went through this cycle.

[00:28:45] Polly Wong: Well, you said it yourself. Yeah, you said it yourself. What's old is new again, honestly, to me, advertising on podcasts, it's radio. to me, connected TV is TV advertising, right? Like it's all we've been through these channels. Even outdoor media is having a huge resurgence right out of home media. And so I think that, you know, what it really comes down to is that the most sophisticated marketers have realized that you need a channel mix.

[00:29:13] Online, offline, you need to be where your customer is at. You need to have multiple distribution channels, you need to have multiple products. And I think that the high growth brands, you know, have realized that, and I think everyone else is beginning to learn as well.

[00:29:25] On marketplaces 

[00:29:25] Ricardo Belmar: So let me ask you too, on, on, that Polly, one of the areas that I, I think is also interesting here is how these brands leverage different marketplaces you know, within that channel mix. I mean, what, what are your thoughts there and how do you advise brands around marketplaces?

[00:29:39] Polly Wong: Definitely D to C brands have had a lot of, you know, trepidation around the marketplaces. I definitely think though that they're going to be forced to consider it. we've already found is, we've just discussed that you can't have an e-commerce only business. And so we saw these e-commerce brands open up stores, and then we saw them add wholesale partners. And so now really the last major distribution channel as a source of revenue growth is the marketplaces.

[00:30:03] And historically, D to C brands have been very protective of their brand's message and of their new customers. And they don't want to let anyone kind of expose their brand other than how they want it presented. However, I do think that the pressure to continue to drive revenue with all of these headwinds and because the reality is that all consumers are on the marketplaces, and you know, now we've got Macy's leaning into their marketplace.

[00:30:30] I mean, every single major retailer is going to have their own marketplace online as well. I think you have to be there. I think, you know, we're finding clients kind of tiptoe into it. They're testing different strategies. They might only put part of their assortment within the marketplaces. They might actually develop a specific collection for the marketplaces.

[00:30:50] So definitely I think they're cautious. But I think that they're going to be forced to consider trying it in ways they might not have a few years ago because they've gotta drive revenue growth. And because there are so many, you know, headwinds, unfortunately at the moment,

[00:31:05] Retail Media Networks

[00:31:05] Ricardo Belmar: So one of the other big trends that we're talking about this season on our show are retail media networks. We've, dedicated an episode on it. I was just at the grocery shop event and that was a huge, huge trend there as well.

[00:31:17] So I'm curious, what, what's your recommendation for brands around you know, whether it's with the marketplaces that they may be new to or as they're getting into stores and, and wholesale agreements there? How are you advising DTC brands around retail media networks?

[00:31:31] Polly Wong: You know, it's interesting. I don't think that we'll see D to C brands leverage their own assets and their own impressions and their own emails and their own social for advertising income and revenue. Because D to C brands usually are not big enough to actually make it worthwhile to suddenly open up their own assets for advertising, but certainly as it relates to the really large retailers and the real large marketplaces, I don't know why you wouldn't choose to advertise there.

[00:32:01] You know, in order to make that advertising work, those platforms have to offer the level of targeting and segmentation that will drive the performance to justify the CPMs and the media spend. Why would you not test it? I mean one, I think really positive quality of DTC brands is that usually they're willing to test anything.

[00:32:19] And I think in this case, not only why would you not test it and consider it, as long as you know that your target consumer is there from a sociodemographic profile perspective. But in some cases, if you are going to play, for example, on the marketplaces, you have to buy media on the marketplaces. It's not like if you build that, they will come.

[00:32:37] You've gotta have the advertising dollars to actually support your sales on the marketing place on the marketplace.

[00:32:42] Casey Golden: for a lot of our listeners. I'm sure they've been nodding their heads as as you speak. There's a lot of question marks though still 

[00:32:49] for anybody who hasn't been looking at their, their media spend in this way. What should brands be looking at a D to C or D to C brands? Be looking at a media spend breakdown.

[00:33:01] You know, what portion are you seeing more of a trend? Because we see it's so scary to move a portion of your business over to something new, even if it's starting to break, There's what are, what do you see more as a breakdown? Just so people can go ahead and make the shift and just close their eyes and go

[00:33:21] Polly Wong: Yeah. large brands that we see, large brands and retailers that we see doing well, that are significant in size and have e-commerce and have stores, they've really shifted to almost a 40, 40 20 marketing mix where 40% of their spend is digital marketing. 40% is offline, which could include actually tv, radio, print, out of home media.

[00:33:47] And then 20% is really PR partnerships, sponsorships, influencers, you know, things around content and community. So, You know, to 40% across the digital channels, 40% across all kind of other, you know non-digital channels. And then what's really encouraging to see and smaller brands can't afford often to spend, you know, top of funnel.

[00:34:12] But as a matter of fact, high growth brands do spend top of funnel. And so you'll see the. Companies are beginning to carve out 10 to 20% of their spend. So they get the pr, they get the influencers, they get the sponsorships and the partnerships that allows them to build community.

[00:34:27] Launching Direct Mail

[00:34:27] Casey Golden: So if there's a, if there's a direct to consumer brand right now that's listening what's the ballpark range they'd need to be? Looking at for budgeting to launch a campaign a, a direct mail campaign.

[00:34:40] Polly Wong: Okay. Well, I thought you were gonna ask a bigger picture question. What percent of top line revenue do you have to spend high growth, emerging brands are spending, you know, 20 to 25% of top line revenue on marketing. Mature businesses spend closer to 10 to 15% of top line revenue on marketing and big retailers and wholesale brands might only spend, you know, six to 10% of their top line revenue on marketing.

[00:35:10] But definitely if you're an emerging DTC brand today, you're definitely spending 20 to 25% of your top line revenue. So for every hundred dollars, you're spending 20 to 25 dollars. To get that. So just in terms of what you have to spend as an emerging brand to get traction. Absolutely. If you think you can build a brand from scratch that's spending, you know, $10 on the a hundred dollars, it'll never happen.

[00:35:34] Unfortunately, those days are, are past us in terms of, you know, really testing print, well here at Ballardi Wong, we only, you know, we run the largest, you know, Scalable, sophisticated programs in the country. So we don't do anything small, cheaper, schlossky. So we're, we're a little bit more on the premium side here . Really to get.

[00:35:52] A solid proof of concept with all of the industry best practices in place for both CRM and acquisition. You're looking at about a 75 to a hundred thousand dollars test in print and we've launched over 250 DTC brands into the mail successfully. And even little baby ones with a few thousand customers and they're all spending that much money.

[00:36:11] So on their first campaign still less expensive, you know, still half as much as a three week TV campaign. So,

[00:36:18] Casey Golden: mean hey, I mean, I mean that could just be one post by a tick, a certain, a couple TikTok influencers too. So, I 

[00:36:25] mean, you 

[00:36:26] know, 

[00:36:26] Polly Wong: That's the, you know, here's the ironic thing. You can put a beautiful full size catalog in front of a consumer for 85 cents. Your cost per click nowadays is, you know, two or $3. So the thing that's really crazy is that you can mail. 4, 5, 6 catalogs to a highly targeted audience for the cost of one click.

[00:36:47] So I think that that's, you know, it seems expensive, but actually, quality touch, yes, it's 

[00:36:54] Casey Golden: I agree. And it's really just being able to say like, instead of spending that hundred k, the 200,000 on this, let's just go ahead and move it over here and run a test. Because I think everything that you've really kind of ran through through this conversation and what you guys are doing is just, it's, it's incredibly compelling. And it's a lot of things that potentially these customer bases or the brands are just not as familiar with because they don't have a lot of seasoned retailers in their company orgs. And so a lot of it, we see somebody doing something or like, you really only have one product. Like you do realize that there's like issues with this who gave you. You know, and then now those 

[00:37:43] conversations 

[00:37:44] Polly Wong: think, well, you know what's gonna be really interesting to see is that it's not gonna be very easy. We're already finding this. We actually do due diligence on D to C transactions because of all of our experience at Belardi Wong. And not this summer, but last summer we worked on six transactions, and this summer we didn't work on any transactions.

[00:38:03] I think very quickly. It's going to be a very tough landscape for raising dollars at this moment in time. And already the industry has become a little bit weary because some of the evaluations and the losses that have happened over the last couple of years. And so I think companies are gonna have to be scrappier and smarter because it's not gonna be so easy to get someone to give you, you know, 20, $30 million just like that. 

[00:38:25] Casey Golden: Yeah. no, I mean yeah, I think it's great. I mean, I, I think that this is, I'm really excited to see some comments once this kind of goes, gets pushed out because I know that this is gonna be some new content that they haven't really thought about as even an option think it's 

[00:38:39] Using Influencers 

[00:38:39] Ricardo Belmar: I I, do wanna go back to one thing that you mentioned in the 40 40 20 split where you had in that 20%, you know, kind of lump together in, in pr, things like influencers, and that tends to get a lot of attention. Around, you know, what brands are spending with influencers and how they're using them.

[00:38:56] Are they on TikTok yet? What? are you seeing there that's actually successful?

[00:39:01] Polly Wong: You know, the truth is, is that for most clients you know, influencers can reach a small target community. But we haven't seen for most clients a huge amount of scale unless you're willing to spend, a few hundred thousand dollars, with an influencer who really has significant reach and real influence on what consumers are buying.

[00:39:25] We just haven't found that for most of our clients, that actually influencers can drive any kind of sustainable scale. So maybe you pay a lot of money and you know, Mary Jane, the influencer does a series of posts maybe over two weeks about some of your new product. Maybe you get a momentary surge in sales, but it's not sustainable and you can't continue to spend those kinds of dollars for those really high touch posts. And so the one challenge that we do find with influencer marketing is it takes a lot of leg work to implement and it is often not truly scalable. It's also kind of interesting to see what's going on on TikTok, because definitely, you know, that that cut meta spend is shifting to TikTok. But TikTok is also hard to measure for the same reasons that it's hard to measure meta, right? Because of platform changes and challenges. And for the most part, because it's hard to measure the return on ad spend, on TikTok, it tends to be a top of funnel channel. Well, I can tell you that in a recession the money for top of funnel marketing is going to dry up very quickly.

[00:40:37] And so you're gonna be focused on those channels that can drive real performance and ROAS because you just don't have enough funding to, to, to, to spend on those top channels. So it'll be really interesting to see, over the next six months how advertising dollars shift around. I usually feel pretty comfortable giving my predictions for retail sales and e-commerce sales, but honestly, at this point, just hand me an ball. I have 

[00:41:01] Ricardo Belmar: I think that's where 

[00:41:02] Polly Wong: I'm gonna continue to be I'm gonna continue to cross my fingers and my toes and hope that at least for our clients, that affluent consumers are still spending 

[00:41:09] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And so, so on what you just said, right around top of funnel and those, is there an argument to be made that if you're going to spend on influencers or TikTok, that you're, you might wanna save that for when you have a new product launch versus just trying to drive sales of an existing product? 

[00:41:27] Polly Wong: Absolutely. It's not something 

[00:41:29] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Because you scale it right 

[00:41:31] Polly Wong: you're gonna turn it on. You can't, you're gonna, you're gonna turn it on maybe three or four times. You know, in the world of retail, we think about five seasons winter. Spring, summer, fall, and holiday. And so you're really going to lean in just a few weeks of each season into your influencer marketing and that spend and really, lean into your peak sales curve to drive those new product sales and to get that reach.

[00:41:55] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. If that makes sense. That makes complete sense. So, so last question for you Polly, and if, someone were to come and ask you right now, what's your top recommendation when you think about growth strategies for a DTC brand, what would you tell 'em?

[00:42:07] Polly Wong: Considering the economic uncertainty, the headwinds and the rising costs across the entire p and l, I would say that my top two recommendations are to one, lean into crm. Make sure that you're activating all five channels targeting your existing customer base, and then two, Because you're targeting your existing customers, continue to focus on your product category expansion, you know, what is your range of product across categories and price points.

[00:42:37] Consumers may start spending down they may be more value focused than ever. So, you know, what is your good, better, best merchandise strategy, right? Not only are you adding simple things like more color skews to your long sleeve t-shirt, but you know, is there a good, better, best strategy for your product?

[00:42:53] Motorcycle clients we've have worked with have done this extremely well. There's a good, better, best motorcycle helmet and the best one has got bluetooth and all kinds of fun things in it. And in, in addition to keeping your, your, your head safe. So definitely I think, leaning into your customer file is a tremendous, profitable asset.

[00:43:11] And then just giving existing customers more to buy. I do think there's plenty of time to lean into new customer acquisi. You know, as we begin to see some of the, the economic uncertainty clear up, hopefully by spring, I actually am quite confident that I do think things will level out and I think we'll be back sailing along by spring of 2023 is, is my hope.

[00:43:33] So fingers crossed. 

[00:43:34] Ricardo Belmar: I think you maybe, may be right about that. And it kind of says that if I kind of read into, the two areas you highlighted for a lot of DTC brands, there's probably some new hires they need to look for to help them with those strategies, particularly around merchandising those new products.

[00:43:47] Products like you talked about earlier.

[00:43:49] Polly Wong: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think you have to, and also to pay attention to the competition. You know, it's amazing to me. I think brands do tend to be inwardly focused and. You know, maybe now people will have the time and to kind of step back and say, how does my assortment look compared to my competitors?

[00:44:06] What are my price points? What are my size ranges? What are my number of colors? You know what is my returns policy? You know, how do I stand up against the competition? Everybody's gonna have to just be a little bit smarter. 

[00:44:16] Ricardo Belmar: I think that's another great point. I mean, I, even on for traditional retailers, I, I can't count how many times in the past I've been in, in a room with retailers and asked them, Well, when was the last time you walked one of your competitors' stores to see what they were doing? you know, I, I, I don't know sometimes whether I wanted to laugh or cry at the fact that they were just crickets in the room and nobody responded when I asked that question.

[00:44:38] so there's definitely some truth to that.

[00:44:40] Polly Wong: Absolutely. 

[00:44:43] Ricardo Belmar: Well, thank you So 

[00:44:44] discuss. I'm probably gonna go down as one of the, our, our most commented episodes with so much in good information and, and advice and I think really unique details that you've helped surface here for, for DTC brands as they grow into, I would call becoming a, full channel retailer in a sense.

[00:45:03] and really didn't, know, cover a lot of ground around making old media, new media, like we started to talk about earlier.

[00:45:09] Polly Wong: Great. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been fun this afternoon to connect with you and I, I hope you both have a, a lovely fall season.

[00:45:16] Casey Golden: Definitely. For our listeners who have been furiously taking notes during this episode, what's the best reach way for them to reach out to you or follow your company?

[00:45:26] Polly Wong: Yeah, obviously we're on the social channels, but if you wanna reach out through the contact us page at Belardi Wong, if you would like to talk to me directly or have any questions or comments for me directly, I know that they'll, they'll make their way to me and I'm always happy to chat and connect.

[00:45:39] Casey Golden: Great.

[00:45:40] Ricardo Belmar: Well, thank you again, Polly, for joining us. We hope to have you back soon.

[00:45:43] Polly Wong: Thank you so much. Have a great one.

[00:45:45] Casey Golden: You too. That's a wrap, Ricardo.

[00:45:48] Show Closing

[00:45:48] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. 

[00:46:18] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:46:35] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:46:36] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. 

]]> <p>Direct-to-consumer. DTC. What emotional response do those words conjure for you? The formula for DTC used to be simple – spend marketing dollars to acquire new customers. Today, customer acquisition costs can be 10X higher than they used to be, so what should be the new strategy in these challenging, post-pandemic economic times? Polly Wong, president of Bellardi Wong, and our latest Retail Transformer, has the answers. Polly’s agency works with the best, most successful DTC brands and she is sharing the best practices every DTC founder, brand manager, and category manager need to know to be successful in this episode! Should you open stores? Leverage print? Catalogs? Is Facebook still worthwhile? What about TikTok? Listen and find out!</p><p><br></p><p>News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show has been nominated for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during NRF 2023 in January in New York City! IF you’re a fan of the show, please give us your vote! You can vote here: https://bit.ly/VIPretail </p><p><br></p><p>News alert #2! We’ve moved up to #19 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review to be mentioned in upcoming episodes! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive</em>, and <em>Overclocked</em>, from the album <em>Beat Hype</em>, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>S2E5 Retail Transformers - Polly Wong</strong></p><h3>[00:00:00] Pre-Intro</h3><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Ricardo, I&#39;ve got one word for you to describe this week&#39;s show. Dtc. </p><p>[00:00:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, so Casey, I&#39;m thinking that&#39;s technically three words, but, but nevermind that. Um, I don&#39;t think we&#39;ve done an entire show focused on DTC before, have we?</p><p>[00:00:13] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Hey, I didn&#39;t write the script. So</p><p>[00:00:21] So this is exciting and. I&#39;m especially pumped for all </p><p>[00:00:24] the DTC founders out there tuning in. This one is for you.</p><p>[00:00:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s true, and honestly, if you&#39;re a direct to consumer founder listening or, or watching us on YouTube, stop right now. Go grab a pen and paper or your iPad or whatever you like to use to take notes, because believe me, you are going to be writing things down nonstop in a mad fury throughout this episode.</p><p>[00:00:45] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Oh yeah. The tips and tricks are going to be flying. And you just don&#39;t wanna miss a</p><p>[00:00:50] minute.</p><p>[00:00:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So should we just start the show or should we make listeners suffer a little bit more first, with more of our carefree and eloquent banter,</p><p>[00:00:56] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Oh, you&#39;re so cruel. Let&#39;s get to the music already. </p><p>[00:00:59]</p><h3>[00:01:19] Show Intro</h3><p>[00:01:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello and welcome to season two, episode five of The Retail Razor Show. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:01:25] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show listeners, retail&#39;s unapologetically authentic podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and tech alike. </p><p>[00:01:39] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> We are </p><p>[00:01:40] back with another </p><p>[00:01:41] episode in our Retail Transformers series, and honestly, if you thought last episode&#39;s guest, Alan Smithson was an absolutely incredible, never ending source of value on the Metaverse, wow are you gonna be blown away with today&#39;s guest and topic!</p><p>[00:01:54] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. As a founder, I&#39;m so excited we&#39;re going to dive into this world of D to C and talk with amazing expert that&#39;s working with most of the top D to C brands out there. You would not believe how much knowledge she has to share, and that could really impact your DTC business by multiples </p><p>[00:02:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Indeed! Faithful followers, you will learn exactly why Polly Wong is more than meets the eye. This may go down as one of our most listened to episodes. We&#39;re gonna hear about what the right marketing and media spend mix should be for customer acquisition today. Because honestly, if you think it&#39;s the same as it was in the early days of D to C, boy are you in for a shock.</p><p>[00:02:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I mean, did you even consider print, like say catalogs? I bet you didn&#39;t. You will after this episode.</p><p>[00:02:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And then there&#39;s all the tips you&#39;re gonna hear </p><p>[00:02:46] on growth strategies, how to activate your CRM for more profitable growth, retargeting those customers. And what about opening stores? Have you thought about where to open stores? </p><p>[00:02:55] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> There&#39;s just so much we could list. I mean, you&#39;re going to hear so many incredible </p><p>[00:03:00] nuggets on marketing, roi, ROAS, and just so much more. </p><p>[00:03:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right, then let&#39;s get to it. </p><p>[00:03:06] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Let&#39;s roll.</p><p>[00:03:07]</p><h3>[00:03:12] Polly Wong Interview</h3><p>[00:03:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And we&#39;re here with our special guest and latest retail transformer to visit the show. Polly Wong, President of Belardi Wong, which some people may know as a direct to consumer marketing agency. But more on that in a moment. First of all, welcome Polly.</p><p>[00:03:26] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Thank you for having me.</p><p>[00:03:27] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It&#39;s great to have you on the show. Since we first met you, we&#39;ve both been looking forward to this conversation and really digging in. So excited </p><p>[00:03:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Polly just to get us started, why don&#39;t you give us a more complete introduction of yourself and tell us about your company and what you do.</p><p>[00:03:42] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> You know, I&#39;ve been in retail for 25 years. I&#39;ve had an incredible amount of experience. Really. It&#39;s both on the client side at some major retailers. I started 25 years ago at eddiebower.com. I was fortunate to work at Williams Sonoma Inc across their portfolio of brands before jumping to the dark side to the agency side, which is a lot of fun and an incredible learning curve.</p><p>[00:04:06] It&#39;s like learning on steroids, I like to say. Today at Belardi Wong, we have 400 active clients, about 90% D TO C brands. Of course, D to C brands have stores as well. And then some very large retail brands that that all of you would know as well. A tremendous amount of experience in fashion, at home decor, furnishings also in some niche categories as well.</p><p>[00:04:28] We definitely do tend to work with premium brands targeting an affluent consumer. So much of the vantage point that I have to share with you today is really from that angle of brands who are really targeting, you know, an affluent consumer. The folks out there buying, you know, two or $300 sweaters and expensive shoes and $5,000 sofa.</p><p>[00:04:47] So I, I like to make that clearer, but we&#39;re really privileged just to have an incredible vantage point into the industry. </p><p>[00:04:53] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Really excited to dig deeper in this. As I mentioned before, I&#39;m very intrigued in, in, into the side of the business of marketing. Compared to a lot of the more traditional route that have been taken over the last decade. So clearly you&#39;re focused on direct to consumer brands, both old and new, but certainly more established brands.</p><p>[00:05:10] I think based off of what you said, one of the areas getting a lot of press lately in the D to C space is really how the marketing spend is being shifted from Facebook, Google, versus other mediums. Can you tell us a little bit about what&#39;s happening here with D to C brands and how that&#39;s changing this marketing mix?</p><p>[00:05:30] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Sure. So it&#39;s been a really fascinating year to watch how the Apple platform changes have really impacted all of the digital platforms. Specifically meta we&#39;ve found, as an aside, we&#39;ve found that really Google is quite a resilient, steady, reliable channel. You know, Google continues to make enhancements that work for advertisers.</p><p>[00:05:52] Performance Max on Google has worked very well for our clients over the last several months, so, so Google&#39;s very kind of reliable and steady. Google has had 10 to 50% increase, 10 to 15% increases. And, you know, costs, but really in line with kind of all the cost increases we&#39;re seeing across the p and l as a brand or as a retailer.</p><p>[00:06:12] So really the challenge on the digital side in the last year has really come from meta and the Apple platform changes basically led. To less effective targeting and less effective measurement. And at the same time that our clients have seen a less effective measurement and less effective targeting on meta, they&#39;ve also seen some pretty steep double digit increases on CPMs, on meta or Facebook, if you will.</p><p>[00:06:38] And so we&#39;ve seen dramatic underperformance in the last year, specifically in the social landscape. And so, you know, D to C brands inherently were built on Facebook and Google. The inherent DNA, if you will, of, of D to C brands is that one, they&#39;re performance based marketers, and two, you know, they&#39;re just wholeheartedly focused on new customer acquisition.</p><p>[00:07:01] And so now you&#39;ve seen that this Facebook channel just, you know, one of the top two most critical channels for new customer acquisition for DTC brands has really begun to plummet in the last year. I know across our client base through August, our clients have spent 19% less this year versus last year on Meta.</p><p>[00:07:21] And that&#39;s because of the significant underperformance. But obviously Meta has taken the lion share of most of the marketing dollars for D2C brands. So, the question is, where is it going? You know, where are they shifting marketing spend? And that&#39;s been really interesting to </p><p>[00:07:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That&#39;s great, and you really mention it as like a CRM strategy. </p><p>[00:07:39] Is that, Is that right? </p><h3>[00:07:40] Spending shifts and pivots</h3><p>[00:07:40] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Yeah, so I think, well, I think we can talk about kind of where they&#39;re shifting their spend, but also, you know, what are some of the, the pivots that D to C brands need to make in order to be successful. And I think most D2C brands have not realized yet that the most incredible asset that they have is the customer file, the customer database.</p><p>[00:08:01] That they&#39;ve built up over the last five to 10 years. Now they&#39;ve spent millions and millions of dollars building their customer file. New customer acquisition always comes at a cost. It&#39;s an investment. You cannot have a profitable business when you are only focused on acquisition as a fact.</p><p>[00:08:15] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Oh my God, can you just like, say that </p><p>[00:08:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> we should just frame that just to make that clear for, for everyone who&#39;s doubting that </p><p>[00:08:22] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We&#39;re putting that in bold print.</p><p>[00:08:24] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Yes. Also I&#39;ll just go out on a limb and also say you can&#39;t have a large, scalable, sustainable business when you only have a handful of product as well, we can get to that later. But definitely you can&#39;t just single handidly focus on new customer acquisition so I actually see, you know, there&#39;s a lot of headwinds right now, but I see a major tailwind that D to C brands could lean into is really crm, right? You know, I&#39;ve talked to many, many brands over the years that when you ask them, they say they spent a hundred percent of their marketing budget on acquisition, and it&#39;s almost like crm, customer retention management. It&#39;s just an afterthought, right?</p><p>[00:08:59] Like, Oh, we have email now, of course they&#39;ll say, We have email and sms. But there are really five major channels in the CRM toolbox, and we don&#39;t see D to C brands leaning into that. It&#39;s a discipline and a skill set they need to evolve to very quickly because that&#39;s where the profit is going to come, as we kind of stare down some economic uncertainty.</p><p>[00:09:18] So the five channels that we really think about, obviously e email. Second is sms. Some clients have leaned into it very quickly. Some have not. It&#39;s still a huge opportunity. I, for one, wondered at the beginning if really SMS would just be shifting sales from email, but we do find that SMS is an incremental revenue driver.</p><p>[00:09:37] So you&#39;ve got email and sms. Obviously D to C brands are pretty good at targeting their customer file on Facebook, but they let it work too often on its own. And you really have to think about the segmentation and targeting of lapse customers. You have to carve out specific marketing dollars at targeting customers who&#39;ve not bought from you in over a year.</p><p>[00:09:58] There&#39;s still a better focus for your marketing dollar than pure new customer acquisition. And so you really wanna target your lapse customer file, on Facebook, and you wanna make sure you&#39;re looking at the frequency and the messaging and the targeting and the testing against that segment. </p><p>[00:10:13] So now hopefully you&#39;ve got brands, you know, leveraging and leaning into reactivation on social. I think what we don&#39;t find enough is actually proactive spending on search with your lapse customers. Let&#39;s say that Mary Jane bought a sweater from you a year and a half ago, and now Mary Jane is on Google searching for a turquoise turtleneck sweater.</p><p>[00:10:36] You should be there targeting her. You should be buying that ad against Mary&#39;s search, right? Her click, you should be targeting her. And so really targeting lapse customers when they&#39;re searching for your product is a huge opportunity. We don&#39;t see clients carving out marketing dollars to really have that kind of proactive approach at customer reactivation on search, so I think that&#39;s a low hanging opportunity.</p><p>[00:11:00] And then for definitely print. So all 400, you know, retailers and brands here, at Belardi Wong, are in the mail. They&#39;re leveraging direct mail and catalogs for customer retention. It&#39;s extremely effective. And driving up purchase frequency and revenue per customer and overall lifetime value. The great thing about print is that, you know, you&#39;ve got a hundred percent reach.</p><p>[00:11:22] So if you want to target Mary Jane who bought from you a year and a half ago she&#39;s gotta at least touch the piece to recycle it, so you&#39;ve got a hundred percent reach. All of our data over the last year as we&#39;ve looked at it, we&#39;ve found that if you want to target a specific customer at a specific time within social, you&#39;ve got about an 18% chance.</p><p>[00:11:43] Basically, you&#39;ve got an 18% chance of reaching who you want. When you want to on Facebook, and that&#39;s because you&#39;re competing with other advertisers for her impression. Mary Jane your customer only has so much impressions and frequency on Facebook and you&#39;re competing with other advertisers, and especially in our case, as I said, our clients tend to target, you know, affluent consumers and so Mary Jane is a great shopper and there&#39;s a lot of advertisers who want her impressions, and so you can&#39;t be sure that you&#39;re going to reach her.</p><p>[00:12:13] And on email, you know, maybe you&#39;re lucky if you&#39;ve got a 20, 25% open rate, but once you start looking at your lapse customers, maybe you&#39;ve got a 10 or 15% open rate. And so the only way that you could make sure that you get a hundred percent reach is in the mail. And so we see this CRM toolbox with email, sms, social, search and print really is a major opportunity for D to C brands who built very expensive customer files at this point, to really lean into that as a major growth strategy.</p><p>[00:12:42] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It seems so basic, but yet at the same time, like, but nobody&#39;s doing it. , Right. Is to like really go back into that core of, of all those customers.</p><p>[00:12:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And I, and I thought that a lot of these DTC would have used search when. came up, right, to try to get that initial customer acquisition. So I, I find it kind of curious that if, maybe I&#39;m wrong about that, but I, it seems to me that that&#39;s one of the original tactics I expect to see DTC brands use at the start, maybe they don&#39;t come back to it, to your point.</p><p>[00:13:15] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> You know, we don&#39;t see a fine level of segmentation and targeting honestly, within digital media buying. You know, I, I think about digital media agencies and I think of them as master tinkerers, and I can almost just see all the people behind the scenes, almost like behind a clock, you know, turning the dial a little bit this way and a little bit that way.</p><p>[00:13:33] And it&#39;s really about bids and CPMs and it&#39;s about creative and frequency and the type of ad. It&#39;s really not about. Okay, This is our cheerleader cohort. This is our loyalist cohort. This is our, you know, former cheerleader cohort meeting. This used to be a best customer, and now she&#39;s not a best customer.</p><p>[00:13:52] What percent of our spend are we going to target against her? What should be the target cost to retain? You know, the industry talks about the target cost of acquisition, you know, the cost to acquire a new customer, but you never hear anyone talk about the cost to retain a customer. And I think we&#39;re gonna have to see a major shift in how people think.</p><p>[00:14:11] I think that&#39;s the one thing in my, my 25 years in retail. I think there has to be an inherent pivot for D to C brands to embrace some of the real kind of retail operation discipline that has existed, you know, for many years and has allowed companies to exist for decades and to become billion dollar retailers.</p><p>[00:14:30] And that definitely includes financial planning. It includes inventory planning, merchandise planning, and definitely really thinking about, you know, your target customer and your segmentation and CRM and how you&#39;re allocating those dollars.</p><p>[00:14:46] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I always say, if you spent </p><p>[00:14:49] half as much time retaining your customers as you spent all of these resources on acquiring them, you&#39;d have a completely different business.</p><p>[00:14:58] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Yeah. You know, and I think we we&#39;re seeing, I think it&#39;s actually kind of exciting. There are definitely always some D to C brands who are leading in the space and we see. Really three major growth strategies and definitely activating more channels for both CRM and for active acquisition. You know, testing TikTok, testing connected TV or streaming tv, leaning into print for both acquisition and crm.</p><p>[00:15:22] And so definitely activating more marketing channels is an important opportunity for D to C brands. But also, I can emphasize enough, and I touched on this earlier, as a matter of fact, the more product you put in front of. Across categories and price points, the more revenue you will drive from her. And I always tell people, I learned two things in my years, at Williams Sonoma Inc.</p><p>[00:15:45] When I was on the client side. The first is that the best way to drive response rates is to have a range of product across categories and price points. So, okay, you know, she bought a sofa from you, what is she gonna buy next? And that&#39;s why you see these types of brands have an incredible assortment in tabletop and seasonal decor and all of those other categories, bed and bath.</p><p>[00:16:06] The second thing I learned at Williams Sonoma I tell people, is that on my second day on the job Chuck Williams himself, so I&#39;m dating myself a little bit, he said to me, Polly, you know how you sell a $200 toaster? You put a $400 toaster next to it? And I never forgot that </p><p>[00:16:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. And, it completely makes sense. I mean, I to, I have to give credit to William Sonoma, right? Who has, mastered that technique of positioning and curating the right selection at different price points to drive a particular one that you might wanna drive, I think they, I&#39;ve an amazing job at doing that, and that&#39;s certainly a lesson a lot of DTC brands would need to learn.</p><p>[00:16:40] And, and also kind of speaks. Theory, I&#39;ve always put out that, you know, so many of these DTC brands that came to be, know, is digitally native, know, wanted to just disrupt one particular product they started with that one product and I always felt that, you know, the one question that does not get asked when they&#39;re seeing some initial success, right?</p><p>[00:17:02] They&#39;re getting a lot of new customers, they weren&#39;t thinking through, okay, what&#39;s the frequency with which these customers I&#39;ve paid to </p><p>[00:17:10] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Yes. </p><p>[00:17:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> now in some way are going to buy again the </p><p>[00:17:14] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Yes, exactly. </p><p>[00:17:17] How often? ,</p><p>[00:17:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> most things people don&#39;t buy every week.</p><p>[00:17:20] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Absolutely. So how often do you need to buy a mattress and how often do you need to buy a suitcase? Right? Thinking </p><p>[00:17:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Two. two, good examples.</p><p>[00:17:27] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> popular, </p><p>[00:17:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> good examples. </p><h3>[00:17:28] Adopting Basic Retail Operations</h3><p>[00:17:28] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Brands that we&#39;ve seen now struggle to grow. Absolutely. You know there are some really great smart brands out there. You know, we&#39;ve seen a lot of the really high growth soft goods companies, so bedding companies, you know, there&#39;s a reason why they launch into lounge wear, right?</p><p>[00:17:43] There&#39;s a reason why they launch into bath, right? So you see these bedding soft good companies launch into other categories because, okay, so I bought a set of sheets. I bought, you know, a beautiful comforter, but what am I gonna buy next from you? And you&#39;ve seen home brands lean into apparel.</p><p>[00:18:00] You&#39;ve seen apparel brands lean into home. You know, we&#39;re going to continue to see that. Absolutely. But honestly, you know, we were just putting together some strategies internally for clients cuz there are, as I said earlier, a significant amount of headwinds, I think facing brands and retailers in the next six to 12 months.</p><p>[00:18:18] There&#39;s a lot of really inexpensive ways that don&#39;t require a lot of research and development that don&#39;t require a lot of product development and long timelines. We were doing an assessment for a women&#39;s apparel company. And we were looking at their tops and we were looking at tops and the price points and the sizes and the colors of their competitive set.</p><p>[00:18:38] And as we were looking at the tops, we realized, you know, you sell that long sleeve basic tee in four colors, but on average your competitors sell their long sleeve basic tee in eight to 10 colors. And also you sell yours for $8 more on average. And so maybe if you could take and just add color ways, take your top selling.</p><p>[00:18:59] Products and add new colorways. Think about, you know, how much would a four, $6 price cut to be competitive? What kind of incremental revenue would that bring? And I think it&#39;s that type of merchandise analysis and merchandise planning and inventory management that honestly is a discipline that D to C brands don&#39;t inherently have.</p><p>[00:19:17] So it&#39;s time, as I said earlier, to hire some good old fashioned retail operations </p><p>[00:19:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah, I think that that&#39;s an </p><p>[00:19:22] That. an excellent point and </p><p>[00:19:23] it&#39;s one that I think that has never been quite so obvious, right, to the DTC brands, because they had that single minded, I have this one product that we&#39;re gonna disrupt. It&#39;s this one product category, this one selection we&#39;re gonna disrupt. And there wasn&#39;t enough thought to, Well, what happens next? After you&#39;ve done that? </p><p>[00:19:37] I, do wanna ask you one question because you know, when Casey and I were thinking of, what we, we were gonna learn from you in this episode, and we thought, it really tells a story about that we think of as, you know, making old media, new media in a way, in a sense that as you&#39;ve been describing to us now, different marketing mix and moving from a lot of pure.</p><p>[00:19:57] Digital marketing spend to other perhaps more, more traditional, maybe some non-traditional, because I heard connected TV in there as well. But I&#39;m really intrigued by the success your clients are having in print and with catalogs, which call that maybe the most traditional option a lot of brands can go with.</p><p>[00:20:14] and when we&#39;ve spoken to you before, you&#39;ve mentioned that. When people hear catalog, sort of have an idea in their head of what that might look like. But what you&#39;re now with your, your, your clients is not exactly the same kind of format. I, I think it&#39;s a much. And maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what&#39;s evolved in this, in the print catalog space.</p><p>[00:20:33] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Yeah. They&#39;re not your mother&#39;s catalogs anymore. You know, it used to be that you have a hundred page catalog and you&#39;ve got, you know, five to 10 items per page and you put the whole store inside the catalog. And it used to be that, 80% of catalogs went to women over 55. And she only bought what she saw on the page.</p><p>[00:20:51] And there&#39;s been just really a fundamental shift. First of all, there is a significant amount of print pieces folded pieces, catalogs going in home, The 20 year olds, 30 year olds, 40 year olds. And so now the catalog isn&#39;t something you, you shop from the, the catalog or the direct mail piece is a channel driver and it&#39;s driving her to the store to buy or is driving her to e-commerce to buy.</p><p>[00:21:15] And over the years, as we&#39;ve analyzed the results, we&#39;ve seen and found that actually only about a third of the product that she buys after she gets the piece was depicted in the piece, meaning that two outta three times what she buys was not in the actual piece, but it drove her to the site or it drove her to the store.</p><p>[00:21:34] So she thought she wanted one sweater, she got to the site, she bought a different sweater, So as we began to understand that there was a new purpose to print that really it was to drive her to a channel to engage and then to buy, right? Always measuring, of course, the ROAS, actually, I think it&#39;s ironic, catalogers were really the original D to C brands and catalogers were always performance based marketers.</p><p>[00:21:57] So I like to throw that out there. But today, especially for our fashion clients and our home brand clients, definitely catalogs look more like look books they&#39;re more aspirational, more lifestyle photography, more storytelling. You know, we actually one of the most successful catalogs in history and the thousands and thousands and thousands of campaigns we measured, when you open up this catalog, the first two spreads are actually just really an aspirational story.</p><p>[00:22:25] And yet it was extremely productive as measured by sales. And so really you&#39;re here to engage the customer and to drive her to a channel to buy, and that is the ultimate goal. Now, what we&#39;ve found, depending on the product assortment, depending on the price point, depending on the target consumer, First of all, you don&#39;t have to send a full, so full, huge catalog anymore, right?</p><p>[00:22:46] So most of our clients are sending catalogs that are maybe 28 or 36 pages, but not, you know, 80 plus pages. So you don&#39;t have to send her as many pages. You don&#39;t have to put the whole store. In the catalog, you wanna just say, Here&#39;s our our new products, here&#39;s our best sellers, and you wanna be compelling and you wanna send her to the channel to buy that she wants to buy in.</p><p>[00:23:08] And then also we&#39;ve seen a whole new lifeline because print is acting as this channel driver and you don&#39;t have to put the full assortment in front of her. We&#39;ve seen an incredible amount of success with folded pieces. You know, here is our top five new products of the season. Check it out online, check it out in store.</p><p>[00:23:25] And so we&#39;ve found that there&#39;s a different messaging and creative strategy also because of this kind of new purpose and how consumers are interacting with print. And I should say that it, it has been an amazing ride. Really just, you know, hundreds of new brands in the mail the last couple of years.</p><p>[00:23:42] But, you know, starting over a decade ago, we launched brands like Shutterfly, Minted, Revolve, Zappos, One Kings Lane. You know, we Allbirds, right? We started with Allbirds had zero customers. You know, over a decade ago we launched all of these brands into the mail. And so some folks I think already could see it, you know, early on.</p><p>[00:24:03] I think what&#39;s happened is that the cost of digital marketing has become extremely competitive and saturated and promotional and expensive, and you can&#39;t always reach who you wanna reach. There&#39;s an amazing amount of real estate in print to tell your story and to put your product, and also it&#39;s effective for both.</p><p>[00:24:20] Crm. I would say that mailing customers is like printing money, but also for new customer acquisition. We tend to work with premium brands and you know, to get someone to buy a $300 sweater from you when they&#39;ve never heard of your brand before, the amount of real estate goes a long way in convincing new customers to buy.</p><p>[00:24:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s a good point cuz in those scenarios, right, you&#39;re really asking that new customer to buy your story as much as your product.</p><p>[00:24:43] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Absolutely. And you know, I think there&#39;s an amount of credibility and authority just as stores give D to C brands credibility. I think the same is can be set of print and I like to say that millennials can spot a manufactured brand from a mile away. And I think that there&#39;s an amount of real estate that you have to tell your story.</p><p>[00:25:03] And if it&#39;s authentic, like we have clients, brands like Outer known who just have incredible, authentic story around sustainability and apparel. And a really, you know, just a huge commitment to that as a business. And they&#39;re able to build that story with their community through print </p><h3>[00:25:19] On Opening Stores</h3><p>[00:25:19] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> one of the initiatives that&#39;s been happening lately that has me very excited, just cuz I think we all kind of started in stores, is more of these digitally native brands or pure play brands actually opening up stores and more pop up. I&#39;m a big advocate of the in-store experience. Not that many of us have had one lately, but with the world closed for a little bit.</p><p>[00:25:42] But I think it&#39;s a great opportunity to actually connect. Are you, are you helping them essentially kind of understand where they should be potentially opening up stores or opening up popups or working on that strategy based on, because you guys know so much about where the consumer lives and that community, </p><p>[00:26:02] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Certainly you can build models regarding, you know, around trade areas to understand where your customers are at today and where your perspective best customers are at. I think to answer your original question though, you know, around just this kind of continued push of D to C brands in stores, honestly, it&#39;s really, really very simple.</p><p>[00:26:26] in any category, more than 50% of sales are still in physical stores. So if you&#39;re not selling either in your own stores or on the floor at Nordstrom&#39;s, for example, if you&#39;re not building your wholesale network, then you&#39;re missing out on 50% of your market. And so that&#39;s really what it comes down to. I think one of the things that I find more encouraging today about the retail landscape than I did before the pandemic.</p><p>[00:26:54] Before the pandemic. You just saw almost an absurd level of store openings from DTC brands. Brands that were suddenly opening 20, 30, 40 stores a year. When you open stores that quickly, you&#39;re not going into just a markets, you&#39;re not negotiating the best real estate deals. You aren&#39;t taking the time to build the models to understand where your customers are and where your best.</p><p>[00:27:17] New perspective customers are, but I think what&#39;s great to see is I&#39;m seeing a more cautious approach. I&#39;m seeing the D to C brands understand they need to have a physical footprint and that maybe at the same time, now they&#39;re only opening up five to seven stores a year. They&#39;re also exploring partnerships with department stores and other retailers to be on their floor.</p><p>[00:27:38] We have so many brands that we work with who sell on the floor at Anthropology, for example. And so I think that most of our clients have realized you have to have that physical presence in order to reach your customer where she&#39;s at when she&#39;s shopping, and also because it&#39;s a significant business opportunity.</p><p>[00:27:55] I also think, I mean, there&#39;s no question, you know, there is, I think, better real estate deals to be had in &#39;A&#39; markets because of the amount of store closings in the last couple of years, I think there are still some significant opportunities in terms of finding the right space, the right price with the right consumer.</p><p>[00:28:12] And so I think that&#39;s very encouraging. I think from what I&#39;ve last seen, this is gonna be the first year in a very, very long time where the number of store openings will actually outpace the number of store closings </p><p>[00:28:22] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. I kind of saw, you know, it&#39;s nice to see that this, this natural transition, essentially it&#39;s all coming back to all these different channels and touch points where there was that moment. where it&#39;s just like you just need to be online and everybody else is doing it wrong, and then you just see it come full circle where they&#39;re starting to join. We&#39;ve already went through this cycle.</p><p>[00:28:45] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Well, you said it yourself. Yeah, you said it yourself. What&#39;s old is new again, honestly, to me, advertising on podcasts, it&#39;s radio. to me, connected TV is TV advertising, right? Like it&#39;s all we&#39;ve been through these channels. Even outdoor media is having a huge resurgence right out of home media. And so I think that, you know, what it really comes down to is that the most sophisticated marketers have realized that you need a channel mix.</p><p>[00:29:13] Online, offline, you need to be where your customer is at. You need to have multiple distribution channels, you need to have multiple products. And I think that the high growth brands, you know, have realized that, and I think everyone else is beginning to learn as well.</p><h3>[00:29:25] On marketplaces </h3><p>[00:29:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So let me ask you too, on, on, that Polly, one of the areas that I, I think is also interesting here is how these brands leverage different marketplaces you know, within that channel mix. I mean, what, what are your thoughts there and how do you advise brands around marketplaces?</p><p>[00:29:39] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Definitely D to C brands have had a lot of, you know, trepidation around the marketplaces. I definitely think though that they&#39;re going to be forced to consider it. we&#39;ve already found is, we&#39;ve just discussed that you can&#39;t have an e-commerce only business. And so we saw these e-commerce brands open up stores, and then we saw them add wholesale partners. And so now really the last major distribution channel as a source of revenue growth is the marketplaces.</p><p>[00:30:03] And historically, D to C brands have been very protective of their brand&#39;s message and of their new customers. And they don&#39;t want to let anyone kind of expose their brand other than how they want it presented. However, I do think that the pressure to continue to drive revenue with all of these headwinds and because the reality is that all consumers are on the marketplaces, and you know, now we&#39;ve got Macy&#39;s leaning into their marketplace.</p><p>[00:30:30] I mean, every single major retailer is going to have their own marketplace online as well. I think you have to be there. I think, you know, we&#39;re finding clients kind of tiptoe into it. They&#39;re testing different strategies. They might only put part of their assortment within the marketplaces. They might actually develop a specific collection for the marketplaces.</p><p>[00:30:50] So definitely I think they&#39;re cautious. But I think that they&#39;re going to be forced to consider trying it in ways they might not have a few years ago because they&#39;ve gotta drive revenue growth. And because there are so many, you know, headwinds, unfortunately at the moment,</p><h3>[00:31:05] Retail Media Networks</h3><p>[00:31:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So one of the other big trends that we&#39;re talking about this season on our show are retail media networks. We&#39;ve, dedicated an episode on it. I was just at the grocery shop event and that was a huge, huge trend there as well.</p><p>[00:31:17] So I&#39;m curious, what, what&#39;s your recommendation for brands around you know, whether it&#39;s with the marketplaces that they may be new to or as they&#39;re getting into stores and, and wholesale agreements there? How are you advising DTC brands around retail media networks?</p><p>[00:31:31] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> You know, it&#39;s interesting. I don&#39;t think that we&#39;ll see D to C brands leverage their own assets and their own impressions and their own emails and their own social for advertising income and revenue. Because D to C brands usually are not big enough to actually make it worthwhile to suddenly open up their own assets for advertising, but certainly as it relates to the really large retailers and the real large marketplaces, I don&#39;t know why you wouldn&#39;t choose to advertise there.</p><p>[00:32:01] You know, in order to make that advertising work, those platforms have to offer the level of targeting and segmentation that will drive the performance to justify the CPMs and the media spend. Why would you not test it? I mean one, I think really positive quality of DTC brands is that usually they&#39;re willing to test anything.</p><p>[00:32:19] And I think in this case, not only why would you not test it and consider it, as long as you know that your target consumer is there from a sociodemographic profile perspective. But in some cases, if you are going to play, for example, on the marketplaces, you have to buy media on the marketplaces. It&#39;s not like if you build that, they will come.</p><p>[00:32:37] You&#39;ve gotta have the advertising dollars to actually support your sales on the marketing place on the marketplace.</p><p>[00:32:42] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> for a lot of our listeners. I&#39;m sure they&#39;ve been nodding their heads as as you speak. There&#39;s a lot of question marks though still </p><p>[00:32:49] for anybody who hasn&#39;t been looking at their, their media spend in this way. What should brands be looking at a D to C or D to C brands? Be looking at a media spend breakdown.</p><p>[00:33:01] You know, what portion are you seeing more of a trend? Because we see it&#39;s so scary to move a portion of your business over to something new, even if it&#39;s starting to break, There&#39;s what are, what do you see more as a breakdown? Just so people can go ahead and make the shift and just close their eyes and go</p><p>[00:33:21] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Yeah. large brands that we see, large brands and retailers that we see doing well, that are significant in size and have e-commerce and have stores, they&#39;ve really shifted to almost a 40, 40 20 marketing mix where 40% of their spend is digital marketing. 40% is offline, which could include actually tv, radio, print, out of home media.</p><p>[00:33:47] And then 20% is really PR partnerships, sponsorships, influencers, you know, things around content and community. So, You know, to 40% across the digital channels, 40% across all kind of other, you know non-digital channels. And then what&#39;s really encouraging to see and smaller brands can&#39;t afford often to spend, you know, top of funnel.</p><p>[00:34:12] But as a matter of fact, high growth brands do spend top of funnel. And so you&#39;ll see the. Companies are beginning to carve out 10 to 20% of their spend. So they get the pr, they get the influencers, they get the sponsorships and the partnerships that allows them to build community.</p><h3>[00:34:27] Launching Direct Mail</h3><p>[00:34:27] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So if there&#39;s a, if there&#39;s a direct to consumer brand right now that&#39;s listening what&#39;s the ballpark range they&#39;d need to be? Looking at for budgeting to launch a campaign a, a direct mail campaign.</p><p>[00:34:40] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Okay. Well, I thought you were gonna ask a bigger picture question. What percent of top line revenue do you have to spend high growth, emerging brands are spending, you know, 20 to 25% of top line revenue on marketing. Mature businesses spend closer to 10 to 15% of top line revenue on marketing and big retailers and wholesale brands might only spend, you know, six to 10% of their top line revenue on marketing.</p><p>[00:35:10] But definitely if you&#39;re an emerging DTC brand today, you&#39;re definitely spending 20 to 25% of your top line revenue. So for every hundred dollars, you&#39;re spending 20 to 25 dollars. To get that. So just in terms of what you have to spend as an emerging brand to get traction. Absolutely. If you think you can build a brand from scratch that&#39;s spending, you know, $10 on the a hundred dollars, it&#39;ll never happen.</p><p>[00:35:34] Unfortunately, those days are, are past us in terms of, you know, really testing print, well here at Ballardi Wong, we only, you know, we run the largest, you know, Scalable, sophisticated programs in the country. So we don&#39;t do anything small, cheaper, schlossky. So we&#39;re, we&#39;re a little bit more on the premium side here . Really to get.</p><p>[00:35:52] A solid proof of concept with all of the industry best practices in place for both CRM and acquisition. You&#39;re looking at about a 75 to a hundred thousand dollars test in print and we&#39;ve launched over 250 DTC brands into the mail successfully. And even little baby ones with a few thousand customers and they&#39;re all spending that much money.</p><p>[00:36:11] So on their first campaign still less expensive, you know, still half as much as a three week TV campaign. So,</p><p>[00:36:18] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> mean hey, I mean, I mean that could just be one post by a tick, a certain, a couple TikTok influencers too. So, I </p><p>[00:36:25] mean, you </p><p>[00:36:26] know, </p><p>[00:36:26] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> That&#39;s the, you know, here&#39;s the ironic thing. You can put a beautiful full size catalog in front of a consumer for 85 cents. Your cost per click nowadays is, you know, two or $3. So the thing that&#39;s really crazy is that you can mail. 4, 5, 6 catalogs to a highly targeted audience for the cost of one click.</p><p>[00:36:47] So I think that that&#39;s, you know, it seems expensive, but actually, quality touch, yes, it&#39;s </p><p>[00:36:54] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I agree. And it&#39;s really just being able to say like, instead of spending that hundred k, the 200,000 on this, let&#39;s just go ahead and move it over here and run a test. Because I think everything that you&#39;ve really kind of ran through through this conversation and what you guys are doing is just, it&#39;s, it&#39;s incredibly compelling. And it&#39;s a lot of things that potentially these customer bases or the brands are just not as familiar with because they don&#39;t have a lot of seasoned retailers in their company orgs. And so a lot of it, we see somebody doing something or like, you really only have one product. Like you do realize that there&#39;s like issues with this who gave you. You know, and then now those </p><p>[00:37:43] conversations </p><p>[00:37:44] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> think, well, you know what&#39;s gonna be really interesting to see is that it&#39;s not gonna be very easy. We&#39;re already finding this. We actually do due diligence on D to C transactions because of all of our experience at Belardi Wong. And not this summer, but last summer we worked on six transactions, and this summer we didn&#39;t work on any transactions.</p><p>[00:38:03] I think very quickly. It&#39;s going to be a very tough landscape for raising dollars at this moment in time. And already the industry has become a little bit weary because some of the evaluations and the losses that have happened over the last couple of years. And so I think companies are gonna have to be scrappier and smarter because it&#39;s not gonna be so easy to get someone to give you, you know, 20, $30 million just like that. </p><p>[00:38:25] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. no, I mean yeah, I think it&#39;s great. I mean, I, I think that this is, I&#39;m really excited to see some comments once this kind of goes, gets pushed out because I know that this is gonna be some new content that they haven&#39;t really thought about as even an option think it&#39;s </p><h3>[00:38:39] Using Influencers </h3><p>[00:38:39] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I I, do wanna go back to one thing that you mentioned in the 40 40 20 split where you had in that 20%, you know, kind of lump together in, in pr, things like influencers, and that tends to get a lot of attention. Around, you know, what brands are spending with influencers and how they&#39;re using them.</p><p>[00:38:56] Are they on TikTok yet? What? are you seeing there that&#39;s actually successful?</p><p>[00:39:01] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> You know, the truth is, is that for most clients you know, influencers can reach a small target community. But we haven&#39;t seen for most clients a huge amount of scale unless you&#39;re willing to spend, a few hundred thousand dollars, with an influencer who really has significant reach and real influence on what consumers are buying.</p><p>[00:39:25] We just haven&#39;t found that for most of our clients, that actually influencers can drive any kind of sustainable scale. So maybe you pay a lot of money and you know, Mary Jane, the influencer does a series of posts maybe over two weeks about some of your new product. Maybe you get a momentary surge in sales, but it&#39;s not sustainable and you can&#39;t continue to spend those kinds of dollars for those really high touch posts. And so the one challenge that we do find with influencer marketing is it takes a lot of leg work to implement and it is often not truly scalable. It&#39;s also kind of interesting to see what&#39;s going on on TikTok, because definitely, you know, that that cut meta spend is shifting to TikTok. But TikTok is also hard to measure for the same reasons that it&#39;s hard to measure meta, right? Because of platform changes and challenges. And for the most part, because it&#39;s hard to measure the return on ad spend, on TikTok, it tends to be a top of funnel channel. Well, I can tell you that in a recession the money for top of funnel marketing is going to dry up very quickly.</p><p>[00:40:37] And so you&#39;re gonna be focused on those channels that can drive real performance and ROAS because you just don&#39;t have enough funding to, to, to, to spend on those top channels. So it&#39;ll be really interesting to see, over the next six months how advertising dollars shift around. I usually feel pretty comfortable giving my predictions for retail sales and e-commerce sales, but honestly, at this point, just hand me an ball. I have </p><p>[00:41:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I think that&#39;s where </p><p>[00:41:02] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> I&#39;m gonna continue to be I&#39;m gonna continue to cross my fingers and my toes and hope that at least for our clients, that affluent consumers are still spending </p><p>[00:41:09] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. And so, so on what you just said, right around top of funnel and those, is there an argument to be made that if you&#39;re going to spend on influencers or TikTok, that you&#39;re, you might wanna save that for when you have a new product launch versus just trying to drive sales of an existing product? </p><p>[00:41:27] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Absolutely. It&#39;s not something </p><p>[00:41:29] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. Because you scale it right </p><p>[00:41:31] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> you&#39;re gonna turn it on. You can&#39;t, you&#39;re gonna, you&#39;re gonna turn it on maybe three or four times. You know, in the world of retail, we think about five seasons winter. Spring, summer, fall, and holiday. And so you&#39;re really going to lean in just a few weeks of each season into your influencer marketing and that spend and really, lean into your peak sales curve to drive those new product sales and to get that reach.</p><p>[00:41:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. If that makes sense. That makes complete sense. So, so last question for you Polly, and if, someone were to come and ask you right now, what&#39;s your top recommendation when you think about growth strategies for a DTC brand, what would you tell &#39;em?</p><p>[00:42:07] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Considering the economic uncertainty, the headwinds and the rising costs across the entire p and l, I would say that my top two recommendations are to one, lean into crm. Make sure that you&#39;re activating all five channels targeting your existing customer base, and then two, Because you&#39;re targeting your existing customers, continue to focus on your product category expansion, you know, what is your range of product across categories and price points.</p><p>[00:42:37] Consumers may start spending down they may be more value focused than ever. So, you know, what is your good, better, best merchandise strategy, right? Not only are you adding simple things like more color skews to your long sleeve t-shirt, but you know, is there a good, better, best strategy for your product?</p><p>[00:42:53] Motorcycle clients we&#39;ve have worked with have done this extremely well. There&#39;s a good, better, best motorcycle helmet and the best one has got bluetooth and all kinds of fun things in it. And in, in addition to keeping your, your, your head safe. So definitely I think, leaning into your customer file is a tremendous, profitable asset.</p><p>[00:43:11] And then just giving existing customers more to buy. I do think there&#39;s plenty of time to lean into new customer acquisi. You know, as we begin to see some of the, the economic uncertainty clear up, hopefully by spring, I actually am quite confident that I do think things will level out and I think we&#39;ll be back sailing along by spring of 2023 is, is my hope.</p><p>[00:43:33] So fingers crossed. </p><p>[00:43:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I think you maybe, may be right about that. And it kind of says that if I kind of read into, the two areas you highlighted for a lot of DTC brands, there&#39;s probably some new hires they need to look for to help them with those strategies, particularly around merchandising those new products.</p><p>[00:43:47] Products like you talked about earlier.</p><p>[00:43:49] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Absolutely. Absolutely. I think you have to, and also to pay attention to the competition. You know, it&#39;s amazing to me. I think brands do tend to be inwardly focused and. You know, maybe now people will have the time and to kind of step back and say, how does my assortment look compared to my competitors?</p><p>[00:44:06] What are my price points? What are my size ranges? What are my number of colors? You know what is my returns policy? You know, how do I stand up against the competition? Everybody&#39;s gonna have to just be a little bit smarter. </p><p>[00:44:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I think that&#39;s another great point. I mean, I, even on for traditional retailers, I, I can&#39;t count how many times in the past I&#39;ve been in, in a room with retailers and asked them, Well, when was the last time you walked one of your competitors&#39; stores to see what they were doing? you know, I, I, I don&#39;t know sometimes whether I wanted to laugh or cry at the fact that they were just crickets in the room and nobody responded when I asked that question.</p><p>[00:44:38] so there&#39;s definitely some truth to that.</p><p>[00:44:40] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Absolutely. </p><p>[00:44:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, thank you So </p><p>[00:44:44] discuss. I&#39;m probably gonna go down as one of the, our, our most commented episodes with so much in good information and, and advice and I think really unique details that you&#39;ve helped surface here for, for DTC brands as they grow into, I would call becoming a, full channel retailer in a sense.</p><p>[00:45:03] and really didn&#39;t, know, cover a lot of ground around making old media, new media, like we started to talk about earlier.</p><p>[00:45:09] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Great. Well, thank you so much for having me. It&#39;s been fun this afternoon to connect with you and I, I hope you both have a, a lovely fall season.</p><p>[00:45:16] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Definitely. For our listeners who have been furiously taking notes during this episode, what&#39;s the best reach way for them to reach out to you or follow your company?</p><p>[00:45:26] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Yeah, obviously we&#39;re on the social channels, but if you wanna reach out through the contact us page at Belardi Wong, if you would like to talk to me directly or have any questions or comments for me directly, I know that they&#39;ll, they&#39;ll make their way to me and I&#39;m always happy to chat and connect.</p><p>[00:45:39] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Great.</p><p>[00:45:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, thank you again, Polly, for joining us. We hope to have you back soon.</p><p>[00:45:43] <strong>Polly Wong:</strong> Thank you so much. Have a great one.</p><p>[00:45:45] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> You too. That&#39;s a wrap, Ricardo.</p><h3>[00:45:48] Show Closing</h3><p>[00:45:48] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We hope you enjoyed our show and we can&#39;t ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don&#39;t wanna miss a minute of what&#39;s next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don&#39;t forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden. </p><p>[00:46:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:46:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:46:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. </p> 19b6cb83-54c7-4305-b258-a7479dc7cc4d https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 09 Nov 2022 18:22:23 +0000 2817 no full S2E4 - Retail Transformers - Alan Smithson S2E4 - Retail Transformers - Alan Smithson 4 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E4 - Retail Transformers - Alan Smithson Interested in the metaverse and need to know how to get started? Meet Alan Smithson, founder of MetaVrse, multiple TED Talk speaker, and builder of “The Mall” in the metaverse, but not just any mall! If there were a hundred-page encyclopedia of the metaverse, Alan would fill every page but you’d still need more room to cover his vast knowledge of all things metaverse. It’s season 2, episode 4, and we’re continuing our Retail Transformers series – you’ll see why Alan Smithson is truly more than meets the eye! Alan tells you what you need to get started with the metaverse, but takes us on an even deeper journey that touches on the future of jobs in digital technologies, how education needs to change to keep up, how the metaverse could make the world a better place, and of course, why shopping should be fun again! Plus, we’ll learn why asking children what they want to be when they grow up is the wrong question to ask. The real question is … News alert! We’re back at #20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S2E4 Retail Transformers - Alan Smithson [00:00:00] Pre-Show Intro [00:00:00] Alan Smithson: Good morning. Retail Razor. No, maybe too much. [00:00:05] Ricardo Belmar: actually we might, we might use that at the, in the intro beginning. [00:00:07] That was pretty [00:00:08] Good. ..That [00:00:09] Alan Smithson: like bit connect . I wanna go to a crypto conference and start doing that. Bit connect [00:00:17] Ricardo Belmar: Now that would be fun to see. [00:00:19] Alan Smithson: Too early maybe. Okay. We'll just start now. [00:00:21] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. All right, here we go. Here we go. [00:00:23] [00:00:23] Introduction [00:00:23] Ricardo Belmar: hello, and welcome to season two, episode four of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:00:49] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome Retail Razor Show listeners to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. [00:01:01] Ricardo Belmar: And we have a truly special treat this week. Following up from our season debut episode on the Metaverse, we are back to talk more metaverse this week, aren't we? [00:01:10] Casey Golden: Yes, and I'm excited. Our listeners and viewers should be excited because this week we're not only talking Metaverse, but we're continuing our Retail Transformer series with special guest, Alan Smithson, founder and CEO of the company, Metaverse. [00:01:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yes. Our faithful followers will learn exactly why Alan is 'more than meets the eye'. [00:01:31] Casey Golden: Aww, you're gonna use that line, every time for these series, aren't you? [00:01:35] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely, a hundred percent. I am totally here for that. [00:01:39] Casey Golden: Okay, so let's talk about Alan. There are few people in the early days of the Metaverse that can talk in depth about what retailers need to look at when building their metaverse strategy. [00:01:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, when we first talked to Alan, you know, when he first came to one of our clubhouse rooms, I was really impressed. And just like you said, he's got the knowledge about the metaverse. We'll also hear about his solution, the mall, that he's building, that will really change how retailers look at the metaverse. [00:02:03] And listeners or viewers are gonna come away with a really smart plan on, on how to attack the metaverse and get experimenting right away, just like we predicted back in season one episode four. [00:02:13] Casey Golden: And experimenting, and experimenting, trying things out is a matter of showing up and learning how to experiment. Alan hits on all of these topics and more honestly, each episode this season has been incredibly informative, but our guest energy is solid, true innovators. I don't know how we keep doing this from one episode to another, but keep those notepads handy. [00:02:35] You'll need it. [00:02:37] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. I mean, we could go on and on about all the juicy details Alan will talk about, but I think I can sum it up by saying if you were gonna write a hundred page Encyclopedia of the Metaverse, Alan would be on page one all the way through page 100, and you'd probably be asking for more pages after that. [00:02:54] Casey Golden: Agreed, so let's get to it then. Our interview with Alan Smithson co-founder of MetaVrse. [00:03:04] AlanSmithson Interview [00:03:04] Ricardo Belmar: And we are here with our very special guest, Alan Smithson, co-founder of the company MetaVrse, whose mission is to enable creation in the Metaverse for everyone. Following from our clubhouse session in our season one opener on the Metaverse and one of what's likely to be many more discussions we'll have on the metaverse going forward. [00:03:23] Alan, welcome to the Retail Razor Show. [00:03:25] Alan Smithson: Thank you so much, Ricardo and Casey. Thanks for having me. This is so, so exciting. You know, we we got to meet in person before these things, which is super cool, you know, and normally it's the other way around. You do all these podcasts and things, and then you finally meet somebody, you're like, Oh, yeah. [00:03:38] So it's really great to see some familiar faces and, and dive into the, the Occam's razor of retail . [00:03:46] Ricardo Belmar: exactly [00:03:47] Casey Golden: I'm so glad to see you Allen and having you here with us this morning. I'm just really excited to catch up and learn what's been going on since the last time we saw each other. [00:03:59] We're [00:03:59] Alan Smithson: many things. [00:04:00] Casey Golden: right. We're not casting from the, the metaverse yet. But who knows? This time next year, a seismic shift is taking [00:04:06] Alan Smithson: time next week we're gonna be releasing some cool stuff and we built in full video chat capabilities into our project. So we'll get into that later. But yeah, the three pushed some technology that will allow us to do this inside of virtual world. [00:04:21] Casey Golden: Interesting. Yes. Experiences on the internet are expected to be more immersive, three dimensional and virtual with the realization of web three . I believe the metaverse will will play , an integral role in product discovery and brand experiences. [00:04:36] Some people are saying it's dead and now it's like coming back. Some people said it's, this is just natural traction. So I mean, I think we're all here for the dips and we're all here for the eyes. [00:04:47] Alan Smithson: I really love the articles that say, you know, the Meta versus Dead or, you know, these are the same articles that in 10 years from now, people will look back and go, Oh yeah, you, you're the guy who wrote the internet as dead article. Good for you. You know, that really inspired a whole generation of people to build the internet, so, [00:05:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it's like how many years ago when everybody was saying physical retail was dead, [00:05:09] Alan Smithson: I mean, yeah, like you can say everything's dead. Look, when we invented tv, people said, Oh, this is gonna replace radio. Every car still has a radio in it. [00:05:20] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:05:21] Alan Smithson: like, radio didn't go away. It just changed and morphed. And you know, now we, now we have Spotify. Okay, maybe radio is not the primary thing, but it never died. [00:05:32] You know, TVs didn't go away when we got the internet. You know computers didn't go away when we got mobile phones. And, you know, mobile phones aren't going away anytime when we get VR and, and AR glasses. So, you know, adding new mediums does not necessarily mean that you, the other one fades away and dies, you know, it just becomes another medium. [00:05:51] There's, , let's say 10 years ago you had, I don't know, a billion people on the internet. Now we have 4 billion people on the Internet. Like, you know, the, the time right now is, is explosive growth. I mean, companies are raising, hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, tens and then hundreds of millions of dollars for internet technologies and metaverse technologies and web three technologies. [00:06:14] You know, this is just the money going in to invest to the future. So, I mean, we're in for a, a really, really interesting next, I guess, eight years now that we're almost kind of at the end of 2022. , By the end of this decade, the world will look very different than it does today, [00:06:30] Ricardo Belmar: Oh yeah. Yeah, [00:06:31] Casey Golden: I agree with that a hundred percent. [00:06:33] Ricardo Belmar: so, [00:06:34] Alan Smithson: none of the things will be dead. [00:06:35] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. No, none. None of it. We're just keep adding more and more I think as we're gonna get [00:06:39] into [00:06:39] Alan Smithson: more people coming on the [00:06:40] internet and more [00:06:41] Casey Golden: I'm [00:06:41] all [00:06:41] Alan Smithson: I like reading. [00:06:42] Casey Golden: web, like 6.0 already, right? [00:06:45] Alan Smithson: Why don't we have six G? I mean, my 5G phone doesn't really do anything for me. I'm like, 5g. I still have no signal. What the heck? [00:06:55] Casey Golden: It's still a marketing boy. [00:06:57] Alan Smithson: I bought a big phone that folds in half so that I can have all the things [00:07:02] Ricardo Belmar: And you're still waiting. And you're still [00:07:04] Alan Smithson: That's the wait. I still [00:07:05] Ricardo Belmar: so [00:07:06] Alan Smithson: but the technology's getting super fast. The the one thing that's exciting that. Most people are consuming the internet on a mobile phone now. Mobile phones and computers are the kind of dominant, but mobile phones kind of leapfrogged and it's places like Africa. They, they just bypass computers altogether and just went straight to phones. [00:07:22] Same with China. And so the phone technology is [00:07:25] Casey Golden: say, with 10 year olds, [00:07:27] Alan Smithson: exactly. 10 year olds in the Chinese, they, they just bypass computers all together. [00:07:32] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:07:33] Alan Smithson: But yeah, the, the world is using mobile phones to access the internet, and the mobile phones are getting so good. You know, the iPhone 14 came out y. These things are super, super computers now. [00:07:45] I mean, if you, One of the people that I, I really think highly of is a guy that runs this company called Otoy. They're a rendering engine and I can't remember the guy's name, but they came up with this concept of the render token. This was way before the whole crypto craze, and they said, What if we could tap into everybody's phone and computer and do batch rendering around the world? [00:08:06] So let's say Disney as a project, right? And they, you know, they need 500 servers to, to run this, you know scene of a Disney movie. Well, can't we then just push it out to a thousand phones, Have everybody, you know use the GPUs that are bit, you know, kinda sitting idle for most of the time on your phone. [00:08:22] Can we leverage that and then pay people for, for using this idle time on their phones? [00:08:27] seem to take off because I think it was a bit early, but that ability to tap into the billions of smartphones and computers out there and the processing power that is sitting idle, I think is going to be a key part of the metaverse moving forward in, in kind of the long term strategy. I mean, this is not, it's not an overnight thing. Nobody's really figured it out yet. But if we can do that, you think of how many computers around the world we could tap into for ai, for modeling, for protein folding for, you know, the good of mankind. [00:08:55] We can really use these these idle devices that are sitting idle for, you know, let's say most people, their phones are only sitting idle while they sleep, but [00:09:04] you know, it's, eight hours of sleep, depending on who you are. Casey, who only sleeps four hours a night, [00:09:12] What is MetaVrse & The Mall [00:09:12] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Well, Alan, so, diving into this space a little bit more, tell us a little more about what Metaverse is in your company and what you're doing and what you're and what that means for retailers and brands. [00:09:24] Alan Smithson: So we we started a company called Metaverse back in 2016, spelled M e t A V R s E, you know, for the vr idea, we built all sorts of projects in, in virtual, augmented, mixed reality, and 3d. We've done over 160 projects now but we've done everything from building retail locations virtual stores. [00:09:43] We've done virtual showrooms for automotive. We have built virtual training for, for medical, for consumer electronics. We did a lot of work for Samsung where we took their their new phone models, actually including this one, and then we animated them opening and you could turn it around and, you know, look inside and all this stuff. [00:09:59] We did a bunch of stuff for Samsung. We built virtual showrooms for MasterCard, but all of these things were actually built on our own engine. And so over the years we actually were building and working on our. What you would call a game engine or a creation platform. So similar to Unity and Unreal we have our own base, you know, rendering technology that allows us to render directly to the internet, directly to a web browser on a mobile phone. [00:10:24] So one of the, the claims to fame for us is that we have a low code, easy to create platform that bypasses the app stores. We actually don't have to go through Apple or Google. We just hit publish. It goes to a browser and works on any device. So this is super powerful and we really set up a goal in mind to build a platform that would let anybody participate and create in the Metaverse. [00:10:47] And so our mission is Metaverse creation for every. That's you know, that's always kind of been our ethos. It used to be XR creation for everyone, and then the whole world moved to the word metaverse. So we're like, Okay, well I guess we should jump on the bandwagon. Even though we started the bandwagon, [00:11:01] Casey Golden: What was xr [00:11:02] Alan Smithson: virtual augmented mixed reality or XR or extended reality is like a [00:11:06] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, [00:11:06] so it mixed, all of it [00:11:08] Alan Smithson: Yeah, I mean, we, we were all in on xr. We did the XR for Business podcast. We did the XR for Learning podcast. We did XR collaboration, which is a whole thing on, you know, collaboration platform. . We really, truly thought the whole world was going to xr and then outta nowhere Zuckerberg said, Hey, we're gonna be called Meta. [00:11:24] And the whole world went to Metaverse and we're like, Oh, well it's a good thing. We called our name That, and applied for the trademark before then [00:11:30] Ricardo Belmar: Ha. Good thing. [00:11:31] What moment led to creating MetaVrse? [00:11:31] Casey Golden: What was that one moment? Where you're just, cuz you've had some other businesses, you've had some worked in some other spaces. But what was that, that moment? Was there a special aha moment or something where [00:11:44] Alan Smithson: yeah. [00:11:44] Casey Golden: you're just like, I'm gonna build like the next version of the world, [00:11:48] Alan Smithson: It was a combination of things. Casey, honestly, it we owned a, a DJ product company called Emulator where it was a big glass, see-through touchscreen that you could play on and you could perform, but the crowd could see what you're doing cuz it was a see through piece of glass that you were DJing on. [00:12:01] We worked with, you know, infected Mushroom and Morgan page. And actually just recently a year ago Jean Michelle Jarre did a huge New Year's Eve virtual New Year's Eve party. It was huge. 7 million people attended and he used our emulator on stage in the virtual world as well. [00:12:15] So, I mean, we built this piece of tech. [00:12:17] We brought it to the world. We were working with big artists. And then we unfortunately brought on the wrong investor and so we lost that company. But right before that happened, I got invited to perform at Curiosity Camp by Eric Schmidt. And Eric Schmidt is, you know, obviously the former CEO of Google and he has this camp that everybody goes to called Curiosity Camp. [00:12:36] And so you go there and it's like camp in the middle of nowhere. I performed, it was kinda like a mini burning man for like 150 entrepreneurs, investors. AI nerds and a bunch of really smart people getting together just to have an UN-conference about what's coming in the world and, and, you know, new economic models and new technology models and these types of things. [00:12:55] So I got to perform. And then after that, I tried the R for the first time in this tiny little tent. And I remember putting it on, it was like a giant brick putting on my head. It was the DK one, the Oculus, and this was in 2014. Put on these giant headphones. And I sat there and they turned it on. And I remember sitting there going, Oh, like having this gasp of, Oh my God, this is amazing. [00:13:14] And I remember staring and I was looking at a concert, but it was so visceral that I felt like I was at the concert. The sound sounded right and, and I just sat there and I was like, Wow. And I remember somebody taking their hand and putting them on my shoulder, and I was on a swivel chair and they turned me around like this, and I realized that I could look everywhere. I was like, Oh my God. I could see the ceiling and the lights and the floor, and I just looked every. Then they hit a button and put me on stage, like I was up in the crowd. And then all, I was standing on stage next to Beck, looking at the artist, hearing it from my ears, looking up the crowd. And I thought, Oh my God. [00:13:49] And as a DJ myself for 20 years, I had this kind of moment where I was like, Holy crap. They just put me on stage in a place where nobody in the world gets to stand. Think about that. You know, like only the artists and the band or the DJ and maybe his manager get to stand on stage. Nobody gets to see this . And by transporting me in vr, I was there and I was like, This is gonna change everything, everything. [00:14:13] And that's, you know, right after that, we kinda lost the company, the, the DJ company. And I said, Well, let's just get into this now. And so in 2014 we started working in VR and we 3D printed our own cameras. We, we had 360 cameras built out of GoPros. We did everything. We did 360 videos. We did AR apps. [00:14:30] We did projection sandbox where you, you had connects and you, if you dug the sand out, it actually projected different things like topography of the sand. Did a VR photo booth for Samsung, which is super cool. We use their camera and you could take a picture with you and your friends and would Photoshop you into space, so you jump outta the machine and you could look at yourself in space with your friends in vr. [00:14:50] Casey Golden: That's great. So like as soon as you got like that one exposure hit, [00:14:54] it [00:14:55] Alan Smithson: that was it. That was. [00:14:56] Casey Golden: we're going this way, [00:14:57] Alan Smithson: Oh yeah. You know, I, I kind of had this thought that this is the future of human communication. This was like, okay, if I'm gonna communicate with somebody from long distance and we can stand there and like put these glasses on and be in the same room, this is gonna be the future of human communication. [00:15:11] And that was my whole ethos. I've since expanded that because, you know, and even if you go on our website, metavrse.com, we say that the Metaverse engine is the future of human communication, collaboration, commerce, and culture, because if you kind of take all of those four, that's really where we are right now. [00:15:29] The metaverse is impacting these things. So yes, we can communicate better, we can have a sense of presence, we can collaborate. You know, the, the new Bugatti was just designed in nine months rather than three years because they used VR to collaborate. You know BMW's been using VR to calibrate all the automotive companies are using it, not just to sell things, but to create. [00:15:47] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, to build, [00:15:48] to help them build faster. [00:15:49] Alan Smithson: so you know, collaboration is gonna be a big part. And then commerce, obviously 3D retail, duh. I mean, you know, Shopify's already showing in 96% improve, you know, uptick in conversion rates when using 3D on a site versus just 2D images and videos. So we're gonna go to 3D for sure. [00:16:09] Everything in the world, every brand, every company in the world will need all of their products and assets. Converted to 3D into 3D worlds, and over the next, you know, by the end of the decade, let's say. And that's a challenge because, you know, how do you convert them? Do you take CAD models and change them into 3d? [00:16:27] Do you take photographs and try to use photogrammetry? Do you use the scanners that are coming in the phones now? Do you use AI just using photographs to convert to 3d? So I think the biggest challenge over the next, you know, eight years or 10 years, end of the decade, This technology is showing massive upticks and, and conversion rates and all of the things from training to marketing to retail to e-com. [00:16:48] All of these things are being impacted positively, really positively, but it's still hard to make them. It's still hard to create the 3D worlds, the 3D environments avatars, clothing for avatars, these types of things. And so I think we're only just scratching the surface of what's possible. But AI is going to fill in a lot of the blanks over the next decade [00:17:07] Casey Golden: That's great. [00:17:08] Nexus of Three Technologies [00:17:08] Alan Smithson: I recently wrote an article called The Metaverse is the nexus of these three technologies. And the article, it, it's kinda like you have to read halfway through the article before I talk about them, because you know what, A little leading thing there. But the idea is that you have three technologies in addition to the internet we have today. [00:17:24] So the internet today, we have the ability to have video and audio and record and all these things that we're doing now, but then you wanna have depth, you wanna be able to walk around a virtual world. So it has 3D or XR vr, right? So you've that 3D component we call xr. Then you've got ai, which is gonna be, you know, natural language processing for maybe you wanna talk to a character, maybe you wanna get help in the store. [00:17:44] You can have conversations. Then computer vision, maybe you wanna see a product and you're like, What does that look like in my house? I hit a button, it changes the camera. Now I can see that couch in my house because the camera itself is using computer vision to understand my living room. Actually, IKEA came up with this really cool thing. [00:18:00] A quick video of your house and it blocks stuff out. Like it'll take your existing couch out and put the new one in for you. You're like, Whoa, this is crazy. So [00:18:08] computer [00:18:08] Casey Golden: love AR for home goods, like for furniture. I mean, [00:18:12] Alan Smithson: So you've got, you know, this 3D ar and then you've got ai, which, you know, kind of enables all that. And the new AI algorithms are allowing you to we have one called in World where you can talk to characters, and the other one that we're looking at right now is anything world. [00:18:26] And the idea is that, Use a text description and it will build a 3D environment for, you can say, I, I need a room with four walls, five windows, a tree in the corner, and a couch over here, and it will build it for you. Now it's very low poly and it's, it's not, you know, it's not perfect, but it's, it's automatic. [00:18:44] It's kinda like, you know, Have you seen Mid Journey and Dall-e yet [00:18:47] Casey Golden: I love Mid Journey. I've been playing on there until like I ran out of [00:18:52] Alan Smithson: credits [00:18:52] Casey Golden: could play [00:18:54] Alan Smithson: I was like, [00:18:55] What the amount of credits, Here's my credit, [00:18:57] my [00:18:57] money, [00:18:58] Casey Golden: do it again. I was having so much fun with it. [00:19:01] and it. [00:19:02] Alan Smithson: and licensing. So like, why would I ever go to a stock photography site ever again? Because I say, Okay, I need, the other day I said I needed a metaverse, whatever. I typed in whatever I, you know, description. It gave me a couple. I was like, not happy. I did it again. I was like, Oh, that one's nice. I up resd it and now that's the image for my article. [00:19:20] Casey Golden: Yeah, [00:19:21] Ricardo Belmar: it's exactly what you wanted. [00:19:22] Casey Golden: I, actually think that it's brilliant that if I could just go ahead and create one. and then it would create like 500 versions. [00:19:31] Alan Smithson: Oh, I'm sure that's coming. I, [00:19:33] I'm sure. [00:19:33] Casey Golden: I'm just like, okay, I like this, but like, don't gimme one now I want like a set of four. Well, you know what, just gimme a set of 500. [00:19:41] Alan Smithson: Yep. You know, this was a really good processing power at that point [00:19:45] because these images, so you know, instead of four it can generate 400. It's, this is the thing with ai, if people don't understand, it's just raw processing power. That's why if we can tap into the phones around the world, You know, use some of this idle processing power, then you just have more power available to do it. [00:20:01] Because right now it's kind of expensive, right? You, you put in a request through mid journey, it goes up to their cloud. Somebody's gotta pay for, you know, an actual computer to process that. Create these four or five or 400 images for incident em back. Anyway, the last technology that we didn't touch on, so xr, ai, and the last one's blockchain. know, how do you have a decentralized ownership of assets? How do you have a record of maybe, you know, maybe you just want something simple like a record of your employment or your record of the things you took for training. Cuz right now you go to university, you have a degree, right? That degree is held by, let's say, you know, let's just use Harvard, right? [00:20:36] Harvard holds your degree. You now put on your, on your LinkedIn, Hey, I went to Harvard at, you know, there Now does, do employers go and verify that? Do they go to Harvard? Chances are, or they. a lot of times. So maybe having a, you know, verified way to not only take your degree, but all the courses that you took. [00:20:53] Maybe you took a course on Udemy or Udacity or you, you did a side course. The side courses are really the skills that you're gonna need, because that's why people are taking, that's why people are learning on YouTube, because right now the world's moving faster than the universities, colleges, and high schools can keep up, and so the curriculums have to go through rigorous vett. [00:21:13] By the time they go through that, it's maybe two, three years, the technology's already passed and like moved on. So we're kinda in this weird technology meets, you know, learning model. And actually I did a TED talk called the, the Marriage of Technology and Education and where I just said, Look, we should be using all these technologies that are, that we're inventing not only to train people on those technologies and how to use them, but use them for this, for for learning. [00:21:39] So we should be using AI algorithm. To do this, and actually something I read yesterday, you know, the company Striver s Str r ivr, they do all the training in VR for Walmart. They've trained over a million people for Walmart. And one of the things they said in their early Stanford hit Human Interaction Lab, the, the early study they did was a teacher, very simple study. [00:22:00] They had a teacher and two students, and they were all represented as avatars in VR. Now the teacher is looking at a student, right? So they have eye contact with the student. But imagine the avatar can look at both students equally. So even though the teacher may not be looking at either student, maybe looking down the middle, the avatar looks like it's looking right at you. [00:22:19] And so you have this personal one-on-one connection, even though it's one to many. And so you imagine if a, a class of a hundred people, everybody feels like you're looking directly at them, and this is super powerful. [00:22:31] Casey Golden: That's [00:22:31] interesting. Yeah, I think that, you education versus application. It's definitely behind. I don't feel like we're, we're really preparing kids for work or to understand what the career opportunities are because it's just so antiquated of yet you don't have to do that anymore. Like, these are all the new jobs in that space, under that topic that literally nobody's talking about. [00:22:58] So I think it's very interest. I asked a, a nine year old before the pandemic, which I'm like, So what do you wanna do? Like when you grow up, right? The, the, the number one question. And she just like, shrugged and pushed back on the pool and like, went backwards. 11. She's like, It doesn't really matter. [00:23:19] It's not like they'll ex, they won't exist anymore by the time I need it. [00:23:25] I just mind [00:23:27] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. Wow. [00:23:28] Yeah. [00:23:28] Alan Smithson: think that the key to this is asking a different question. The different question is, is this instead of what do you wanna do when you grow up? Or what job do you want to get? Because we don't know what the jobs are gonna be. We don't, we're inventing them as we go. And something like, I read a stat, something like 60% of jobs over the next decade won't exist, [00:23:45] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's right. [00:23:46] Yeah. [00:23:46] Alan Smithson: So what are we training people [00:23:47] for? [00:23:48] We don't [00:23:48] Ricardo Belmar: Right. We don't [00:23:48] Casey Golden: a nine year old to tell me that. [00:23:50] Ricardo Belmar: we, We don't even know. That's why we need better tools, Right. To be able to do [00:23:53] What problem do you want to solve? [00:23:53] Alan Smithson: so here's the better question to ask in my opinion, is what problem do you wanna solve in the [00:23:58] world? [00:23:59] Ricardo Belmar: That's the [00:23:59] Alan Smithson: know, technology can be used. It doesn't matter if you have a problem you wanna solve, like climate change, I want to solve, I wanna stop sharks from being harvested for their fins. Okay? If you take that, that singular cue, you can use all sorts of technologies to disrupt supply chains to, you know sink ships. You could do everything in your power to people from fishing for sharks, cutting their fins off and throwing them back. I mean, imagine just one person had a singular vision on that and used every piece of technology to disrupt that industry. Of course, you do [00:24:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. It, it's like the, the number one thing, right, the technology brings is agility to do these things quickly. [00:24:37] Alan Smithson: we're not teaching people. that, one, they have all the technology at the fingertips as long as you have access to the internet and a phone or a computer. Two, you can make a big difference as an individual. And three, we're not teaching people to set goals and look at long term horizons. So when Julie and I got into Metaverse, this was actually not our long-term goal. [00:24:59] Our long-term goal is to build a new education system using this technology. But we're in year seven of a 30 year plan. mean, literally, you know, we started in 2014, we're now in, you know, 2022 and we're going out to, you know, 20, I think it was 2048 or something, was our kind of goal. So imagine looking 20 years out as a student instead of saying, What do you want to, what kinda job do you wanna get? [00:25:22] Well, I'll get a job and then six months later, my employer will lay me off and then I'll go through this thing. And once you get into the the rat race of having to pay rent, your opportunities to dream huge and solve world problems really diminishes. Because you just need to pay your bills. And I think this is one of the one of the things that we can do better as a society is, is give people a bit of a safety net so they can start to try to cha to take on big problems in the world. [00:25:47] But you have to tell them what the problems are and what are some of the solution opportunities, and then say, here dedicate your life to one, solving this problem. [00:25:55] Casey Golden: Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that that's a much better way of looking at it. And I think it's just gonna be inevitable. Like I will never ask that question again after I got that answer because I too realize that like, it's a wrong question. [00:26:09] Alan Smithson: You know, ask me, what are you gonna do when you grow up? And I'm like, Well, I don't know. I, I have been in my life, I, I graduated with a degree in molecular biology. I was a pharmaceutical rep. I owned a medical billing company. We owned a hostile, We we had a nutraceutical company. [00:26:26] We had a DJ business. I was a DJ for 20 years. We had a technology company and now we own a game engine. So who knows where life will take you. But now we have a, a singular vision and, and mission to, to create a new education system for the world using the technologies that we're talking about today. [00:26:41] And we, we actually settled on retail as a model to focus on that because all the technologies we need for retail at the highest levels. So, you know, we're building a virtual mall, which is insane, but we're building the world's largest virtual mall, and all the technologies in there are actually being built in mindfulness of what we're gonna need for education. [00:27:02] So the hundredth floor of the mall, each floor of the mall is a million square feet, so it's a hundred floors tall. Each floor is a million square feet, so you have a hundred million square feet of virtual space to build retail. Experiences and entertainment and all these things. But the hundredth floor is actually owned by the Unlimited Awesome Academy, which is Julie and i's trust to build this new education platform. [00:27:23] So the hundredth floor of the mall will benefit from the entire mall. The 20th floor of the mall is an education floor, so we have, you know, floor one to 20 is owned by the mall and leased to brands. So we've got like a luxury floor, automotive floor, consumer electronics, all these things. Floor 20 is actually reserved for education. [00:27:39] So we're gonna put education systems in there and let them have the, the floor, There's no charge for that. So we really do have this kind of long term vision of how we can leverage the, the retail world for the technology. Cuz we're, we're working with our partners to build insane amounts of technology, like crazy stuff. [00:27:56] We can, We built a technology recently called Infinite, l o d, or infinite level of detail that allows us to have an infinite virtual world. Meaning the mall's one building, when you leave the mall, it's vast. I mean, you could build anything you want in as far as you see. And it could be out in space like we designed it so that it doesn't, it, it loads on any phone fast and you can load and go anywhere in the world and walk around and it's just vast, right? [00:28:22] So that technology, I think is gonna revolutionize how. Build these things, because now what it typically happens is you build a scene and the scene is a fixed map, like, you know, Decentraland, a fixed map, sandbox, it's a fixed map. And then what you do is as you walk around the map, it's kinda loading different parts of the map. [00:28:40] Well, we don't have a fixed map. We have the fixed mall, but then the map is completely open to the world and what they wanna build. And so this is kind of our way of saying, okay, what does an open and unlimited metaverse look like? You know? And because that's really what people want. They want a persistent. Is never ending. It's kinda like Second Life, but you know, at a much, much larger scale available. And then Second, Life is still successful. They still have probably a million people a year on Second. Life doesn't work on mobile, Decent land, doesn't work on mobile Sandbox doesn't work on mobile. Roblox barely works on mobile. [00:29:11] So you know, having the ability to onboard billions of mobile phones into the Metas is gonna be the key. And then of course, we'll move to glasses over the next decade as well. You're seeing Oculus moved over to Meta now. Meta is introducing a new a new headset. So we're gonna see vast improve improvements of this. And then I would, I'd venture to say Apple makes their entrance into this space probably in the next year, would be my guess. We've been waiting for years and there's been lots of rumors over the years. I remember somebody in 2014 saying, Apple's gonna come out with VR glasses this year. [00:29:43] And I was like, I don't know about. Now, here we are, seven years [00:29:47] later. It's still [00:29:48] Why are brands coming to the mall? [00:29:48] Ricardo Belmar: So, so Alan, let me ask you more about the mall. I'm curious, when you talk to retailers and brands about the floors in the mall that you've got set aside for them, what, what's, what's your pitch to them? What, what's the selling point for the retailers to, Is it, for example, because you'd run on mobile where so many of these other platforms either barely do or, or don't what, what's the big selling point for the retail on the brand to, to be in the. [00:30:10] Alan Smithson: sure. I think it's, it's being part of something bigger. First of all, you know, you look. Brands are jumping into De Central and because it's, it's there and it works and it's bigger, right? It's a bigger community and there's gonna be more chance of eyeballs falling on. The problem is there's just not a lot of users there because the graphic fidelity is ma and there's a lot of barriers to entry. [00:30:27] If you wanna buy something physical, you cannot, If you want to use your credit card to buy something digital, you cannot, You have to buy with Manna, which is their in world currency. So we took a lot of the ideas from what these other platforms were doing. We said, Okay, well, how. Specifically make that for retail. [00:30:46] And really it was less about what we thought. And we've just had a lot of meetings with a lot of brands in the hundreds. And so when we, when we show them the mall, when we walk around, when we show them stores, when they say, Oh, well can it do this? Can it connect to our backend order management system? [00:31:00] Yes, it can because we use JavaScript. Can it, can we connect our loyalty program? Yes, absolutely. We have a, a backend system. And so it's just a really, a combination of. Having this idea for 'em all because we were building virtual showrooms for all different brands, and they were saying, Oh, I want a video chat on this one. [00:31:18] And this one would say, I want to dress the avatars and I, I want something over here. And so all these different disparate virtual showrooms that we're building, we built one for MasterCard, we built one for, for Samsung. We built all these things and they were asking for the same thing in different ways. [00:31:30] So we said, What if we built in a persistent mall so that if, [00:31:33] if we build a new piece of tech for one, one person, one brand, it now everybody in the mall. So you have the central part. Now brands can start driving people into their stores. So the mall.io/brand, it drops you right into the brand store. You can walk around, you get the full brand experience, but you can walk out the door as well. [00:31:52] So we've been meeting with, with hundreds of brands, and the brands that have interest in the mall, they want to get into the metaverse. And now here, here's the thing is it's a big cluster. You know, everybody's like, Oh, talking about the metaverse, the buzzword of the year. You know, do I make NFTs, do I not? [00:32:06] NFTs are kind of got like a, you know, negative connotation now that they've lost half their value. So it. Do we build our own virtual store? Do we go into Decentraland? Do we build something over here? Do we go into Roblox? And you know, the question or the answer's probably you gotta try all of the things, right? [00:32:23] And so you know, what we recommend is, look, take a budget, you know, whatever it is, 50 grand, a hundred grand, 200 grand, whatever your budget is, that's discretionary. You know, don't invest too much in this right now because nobody knows what's gonna work and whatnot. So we have like a 50 grand entrance package. [00:32:37] You get lease, you get, you know, kind of all the things included. We build everything out for you. [00:32:41] We have a full studio. And so the idea was how do we just get rid of all of the barriers to entry for a brand and then just get them into the mall. Because it's, it's all new for all of us, right? You know, people are saying, How are you gonna get any traffic in the mall? [00:32:53] Well, you know, of course we're the mall. We have to get traffic in there. But we're coordinating that effort with the brands. With the brands that we're working with, because really we don't have the brand gravitas of a, you know, of a, of a large shoe company or a, a large electronics manufacturer. You guys have, they have hundreds of thousands or millions of consumers. [00:33:12] And we're working with a candy company. They're gonna put QR codes on the candy, so that's gonna drive people directly into their store in the mall. And, they have multiple stores in the mall, so it's. It's really intriguing how, we've kind of realized that the marketing and getting people into the mall is, is less our responsibility is more of the brands, but where our responsibility is to have the right brands there and encourage them to build cool stuff because it's really less about, you, know, a store and it's more about an experience. And so, you know, one thing that I think the mall replaces or, or at least adjuncts is that, or not replaces, but adjuncts is that Amazon and Mall Walmart are the two largest retail stores on earth digitally, right? amazon.com and walmart.com. But you wouldn't invite your friends to go shopping on amazon.com. [00:33:58] You'd be like, Hey, we're gonna have a shopping date on, Go on Amazon. See what I'm ordering in my cart. It, it's taken the fun out shopping it, it's taken a front out. It's, it's just ruthless procurement of goods. Casey we'll go Amazon shopping [00:34:12] Buying vs Shopping - it should be fun! [00:34:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. It's buying versus shopping. [00:34:14] Alan Smithson: it is. Procurement of goods versus shopping and shopping should be fun. [00:34:18] There is a reason why malls aim the cultural center of communities, and we wanna do the same thing. So our, our mall is multiplayer. You can invite your friends, you can go walk around. It's super fun actually. And we're putting little mini games in there. There's daily games that change every day so you can win prizes. [00:34:34] Just super cool stuff. So. [00:34:35] Casey Golden: That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I think that big, that big benefit at the end of the day of participating. It may not necessarily be a conversion rate because that's not necessarily the goal Right. [00:34:48] now. What would you say is that roi? Because I don't feel that it's going to be money, like sales revenue, but I might be wrong. [00:34:59] Like today, if somebody wanted to go and have their first Metaverse experience with you, what is that main transformation or moment that you expect that that brand is going to be mentioning in the meeting to a hundred thousand or 800,000 next season? There? [00:35:19] Alan Smithson: I think you nailed it. Is, is really up to the brands to build some cool stuff and, and look, right now we made the mall look like, like a mall. It's got stores you can walk around. It doesn't need to look like a mall. It could be a, a field, it could be a space, it could be anything, right? So when you walk in your store, , Yes. [00:35:34] It looks like a store from the outside. And then when you walk in through the barrier of the door, it changes and, loads a new project. And the new project is like, Oh, now I'm in a, you know, basketball court, or now I'm like sitting court side watching you know, Nicks and nets, right? So it's one of those things that right now there's a term called skew amorphism, meaning we kind of tend to take what is already existing and build things like that. [00:35:56] So we. A mall. Looks like a mall. We put it into digital format so it feels and looks like a mall. Like you're walking around. You don't, it just feels right. It just looks like a mall or, Okay, great. I get it. I understand it this, really understand it. But that doesn't mean we can't push the absolute limits on the other end. [00:36:09] But what we need to do, and we need to do this for everybody, is make people feel comfortable in these virtual spaces and, and skew amorphism or, or bringing kind of the traditional world into the virtual world for now seems to. The right path. We've done some crazy, crazy stuff on the, on the, you know, way out there, NFT galleries and stuff. [00:36:30] And it doesn't really resonate with people. They don't know how to navigate it. They, they don't understand it. They're, there's a bit of a mix mix mash, so I think it's really gonna be up to the brands to build cool experiences that engage with their customers that. Really drive brand awareness. You look at Samsung's 8 37 store in New York. I think it's a prime example. And even Nike Store in New York City, I mean, yes, they sell shoes, but it's really about the experience of experiencing the brand. You go into Nike store and the whole first floor is the history of Nike. You can look at the old shoes, like it's just really, really cool. Yes, you can buy some shoes on, you know, one of the other floors, but it's not about that. It's about the experience of, oh my God, I was in New York and I went to this crazy store. And it, it, made me realize how how much research has gone into the Nike shoes and then like, you can really build these experiences and Samsung 8 3 7 in New York as well. [00:37:16] You go in there, you can't buy anything. You can literally just, you can look at the fridges, you can look at the kitchens, you can look at the, the mobile phones. You can, there's all these really cool experiences. There's lots of places to take selfies, which is fun. And you, you know, people's new selfie flex is gonna be, Hey, I gonna dress up my avatar. [00:37:33] And dripping in Gucci and and take a picture. But I think people's online personas are going to start being more important than their in-person personas. We're already seeing that. I mean, like, you know, people in virtual worlds are spending billion, billions on skins. [00:37:49] Ricardo Belmar: Oh yeah. Oh [00:37:51] Alan Smithson: You know, night skins. [00:37:53] I mean, I think Fortnite did something like $9 billion last year, Something [00:37:57] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. [00:37:57] It's crazy. Yeah. So, Alan, let me ask you this. What, what would be your top advice right now for, for, let's say for this over this next year for retailers, DTC brands, I mean even retail tech businesses who are all looking at the metaverse and kind of thinking, Okay, how do I get in? What, what, what are my first steps? [00:38:17] What do I do to get started? [00:38:19] Alan Smithson: Sure. Find a, a decent partner who understands retail, who's done with this. There's, you know There's a company called Max, a Maxent. They do a great work on kind of, you know, for furniture companies, a bunch of retailers. [00:38:30] [00:38:30] Alan Smithson: Marxent [00:38:31] [00:38:31] Yeah, they, they do a great job. Converting things to 3d, you're gonna have to have teams that understand 3d. [00:38:36] And 3D is not easy. It's not as easy as creating a JPEG or a video. It's quite complicated. There's. You have a 3D model, then you've got layers and layers of of images that go on top of that to make it look realistic. You've got a bumpy one that makes it look bumpy. You've got texture files, all these things. [00:38:51] It's not, it's not really that easy a technology. Now, it's getting easier and we're getting there, but I think by starting now and starting small, taking a, you know, let's say 50,000 to a $500,000 budget, building something and then starting to have your teams internally. Understand how the sausage is made. How do we go from an idea or a concept or some photographs of a store to a fully, 3D environment with avatars, with products in there and everything, and, click to buy everything. [00:39:19] And so one of the reasons we did the mall is because we've done this a bunch of times for individual clients and it, it ended up becoming kind of rinse and repeat, right? We're like, Okay, well this, this client wants, and now we can build a virtual showroom in. Oh man, the last one we built, we took three days and it was beautiful. Just because we're getting really good at that. So I think the first thing is understand, learn a bit. So there's lots and lots of . I don't know how many guides to the metaverse there are, but there's probably at least a hundred that I know of. So go read some of those. You know, have somebody in your team dedicate somebody in your team to be the head of Metaverse, you know, and it's not just about, you know, 3D and that sort of thing, but you have to understand the crypto world as well. [00:39:58] People are gonna start buying in cryptocurrencies. What does that mean for you? How. How do you get paid in cryptocurrency and convert that to fiat because brands don't have accounting systems that that can take into account crypto. Right. So we have a, a partner named BitPay. So anybody can pay in any crypto they want using 95 different wallets. [00:40:16] It automatically takes their money, converts to U s D on at the end of the day and then settles with the brand at the end of the day. So you, the brands get settled in USD. . And, and the client doesn't know any, any difference in between and it's actually cheaper. So a stripe is like 3% for, you know, paying with credit cards or whatever. [00:40:34] With fiat and BitPay is only 1% because, and there's no chargebacks. Cuz once a crypto payment's paid, it's, there's, you can't reverse it. So I think there's gonna be a, a combination of. Onboarding customers or guests, we call them guests in the mall. Onboarding guests into, the crypto world slowly, but allowing them to pay in anything they want. [00:40:52] You pay credit card, PayPal, Amazon Pay, you know, it doesn't matter. We will, we will take any form of payment for physical and or digital goods in fiat and or cryptocurrency. And so from a brand standpoint, something like the mall kind of gives you. A boost because you don't have to reinvent the wheel. [00:41:10] If you're going into Decentraland again, there's a platform already there, there's people there. Roblox is great if, let's say, for example, you're a brand and your, your target customer is 25 to 30, well, your next target customer is, you know, 15 to 25. Right? Like that block. So if they're playing Roblox, and then I think something like 62% of Roblox players are under the age of 16. So if that's your next target demographic, like Gucci wants to be in the next, you know, they wanna be generationally relevant. [00:41:39] So if you're a brand that wants to be generationally relevant and be put in front of millions of people, go Roblox, you know that, that's a great starting point there. But it's, it's hard to get people's attention in there too. You've got, something like 10 million games on Roblox or something, or 4 million games on Roblox. So and then with the mall, it is a dedicated retail experience. You know, people are going there for that. They know what they're getting, and there's, there's gonna be a lot of, malls, digital malls, metaverse malls and these sorts of things. [00:42:06] But I don't think a lot of the startups that get into this realize the true depth of what's required. I mean, we spent seven years building a game engine for Enterprise. So when a, when a client says, What are your security protocols? We, we have a SOC two compliance and SOC two is not an easy thing to do. [00:42:23] It's, you know, it's eight months of, they basically take everybody on your team rip apart of their computers and you know, digitally [00:42:31] inside, make sure you don't have anything hidden. You gotta go through all these security protocols. So now that when we go to our clients, we say we are of SOC two, we also have Kronos compliance. [00:42:40] So Kronos is a 3D standard so that if you have a 3D model that you use on walmart.com, you can just pick it up and drop it into the mall and it will look the. This is important. Your product is not gonna look real in Roblox. It's gonna look like it's made out of Lego. You go, same thing with Sandbox, same with the Decentraland. [00:42:58] And they use a technology called voxels. So it's, very gamey looking like, like it's made out [00:43:02] Ricardo Belmar: Very [00:43:03] blocky. It's very [00:43:04] Casey Golden: of a standard of visual aesthetic that a lot, the higher end the brand, the less familiar that feels. And it's, but it's being adopted and it's, You don't have to be photorealistic all the time, [00:43:21] Alan Smithson: Yeah. You can have fun with it. And that's what I tell brands. Look, [00:43:24] You can use Unreal Engine for your commercials, your, your Hollywood movies. You know, they, they high, super high end. Maybe you want to build a film, a car, you know, driving through things. You can use the Unreal Engine for that. Then you can take the same asset. Down res it put it into Metaverse Engine. And now you can use it on the web, on, on the mall, right? You can use that same thing now it's interactive. You can drive it, you can, you know, on a mobile phone. Then you can take that same thing, pixelize it, and throw it into, into Decentraland or sandbox or, or Roblox or Minecraft. [00:43:51] And the idea is that you're using one asset to create several experiences and brands are gonna start doing this. I mean, it's just very few brands are doing it. [00:44:00] But I predict that you're not gonna be in one metaverse. You're gonna be in a bunch of different things, try different things, and some will be successful, Some won't. [00:44:06] Try things on your own website as well. I mean, our system. When you b build a store in the mall, you can actually build a hit, copy, paste, make a separate one and put it on your website as well. Now it'll link over to the mall, but it can reside on your know your brand.com website. We, we've taken out as many barriers to entry for brands as possible from, from our standpoint. [00:44:26] Casey Golden: Yeah. [00:44:27] Alan Smithson: We just, we've done so many meetings and it's been, I mean, our FAQ page is 50 questions long now for the mall [00:44:33] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's hard enough to wrap your brain around it. At least once you make the decision. Let me take you right to it. [00:44:44] Alan Smithson: Let's just get it done, shall we? [00:44:46] And shouldn't be like one year thing. Oh my God, we're gonna build this thing in a year. Like what? No, man. If you can't build it in a, you know, eight weeks. [00:44:53] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. you'll be too late. [00:44:55] Alan Smithson: Yeah. maybe. Maybe. [00:44:58] Ricardo Belmar: You might be too late. [00:44:59] Alan Smithson: It's a crazy world we live in. It's moving so fast. That's why, one of our benefits of the engine is that it's low code. [00:45:04] We can build these things in in hours, you know like building the whole thing from scratch takes three days. You imagine how long that used to take? Six months ago, that took three weeks. [00:45:14] Ricardo Belmar: There's definitely a magic to to low code for sure, to really speed things up. [00:45:18] Alan Smithson: Yep. [00:45:19] How to reach Alan? [00:45:19] Casey Golden: what's the best way for someone to get in touch with you and follow the journey? [00:45:23] Alan Smithson: Sure. I, I, there's a couple ways. Metaverse Engine, which is, you know, the creation platform that is powering the, the mall. You can go to metaverse.com, m a t a v r s e.com. The mall is simply the mall.io. You can go sign up there, and if you sign up now for the mall, whether you're a brand or a guest, or an investor it'll ask you, you know, a dropdown for that. [00:45:43] You'll get put into a, an email funnel. So you'll have, if you sign up now, you'll have all early access to everything. So, for example, we're launching a new website for the mall, And that new website is fully built as a 3D world. So you scroll down the mall and you actually walk in and you end up inside of 3D website walking around. [00:46:00] It's not the mall, it's the website for the mall. we used our engine to build a revolutionary new website. So go to mall.io, the mall.io. And then you can just add me on LinkedIn. I can't add anybody from that, but you can follow me on LinkedIn. Cause I hit the limit of LinkedIn. Just use this my name alan Smithson. And you'll see fireworks above my head. I, I took a picture at the Formula one and that's my profile pick now [00:46:22] Casey Golden: Oh, [00:46:22] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, nice. [00:46:23] Alan Smithson: was like, this [00:46:24] Ricardo Belmar: cool [00:46:24] Alan Smithson: awesome. [00:46:25] Ricardo Belmar: Very cool . [00:46:26] Alan Smithson: Yep. [00:46:27] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I, I, I know I have really learned a lot today, Alan. Thank, thank you for that. I'm sure all of our listeners and, and viewers did too. Casey cause, you're already a, a Metaverse and, and web three advocate, so I'm sure a lot of this was old news for you after your debut event. Right. [00:46:40] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, we just had our second successful brand activation with Lux Lock on the 12th for New York Fashion Week. So with five brands everyone is enjoying. The experiences and looking forward to the future of commerce, like the brands are excited, the con consumers are excited. Making these early experiences is just critical into understanding like what these channels could potentially mean to your company. [00:47:06] Just do something And see what happens. [00:47:11] Alan Smithson: Yep. No, it's absolutely true. And look, one other thing that I, I didn't really mention is set some KPIs. What, what is it you want to get out of it? Because a lot of times, you know, for the last five years or six years, we've been building all sorts of marketing things, and they never really set KPIs. [00:47:25] They're just like, Hey, let's do this cool thing over there. And you're like, Yeah, I'll take your money and we'll do it. No, there's no measurement of success. So then you don't get a subsequent budget. And, and marketing teams are, they, they sometimes do this a lot, you know, they'll, they'll do things without measuring it, and that's fine. [00:47:41] Then maybe they want the media hits or whatever it is. But you have to have some metrics of success. Is it conversions? Is it time spent on platform? Is it, is it the number of visitors? What I, is the metric that you're measuring for success? [00:47:52] Because then, you can measure that. We can make changes. You can change completely everything or just some things, and you can get to the successful metrics. If you're not measuring it there's no point. So that's why actually one of the things in our mall is, complete analytics dashboard with, with everything from time spent on how much time somebody spent on a product. I mean, looking at it did they invite a friend? Did they convert from there? You know, these things are all really important. [00:48:15] And so we built, built this cool dashboard so that you can kinda look at your store and, and see a heat map of where people walked. Cause if somebody walks in your store and they all go right, and you want them to go left, well you can put a little display. [00:48:27] Casey Golden: they always, always go right. [00:48:29] Alan Smithson: Do they [00:48:29] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. [00:48:33] Casey Golden: apartment? Buildings. We'll go right [00:48:38] Alan Smithson: love it? Well, you know what? The heat map data will tell us where people go. [00:48:42] We'll find it. Yeah. Once we have this segregated data in the mall, we'll be able to tell, you know, okay. 57% of people went that way. 37 went that way. [00:48:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And then you can keep adjusting, right? I mean, that's kinda the whole point is you want to keep adjusting and adapting to what, What's gonna work? [00:48:55] Alan Smithson: Yeah, you could put a plant there to make them sure. They go around it the other way. You just literally, and this is the other thing, you can re-merchandise your store for every day if you wanted to, you could be like, Hey, today we're gonna do, you know I don't know. It's October, so we're gonna do a Halloween theme, and for the month of October, it's Halloween theme. [00:49:10] And then, you know, as soon as November one hits, you just hit published to the next one, and now you're a Christmas. Right. So rebranding doesn't take, Okay, we gotta build a store, then we gotta ship out all the pieces to all the stores around the world, and then you gotta remerchandise it and then we gotta take photos to make sure that you did it right. [00:49:25] No, it's like one small team can remerchandise a store for potentially billions of people. [00:49:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's, that's incredible. That's an amazing approach. Love it. Well, Alan, thank you so much for, for joining us today. You're, you're truly, I think transforming retail and coding meta versus is more than meets the eye in doing so. And I'm sure we are gonna be asking you to come back on to give us an update on how the all is going in the [00:49:49] Alan Smithson: We'd guys. Honored. [00:49:50] Casey Golden: Always an absolute pleasure to to listen to you and to chat with you. I just love to hear how your world is progressing. [00:49:58] I'm still so web two [00:50:00] Alan Smithson: We're we're ? That's a, Yeah, we're on the two five spectrum [00:50:05] Casey Golden: Yeah. [00:50:06] Alan Smithson: Awesome. Well, [00:50:07] Casey Golden: But thanks again a I hope to have you back soon [00:50:11] Alan Smithson: awesome guys. a great one. [00:50:13] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks. [00:50:14] Show Closing [00:50:14] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:50:44] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:51:01] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:51:02] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. Interested in the metaverse and need to know how to get started? Meet Alan Smithson, founder of MetaVrse, multiple TED Talk speaker, and builder of “The Mall” in the metaverse, but not just any mall! If there were a hundred-page encyclopedia of the metaverse, Alan would fill every page but you’d still need more room to cover his vast knowledge of all things metaverse. It’s season 2, episode 4, and we’re continuing our Retail Transformers series – you’ll see why Alan Smithson is truly more than meets the eye!


Alan tells you what you need to get started with the metaverse, but takes us on an even deeper journey that touches on the future of jobs in digital technologies, how education needs to change to keep up, how the metaverse could make the world a better place, and of course, why shopping should be fun again! Plus, we’ll learn why asking children what they want to be when they grow up is the wrong question to ask. The real question is …


News alert! We’re back at #20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.

Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey



TRANSCRIPT

S2E4 Retail Transformers - Alan Smithson

[00:00:00] Pre-Show Intro

[00:00:00] Alan Smithson: Good morning. Retail Razor. No, maybe too much. 

[00:00:05] Ricardo Belmar: actually we might, we might use that at the, in the intro beginning. 

[00:00:07] That was pretty 

[00:00:08] Good. ..That 

[00:00:09] Alan Smithson: like bit connect . I wanna go to a crypto conference and start doing that. Bit connect

[00:00:17] Ricardo Belmar: Now that would be fun to see. 

[00:00:19] Alan Smithson: Too early maybe. Okay. We'll just start now. 

[00:00:21] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. All right, here we go. Here we go. 

[00:00:23]

[00:00:23] Introduction

[00:00:23] Ricardo Belmar: hello, and welcome to season two, episode four of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:00:49] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome Retail Razor Show listeners to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.

[00:01:01] Ricardo Belmar: And we have a truly special treat this week. Following up from our season debut episode on the Metaverse, we are back to talk more metaverse this week, aren't we?

[00:01:10] Casey Golden: Yes, and I'm excited. Our listeners and viewers should be excited because this week we're not only talking Metaverse, but we're continuing our Retail Transformer series with special guest, Alan Smithson, founder and CEO of the company, Metaverse.

[00:01:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yes. Our faithful followers will learn exactly why Alan is 'more than meets the eye'.

[00:01:31] Casey Golden: Aww, you're gonna use that line, every time for these series, aren't you?

[00:01:35] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely, a hundred percent. I am totally here for that.

[00:01:39] Casey Golden: Okay, so let's talk about Alan. There are few people in the early days of the Metaverse that can talk in depth about what retailers need to look at when building their metaverse strategy.

[00:01:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, when we first talked to Alan, you know, when he first came to one of our clubhouse rooms, I was really impressed. And just like you said, he's got the knowledge about the metaverse. We'll also hear about his solution, the mall, that he's building, that will really change how retailers look at the metaverse.

[00:02:03] And listeners or viewers are gonna come away with a really smart plan on, on how to attack the metaverse and get experimenting right away, just like we predicted back in season one episode four.

[00:02:13] Casey Golden: And experimenting, and experimenting, trying things out is a matter of showing up and learning how to experiment. Alan hits on all of these topics and more honestly, each episode this season has been incredibly informative, but our guest energy is solid, true innovators. I don't know how we keep doing this from one episode to another, but keep those notepads handy.

[00:02:35] You'll need it.

[00:02:37] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. I mean, we could go on and on about all the juicy details Alan will talk about, but I think I can sum it up by saying if you were gonna write a hundred page Encyclopedia of the Metaverse, Alan would be on page one all the way through page 100, and you'd probably be asking for more pages after that.

[00:02:54] Casey Golden: Agreed, so let's get to it then. Our interview with Alan Smithson co-founder of MetaVrse. 

[00:03:04] AlanSmithson Interview

[00:03:04] Ricardo Belmar: And we are here with our very special guest, Alan Smithson, co-founder of the company MetaVrse, whose mission is to enable creation in the Metaverse for everyone. Following from our clubhouse session in our season one opener on the Metaverse and one of what's likely to be many more discussions we'll have on the metaverse going forward.

[00:03:23] Alan, welcome to the Retail Razor Show. 

[00:03:25] Alan Smithson: Thank you so much, Ricardo and Casey. Thanks for having me. This is so, so exciting. You know, we we got to meet in person before these things, which is super cool, you know, and normally it's the other way around. You do all these podcasts and things, and then you finally meet somebody, you're like, Oh, yeah.

[00:03:38] So it's really great to see some familiar faces and, and dive into the, the Occam's razor of retail .

[00:03:46] Ricardo Belmar: exactly

[00:03:47] Casey Golden: I'm so glad to see you Allen and having you here with us this morning. I'm just really excited to catch up and learn what's been going on since the last time we saw each other. 

[00:03:59] We're 

[00:03:59] Alan Smithson: many things. 

[00:04:00] Casey Golden: right. We're not casting from the, the metaverse yet. But who knows? This time next year, a seismic shift is taking 

[00:04:06] Alan Smithson: time next week we're gonna be releasing some cool stuff and we built in full video chat capabilities into our project. So we'll get into that later. But yeah, the three pushed some technology that will allow us to do this inside of virtual world.

[00:04:21] Casey Golden: Interesting. Yes. Experiences on the internet are expected to be more immersive, three dimensional and virtual with the realization of web three . I believe the metaverse will will play , an integral role in product discovery and brand experiences.

[00:04:36] Some people are saying it's dead and now it's like coming back. Some people said it's, this is just natural traction. So I mean, I think we're all here for the dips and we're all here for the eyes.

[00:04:47] Alan Smithson: I really love the articles that say, you know, the Meta versus Dead or, you know, these are the same articles that in 10 years from now, people will look back and go, Oh yeah, you, you're the guy who wrote the internet as dead article. Good for you. You know, that really inspired a whole generation of people to build the internet, so, 

[00:05:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it's like how many years ago when everybody was saying physical retail was dead,

[00:05:09] Alan Smithson: I mean, yeah, like you can say everything's dead. Look, when we invented tv, people said, Oh, this is gonna replace radio. Every car still has a radio in it. 

[00:05:20] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:05:21] Alan Smithson: like, radio didn't go away. It just changed and morphed. And you know, now we, now we have Spotify. Okay, maybe radio is not the primary thing, but it never died.

[00:05:32] You know, TVs didn't go away when we got the internet. You know computers didn't go away when we got mobile phones. And, you know, mobile phones aren't going away anytime when we get VR and, and AR glasses. So, you know, adding new mediums does not necessarily mean that you, the other one fades away and dies, you know, it just becomes another medium.

[00:05:51] There's, , let's say 10 years ago you had, I don't know, a billion people on the internet. Now we have 4 billion people on the Internet. Like, you know, the, the time right now is, is explosive growth. I mean, companies are raising, hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, tens and then hundreds of millions of dollars for internet technologies and metaverse technologies and web three technologies.

[00:06:14] You know, this is just the money going in to invest to the future. So, I mean, we're in for a, a really, really interesting next, I guess, eight years now that we're almost kind of at the end of 2022. , By the end of this decade, the world will look very different than it does today,

[00:06:30] Ricardo Belmar: Oh yeah. Yeah,

[00:06:31] Casey Golden: I agree with that a hundred percent.

[00:06:33] Ricardo Belmar: so, 

[00:06:34] Alan Smithson: none of the things will be dead.

[00:06:35] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. No, none. None of it. We're just keep adding more and more I think as we're gonna get 

[00:06:39] into 

[00:06:39] Alan Smithson: more people coming on the

[00:06:40] internet and more 

[00:06:41] Casey Golden: I'm 

[00:06:41] all 

[00:06:41] Alan Smithson: I like reading. 

[00:06:42] Casey Golden: web, like 6.0 already, right?

[00:06:45] Alan Smithson: Why don't we have six G? I mean, my 5G phone doesn't really do anything for me. I'm like, 5g. I still have no signal. What the heck?

[00:06:55] Casey Golden: It's still a marketing boy.

[00:06:57] Alan Smithson: I bought a big phone that folds in half so that I can have all the things

[00:07:02] Ricardo Belmar: And you're still waiting. And you're still 

[00:07:04] Alan Smithson: That's the wait. I still

[00:07:05] Ricardo Belmar: so 

[00:07:06] Alan Smithson: but the technology's getting super fast. The the one thing that's exciting that. Most people are consuming the internet on a mobile phone now. Mobile phones and computers are the kind of dominant, but mobile phones kind of leapfrogged and it's places like Africa. They, they just bypass computers altogether and just went straight to phones.

[00:07:22] Same with China. And so the phone technology is

[00:07:25] Casey Golden: say, with 10 year olds,

[00:07:27] Alan Smithson: exactly. 10 year olds in the Chinese, they, they just bypass computers all together.

[00:07:32] Ricardo Belmar: Right. 

[00:07:33] Alan Smithson: But yeah, the, the world is using mobile phones to access the internet, and the mobile phones are getting so good. You know, the iPhone 14 came out y. These things are super, super computers now.

[00:07:45] I mean, if you, One of the people that I, I really think highly of is a guy that runs this company called Otoy. They're a rendering engine and I can't remember the guy's name, but they came up with this concept of the render token. This was way before the whole crypto craze, and they said, What if we could tap into everybody's phone and computer and do batch rendering around the world?

[00:08:06] So let's say Disney as a project, right? And they, you know, they need 500 servers to, to run this, you know scene of a Disney movie. Well, can't we then just push it out to a thousand phones, Have everybody, you know use the GPUs that are bit, you know, kinda sitting idle for most of the time on your phone.

[00:08:22] Can we leverage that and then pay people for, for using this idle time on their phones?

[00:08:27] seem to take off because I think it was a bit early, but that ability to tap into the billions of smartphones and computers out there and the processing power that is sitting idle, I think is going to be a key part of the metaverse moving forward in, in kind of the long term strategy. I mean, this is not, it's not an overnight thing. Nobody's really figured it out yet. But if we can do that, you think of how many computers around the world we could tap into for ai, for modeling, for protein folding for, you know, the good of mankind.

[00:08:55] We can really use these these idle devices that are sitting idle for, you know, let's say most people, their phones are only sitting idle while they sleep, but

[00:09:04] you know, it's, eight hours of sleep, depending on who you are. Casey, who only sleeps four hours a night,

[00:09:12] What is MetaVrse & The Mall

[00:09:12] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Well, Alan, so, diving into this space a little bit more, tell us a little more about what Metaverse is in your company and what you're doing and what you're and what that means for retailers and brands.

[00:09:24] Alan Smithson: So we we started a company called Metaverse back in 2016, spelled M e t A V R s E, you know, for the vr idea, we built all sorts of projects in, in virtual, augmented, mixed reality, and 3d. We've done over 160 projects now but we've done everything from building retail locations virtual stores.

[00:09:43] We've done virtual showrooms for automotive. We have built virtual training for, for medical, for consumer electronics. We did a lot of work for Samsung where we took their their new phone models, actually including this one, and then we animated them opening and you could turn it around and, you know, look inside and all this stuff.

[00:09:59] We did a bunch of stuff for Samsung. We built virtual showrooms for MasterCard, but all of these things were actually built on our own engine. And so over the years we actually were building and working on our. What you would call a game engine or a creation platform. So similar to Unity and Unreal we have our own base, you know, rendering technology that allows us to render directly to the internet, directly to a web browser on a mobile phone.

[00:10:24] So one of the, the claims to fame for us is that we have a low code, easy to create platform that bypasses the app stores. We actually don't have to go through Apple or Google. We just hit publish. It goes to a browser and works on any device. So this is super powerful and we really set up a goal in mind to build a platform that would let anybody participate and create in the Metaverse.

[00:10:47] And so our mission is Metaverse creation for every. That's you know, that's always kind of been our ethos. It used to be XR creation for everyone, and then the whole world moved to the word metaverse. So we're like, Okay, well I guess we should jump on the bandwagon. Even though we started the bandwagon,

[00:11:01] Casey Golden: What was xr 

[00:11:02] Alan Smithson: virtual augmented mixed reality or XR or extended reality is like a

[00:11:06] Ricardo Belmar: yeah,

[00:11:06] so it mixed, all of it

[00:11:08] Alan Smithson: Yeah, I mean, we, we were all in on xr. We did the XR for Business podcast. We did the XR for Learning podcast. We did XR collaboration, which is a whole thing on, you know, collaboration platform. . We really, truly thought the whole world was going to xr and then outta nowhere Zuckerberg said, Hey, we're gonna be called Meta.

[00:11:24] And the whole world went to Metaverse and we're like, Oh, well it's a good thing. We called our name That, and applied for the trademark before then

[00:11:30] Ricardo Belmar: Ha. Good thing.

[00:11:31] What moment led to creating MetaVrse?

[00:11:31] Casey Golden: What was that one moment? Where you're just, cuz you've had some other businesses, you've had some worked in some other spaces. But what was that, that moment? Was there a special aha moment or something where 

[00:11:44] Alan Smithson: yeah. 

[00:11:44] Casey Golden: you're just like, I'm gonna build like the next version of the world,

[00:11:48] Alan Smithson: It was a combination of things. Casey, honestly, it we owned a, a DJ product company called Emulator where it was a big glass, see-through touchscreen that you could play on and you could perform, but the crowd could see what you're doing cuz it was a see through piece of glass that you were DJing on.

[00:12:01] We worked with, you know, infected Mushroom and Morgan page. And actually just recently a year ago Jean Michelle Jarre did a huge New Year's Eve virtual New Year's Eve party. It was huge. 7 million people attended and he used our emulator on stage in the virtual world as well.

[00:12:15] So, I mean, we built this piece of tech.

[00:12:17] We brought it to the world. We were working with big artists. And then we unfortunately brought on the wrong investor and so we lost that company. But right before that happened, I got invited to perform at Curiosity Camp by Eric Schmidt. And Eric Schmidt is, you know, obviously the former CEO of Google and he has this camp that everybody goes to called Curiosity Camp.

[00:12:36] And so you go there and it's like camp in the middle of nowhere. I performed, it was kinda like a mini burning man for like 150 entrepreneurs, investors. AI nerds and a bunch of really smart people getting together just to have an UN-conference about what's coming in the world and, and, you know, new economic models and new technology models and these types of things.

[00:12:55] So I got to perform. And then after that, I tried the R for the first time in this tiny little tent. And I remember putting it on, it was like a giant brick putting on my head. It was the DK one, the Oculus, and this was in 2014. Put on these giant headphones. And I sat there and they turned it on. And I remember sitting there going, Oh, like having this gasp of, Oh my God, this is amazing.

[00:13:14] And I remember staring and I was looking at a concert, but it was so visceral that I felt like I was at the concert. The sound sounded right and, and I just sat there and I was like, Wow. And I remember somebody taking their hand and putting them on my shoulder, and I was on a swivel chair and they turned me around like this, and I realized that I could look everywhere. I was like, Oh my God. I could see the ceiling and the lights and the floor, and I just looked every. Then they hit a button and put me on stage, like I was up in the crowd. And then all, I was standing on stage next to Beck, looking at the artist, hearing it from my ears, looking up the crowd. And I thought, Oh my God.

[00:13:49] And as a DJ myself for 20 years, I had this kind of moment where I was like, Holy crap. They just put me on stage in a place where nobody in the world gets to stand. Think about that. You know, like only the artists and the band or the DJ and maybe his manager get to stand on stage. Nobody gets to see this . And by transporting me in vr, I was there and I was like, This is gonna change everything, everything.

[00:14:13] And that's, you know, right after that, we kinda lost the company, the, the DJ company. And I said, Well, let's just get into this now. And so in 2014 we started working in VR and we 3D printed our own cameras. We, we had 360 cameras built out of GoPros. We did everything. We did 360 videos. We did AR apps.

[00:14:30] We did projection sandbox where you, you had connects and you, if you dug the sand out, it actually projected different things like topography of the sand. Did a VR photo booth for Samsung, which is super cool. We use their camera and you could take a picture with you and your friends and would Photoshop you into space, so you jump outta the machine and you could look at yourself in space with your friends in vr.

[00:14:50] Casey Golden: That's great. So like as soon as you got like that one exposure hit, 

[00:14:54] it 

[00:14:55] Alan Smithson: that was it. That was.

[00:14:56] Casey Golden: we're going this way,

[00:14:57] Alan Smithson: Oh yeah. You know, I, I kind of had this thought that this is the future of human communication. This was like, okay, if I'm gonna communicate with somebody from long distance and we can stand there and like put these glasses on and be in the same room, this is gonna be the future of human communication.

[00:15:11] And that was my whole ethos. I've since expanded that because, you know, and even if you go on our website, metavrse.com, we say that the Metaverse engine is the future of human communication, collaboration, commerce, and culture, because if you kind of take all of those four, that's really where we are right now.

[00:15:29] The metaverse is impacting these things. So yes, we can communicate better, we can have a sense of presence, we can collaborate. You know, the, the new Bugatti was just designed in nine months rather than three years because they used VR to collaborate. You know BMW's been using VR to calibrate all the automotive companies are using it, not just to sell things, but to create.

[00:15:47] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, to build,

[00:15:48] to help them build faster. 

[00:15:49] Alan Smithson: so you know, collaboration is gonna be a big part. And then commerce, obviously 3D retail, duh. I mean, you know, Shopify's already showing in 96% improve, you know, uptick in conversion rates when using 3D on a site versus just 2D images and videos. So we're gonna go to 3D for sure.

[00:16:09] Everything in the world, every brand, every company in the world will need all of their products and assets. Converted to 3D into 3D worlds, and over the next, you know, by the end of the decade, let's say. And that's a challenge because, you know, how do you convert them? Do you take CAD models and change them into 3d?

[00:16:27] Do you take photographs and try to use photogrammetry? Do you use the scanners that are coming in the phones now? Do you use AI just using photographs to convert to 3d? So I think the biggest challenge over the next, you know, eight years or 10 years, end of the decade, This technology is showing massive upticks and, and conversion rates and all of the things from training to marketing to retail to e-com.

[00:16:48] All of these things are being impacted positively, really positively, but it's still hard to make them. It's still hard to create the 3D worlds, the 3D environments avatars, clothing for avatars, these types of things. And so I think we're only just scratching the surface of what's possible. But AI is going to fill in a lot of the blanks over the next decade 

[00:17:07] Casey Golden: That's great.

[00:17:08] Nexus of Three Technologies

[00:17:08] Alan Smithson: I recently wrote an article called The Metaverse is the nexus of these three technologies. And the article, it, it's kinda like you have to read halfway through the article before I talk about them, because you know what, A little leading thing there. But the idea is that you have three technologies in addition to the internet we have today.

[00:17:24] So the internet today, we have the ability to have video and audio and record and all these things that we're doing now, but then you wanna have depth, you wanna be able to walk around a virtual world. So it has 3D or XR vr, right? So you've that 3D component we call xr. Then you've got ai, which is gonna be, you know, natural language processing for maybe you wanna talk to a character, maybe you wanna get help in the store.

[00:17:44] You can have conversations. Then computer vision, maybe you wanna see a product and you're like, What does that look like in my house? I hit a button, it changes the camera. Now I can see that couch in my house because the camera itself is using computer vision to understand my living room. Actually, IKEA came up with this really cool thing.

[00:18:00] A quick video of your house and it blocks stuff out. Like it'll take your existing couch out and put the new one in for you. You're like, Whoa, this is crazy. So

[00:18:08] computer 

[00:18:08] Casey Golden: love AR for home goods, like for furniture. I mean,

[00:18:12] Alan Smithson: So you've got, you know, this 3D ar and then you've got ai, which, you know, kind of enables all that. And the new AI algorithms are allowing you to we have one called in World where you can talk to characters, and the other one that we're looking at right now is anything world.

[00:18:26] And the idea is that, Use a text description and it will build a 3D environment for, you can say, I, I need a room with four walls, five windows, a tree in the corner, and a couch over here, and it will build it for you. Now it's very low poly and it's, it's not, you know, it's not perfect, but it's, it's automatic.

[00:18:44] It's kinda like, you know, Have you seen Mid Journey and Dall-e yet

[00:18:47] Casey Golden: I love Mid Journey. I've been playing on there until like I ran out of 

[00:18:52] Alan Smithson: credits 

[00:18:52] Casey Golden: could play 

[00:18:54] Alan Smithson: I was like,

[00:18:55] What the amount of credits, Here's my credit,

[00:18:57] my 

[00:18:57] money, 

[00:18:58] Casey Golden: do it again. I was having so much fun with it. 

[00:19:01] and it. 

[00:19:02] Alan Smithson: and licensing. So like, why would I ever go to a stock photography site ever again? Because I say, Okay, I need, the other day I said I needed a metaverse, whatever. I typed in whatever I, you know, description. It gave me a couple. I was like, not happy. I did it again. I was like, Oh, that one's nice. I up resd it and now that's the image for my article.

[00:19:20] Casey Golden: Yeah,

[00:19:21] Ricardo Belmar: it's exactly what you wanted. 

[00:19:22] Casey Golden: I, actually think that it's brilliant that if I could just go ahead and create one. and then it would create like 500 versions.

[00:19:31] Alan Smithson: Oh, I'm sure that's coming. I,

[00:19:33] I'm sure. 

[00:19:33] Casey Golden: I'm just like, okay, I like this, but like, don't gimme one now I want like a set of four. Well, you know what, just gimme a set of 500.

[00:19:41] Alan Smithson: Yep. You know, this was a really good processing power at that point

[00:19:45] because these images, so you know, instead of four it can generate 400. It's, this is the thing with ai, if people don't understand, it's just raw processing power. That's why if we can tap into the phones around the world, You know, use some of this idle processing power, then you just have more power available to do it.

[00:20:01] Because right now it's kind of expensive, right? You, you put in a request through mid journey, it goes up to their cloud. Somebody's gotta pay for, you know, an actual computer to process that. Create these four or five or 400 images for incident em back. Anyway, the last technology that we didn't touch on, so xr, ai, and the last one's blockchain. know, how do you have a decentralized ownership of assets? How do you have a record of maybe, you know, maybe you just want something simple like a record of your employment or your record of the things you took for training. Cuz right now you go to university, you have a degree, right? That degree is held by, let's say, you know, let's just use Harvard, right?

[00:20:36] Harvard holds your degree. You now put on your, on your LinkedIn, Hey, I went to Harvard at, you know, there Now does, do employers go and verify that? Do they go to Harvard? Chances are, or they. a lot of times. So maybe having a, you know, verified way to not only take your degree, but all the courses that you took.

[00:20:53] Maybe you took a course on Udemy or Udacity or you, you did a side course. The side courses are really the skills that you're gonna need, because that's why people are taking, that's why people are learning on YouTube, because right now the world's moving faster than the universities, colleges, and high schools can keep up, and so the curriculums have to go through rigorous vett.

[00:21:13] By the time they go through that, it's maybe two, three years, the technology's already passed and like moved on. So we're kinda in this weird technology meets, you know, learning model. And actually I did a TED talk called the, the Marriage of Technology and Education and where I just said, Look, we should be using all these technologies that are, that we're inventing not only to train people on those technologies and how to use them, but use them for this, for for learning.

[00:21:39] So we should be using AI algorithm. To do this, and actually something I read yesterday, you know, the company Striver s Str r ivr, they do all the training in VR for Walmart. They've trained over a million people for Walmart. And one of the things they said in their early Stanford hit Human Interaction Lab, the, the early study they did was a teacher, very simple study.

[00:22:00] They had a teacher and two students, and they were all represented as avatars in VR. Now the teacher is looking at a student, right? So they have eye contact with the student. But imagine the avatar can look at both students equally. So even though the teacher may not be looking at either student, maybe looking down the middle, the avatar looks like it's looking right at you.

[00:22:19] And so you have this personal one-on-one connection, even though it's one to many. And so you imagine if a, a class of a hundred people, everybody feels like you're looking directly at them, and this is super powerful.

[00:22:31] Casey Golden: That's 

[00:22:31] interesting. Yeah, I think that, you education versus application. It's definitely behind. I don't feel like we're, we're really preparing kids for work or to understand what the career opportunities are because it's just so antiquated of yet you don't have to do that anymore. Like, these are all the new jobs in that space, under that topic that literally nobody's talking about.

[00:22:58] So I think it's very interest. I asked a, a nine year old before the pandemic, which I'm like, So what do you wanna do? Like when you grow up, right? The, the, the number one question. And she just like, shrugged and pushed back on the pool and like, went backwards. 11. She's like, It doesn't really matter.

[00:23:19] It's not like they'll ex, they won't exist anymore by the time I need it. 

[00:23:25] I just mind 

[00:23:27] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. Wow.

[00:23:28] Yeah. 

[00:23:28] Alan Smithson: think that the key to this is asking a different question. The different question is, is this instead of what do you wanna do when you grow up? Or what job do you want to get? Because we don't know what the jobs are gonna be. We don't, we're inventing them as we go. And something like, I read a stat, something like 60% of jobs over the next decade won't exist,

[00:23:45] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's right.

[00:23:46] Yeah. 

[00:23:46] Alan Smithson: So what are we training people

[00:23:47] for? 

[00:23:48] We don't 

[00:23:48] Ricardo Belmar: Right. We don't 

[00:23:48] Casey Golden: a nine year old to tell me that.

[00:23:50] Ricardo Belmar: we, We don't even know. That's why we need better tools, Right. To be able to do 

[00:23:53] What problem do you want to solve?

[00:23:53] Alan Smithson: so here's the better question to ask in my opinion, is what problem do you wanna solve in the

[00:23:58] world? 

[00:23:59] Ricardo Belmar: That's the 

[00:23:59] Alan Smithson: know, technology can be used. It doesn't matter if you have a problem you wanna solve, like climate change, I want to solve, I wanna stop sharks from being harvested for their fins. Okay? If you take that, that singular cue, you can use all sorts of technologies to disrupt supply chains to, you know sink ships. You could do everything in your power to people from fishing for sharks, cutting their fins off and throwing them back. I mean, imagine just one person had a singular vision on that and used every piece of technology to disrupt that industry. Of course, you do 

[00:24:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. It, it's like the, the number one thing, right, the technology brings is agility to do these things quickly. 

[00:24:37] Alan Smithson: we're not teaching people. that, one, they have all the technology at the fingertips as long as you have access to the internet and a phone or a computer. Two, you can make a big difference as an individual. And three, we're not teaching people to set goals and look at long term horizons. So when Julie and I got into Metaverse, this was actually not our long-term goal.

[00:24:59] Our long-term goal is to build a new education system using this technology. But we're in year seven of a 30 year plan. mean, literally, you know, we started in 2014, we're now in, you know, 2022 and we're going out to, you know, 20, I think it was 2048 or something, was our kind of goal. So imagine looking 20 years out as a student instead of saying, What do you want to, what kinda job do you wanna get?

[00:25:22] Well, I'll get a job and then six months later, my employer will lay me off and then I'll go through this thing. And once you get into the the rat race of having to pay rent, your opportunities to dream huge and solve world problems really diminishes. Because you just need to pay your bills. And I think this is one of the one of the things that we can do better as a society is, is give people a bit of a safety net so they can start to try to cha to take on big problems in the world.

[00:25:47] But you have to tell them what the problems are and what are some of the solution opportunities, and then say, here dedicate your life to one, solving this problem.

[00:25:55] Casey Golden: Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that that's a much better way of looking at it. And I think it's just gonna be inevitable. Like I will never ask that question again after I got that answer because I too realize that like, it's a wrong question.

[00:26:09] Alan Smithson: You know, ask me, what are you gonna do when you grow up? And I'm like, Well, I don't know. I, I have been in my life, I, I graduated with a degree in molecular biology. I was a pharmaceutical rep. I owned a medical billing company. We owned a hostile, We we had a nutraceutical company.

[00:26:26] We had a DJ business. I was a DJ for 20 years. We had a technology company and now we own a game engine. So who knows where life will take you. But now we have a, a singular vision and, and mission to, to create a new education system for the world using the technologies that we're talking about today.

[00:26:41] And we, we actually settled on retail as a model to focus on that because all the technologies we need for retail at the highest levels. So, you know, we're building a virtual mall, which is insane, but we're building the world's largest virtual mall, and all the technologies in there are actually being built in mindfulness of what we're gonna need for education.

[00:27:02] So the hundredth floor of the mall, each floor of the mall is a million square feet, so it's a hundred floors tall. Each floor is a million square feet, so you have a hundred million square feet of virtual space to build retail. Experiences and entertainment and all these things. But the hundredth floor is actually owned by the Unlimited Awesome Academy, which is Julie and i's trust to build this new education platform.

[00:27:23] So the hundredth floor of the mall will benefit from the entire mall. The 20th floor of the mall is an education floor, so we have, you know, floor one to 20 is owned by the mall and leased to brands. So we've got like a luxury floor, automotive floor, consumer electronics, all these things. Floor 20 is actually reserved for education.

[00:27:39] So we're gonna put education systems in there and let them have the, the floor, There's no charge for that. So we really do have this kind of long term vision of how we can leverage the, the retail world for the technology. Cuz we're, we're working with our partners to build insane amounts of technology, like crazy stuff.

[00:27:56] We can, We built a technology recently called Infinite, l o d, or infinite level of detail that allows us to have an infinite virtual world. Meaning the mall's one building, when you leave the mall, it's vast. I mean, you could build anything you want in as far as you see. And it could be out in space like we designed it so that it doesn't, it, it loads on any phone fast and you can load and go anywhere in the world and walk around and it's just vast, right?

[00:28:22] So that technology, I think is gonna revolutionize how. Build these things, because now what it typically happens is you build a scene and the scene is a fixed map, like, you know, Decentraland, a fixed map, sandbox, it's a fixed map. And then what you do is as you walk around the map, it's kinda loading different parts of the map.

[00:28:40] Well, we don't have a fixed map. We have the fixed mall, but then the map is completely open to the world and what they wanna build. And so this is kind of our way of saying, okay, what does an open and unlimited metaverse look like? You know? And because that's really what people want. They want a persistent. Is never ending. It's kinda like Second Life, but you know, at a much, much larger scale available. And then Second, Life is still successful. They still have probably a million people a year on Second. Life doesn't work on mobile, Decent land, doesn't work on mobile Sandbox doesn't work on mobile. Roblox barely works on mobile.

[00:29:11] So you know, having the ability to onboard billions of mobile phones into the Metas is gonna be the key. And then of course, we'll move to glasses over the next decade as well. You're seeing Oculus moved over to Meta now. Meta is introducing a new a new headset. So we're gonna see vast improve improvements of this. And then I would, I'd venture to say Apple makes their entrance into this space probably in the next year, would be my guess. We've been waiting for years and there's been lots of rumors over the years. I remember somebody in 2014 saying, Apple's gonna come out with VR glasses this year.

[00:29:43] And I was like, I don't know about. Now, here we are, seven years 

[00:29:47] later. It's still 

[00:29:48] Why are brands coming to the mall?

[00:29:48] Ricardo Belmar: So, so Alan, let me ask you more about the mall. I'm curious, when you talk to retailers and brands about the floors in the mall that you've got set aside for them, what, what's, what's your pitch to them? What, what's the selling point for the retailers to, Is it, for example, because you'd run on mobile where so many of these other platforms either barely do or, or don't what, what's the big selling point for the retail on the brand to, to be in the.

[00:30:10] Alan Smithson: sure. I think it's, it's being part of something bigger. First of all, you know, you look. Brands are jumping into De Central and because it's, it's there and it works and it's bigger, right? It's a bigger community and there's gonna be more chance of eyeballs falling on. The problem is there's just not a lot of users there because the graphic fidelity is ma and there's a lot of barriers to entry.

[00:30:27] If you wanna buy something physical, you cannot, If you want to use your credit card to buy something digital, you cannot, You have to buy with Manna, which is their in world currency. So we took a lot of the ideas from what these other platforms were doing. We said, Okay, well, how. Specifically make that for retail.

[00:30:46] And really it was less about what we thought. And we've just had a lot of meetings with a lot of brands in the hundreds. And so when we, when we show them the mall, when we walk around, when we show them stores, when they say, Oh, well can it do this? Can it connect to our backend order management system?

[00:31:00] Yes, it can because we use JavaScript. Can it, can we connect our loyalty program? Yes, absolutely. We have a, a backend system. And so it's just a really, a combination of. Having this idea for 'em all because we were building virtual showrooms for all different brands, and they were saying, Oh, I want a video chat on this one.

[00:31:18] And this one would say, I want to dress the avatars and I, I want something over here. And so all these different disparate virtual showrooms that we're building, we built one for MasterCard, we built one for, for Samsung. We built all these things and they were asking for the same thing in different ways.

[00:31:30] So we said, What if we built in a persistent mall so that if,

[00:31:33] if we build a new piece of tech for one, one person, one brand, it now everybody in the mall. So you have the central part. Now brands can start driving people into their stores. So the mall.io/brand, it drops you right into the brand store. You can walk around, you get the full brand experience, but you can walk out the door as well. 

[00:31:52] So we've been meeting with, with hundreds of brands, and the brands that have interest in the mall, they want to get into the metaverse. And now here, here's the thing is it's a big cluster. You know, everybody's like, Oh, talking about the metaverse, the buzzword of the year. You know, do I make NFTs, do I not?

[00:32:06] NFTs are kind of got like a, you know, negative connotation now that they've lost half their value. So it. Do we build our own virtual store? Do we go into Decentraland? Do we build something over here? Do we go into Roblox? And you know, the question or the answer's probably you gotta try all of the things, right?

[00:32:23] And so you know, what we recommend is, look, take a budget, you know, whatever it is, 50 grand, a hundred grand, 200 grand, whatever your budget is, that's discretionary. You know, don't invest too much in this right now because nobody knows what's gonna work and whatnot. So we have like a 50 grand entrance package.

[00:32:37] You get lease, you get, you know, kind of all the things included. We build everything out for you.

[00:32:41] We have a full studio. And so the idea was how do we just get rid of all of the barriers to entry for a brand and then just get them into the mall. Because it's, it's all new for all of us, right? You know, people are saying, How are you gonna get any traffic in the mall?

[00:32:53] Well, you know, of course we're the mall. We have to get traffic in there. But we're coordinating that effort with the brands. With the brands that we're working with, because really we don't have the brand gravitas of a, you know, of a, of a large shoe company or a, a large electronics manufacturer. You guys have, they have hundreds of thousands or millions of consumers. 

[00:33:12] And we're working with a candy company. They're gonna put QR codes on the candy, so that's gonna drive people directly into their store in the mall. And, they have multiple stores in the mall, so it's. It's really intriguing how, we've kind of realized that the marketing and getting people into the mall is, is less our responsibility is more of the brands, but where our responsibility is to have the right brands there and encourage them to build cool stuff because it's really less about, you, know, a store and it's more about an experience. And so, you know, one thing that I think the mall replaces or, or at least adjuncts is that, or not replaces, but adjuncts is that Amazon and Mall Walmart are the two largest retail stores on earth digitally, right? amazon.com and walmart.com. But you wouldn't invite your friends to go shopping on amazon.com.

[00:33:58] You'd be like, Hey, we're gonna have a shopping date on, Go on Amazon. See what I'm ordering in my cart. It, it's taken the fun out shopping it, it's taken a front out. It's, it's just ruthless procurement of goods. Casey we'll go Amazon shopping

[00:34:12] Buying vs Shopping - it should be fun!

[00:34:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. It's buying versus shopping. 

[00:34:14] Alan Smithson: it is. Procurement of goods versus shopping and shopping should be fun.

[00:34:18] There is a reason why malls aim the cultural center of communities, and we wanna do the same thing. So our, our mall is multiplayer. You can invite your friends, you can go walk around. It's super fun actually. And we're putting little mini games in there. There's daily games that change every day so you can win prizes.

[00:34:34] Just super cool stuff. So. 

[00:34:35] Casey Golden: That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I think that big, that big benefit at the end of the day of participating. It may not necessarily be a conversion rate because that's not necessarily the goal Right. 

[00:34:48] now. What would you say is that roi? Because I don't feel that it's going to be money, like sales revenue, but I might be wrong.

[00:34:59] Like today, if somebody wanted to go and have their first Metaverse experience with you, what is that main transformation or moment that you expect that that brand is going to be mentioning in the meeting to a hundred thousand or 800,000 next season? There?

[00:35:19] Alan Smithson: I think you nailed it. Is, is really up to the brands to build some cool stuff and, and look, right now we made the mall look like, like a mall. It's got stores you can walk around. It doesn't need to look like a mall. It could be a, a field, it could be a space, it could be anything, right? So when you walk in your store, , Yes.

[00:35:34] It looks like a store from the outside. And then when you walk in through the barrier of the door, it changes and, loads a new project. And the new project is like, Oh, now I'm in a, you know, basketball court, or now I'm like sitting court side watching you know, Nicks and nets, right? So it's one of those things that right now there's a term called skew amorphism, meaning we kind of tend to take what is already existing and build things like that.

[00:35:56] So we. A mall. Looks like a mall. We put it into digital format so it feels and looks like a mall. Like you're walking around. You don't, it just feels right. It just looks like a mall or, Okay, great. I get it. I understand it this, really understand it. But that doesn't mean we can't push the absolute limits on the other end.

[00:36:09] But what we need to do, and we need to do this for everybody, is make people feel comfortable in these virtual spaces and, and skew amorphism or, or bringing kind of the traditional world into the virtual world for now seems to. The right path. We've done some crazy, crazy stuff on the, on the, you know, way out there, NFT galleries and stuff. 

[00:36:30] And it doesn't really resonate with people. They don't know how to navigate it. They, they don't understand it. They're, there's a bit of a mix mix mash, so I think it's really gonna be up to the brands to build cool experiences that engage with their customers that. Really drive brand awareness. You look at Samsung's 8 37 store in New York. I think it's a prime example. And even Nike Store in New York City, I mean, yes, they sell shoes, but it's really about the experience of experiencing the brand. You go into Nike store and the whole first floor is the history of Nike. You can look at the old shoes, like it's just really, really cool. Yes, you can buy some shoes on, you know, one of the other floors, but it's not about that. It's about the experience of, oh my God, I was in New York and I went to this crazy store. And it, it, made me realize how how much research has gone into the Nike shoes and then like, you can really build these experiences and Samsung 8 3 7 in New York as well.

[00:37:16] You go in there, you can't buy anything. You can literally just, you can look at the fridges, you can look at the kitchens, you can look at the, the mobile phones. You can, there's all these really cool experiences. There's lots of places to take selfies, which is fun. And you, you know, people's new selfie flex is gonna be, Hey, I gonna dress up my avatar.

[00:37:33] And dripping in Gucci and and take a picture. But I think people's online personas are going to start being more important than their in-person personas. We're already seeing that. I mean, like, you know, people in virtual worlds are spending billion, billions on skins. 

[00:37:49] Ricardo Belmar: Oh yeah. Oh 

[00:37:51] Alan Smithson: You know, night skins.

[00:37:53] I mean, I think Fortnite did something like $9 billion last year, Something 

[00:37:57] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. 

[00:37:57] It's crazy. Yeah. So, Alan, let me ask you this. What, what would be your top advice right now for, for, let's say for this over this next year for retailers, DTC brands, I mean even retail tech businesses who are all looking at the metaverse and kind of thinking, Okay, how do I get in? What, what, what are my first steps?

[00:38:17] What do I do to get started?

[00:38:19] Alan Smithson: Sure. Find a, a decent partner who understands retail, who's done with this. There's, you know There's a company called Max, a Maxent. They do a great work on kind of, you know, for furniture companies, a bunch of retailers. 

[00:38:30]

[00:38:30] Alan Smithson: Marxent 

[00:38:31]

[00:38:31] Yeah, they, they do a great job. Converting things to 3d, you're gonna have to have teams that understand 3d.

[00:38:36] And 3D is not easy. It's not as easy as creating a JPEG or a video. It's quite complicated. There's. You have a 3D model, then you've got layers and layers of of images that go on top of that to make it look realistic. You've got a bumpy one that makes it look bumpy. You've got texture files, all these things.

[00:38:51] It's not, it's not really that easy a technology. Now, it's getting easier and we're getting there, but I think by starting now and starting small, taking a, you know, let's say 50,000 to a $500,000 budget, building something and then starting to have your teams internally. Understand how the sausage is made. How do we go from an idea or a concept or some photographs of a store to a fully, 3D environment with avatars, with products in there and everything, and, click to buy everything.

[00:39:19] And so one of the reasons we did the mall is because we've done this a bunch of times for individual clients and it, it ended up becoming kind of rinse and repeat, right? We're like, Okay, well this, this client wants, and now we can build a virtual showroom in. Oh man, the last one we built, we took three days and it was beautiful. Just because we're getting really good at that. So I think the first thing is understand, learn a bit. So there's lots and lots of . I don't know how many guides to the metaverse there are, but there's probably at least a hundred that I know of. So go read some of those. You know, have somebody in your team dedicate somebody in your team to be the head of Metaverse, you know, and it's not just about, you know, 3D and that sort of thing, but you have to understand the crypto world as well.

[00:39:58] People are gonna start buying in cryptocurrencies. What does that mean for you? How. How do you get paid in cryptocurrency and convert that to fiat because brands don't have accounting systems that that can take into account crypto. Right. So we have a, a partner named BitPay. So anybody can pay in any crypto they want using 95 different wallets.

[00:40:16] It automatically takes their money, converts to U s D on at the end of the day and then settles with the brand at the end of the day. So you, the brands get settled in USD. . And, and the client doesn't know any, any difference in between and it's actually cheaper. So a stripe is like 3% for, you know, paying with credit cards or whatever.

[00:40:34] With fiat and BitPay is only 1% because, and there's no chargebacks. Cuz once a crypto payment's paid, it's, there's, you can't reverse it. So I think there's gonna be a, a combination of. Onboarding customers or guests, we call them guests in the mall. Onboarding guests into, the crypto world slowly, but allowing them to pay in anything they want.

[00:40:52] You pay credit card, PayPal, Amazon Pay, you know, it doesn't matter. We will, we will take any form of payment for physical and or digital goods in fiat and or cryptocurrency. And so from a brand standpoint, something like the mall kind of gives you. A boost because you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

[00:41:10] If you're going into Decentraland again, there's a platform already there, there's people there. Roblox is great if, let's say, for example, you're a brand and your, your target customer is 25 to 30, well, your next target customer is, you know, 15 to 25. Right? Like that block. So if they're playing Roblox, and then I think something like 62% of Roblox players are under the age of 16. So if that's your next target demographic, like Gucci wants to be in the next, you know, they wanna be generationally relevant. 

[00:41:39] So if you're a brand that wants to be generationally relevant and be put in front of millions of people, go Roblox, you know that, that's a great starting point there. But it's, it's hard to get people's attention in there too. You've got, something like 10 million games on Roblox or something, or 4 million games on Roblox. So and then with the mall, it is a dedicated retail experience. You know, people are going there for that. They know what they're getting, and there's, there's gonna be a lot of, malls, digital malls, metaverse malls and these sorts of things.

[00:42:06] But I don't think a lot of the startups that get into this realize the true depth of what's required. I mean, we spent seven years building a game engine for Enterprise. So when a, when a client says, What are your security protocols? We, we have a SOC two compliance and SOC two is not an easy thing to do.

[00:42:23] It's, you know, it's eight months of, they basically take everybody on your team rip apart of their computers and you know, digitally 

[00:42:31] inside, make sure you don't have anything hidden. You gotta go through all these security protocols. So now that when we go to our clients, we say we are of SOC two, we also have Kronos compliance.

[00:42:40] So Kronos is a 3D standard so that if you have a 3D model that you use on walmart.com, you can just pick it up and drop it into the mall and it will look the. This is important. Your product is not gonna look real in Roblox. It's gonna look like it's made out of Lego. You go, same thing with Sandbox, same with the Decentraland.

[00:42:58] And they use a technology called voxels. So it's, very gamey looking like, like it's made out 

[00:43:02] Ricardo Belmar: Very 

[00:43:03] blocky. It's very 

[00:43:04] Casey Golden: of a standard of visual aesthetic that a lot, the higher end the brand, the less familiar that feels. And it's, but it's being adopted and it's, You don't have to be photorealistic all the time, 

[00:43:21] Alan Smithson: Yeah. You can have fun with it. And that's what I tell brands. Look,

[00:43:24] You can use Unreal Engine for your commercials, your, your Hollywood movies. You know, they, they high, super high end. Maybe you want to build a film, a car, you know, driving through things. You can use the Unreal Engine for that. Then you can take the same asset. Down res it put it into Metaverse Engine. And now you can use it on the web, on, on the mall, right? You can use that same thing now it's interactive. You can drive it, you can, you know, on a mobile phone. Then you can take that same thing, pixelize it, and throw it into, into Decentraland or sandbox or, or Roblox or Minecraft.

[00:43:51] And the idea is that you're using one asset to create several experiences and brands are gonna start doing this. I mean, it's just very few brands are doing it. 

[00:44:00] But I predict that you're not gonna be in one metaverse. You're gonna be in a bunch of different things, try different things, and some will be successful, Some won't.

[00:44:06] Try things on your own website as well. I mean, our system. When you b build a store in the mall, you can actually build a hit, copy, paste, make a separate one and put it on your website as well. Now it'll link over to the mall, but it can reside on your know your brand.com website. We, we've taken out as many barriers to entry for brands as possible from, from our standpoint. 

[00:44:26] Casey Golden: Yeah. 

[00:44:27] Alan Smithson: We just, we've done so many meetings and it's been, I mean, our FAQ page is 50 questions long now for the mall 

[00:44:33] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's hard enough to wrap your brain around it. At least once you make the decision. Let me take you right to it. 

[00:44:44] Alan Smithson: Let's just get it done, shall we? 

[00:44:46] And shouldn't be like one year thing. Oh my God, we're gonna build this thing in a year. Like what? No, man. If you can't build it in a, you know, eight weeks. 

[00:44:53] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. you'll be too late. 

[00:44:55] Alan Smithson: Yeah. maybe. Maybe. 

[00:44:58] Ricardo Belmar: You might be too late. 

[00:44:59] Alan Smithson: It's a crazy world we live in. It's moving so fast. That's why, one of our benefits of the engine is that it's low code.

[00:45:04] We can build these things in in hours, you know like building the whole thing from scratch takes three days. You imagine how long that used to take? Six months ago, that took three weeks.

[00:45:14] Ricardo Belmar: There's definitely a magic to to low code for sure, to really speed things up.

[00:45:18] Alan Smithson: Yep. 

[00:45:19] How to reach Alan?

[00:45:19] Casey Golden: what's the best way for someone to get in touch with you and follow the journey? 

[00:45:23] Alan Smithson: Sure. I, I, there's a couple ways. Metaverse Engine, which is, you know, the creation platform that is powering the, the mall. You can go to metaverse.com, m a t a v r s e.com. The mall is simply the mall.io. You can go sign up there, and if you sign up now for the mall, whether you're a brand or a guest, or an investor it'll ask you, you know, a dropdown for that.

[00:45:43] You'll get put into a, an email funnel. So you'll have, if you sign up now, you'll have all early access to everything. So, for example, we're launching a new website for the mall, And that new website is fully built as a 3D world. So you scroll down the mall and you actually walk in and you end up inside of 3D website walking around.

[00:46:00] It's not the mall, it's the website for the mall. we used our engine to build a revolutionary new website. So go to mall.io, the mall.io. And then you can just add me on LinkedIn. I can't add anybody from that, but you can follow me on LinkedIn. Cause I hit the limit of LinkedIn. Just use this my name alan Smithson. And you'll see fireworks above my head. I, I took a picture at the Formula one and that's my profile pick now 

[00:46:22] Casey Golden: Oh, 

[00:46:22] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, nice. 

[00:46:23] Alan Smithson: was like, this 

[00:46:24] Ricardo Belmar: cool 

[00:46:24] Alan Smithson: awesome. 

[00:46:25] Ricardo Belmar: Very cool . 

[00:46:26] Alan Smithson: Yep. 

[00:46:27] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I, I, I know I have really learned a lot today, Alan. Thank, thank you for that. I'm sure all of our listeners and, and viewers did too. Casey cause, you're already a, a Metaverse and, and web three advocate, so I'm sure a lot of this was old news for you after your debut event. Right. 

[00:46:40] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, we just had our second successful brand activation with Lux Lock on the 12th for New York Fashion Week. So with five brands everyone is enjoying. The experiences and looking forward to the future of commerce, like the brands are excited, the con consumers are excited. Making these early experiences is just critical into understanding like what these channels could potentially mean to your company.

[00:47:06] Just do something And see what happens. 

[00:47:11] Alan Smithson: Yep. No, it's absolutely true. And look, one other thing that I, I didn't really mention is set some KPIs. What, what is it you want to get out of it? Because a lot of times, you know, for the last five years or six years, we've been building all sorts of marketing things, and they never really set KPIs.

[00:47:25] They're just like, Hey, let's do this cool thing over there. And you're like, Yeah, I'll take your money and we'll do it. No, there's no measurement of success. So then you don't get a subsequent budget. And, and marketing teams are, they, they sometimes do this a lot, you know, they'll, they'll do things without measuring it, and that's fine.

[00:47:41] Then maybe they want the media hits or whatever it is. But you have to have some metrics of success. Is it conversions? Is it time spent on platform? Is it, is it the number of visitors? What I, is the metric that you're measuring for success?

[00:47:52] Because then, you can measure that. We can make changes. You can change completely everything or just some things, and you can get to the successful metrics. If you're not measuring it there's no point. So that's why actually one of the things in our mall is, complete analytics dashboard with, with everything from time spent on how much time somebody spent on a product. I mean, looking at it did they invite a friend? Did they convert from there? You know, these things are all really important.

[00:48:15] And so we built, built this cool dashboard so that you can kinda look at your store and, and see a heat map of where people walked. Cause if somebody walks in your store and they all go right, and you want them to go left, well you can put a little display. 

[00:48:27] Casey Golden: they always, always go right. 

[00:48:29] Alan Smithson: Do they

[00:48:29] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. 

[00:48:33] Casey Golden: apartment? Buildings. We'll go right

[00:48:38] Alan Smithson: love it? Well, you know what? The heat map data will tell us where people go. 

[00:48:42] We'll find it. Yeah. Once we have this segregated data in the mall, we'll be able to tell, you know, okay. 57% of people went that way. 37 went that way. 

[00:48:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And then you can keep adjusting, right? I mean, that's kinda the whole point is you want to keep adjusting and adapting to what, What's gonna work? 

[00:48:55] Alan Smithson: Yeah, you could put a plant there to make them sure. They go around it the other way. You just literally, and this is the other thing, you can re-merchandise your store for every day if you wanted to, you could be like, Hey, today we're gonna do, you know I don't know. It's October, so we're gonna do a Halloween theme, and for the month of October, it's Halloween theme.

[00:49:10] And then, you know, as soon as November one hits, you just hit published to the next one, and now you're a Christmas. Right. So rebranding doesn't take, Okay, we gotta build a store, then we gotta ship out all the pieces to all the stores around the world, and then you gotta remerchandise it and then we gotta take photos to make sure that you did it right.

[00:49:25] No, it's like one small team can remerchandise a store for potentially billions of people. 

[00:49:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's, that's incredible. That's an amazing approach. Love it. Well, Alan, thank you so much for, for joining us today. You're, you're truly, I think transforming retail and coding meta versus is more than meets the eye in doing so. And I'm sure we are gonna be asking you to come back on to give us an update on how the all is going in the

[00:49:49] Alan Smithson: We'd guys. Honored. 

[00:49:50] Casey Golden: Always an absolute pleasure to to listen to you and to chat with you. I just love to hear how your world is progressing. 

[00:49:58] I'm still so web two

[00:50:00] Alan Smithson: We're we're ? That's a, Yeah, we're on the two five spectrum 

[00:50:05] Casey Golden: Yeah. 

[00:50:06] Alan Smithson: Awesome. Well, 

[00:50:07] Casey Golden: But thanks again a I hope to have you back soon 

[00:50:11] Alan Smithson: awesome guys. a great one. 

[00:50:13] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks.

[00:50:14] Show Closing

[00:50:14] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. 

[00:50:44] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:51:01] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:51:02] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. 

]]> <p>Interested in the metaverse and need to know how to get started? Meet Alan Smithson, founder of MetaVrse, multiple TED Talk speaker, and builder of “The Mall” in the metaverse, but not just any mall! If there were a hundred-page encyclopedia of the metaverse, Alan would fill every page but you’d still need more room to cover his vast knowledge of all things metaverse. It’s season 2, episode 4, and we’re continuing our Retail Transformers series – you’ll see why Alan Smithson is truly more than meets the eye!</p><p><br></p><p>Alan tells you what you need to get started with the metaverse, but takes us on an even deeper journey that touches on the future of jobs in digital technologies, how education needs to change to keep up, how the metaverse could make the world a better place, and of course, why shopping should be fun again! Plus, we’ll learn why asking children what they want to be when they grow up is the wrong question to ask. The real question is …</p><p><br></p><p>News alert! We’re back at #20 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>E-Motive</em>, and <em>Overclocked</em>, from the album <em>Beat Hype</em>, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>S2E4 Retail Transformers - Alan Smithson</strong></p><h3>[00:00:00] Pre-Show Intro</h3><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Good morning. Retail Razor. No, maybe too much. </p><p>[00:00:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> actually we might, we might use that at the, in the intro beginning. </p><p>[00:00:07] That was pretty </p><p>[00:00:08] Good. ..That </p><p>[00:00:09] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> like bit connect . I wanna go to a crypto conference and start doing that. Bit connect</p><p>[00:00:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Now that would be fun to see. </p><p>[00:00:19] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Too early maybe. Okay. We&#39;ll just start now. </p><p>[00:00:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. All right, here we go. Here we go. </p><p>[00:00:23]</p><h3>[00:00:23] Introduction</h3><p>[00:00:23] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> hello, and welcome to season two, episode four of the Retail Razor Show. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:00:49] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome Retail Razor Show listeners to retail&#39;s favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.</p><p>[00:01:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And we have a truly special treat this week. Following up from our season debut episode on the Metaverse, we are back to talk more metaverse this week, aren&#39;t we?</p><p>[00:01:10] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yes, and I&#39;m excited. Our listeners and viewers should be excited because this week we&#39;re not only talking Metaverse, but we&#39;re continuing our Retail Transformer series with special guest, Alan Smithson, founder and CEO of the company, Metaverse.</p><p>[00:01:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yes. Our faithful followers will learn exactly why Alan is &#39;more than meets the eye&#39;.</p><p>[00:01:31] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Aww, you&#39;re gonna use that line, every time for these series, aren&#39;t you?</p><p>[00:01:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Absolutely, a hundred percent. I am totally here for that.</p><p>[00:01:39] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Okay, so let&#39;s talk about Alan. There are few people in the early days of the Metaverse that can talk in depth about what retailers need to look at when building their metaverse strategy.</p><p>[00:01:49] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, when we first talked to Alan, you know, when he first came to one of our clubhouse rooms, I was really impressed. And just like you said, he&#39;s got the knowledge about the metaverse. We&#39;ll also hear about his solution, the mall, that he&#39;s building, that will really change how retailers look at the metaverse.</p><p>[00:02:03] And listeners or viewers are gonna come away with a really smart plan on, on how to attack the metaverse and get experimenting right away, just like we predicted back in season one episode four.</p><p>[00:02:13] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And experimenting, and experimenting, trying things out is a matter of showing up and learning how to experiment. Alan hits on all of these topics and more honestly, each episode this season has been incredibly informative, but our guest energy is solid, true innovators. I don&#39;t know how we keep doing this from one episode to another, but keep those notepads handy.</p><p>[00:02:35] You&#39;ll need it.</p><p>[00:02:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. I mean, we could go on and on about all the juicy details Alan will talk about, but I think I can sum it up by saying if you were gonna write a hundred page Encyclopedia of the Metaverse, Alan would be on page one all the way through page 100, and you&#39;d probably be asking for more pages after that.</p><p>[00:02:54] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Agreed, so let&#39;s get to it then. Our interview with Alan Smithson co-founder of MetaVrse. </p><h3>[00:03:04] AlanSmithson Interview</h3><p>[00:03:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And we are here with our very special guest, Alan Smithson, co-founder of the company MetaVrse, whose mission is to enable creation in the Metaverse for everyone. Following from our clubhouse session in our season one opener on the Metaverse and one of what&#39;s likely to be many more discussions we&#39;ll have on the metaverse going forward.</p><p>[00:03:23] Alan, welcome to the Retail Razor Show. </p><p>[00:03:25] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Thank you so much, Ricardo and Casey. Thanks for having me. This is so, so exciting. You know, we we got to meet in person before these things, which is super cool, you know, and normally it&#39;s the other way around. You do all these podcasts and things, and then you finally meet somebody, you&#39;re like, Oh, yeah.</p><p>[00:03:38] So it&#39;s really great to see some familiar faces and, and dive into the, the Occam&#39;s razor of retail .</p><p>[00:03:46] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> exactly</p><p>[00:03:47] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I&#39;m so glad to see you Allen and having you here with us this morning. I&#39;m just really excited to catch up and learn what&#39;s been going on since the last time we saw each other. </p><p>[00:03:59] We&#39;re </p><p>[00:03:59] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> many things. </p><p>[00:04:00] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> right. We&#39;re not casting from the, the metaverse yet. But who knows? This time next year, a seismic shift is taking </p><p>[00:04:06] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> time next week we&#39;re gonna be releasing some cool stuff and we built in full video chat capabilities into our project. So we&#39;ll get into that later. But yeah, the three pushed some technology that will allow us to do this inside of virtual world.</p><p>[00:04:21] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Interesting. Yes. Experiences on the internet are expected to be more immersive, three dimensional and virtual with the realization of web three . I believe the metaverse will will play , an integral role in product discovery and brand experiences.</p><p>[00:04:36] Some people are saying it&#39;s dead and now it&#39;s like coming back. Some people said it&#39;s, this is just natural traction. So I mean, I think we&#39;re all here for the dips and we&#39;re all here for the eyes.</p><p>[00:04:47] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> I really love the articles that say, you know, the Meta versus Dead or, you know, these are the same articles that in 10 years from now, people will look back and go, Oh yeah, you, you&#39;re the guy who wrote the internet as dead article. Good for you. You know, that really inspired a whole generation of people to build the internet, so, </p><p>[00:05:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, it&#39;s like how many years ago when everybody was saying physical retail was dead,</p><p>[00:05:09] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> I mean, yeah, like you can say everything&#39;s dead. Look, when we invented tv, people said, Oh, this is gonna replace radio. Every car still has a radio in it. </p><p>[00:05:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:05:21] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> like, radio didn&#39;t go away. It just changed and morphed. And you know, now we, now we have Spotify. Okay, maybe radio is not the primary thing, but it never died.</p><p>[00:05:32] You know, TVs didn&#39;t go away when we got the internet. You know computers didn&#39;t go away when we got mobile phones. And, you know, mobile phones aren&#39;t going away anytime when we get VR and, and AR glasses. So, you know, adding new mediums does not necessarily mean that you, the other one fades away and dies, you know, it just becomes another medium.</p><p>[00:05:51] There&#39;s, , let&#39;s say 10 years ago you had, I don&#39;t know, a billion people on the internet. Now we have 4 billion people on the Internet. Like, you know, the, the time right now is, is explosive growth. I mean, companies are raising, hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, tens and then hundreds of millions of dollars for internet technologies and metaverse technologies and web three technologies.</p><p>[00:06:14] You know, this is just the money going in to invest to the future. So, I mean, we&#39;re in for a, a really, really interesting next, I guess, eight years now that we&#39;re almost kind of at the end of 2022. , By the end of this decade, the world will look very different than it does today,</p><p>[00:06:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh yeah. Yeah,</p><p>[00:06:31] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I agree with that a hundred percent.</p><p>[00:06:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> so, </p><p>[00:06:34] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> none of the things will be dead.</p><p>[00:06:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. No, none. None of it. We&#39;re just keep adding more and more I think as we&#39;re gonna get </p><p>[00:06:39] into </p><p>[00:06:39] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> more people coming on the</p><p>[00:06:40] internet and more </p><p>[00:06:41] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I&#39;m </p><p>[00:06:41] all </p><p>[00:06:41] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> I like reading. </p><p>[00:06:42] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> web, like 6.0 already, right?</p><p>[00:06:45] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Why don&#39;t we have six G? I mean, my 5G phone doesn&#39;t really do anything for me. I&#39;m like, 5g. I still have no signal. What the heck?</p><p>[00:06:55] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It&#39;s still a marketing boy.</p><p>[00:06:57] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> I bought a big phone that folds in half so that I can have all the things</p><p>[00:07:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And you&#39;re still waiting. And you&#39;re still </p><p>[00:07:04] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> That&#39;s the wait. I still</p><p>[00:07:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> so </p><p>[00:07:06] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> but the technology&#39;s getting super fast. The the one thing that&#39;s exciting that. Most people are consuming the internet on a mobile phone now. Mobile phones and computers are the kind of dominant, but mobile phones kind of leapfrogged and it&#39;s places like Africa. They, they just bypass computers altogether and just went straight to phones.</p><p>[00:07:22] Same with China. And so the phone technology is</p><p>[00:07:25] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> say, with 10 year olds,</p><p>[00:07:27] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> exactly. 10 year olds in the Chinese, they, they just bypass computers all together.</p><p>[00:07:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. </p><p>[00:07:33] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> But yeah, the, the world is using mobile phones to access the internet, and the mobile phones are getting so good. You know, the iPhone 14 came out y. These things are super, super computers now.</p><p>[00:07:45] I mean, if you, One of the people that I, I really think highly of is a guy that runs this company called Otoy. They&#39;re a rendering engine and I can&#39;t remember the guy&#39;s name, but they came up with this concept of the render token. This was way before the whole crypto craze, and they said, What if we could tap into everybody&#39;s phone and computer and do batch rendering around the world?</p><p>[00:08:06] So let&#39;s say Disney as a project, right? And they, you know, they need 500 servers to, to run this, you know scene of a Disney movie. Well, can&#39;t we then just push it out to a thousand phones, Have everybody, you know use the GPUs that are bit, you know, kinda sitting idle for most of the time on your phone.</p><p>[00:08:22] Can we leverage that and then pay people for, for using this idle time on their phones?</p><p>[00:08:27] seem to take off because I think it was a bit early, but that ability to tap into the billions of smartphones and computers out there and the processing power that is sitting idle, I think is going to be a key part of the metaverse moving forward in, in kind of the long term strategy. I mean, this is not, it&#39;s not an overnight thing. Nobody&#39;s really figured it out yet. But if we can do that, you think of how many computers around the world we could tap into for ai, for modeling, for protein folding for, you know, the good of mankind.</p><p>[00:08:55] We can really use these these idle devices that are sitting idle for, you know, let&#39;s say most people, their phones are only sitting idle while they sleep, but</p><p>[00:09:04] you know, it&#39;s, eight hours of sleep, depending on who you are. Casey, who only sleeps four hours a night,</p><h3>[00:09:12] What is MetaVrse &amp; The Mall</h3><p>[00:09:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. Well, Alan, so, diving into this space a little bit more, tell us a little more about what Metaverse is in your company and what you&#39;re doing and what you&#39;re and what that means for retailers and brands.</p><p>[00:09:24] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> So we we started a company called Metaverse back in 2016, spelled M e t A V R s E, you know, for the vr idea, we built all sorts of projects in, in virtual, augmented, mixed reality, and 3d. We&#39;ve done over 160 projects now but we&#39;ve done everything from building retail locations virtual stores.</p><p>[00:09:43] We&#39;ve done virtual showrooms for automotive. We have built virtual training for, for medical, for consumer electronics. We did a lot of work for Samsung where we took their their new phone models, actually including this one, and then we animated them opening and you could turn it around and, you know, look inside and all this stuff.</p><p>[00:09:59] We did a bunch of stuff for Samsung. We built virtual showrooms for MasterCard, but all of these things were actually built on our own engine. And so over the years we actually were building and working on our. What you would call a game engine or a creation platform. So similar to Unity and Unreal we have our own base, you know, rendering technology that allows us to render directly to the internet, directly to a web browser on a mobile phone.</p><p>[00:10:24] So one of the, the claims to fame for us is that we have a low code, easy to create platform that bypasses the app stores. We actually don&#39;t have to go through Apple or Google. We just hit publish. It goes to a browser and works on any device. So this is super powerful and we really set up a goal in mind to build a platform that would let anybody participate and create in the Metaverse.</p><p>[00:10:47] And so our mission is Metaverse creation for every. That&#39;s you know, that&#39;s always kind of been our ethos. It used to be XR creation for everyone, and then the whole world moved to the word metaverse. So we&#39;re like, Okay, well I guess we should jump on the bandwagon. Even though we started the bandwagon,</p><p>[00:11:01] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> What was xr </p><p>[00:11:02] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> virtual augmented mixed reality or XR or extended reality is like a</p><p>[00:11:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah,</p><p>[00:11:06] so it mixed, all of it</p><p>[00:11:08] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Yeah, I mean, we, we were all in on xr. We did the XR for Business podcast. We did the XR for Learning podcast. We did XR collaboration, which is a whole thing on, you know, collaboration platform. . We really, truly thought the whole world was going to xr and then outta nowhere Zuckerberg said, Hey, we&#39;re gonna be called Meta.</p><p>[00:11:24] And the whole world went to Metaverse and we&#39;re like, Oh, well it&#39;s a good thing. We called our name That, and applied for the trademark before then</p><p>[00:11:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Ha. Good thing.</p><h3>[00:11:31] What moment led to creating MetaVrse?</h3><p>[00:11:31] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> What was that one moment? Where you&#39;re just, cuz you&#39;ve had some other businesses, you&#39;ve had some worked in some other spaces. But what was that, that moment? Was there a special aha moment or something where </p><p>[00:11:44] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> yeah. </p><p>[00:11:44] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> you&#39;re just like, I&#39;m gonna build like the next version of the world,</p><p>[00:11:48] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> It was a combination of things. Casey, honestly, it we owned a, a DJ product company called Emulator where it was a big glass, see-through touchscreen that you could play on and you could perform, but the crowd could see what you&#39;re doing cuz it was a see through piece of glass that you were DJing on.</p><p>[00:12:01] We worked with, you know, infected Mushroom and Morgan page. And actually just recently a year ago Jean Michelle Jarre did a huge New Year&#39;s Eve virtual New Year&#39;s Eve party. It was huge. 7 million people attended and he used our emulator on stage in the virtual world as well.</p><p>[00:12:15] So, I mean, we built this piece of tech.</p><p>[00:12:17] We brought it to the world. We were working with big artists. And then we unfortunately brought on the wrong investor and so we lost that company. But right before that happened, I got invited to perform at Curiosity Camp by Eric Schmidt. And Eric Schmidt is, you know, obviously the former CEO of Google and he has this camp that everybody goes to called Curiosity Camp.</p><p>[00:12:36] And so you go there and it&#39;s like camp in the middle of nowhere. I performed, it was kinda like a mini burning man for like 150 entrepreneurs, investors. AI nerds and a bunch of really smart people getting together just to have an UN-conference about what&#39;s coming in the world and, and, you know, new economic models and new technology models and these types of things.</p><p>[00:12:55] So I got to perform. And then after that, I tried the R for the first time in this tiny little tent. And I remember putting it on, it was like a giant brick putting on my head. It was the DK one, the Oculus, and this was in 2014. Put on these giant headphones. And I sat there and they turned it on. And I remember sitting there going, Oh, like having this gasp of, Oh my God, this is amazing.</p><p>[00:13:14] And I remember staring and I was looking at a concert, but it was so visceral that I felt like I was at the concert. The sound sounded right and, and I just sat there and I was like, Wow. And I remember somebody taking their hand and putting them on my shoulder, and I was on a swivel chair and they turned me around like this, and I realized that I could look everywhere. I was like, Oh my God. I could see the ceiling and the lights and the floor, and I just looked every. Then they hit a button and put me on stage, like I was up in the crowd. And then all, I was standing on stage next to Beck, looking at the artist, hearing it from my ears, looking up the crowd. And I thought, Oh my God.</p><p>[00:13:49] And as a DJ myself for 20 years, I had this kind of moment where I was like, Holy crap. They just put me on stage in a place where nobody in the world gets to stand. Think about that. You know, like only the artists and the band or the DJ and maybe his manager get to stand on stage. Nobody gets to see this . And by transporting me in vr, I was there and I was like, This is gonna change everything, everything.</p><p>[00:14:13] And that&#39;s, you know, right after that, we kinda lost the company, the, the DJ company. And I said, Well, let&#39;s just get into this now. And so in 2014 we started working in VR and we 3D printed our own cameras. We, we had 360 cameras built out of GoPros. We did everything. We did 360 videos. We did AR apps.</p><p>[00:14:30] We did projection sandbox where you, you had connects and you, if you dug the sand out, it actually projected different things like topography of the sand. Did a VR photo booth for Samsung, which is super cool. We use their camera and you could take a picture with you and your friends and would Photoshop you into space, so you jump outta the machine and you could look at yourself in space with your friends in vr.</p><p>[00:14:50] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That&#39;s great. So like as soon as you got like that one exposure hit, </p><p>[00:14:54] it </p><p>[00:14:55] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> that was it. That was.</p><p>[00:14:56] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> we&#39;re going this way,</p><p>[00:14:57] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Oh yeah. You know, I, I kind of had this thought that this is the future of human communication. This was like, okay, if I&#39;m gonna communicate with somebody from long distance and we can stand there and like put these glasses on and be in the same room, this is gonna be the future of human communication.</p><p>[00:15:11] And that was my whole ethos. I&#39;ve since expanded that because, you know, and even if you go on our website, metavrse.com, we say that the Metaverse engine is the future of human communication, collaboration, commerce, and culture, because if you kind of take all of those four, that&#39;s really where we are right now.</p><p>[00:15:29] The metaverse is impacting these things. So yes, we can communicate better, we can have a sense of presence, we can collaborate. You know, the, the new Bugatti was just designed in nine months rather than three years because they used VR to collaborate. You know BMW&#39;s been using VR to calibrate all the automotive companies are using it, not just to sell things, but to create.</p><p>[00:15:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah, to build,</p><p>[00:15:48] to help them build faster. </p><p>[00:15:49] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> so you know, collaboration is gonna be a big part. And then commerce, obviously 3D retail, duh. I mean, you know, Shopify&#39;s already showing in 96% improve, you know, uptick in conversion rates when using 3D on a site versus just 2D images and videos. So we&#39;re gonna go to 3D for sure.</p><p>[00:16:09] Everything in the world, every brand, every company in the world will need all of their products and assets. Converted to 3D into 3D worlds, and over the next, you know, by the end of the decade, let&#39;s say. And that&#39;s a challenge because, you know, how do you convert them? Do you take CAD models and change them into 3d?</p><p>[00:16:27] Do you take photographs and try to use photogrammetry? Do you use the scanners that are coming in the phones now? Do you use AI just using photographs to convert to 3d? So I think the biggest challenge over the next, you know, eight years or 10 years, end of the decade, This technology is showing massive upticks and, and conversion rates and all of the things from training to marketing to retail to e-com.</p><p>[00:16:48] All of these things are being impacted positively, really positively, but it&#39;s still hard to make them. It&#39;s still hard to create the 3D worlds, the 3D environments avatars, clothing for avatars, these types of things. And so I think we&#39;re only just scratching the surface of what&#39;s possible. But AI is going to fill in a lot of the blanks over the next decade </p><p>[00:17:07] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That&#39;s great.</p><h3>[00:17:08] Nexus of Three Technologies</h3><p>[00:17:08] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> I recently wrote an article called The Metaverse is the nexus of these three technologies. And the article, it, it&#39;s kinda like you have to read halfway through the article before I talk about them, because you know what, A little leading thing there. But the idea is that you have three technologies in addition to the internet we have today.</p><p>[00:17:24] So the internet today, we have the ability to have video and audio and record and all these things that we&#39;re doing now, but then you wanna have depth, you wanna be able to walk around a virtual world. So it has 3D or XR vr, right? So you&#39;ve that 3D component we call xr. Then you&#39;ve got ai, which is gonna be, you know, natural language processing for maybe you wanna talk to a character, maybe you wanna get help in the store.</p><p>[00:17:44] You can have conversations. Then computer vision, maybe you wanna see a product and you&#39;re like, What does that look like in my house? I hit a button, it changes the camera. Now I can see that couch in my house because the camera itself is using computer vision to understand my living room. Actually, IKEA came up with this really cool thing.</p><p>[00:18:00] A quick video of your house and it blocks stuff out. Like it&#39;ll take your existing couch out and put the new one in for you. You&#39;re like, Whoa, this is crazy. So</p><p>[00:18:08] computer </p><p>[00:18:08] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> love AR for home goods, like for furniture. I mean,</p><p>[00:18:12] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> So you&#39;ve got, you know, this 3D ar and then you&#39;ve got ai, which, you know, kind of enables all that. And the new AI algorithms are allowing you to we have one called in World where you can talk to characters, and the other one that we&#39;re looking at right now is anything world.</p><p>[00:18:26] And the idea is that, Use a text description and it will build a 3D environment for, you can say, I, I need a room with four walls, five windows, a tree in the corner, and a couch over here, and it will build it for you. Now it&#39;s very low poly and it&#39;s, it&#39;s not, you know, it&#39;s not perfect, but it&#39;s, it&#39;s automatic.</p><p>[00:18:44] It&#39;s kinda like, you know, Have you seen Mid Journey and Dall-e yet</p><p>[00:18:47] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I love Mid Journey. I&#39;ve been playing on there until like I ran out of </p><p>[00:18:52] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> credits </p><p>[00:18:52] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> could play </p><p>[00:18:54] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> I was like,</p><p>[00:18:55] What the amount of credits, Here&#39;s my credit,</p><p>[00:18:57] my </p><p>[00:18:57] money, </p><p>[00:18:58] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> do it again. I was having so much fun with it. </p><p>[00:19:01] and it. </p><p>[00:19:02] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> and licensing. So like, why would I ever go to a stock photography site ever again? Because I say, Okay, I need, the other day I said I needed a metaverse, whatever. I typed in whatever I, you know, description. It gave me a couple. I was like, not happy. I did it again. I was like, Oh, that one&#39;s nice. I up resd it and now that&#39;s the image for my article.</p><p>[00:19:20] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:19:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it&#39;s exactly what you wanted. </p><p>[00:19:22] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I, actually think that it&#39;s brilliant that if I could just go ahead and create one. and then it would create like 500 versions.</p><p>[00:19:31] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Oh, I&#39;m sure that&#39;s coming. I,</p><p>[00:19:33] I&#39;m sure. </p><p>[00:19:33] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I&#39;m just like, okay, I like this, but like, don&#39;t gimme one now I want like a set of four. Well, you know what, just gimme a set of 500.</p><p>[00:19:41] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Yep. You know, this was a really good processing power at that point</p><p>[00:19:45] because these images, so you know, instead of four it can generate 400. It&#39;s, this is the thing with ai, if people don&#39;t understand, it&#39;s just raw processing power. That&#39;s why if we can tap into the phones around the world, You know, use some of this idle processing power, then you just have more power available to do it.</p><p>[00:20:01] Because right now it&#39;s kind of expensive, right? You, you put in a request through mid journey, it goes up to their cloud. Somebody&#39;s gotta pay for, you know, an actual computer to process that. Create these four or five or 400 images for incident em back. Anyway, the last technology that we didn&#39;t touch on, so xr, ai, and the last one&#39;s blockchain. know, how do you have a decentralized ownership of assets? How do you have a record of maybe, you know, maybe you just want something simple like a record of your employment or your record of the things you took for training. Cuz right now you go to university, you have a degree, right? That degree is held by, let&#39;s say, you know, let&#39;s just use Harvard, right?</p><p>[00:20:36] Harvard holds your degree. You now put on your, on your LinkedIn, Hey, I went to Harvard at, you know, there Now does, do employers go and verify that? Do they go to Harvard? Chances are, or they. a lot of times. So maybe having a, you know, verified way to not only take your degree, but all the courses that you took.</p><p>[00:20:53] Maybe you took a course on Udemy or Udacity or you, you did a side course. The side courses are really the skills that you&#39;re gonna need, because that&#39;s why people are taking, that&#39;s why people are learning on YouTube, because right now the world&#39;s moving faster than the universities, colleges, and high schools can keep up, and so the curriculums have to go through rigorous vett.</p><p>[00:21:13] By the time they go through that, it&#39;s maybe two, three years, the technology&#39;s already passed and like moved on. So we&#39;re kinda in this weird technology meets, you know, learning model. And actually I did a TED talk called the, the Marriage of Technology and Education and where I just said, Look, we should be using all these technologies that are, that we&#39;re inventing not only to train people on those technologies and how to use them, but use them for this, for for learning.</p><p>[00:21:39] So we should be using AI algorithm. To do this, and actually something I read yesterday, you know, the company Striver s Str r ivr, they do all the training in VR for Walmart. They&#39;ve trained over a million people for Walmart. And one of the things they said in their early Stanford hit Human Interaction Lab, the, the early study they did was a teacher, very simple study.</p><p>[00:22:00] They had a teacher and two students, and they were all represented as avatars in VR. Now the teacher is looking at a student, right? So they have eye contact with the student. But imagine the avatar can look at both students equally. So even though the teacher may not be looking at either student, maybe looking down the middle, the avatar looks like it&#39;s looking right at you.</p><p>[00:22:19] And so you have this personal one-on-one connection, even though it&#39;s one to many. And so you imagine if a, a class of a hundred people, everybody feels like you&#39;re looking directly at them, and this is super powerful.</p><p>[00:22:31] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That&#39;s </p><p>[00:22:31] interesting. Yeah, I think that, you education versus application. It&#39;s definitely behind. I don&#39;t feel like we&#39;re, we&#39;re really preparing kids for work or to understand what the career opportunities are because it&#39;s just so antiquated of yet you don&#39;t have to do that anymore. Like, these are all the new jobs in that space, under that topic that literally nobody&#39;s talking about.</p><p>[00:22:58] So I think it&#39;s very interest. I asked a, a nine year old before the pandemic, which I&#39;m like, So what do you wanna do? Like when you grow up, right? The, the, the number one question. And she just like, shrugged and pushed back on the pool and like, went backwards. 11. She&#39;s like, It doesn&#39;t really matter.</p><p>[00:23:19] It&#39;s not like they&#39;ll ex, they won&#39;t exist anymore by the time I need it. </p><p>[00:23:25] I just mind </p><p>[00:23:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hmm. Wow.</p><p>[00:23:28] Yeah. </p><p>[00:23:28] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> think that the key to this is asking a different question. The different question is, is this instead of what do you wanna do when you grow up? Or what job do you want to get? Because we don&#39;t know what the jobs are gonna be. We don&#39;t, we&#39;re inventing them as we go. And something like, I read a stat, something like 60% of jobs over the next decade won&#39;t exist,</p><p>[00:23:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, that&#39;s right.</p><p>[00:23:46] Yeah. </p><p>[00:23:46] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> So what are we training people</p><p>[00:23:47] for? </p><p>[00:23:48] We don&#39;t </p><p>[00:23:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. We don&#39;t </p><p>[00:23:48] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> a nine year old to tell me that.</p><p>[00:23:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> we, We don&#39;t even know. That&#39;s why we need better tools, Right. To be able to do </p><h3>[00:23:53] What problem do you want to solve?</h3><p>[00:23:53] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> so here&#39;s the better question to ask in my opinion, is what problem do you wanna solve in the</p><p>[00:23:58] world? </p><p>[00:23:59] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s the </p><p>[00:23:59] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> know, technology can be used. It doesn&#39;t matter if you have a problem you wanna solve, like climate change, I want to solve, I wanna stop sharks from being harvested for their fins. Okay? If you take that, that singular cue, you can use all sorts of technologies to disrupt supply chains to, you know sink ships. You could do everything in your power to people from fishing for sharks, cutting their fins off and throwing them back. I mean, imagine just one person had a singular vision on that and used every piece of technology to disrupt that industry. Of course, you do </p><p>[00:24:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. It, it&#39;s like the, the number one thing, right, the technology brings is agility to do these things quickly. </p><p>[00:24:37] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> we&#39;re not teaching people. that, one, they have all the technology at the fingertips as long as you have access to the internet and a phone or a computer. Two, you can make a big difference as an individual. And three, we&#39;re not teaching people to set goals and look at long term horizons. So when Julie and I got into Metaverse, this was actually not our long-term goal.</p><p>[00:24:59] Our long-term goal is to build a new education system using this technology. But we&#39;re in year seven of a 30 year plan. mean, literally, you know, we started in 2014, we&#39;re now in, you know, 2022 and we&#39;re going out to, you know, 20, I think it was 2048 or something, was our kind of goal. So imagine looking 20 years out as a student instead of saying, What do you want to, what kinda job do you wanna get?</p><p>[00:25:22] Well, I&#39;ll get a job and then six months later, my employer will lay me off and then I&#39;ll go through this thing. And once you get into the the rat race of having to pay rent, your opportunities to dream huge and solve world problems really diminishes. Because you just need to pay your bills. And I think this is one of the one of the things that we can do better as a society is, is give people a bit of a safety net so they can start to try to cha to take on big problems in the world.</p><p>[00:25:47] But you have to tell them what the problems are and what are some of the solution opportunities, and then say, here dedicate your life to one, solving this problem.</p><p>[00:25:55] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that that&#39;s a much better way of looking at it. And I think it&#39;s just gonna be inevitable. Like I will never ask that question again after I got that answer because I too realize that like, it&#39;s a wrong question.</p><p>[00:26:09] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> You know, ask me, what are you gonna do when you grow up? And I&#39;m like, Well, I don&#39;t know. I, I have been in my life, I, I graduated with a degree in molecular biology. I was a pharmaceutical rep. I owned a medical billing company. We owned a hostile, We we had a nutraceutical company.</p><p>[00:26:26] We had a DJ business. I was a DJ for 20 years. We had a technology company and now we own a game engine. So who knows where life will take you. But now we have a, a singular vision and, and mission to, to create a new education system for the world using the technologies that we&#39;re talking about today.</p><p>[00:26:41] And we, we actually settled on retail as a model to focus on that because all the technologies we need for retail at the highest levels. So, you know, we&#39;re building a virtual mall, which is insane, but we&#39;re building the world&#39;s largest virtual mall, and all the technologies in there are actually being built in mindfulness of what we&#39;re gonna need for education.</p><p>[00:27:02] So the hundredth floor of the mall, each floor of the mall is a million square feet, so it&#39;s a hundred floors tall. Each floor is a million square feet, so you have a hundred million square feet of virtual space to build retail. Experiences and entertainment and all these things. But the hundredth floor is actually owned by the Unlimited Awesome Academy, which is Julie and i&#39;s trust to build this new education platform.</p><p>[00:27:23] So the hundredth floor of the mall will benefit from the entire mall. The 20th floor of the mall is an education floor, so we have, you know, floor one to 20 is owned by the mall and leased to brands. So we&#39;ve got like a luxury floor, automotive floor, consumer electronics, all these things. Floor 20 is actually reserved for education.</p><p>[00:27:39] So we&#39;re gonna put education systems in there and let them have the, the floor, There&#39;s no charge for that. So we really do have this kind of long term vision of how we can leverage the, the retail world for the technology. Cuz we&#39;re, we&#39;re working with our partners to build insane amounts of technology, like crazy stuff.</p><p>[00:27:56] We can, We built a technology recently called Infinite, l o d, or infinite level of detail that allows us to have an infinite virtual world. Meaning the mall&#39;s one building, when you leave the mall, it&#39;s vast. I mean, you could build anything you want in as far as you see. And it could be out in space like we designed it so that it doesn&#39;t, it, it loads on any phone fast and you can load and go anywhere in the world and walk around and it&#39;s just vast, right?</p><p>[00:28:22] So that technology, I think is gonna revolutionize how. Build these things, because now what it typically happens is you build a scene and the scene is a fixed map, like, you know, Decentraland, a fixed map, sandbox, it&#39;s a fixed map. And then what you do is as you walk around the map, it&#39;s kinda loading different parts of the map.</p><p>[00:28:40] Well, we don&#39;t have a fixed map. We have the fixed mall, but then the map is completely open to the world and what they wanna build. And so this is kind of our way of saying, okay, what does an open and unlimited metaverse look like? You know? And because that&#39;s really what people want. They want a persistent. Is never ending. It&#39;s kinda like Second Life, but you know, at a much, much larger scale available. And then Second, Life is still successful. They still have probably a million people a year on Second. Life doesn&#39;t work on mobile, Decent land, doesn&#39;t work on mobile Sandbox doesn&#39;t work on mobile. Roblox barely works on mobile.</p><p>[00:29:11] So you know, having the ability to onboard billions of mobile phones into the Metas is gonna be the key. And then of course, we&#39;ll move to glasses over the next decade as well. You&#39;re seeing Oculus moved over to Meta now. Meta is introducing a new a new headset. So we&#39;re gonna see vast improve improvements of this. And then I would, I&#39;d venture to say Apple makes their entrance into this space probably in the next year, would be my guess. We&#39;ve been waiting for years and there&#39;s been lots of rumors over the years. I remember somebody in 2014 saying, Apple&#39;s gonna come out with VR glasses this year.</p><p>[00:29:43] And I was like, I don&#39;t know about. Now, here we are, seven years </p><p>[00:29:47] later. It&#39;s still </p><h3>[00:29:48] Why are brands coming to the mall?</h3><p>[00:29:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So, so Alan, let me ask you more about the mall. I&#39;m curious, when you talk to retailers and brands about the floors in the mall that you&#39;ve got set aside for them, what, what&#39;s, what&#39;s your pitch to them? What, what&#39;s the selling point for the retailers to, Is it, for example, because you&#39;d run on mobile where so many of these other platforms either barely do or, or don&#39;t what, what&#39;s the big selling point for the retail on the brand to, to be in the.</p><p>[00:30:10] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> sure. I think it&#39;s, it&#39;s being part of something bigger. First of all, you know, you look. Brands are jumping into De Central and because it&#39;s, it&#39;s there and it works and it&#39;s bigger, right? It&#39;s a bigger community and there&#39;s gonna be more chance of eyeballs falling on. The problem is there&#39;s just not a lot of users there because the graphic fidelity is ma and there&#39;s a lot of barriers to entry.</p><p>[00:30:27] If you wanna buy something physical, you cannot, If you want to use your credit card to buy something digital, you cannot, You have to buy with Manna, which is their in world currency. So we took a lot of the ideas from what these other platforms were doing. We said, Okay, well, how. Specifically make that for retail.</p><p>[00:30:46] And really it was less about what we thought. And we&#39;ve just had a lot of meetings with a lot of brands in the hundreds. And so when we, when we show them the mall, when we walk around, when we show them stores, when they say, Oh, well can it do this? Can it connect to our backend order management system?</p><p>[00:31:00] Yes, it can because we use JavaScript. Can it, can we connect our loyalty program? Yes, absolutely. We have a, a backend system. And so it&#39;s just a really, a combination of. Having this idea for &#39;em all because we were building virtual showrooms for all different brands, and they were saying, Oh, I want a video chat on this one.</p><p>[00:31:18] And this one would say, I want to dress the avatars and I, I want something over here. And so all these different disparate virtual showrooms that we&#39;re building, we built one for MasterCard, we built one for, for Samsung. We built all these things and they were asking for the same thing in different ways.</p><p>[00:31:30] So we said, What if we built in a persistent mall so that if,</p><p>[00:31:33] if we build a new piece of tech for one, one person, one brand, it now everybody in the mall. So you have the central part. Now brands can start driving people into their stores. So the mall.io/brand, it drops you right into the brand store. You can walk around, you get the full brand experience, but you can walk out the door as well. </p><p>[00:31:52] So we&#39;ve been meeting with, with hundreds of brands, and the brands that have interest in the mall, they want to get into the metaverse. And now here, here&#39;s the thing is it&#39;s a big cluster. You know, everybody&#39;s like, Oh, talking about the metaverse, the buzzword of the year. You know, do I make NFTs, do I not?</p><p>[00:32:06] NFTs are kind of got like a, you know, negative connotation now that they&#39;ve lost half their value. So it. Do we build our own virtual store? Do we go into Decentraland? Do we build something over here? Do we go into Roblox? And you know, the question or the answer&#39;s probably you gotta try all of the things, right?</p><p>[00:32:23] And so you know, what we recommend is, look, take a budget, you know, whatever it is, 50 grand, a hundred grand, 200 grand, whatever your budget is, that&#39;s discretionary. You know, don&#39;t invest too much in this right now because nobody knows what&#39;s gonna work and whatnot. So we have like a 50 grand entrance package.</p><p>[00:32:37] You get lease, you get, you know, kind of all the things included. We build everything out for you.</p><p>[00:32:41] We have a full studio. And so the idea was how do we just get rid of all of the barriers to entry for a brand and then just get them into the mall. Because it&#39;s, it&#39;s all new for all of us, right? You know, people are saying, How are you gonna get any traffic in the mall?</p><p>[00:32:53] Well, you know, of course we&#39;re the mall. We have to get traffic in there. But we&#39;re coordinating that effort with the brands. With the brands that we&#39;re working with, because really we don&#39;t have the brand gravitas of a, you know, of a, of a large shoe company or a, a large electronics manufacturer. You guys have, they have hundreds of thousands or millions of consumers. </p><p>[00:33:12] And we&#39;re working with a candy company. They&#39;re gonna put QR codes on the candy, so that&#39;s gonna drive people directly into their store in the mall. And, they have multiple stores in the mall, so it&#39;s. It&#39;s really intriguing how, we&#39;ve kind of realized that the marketing and getting people into the mall is, is less our responsibility is more of the brands, but where our responsibility is to have the right brands there and encourage them to build cool stuff because it&#39;s really less about, you, know, a store and it&#39;s more about an experience. And so, you know, one thing that I think the mall replaces or, or at least adjuncts is that, or not replaces, but adjuncts is that Amazon and Mall Walmart are the two largest retail stores on earth digitally, right? amazon.com and walmart.com. But you wouldn&#39;t invite your friends to go shopping on amazon.com.</p><p>[00:33:58] You&#39;d be like, Hey, we&#39;re gonna have a shopping date on, Go on Amazon. See what I&#39;m ordering in my cart. It, it&#39;s taken the fun out shopping it, it&#39;s taken a front out. It&#39;s, it&#39;s just ruthless procurement of goods. Casey we&#39;ll go Amazon shopping</p><h3>[00:34:12] Buying vs Shopping - it should be fun!</h3><p>[00:34:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. It&#39;s buying versus shopping. </p><p>[00:34:14] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> it is. Procurement of goods versus shopping and shopping should be fun.</p><p>[00:34:18] There is a reason why malls aim the cultural center of communities, and we wanna do the same thing. So our, our mall is multiplayer. You can invite your friends, you can go walk around. It&#39;s super fun actually. And we&#39;re putting little mini games in there. There&#39;s daily games that change every day so you can win prizes.</p><p>[00:34:34] Just super cool stuff. So. </p><p>[00:34:35] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That&#39;s awesome. Yeah, I mean, I think that big, that big benefit at the end of the day of participating. It may not necessarily be a conversion rate because that&#39;s not necessarily the goal Right. </p><p>[00:34:48] now. What would you say is that roi? Because I don&#39;t feel that it&#39;s going to be money, like sales revenue, but I might be wrong.</p><p>[00:34:59] Like today, if somebody wanted to go and have their first Metaverse experience with you, what is that main transformation or moment that you expect that that brand is going to be mentioning in the meeting to a hundred thousand or 800,000 next season? There?</p><p>[00:35:19] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> I think you nailed it. Is, is really up to the brands to build some cool stuff and, and look, right now we made the mall look like, like a mall. It&#39;s got stores you can walk around. It doesn&#39;t need to look like a mall. It could be a, a field, it could be a space, it could be anything, right? So when you walk in your store, , Yes.</p><p>[00:35:34] It looks like a store from the outside. And then when you walk in through the barrier of the door, it changes and, loads a new project. And the new project is like, Oh, now I&#39;m in a, you know, basketball court, or now I&#39;m like sitting court side watching you know, Nicks and nets, right? So it&#39;s one of those things that right now there&#39;s a term called skew amorphism, meaning we kind of tend to take what is already existing and build things like that.</p><p>[00:35:56] So we. A mall. Looks like a mall. We put it into digital format so it feels and looks like a mall. Like you&#39;re walking around. You don&#39;t, it just feels right. It just looks like a mall or, Okay, great. I get it. I understand it this, really understand it. But that doesn&#39;t mean we can&#39;t push the absolute limits on the other end.</p><p>[00:36:09] But what we need to do, and we need to do this for everybody, is make people feel comfortable in these virtual spaces and, and skew amorphism or, or bringing kind of the traditional world into the virtual world for now seems to. The right path. We&#39;ve done some crazy, crazy stuff on the, on the, you know, way out there, NFT galleries and stuff. </p><p>[00:36:30] And it doesn&#39;t really resonate with people. They don&#39;t know how to navigate it. They, they don&#39;t understand it. They&#39;re, there&#39;s a bit of a mix mix mash, so I think it&#39;s really gonna be up to the brands to build cool experiences that engage with their customers that. Really drive brand awareness. You look at Samsung&#39;s 8 37 store in New York. I think it&#39;s a prime example. And even Nike Store in New York City, I mean, yes, they sell shoes, but it&#39;s really about the experience of experiencing the brand. You go into Nike store and the whole first floor is the history of Nike. You can look at the old shoes, like it&#39;s just really, really cool. Yes, you can buy some shoes on, you know, one of the other floors, but it&#39;s not about that. It&#39;s about the experience of, oh my God, I was in New York and I went to this crazy store. And it, it, made me realize how how much research has gone into the Nike shoes and then like, you can really build these experiences and Samsung 8 3 7 in New York as well.</p><p>[00:37:16] You go in there, you can&#39;t buy anything. You can literally just, you can look at the fridges, you can look at the kitchens, you can look at the, the mobile phones. You can, there&#39;s all these really cool experiences. There&#39;s lots of places to take selfies, which is fun. And you, you know, people&#39;s new selfie flex is gonna be, Hey, I gonna dress up my avatar.</p><p>[00:37:33] And dripping in Gucci and and take a picture. But I think people&#39;s online personas are going to start being more important than their in-person personas. We&#39;re already seeing that. I mean, like, you know, people in virtual worlds are spending billion, billions on skins. </p><p>[00:37:49] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh yeah. Oh </p><p>[00:37:51] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> You know, night skins.</p><p>[00:37:53] I mean, I think Fortnite did something like $9 billion last year, Something </p><p>[00:37:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hmm. </p><p>[00:37:57] It&#39;s crazy. Yeah. So, Alan, let me ask you this. What, what would be your top advice right now for, for, let&#39;s say for this over this next year for retailers, DTC brands, I mean even retail tech businesses who are all looking at the metaverse and kind of thinking, Okay, how do I get in? What, what, what are my first steps?</p><p>[00:38:17] What do I do to get started?</p><p>[00:38:19] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Sure. Find a, a decent partner who understands retail, who&#39;s done with this. There&#39;s, you know There&#39;s a company called Max, a Maxent. They do a great work on kind of, you know, for furniture companies, a bunch of retailers. </p><p>[00:38:30]</p><p>[00:38:30] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Marxent </p><p>[00:38:31]</p><p>[00:38:31] Yeah, they, they do a great job. Converting things to 3d, you&#39;re gonna have to have teams that understand 3d.</p><p>[00:38:36] And 3D is not easy. It&#39;s not as easy as creating a JPEG or a video. It&#39;s quite complicated. There&#39;s. You have a 3D model, then you&#39;ve got layers and layers of of images that go on top of that to make it look realistic. You&#39;ve got a bumpy one that makes it look bumpy. You&#39;ve got texture files, all these things.</p><p>[00:38:51] It&#39;s not, it&#39;s not really that easy a technology. Now, it&#39;s getting easier and we&#39;re getting there, but I think by starting now and starting small, taking a, you know, let&#39;s say 50,000 to a $500,000 budget, building something and then starting to have your teams internally. Understand how the sausage is made. How do we go from an idea or a concept or some photographs of a store to a fully, 3D environment with avatars, with products in there and everything, and, click to buy everything.</p><p>[00:39:19] And so one of the reasons we did the mall is because we&#39;ve done this a bunch of times for individual clients and it, it ended up becoming kind of rinse and repeat, right? We&#39;re like, Okay, well this, this client wants, and now we can build a virtual showroom in. Oh man, the last one we built, we took three days and it was beautiful. Just because we&#39;re getting really good at that. So I think the first thing is understand, learn a bit. So there&#39;s lots and lots of . I don&#39;t know how many guides to the metaverse there are, but there&#39;s probably at least a hundred that I know of. So go read some of those. You know, have somebody in your team dedicate somebody in your team to be the head of Metaverse, you know, and it&#39;s not just about, you know, 3D and that sort of thing, but you have to understand the crypto world as well.</p><p>[00:39:58] People are gonna start buying in cryptocurrencies. What does that mean for you? How. How do you get paid in cryptocurrency and convert that to fiat because brands don&#39;t have accounting systems that that can take into account crypto. Right. So we have a, a partner named BitPay. So anybody can pay in any crypto they want using 95 different wallets.</p><p>[00:40:16] It automatically takes their money, converts to U s D on at the end of the day and then settles with the brand at the end of the day. So you, the brands get settled in USD. . And, and the client doesn&#39;t know any, any difference in between and it&#39;s actually cheaper. So a stripe is like 3% for, you know, paying with credit cards or whatever.</p><p>[00:40:34] With fiat and BitPay is only 1% because, and there&#39;s no chargebacks. Cuz once a crypto payment&#39;s paid, it&#39;s, there&#39;s, you can&#39;t reverse it. So I think there&#39;s gonna be a, a combination of. Onboarding customers or guests, we call them guests in the mall. Onboarding guests into, the crypto world slowly, but allowing them to pay in anything they want.</p><p>[00:40:52] You pay credit card, PayPal, Amazon Pay, you know, it doesn&#39;t matter. We will, we will take any form of payment for physical and or digital goods in fiat and or cryptocurrency. And so from a brand standpoint, something like the mall kind of gives you. A boost because you don&#39;t have to reinvent the wheel.</p><p>[00:41:10] If you&#39;re going into Decentraland again, there&#39;s a platform already there, there&#39;s people there. Roblox is great if, let&#39;s say, for example, you&#39;re a brand and your, your target customer is 25 to 30, well, your next target customer is, you know, 15 to 25. Right? Like that block. So if they&#39;re playing Roblox, and then I think something like 62% of Roblox players are under the age of 16. So if that&#39;s your next target demographic, like Gucci wants to be in the next, you know, they wanna be generationally relevant. </p><p>[00:41:39] So if you&#39;re a brand that wants to be generationally relevant and be put in front of millions of people, go Roblox, you know that, that&#39;s a great starting point there. But it&#39;s, it&#39;s hard to get people&#39;s attention in there too. You&#39;ve got, something like 10 million games on Roblox or something, or 4 million games on Roblox. So and then with the mall, it is a dedicated retail experience. You know, people are going there for that. They know what they&#39;re getting, and there&#39;s, there&#39;s gonna be a lot of, malls, digital malls, metaverse malls and these sorts of things.</p><p>[00:42:06] But I don&#39;t think a lot of the startups that get into this realize the true depth of what&#39;s required. I mean, we spent seven years building a game engine for Enterprise. So when a, when a client says, What are your security protocols? We, we have a SOC two compliance and SOC two is not an easy thing to do.</p><p>[00:42:23] It&#39;s, you know, it&#39;s eight months of, they basically take everybody on your team rip apart of their computers and you know, digitally </p><p>[00:42:31] inside, make sure you don&#39;t have anything hidden. You gotta go through all these security protocols. So now that when we go to our clients, we say we are of SOC two, we also have Kronos compliance.</p><p>[00:42:40] So Kronos is a 3D standard so that if you have a 3D model that you use on walmart.com, you can just pick it up and drop it into the mall and it will look the. This is important. Your product is not gonna look real in Roblox. It&#39;s gonna look like it&#39;s made out of Lego. You go, same thing with Sandbox, same with the Decentraland.</p><p>[00:42:58] And they use a technology called voxels. So it&#39;s, very gamey looking like, like it&#39;s made out </p><p>[00:43:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Very </p><p>[00:43:03] blocky. It&#39;s very </p><p>[00:43:04] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> of a standard of visual aesthetic that a lot, the higher end the brand, the less familiar that feels. And it&#39;s, but it&#39;s being adopted and it&#39;s, You don&#39;t have to be photorealistic all the time, </p><p>[00:43:21] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Yeah. You can have fun with it. And that&#39;s what I tell brands. Look,</p><p>[00:43:24] You can use Unreal Engine for your commercials, your, your Hollywood movies. You know, they, they high, super high end. Maybe you want to build a film, a car, you know, driving through things. You can use the Unreal Engine for that. Then you can take the same asset. Down res it put it into Metaverse Engine. And now you can use it on the web, on, on the mall, right? You can use that same thing now it&#39;s interactive. You can drive it, you can, you know, on a mobile phone. Then you can take that same thing, pixelize it, and throw it into, into Decentraland or sandbox or, or Roblox or Minecraft.</p><p>[00:43:51] And the idea is that you&#39;re using one asset to create several experiences and brands are gonna start doing this. I mean, it&#39;s just very few brands are doing it. </p><p>[00:44:00] But I predict that you&#39;re not gonna be in one metaverse. You&#39;re gonna be in a bunch of different things, try different things, and some will be successful, Some won&#39;t.</p><p>[00:44:06] Try things on your own website as well. I mean, our system. When you b build a store in the mall, you can actually build a hit, copy, paste, make a separate one and put it on your website as well. Now it&#39;ll link over to the mall, but it can reside on your know your brand.com website. We, we&#39;ve taken out as many barriers to entry for brands as possible from, from our standpoint. </p><p>[00:44:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:44:27] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> We just, we&#39;ve done so many meetings and it&#39;s been, I mean, our FAQ page is 50 questions long now for the mall </p><p>[00:44:33] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. I mean, it&#39;s, it&#39;s hard enough to wrap your brain around it. At least once you make the decision. Let me take you right to it. </p><p>[00:44:44] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Let&#39;s just get it done, shall we? </p><p>[00:44:46] And shouldn&#39;t be like one year thing. Oh my God, we&#39;re gonna build this thing in a year. Like what? No, man. If you can&#39;t build it in a, you know, eight weeks. </p><p>[00:44:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. you&#39;ll be too late. </p><p>[00:44:55] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Yeah. maybe. Maybe. </p><p>[00:44:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You might be too late. </p><p>[00:44:59] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> It&#39;s a crazy world we live in. It&#39;s moving so fast. That&#39;s why, one of our benefits of the engine is that it&#39;s low code.</p><p>[00:45:04] We can build these things in in hours, you know like building the whole thing from scratch takes three days. You imagine how long that used to take? Six months ago, that took three weeks.</p><p>[00:45:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> There&#39;s definitely a magic to to low code for sure, to really speed things up.</p><p>[00:45:18] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Yep. </p><h3>[00:45:19] How to reach Alan?</h3><p>[00:45:19] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> what&#39;s the best way for someone to get in touch with you and follow the journey? </p><p>[00:45:23] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Sure. I, I, there&#39;s a couple ways. Metaverse Engine, which is, you know, the creation platform that is powering the, the mall. You can go to metaverse.com, m a t a v r s e.com. The mall is simply the mall.io. You can go sign up there, and if you sign up now for the mall, whether you&#39;re a brand or a guest, or an investor it&#39;ll ask you, you know, a dropdown for that.</p><p>[00:45:43] You&#39;ll get put into a, an email funnel. So you&#39;ll have, if you sign up now, you&#39;ll have all early access to everything. So, for example, we&#39;re launching a new website for the mall, And that new website is fully built as a 3D world. So you scroll down the mall and you actually walk in and you end up inside of 3D website walking around.</p><p>[00:46:00] It&#39;s not the mall, it&#39;s the website for the mall. we used our engine to build a revolutionary new website. So go to mall.io, the mall.io. And then you can just add me on LinkedIn. I can&#39;t add anybody from that, but you can follow me on LinkedIn. Cause I hit the limit of LinkedIn. Just use this my name alan Smithson. And you&#39;ll see fireworks above my head. I, I took a picture at the Formula one and that&#39;s my profile pick now </p><p>[00:46:22] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Oh, </p><p>[00:46:22] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh, nice. </p><p>[00:46:23] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> was like, this </p><p>[00:46:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> cool </p><p>[00:46:24] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> awesome. </p><p>[00:46:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Very cool . </p><p>[00:46:26] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Yep. </p><p>[00:46:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, I, I, I know I have really learned a lot today, Alan. Thank, thank you for that. I&#39;m sure all of our listeners and, and viewers did too. Casey cause, you&#39;re already a, a Metaverse and, and web three advocate, so I&#39;m sure a lot of this was old news for you after your debut event. Right. </p><p>[00:46:40] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I mean, we just had our second successful brand activation with Lux Lock on the 12th for New York Fashion Week. So with five brands everyone is enjoying. The experiences and looking forward to the future of commerce, like the brands are excited, the con consumers are excited. Making these early experiences is just critical into understanding like what these channels could potentially mean to your company.</p><p>[00:47:06] Just do something And see what happens. </p><p>[00:47:11] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Yep. No, it&#39;s absolutely true. And look, one other thing that I, I didn&#39;t really mention is set some KPIs. What, what is it you want to get out of it? Because a lot of times, you know, for the last five years or six years, we&#39;ve been building all sorts of marketing things, and they never really set KPIs.</p><p>[00:47:25] They&#39;re just like, Hey, let&#39;s do this cool thing over there. And you&#39;re like, Yeah, I&#39;ll take your money and we&#39;ll do it. No, there&#39;s no measurement of success. So then you don&#39;t get a subsequent budget. And, and marketing teams are, they, they sometimes do this a lot, you know, they&#39;ll, they&#39;ll do things without measuring it, and that&#39;s fine.</p><p>[00:47:41] Then maybe they want the media hits or whatever it is. But you have to have some metrics of success. Is it conversions? Is it time spent on platform? Is it, is it the number of visitors? What I, is the metric that you&#39;re measuring for success?</p><p>[00:47:52] Because then, you can measure that. We can make changes. You can change completely everything or just some things, and you can get to the successful metrics. If you&#39;re not measuring it there&#39;s no point. So that&#39;s why actually one of the things in our mall is, complete analytics dashboard with, with everything from time spent on how much time somebody spent on a product. I mean, looking at it did they invite a friend? Did they convert from there? You know, these things are all really important.</p><p>[00:48:15] And so we built, built this cool dashboard so that you can kinda look at your store and, and see a heat map of where people walked. Cause if somebody walks in your store and they all go right, and you want them to go left, well you can put a little display. </p><p>[00:48:27] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> they always, always go right. </p><p>[00:48:29] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Do they</p><p>[00:48:29] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. </p><p>[00:48:33] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> apartment? Buildings. We&#39;ll go right</p><p>[00:48:38] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> love it? Well, you know what? The heat map data will tell us where people go. </p><p>[00:48:42] We&#39;ll find it. Yeah. Once we have this segregated data in the mall, we&#39;ll be able to tell, you know, okay. 57% of people went that way. 37 went that way. </p><p>[00:48:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. And then you can keep adjusting, right? I mean, that&#39;s kinda the whole point is you want to keep adjusting and adapting to what, What&#39;s gonna work? </p><p>[00:48:55] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Yeah, you could put a plant there to make them sure. They go around it the other way. You just literally, and this is the other thing, you can re-merchandise your store for every day if you wanted to, you could be like, Hey, today we&#39;re gonna do, you know I don&#39;t know. It&#39;s October, so we&#39;re gonna do a Halloween theme, and for the month of October, it&#39;s Halloween theme.</p><p>[00:49:10] And then, you know, as soon as November one hits, you just hit published to the next one, and now you&#39;re a Christmas. Right. So rebranding doesn&#39;t take, Okay, we gotta build a store, then we gotta ship out all the pieces to all the stores around the world, and then you gotta remerchandise it and then we gotta take photos to make sure that you did it right.</p><p>[00:49:25] No, it&#39;s like one small team can remerchandise a store for potentially billions of people. </p><p>[00:49:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. That&#39;s, that&#39;s incredible. That&#39;s an amazing approach. Love it. Well, Alan, thank you so much for, for joining us today. You&#39;re, you&#39;re truly, I think transforming retail and coding meta versus is more than meets the eye in doing so. And I&#39;m sure we are gonna be asking you to come back on to give us an update on how the all is going in the</p><p>[00:49:49] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> We&#39;d guys. Honored. </p><p>[00:49:50] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Always an absolute pleasure to to listen to you and to chat with you. I just love to hear how your world is progressing. </p><p>[00:49:58] I&#39;m still so web two</p><p>[00:50:00] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> We&#39;re we&#39;re ? That&#39;s a, Yeah, we&#39;re on the two five spectrum </p><p>[00:50:05] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:50:06] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> Awesome. Well, </p><p>[00:50:07] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> But thanks again a I hope to have you back soon </p><p>[00:50:11] <strong>Alan Smithson:</strong> awesome guys. a great one. </p><p>[00:50:13] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thanks.</p><h3>[00:50:14] Show Closing</h3><p>[00:50:14] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We hope you enjoyed our show and we can&#39;t ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don&#39;t wanna miss a minute of what&#39;s next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don&#39;t forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden. </p><p>[00:50:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:51:01] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:51:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. </p> 5a1aed34-eabd-4419-84e9-294477ecbbd5 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Sun, 30 Oct 2022 11:05:00 +0000 3083 no full S2E3c SPECIAL Groceryshop 2022 Part 3 – Andrew Lipsman of eMarketer & Krystina Gustafson of ShopTalk S2E3c SPECIAL Groceryshop 2022 Part 3 – Andrew Lipsman of eMarketer & Krystina Gustafson of ShopTalk 3 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E3c SPECIAL Groceryshop 2022 Part 3 – Andrew Lipsman of eMarketer & Krystina Gustafson of ShopTalk Missed Groceryshop 2022? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered! Welcome to another SPECIAL EDITION season 2, episode 3, Part 3, Groceryshop recap! We’re bringing you 6 great interviews recorded live and in-person at Groceryshop in Las Vegas, NV, bundled up in 3 episodes with 2 interviews each. For part 3, we saved two very special guests for your listening pleasure. Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail and ecommerce at Insider Intelligence gives us a rundown of the top trends across Groceryshop, with a focus on retail media, convenience stores, and a unique perspective on personalization and omnichannel. Then you’ll hear from Krystina Gustafson, SVP Content for Groceryshop and Shoptalk. Krystina gives us the insider’s view of the show, how it’s produced, another view of top trends, and finally, a take on what was NOT talked about at the show. You'll be hard pressed to find a more jampacked 30 minutes of insights! News alert! We’re back at #20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Swag Tag and Brag, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT SPECIAL Edition: Groceryshop 2022, Part 3 [00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: [00:00:20] Introduction to Part 3 [00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode three, part three of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:00:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome retail Razor Show listeners to our un apologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. [00:00:39] Ricardo Belmar: So Casey, what did you think of part two of our grocery shop interview series with those two incredible grocery retailers, Lisa Kinney from Albertsons and Dave Steck from Schnuck Markets. [00:00:48] Casey Golden: Well, you did say that this episode would be thought provoking and you delivered. Lisa really sliced and diced what's happening in grocery with consumer data. I found it incredibly interesting and related right back to the future of retail media networks in a way I've just never heard anyone talk about it like that before. [00:01:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's right. I mean, Lisa really brought home issues around where the data comes from with all the tech partners that grocers are involved with now, and asked I think, some tough questions about how retail media would bring brands and retailers together and where all those dollars come from. [00:01:22] Casey Golden: Yeah. And then Dave Steck, I mean, is there any emerging tech that he's not looking into yet? I mean, I don't know, maybe web three, but. [00:01:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Something tells me that that's not too far behind on his schedule . But yes, I mean, yeah, he, he really showed us how having the right corporate culture just opens the door to doing really creative and innovative things with New Tech in the store. I mean, he's got, he's not only has robots and IoT, he's looking at electronic shelf labels. [00:01:50] I think there's no limit to where Schnuck's is going, and it's pretty impressive. [00:01:53] Casey Golden: So for our listeners who haven't checked out part two. You should probably stop right now. Go back. Listen. We'll wait. [00:02:00] Ricardo Belmar: So, So do we just stop talking now and wait for the listeners to come back or what? [00:02:03] Casey Golden: Uh, Uh, not really. I mean, we're recording for a reason. We're not live. [00:02:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Okay. That, Yeah. All right. I know, I know. Just, just kidding. So let's talk about this episode then. [00:02:10] Casey Golden: Who do you have lined up and tell me, did you save the best for last? Honestly, part two was jampacked full of insights coming at you every minute. [00:02:19] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I have to admit, yes, yes, Probably, possibly. Maybe. We did save the best for last, not to diminish anything about our previous guests in any way because they were all really amazing. We got lots of fantastic insights and, and knowledge from everybody. But , this time out, we've got two really amazing guests. [00:02:37] One I, I would call a recent fan favorite Andrew Lipsman the principal analyst for retail and e-commerce at e-marketer, Insider Intelligence, and hot off of our Retail Media networks episode. That's quickly becoming one of our most downloaded episodes, by the way ,that I caught up with Andrew at Grocery shop after one of his sessions, and we talked about what some of the biggest trends were across the whole show. [00:02:58] As we're pretty much near the end of the event at this point. So much of what Stewart told us in part one I think stayed the course for the rest of the show. But Andrew points out some really interesting tidbits about the convenience store segment . And it might just be a, a sleeping giant waiting to surface. [00:03:13] Within all the talk around, around grocery and food in, in general. So we briefly touch on quick commerce and rapid delivery and the latest from the show on those providers. It was really interesting though to hear his take on personalization and omnichannel and how those, I mean, let's face it, those are not new trends. [00:03:31] But suddenly they were just front and center at grocery shop. You, you'd think that the grocery industry hadn't heard of those two things before the way they were being talked about. So I think his position will surprise you on those two. And, you have to watch out for our discussion on what was not a trend at the show. [00:03:48] I'll give you a hint. It rhymes with metaverse, [00:03:50] Casey Golden: not a hint, [00:03:53] Ricardo Belmar: It's not [00:03:55] Casey Golden: It's not a hint, way to give it away. Um, [00:04:00] Ricardo Belmar: on. Okay. You'll see, you'll, you'll see, there, there's a reason for why that's the case and it comes back again in fact, with the second guest for this episode [00:04:06] Casey Golden: Okay, so don't keep us in the suspense. I mean, I'm, I'm a co-host and I'm in suspense who's, two. [00:04:13] Ricardo Belmar: number two is none other than Krystina Gustafson, SVP of content for grocery shop and shop talk. And if you're like me, you probably remember Krystina from back in her cnbc, retail journalist days. So this is a, a, a real treat of an interview. Krystina and I talk about what makes grocery shop so special, how they put the show together. [00:04:31] What are the key trends from her perspective ,from what they were trying to accomplish? And you know, while they're similar to what we've been hearing from the other guests, there is a bit of a unique twist, I think, to what she offered. So I won't give that away. You'll have to listen. But we do dig into what some of the big buzz was about, what was happening in the expo hall. [00:04:49] And I asked her as well about what's not buzzing, You know, i e metaverse, which was not really buzzing at the show. And of course where retail media is headed because I don't think we can possibly do an episode about grocery shop and not talk about retail media. But it's a fascinating insider discussion that I think listeners will really enjoy. [00:05:06] We have to have Krystina back on the show again. She's so much fun to talk to. [00:05:09] Casey Golden: All right, I'm sold. With that lead in there's nothing left to do, but head straight to the interviews. I'm excited to grab some popcorn, get comfy, grab a notepad, and dive right in. So let's listen together to Andrew Lipman and Krystina Gustafson recorded live and in person at Grocery Shop 2022. [00:05:28] Andrew Lipsman Interview [00:05:28] Ricardo Belmar: and welcome To the retail Razor Show Special Edition episode at Grocery shop 2022. [00:05:42] I'm here at the show in Las Vegas, Continuing our series of amazing retail transformers to talk all things, grocery and consumer goods. I'm here now with Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail and e-commerce at Insider Intelligence. Andrew, it is awesome to have you back on the show again. [00:05:58] Andrew Lipsman: It's great to be back already. Ricardo. [00:06:00] Ricardo Belmar: So of course the existing listeners may have heard or watched our retail media networks episode, they'll already be familiar with you. But for new listeners give us a quick, intro to what you do at insider intelligence. [00:06:10] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. as you said, I'm a principal analyst covering retail and e-commerce. So I really cover the gamut of all things, retail, whether that's in store e-commerce and Increasingly advertising where retail and e-commerce intersect with other trends. So retail media Has certainly been in my cross hairs and I've also spent a, quite a bit of extra time in the last year or so focusing more and more on grocery and CPG. [00:06:33] Ricardo Belmar: So since we are at grocery shop, let's talk about what some of the big trends are that you're seeing here. And they're getting all the buzz. I know you've spoken a couple of sessions that I attended. One panel was a session about emerging tech in the convenience store space. [00:06:47] So Kind of thinking back to that and anything else you've seen at the show, what, What are let's say two or three big trends that you're seeing here at the show. [00:06:53] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah, well, it's certainly biased towards the sessions that I was in. [00:06:56] And I've been running around. and haven't seen as many other sessions as I would've liked, but convenience does seem to be a bigger trend. They've done a nice job with the convenience track. [00:07:04] And I guess my viewpoint is that it's maybe under appreciated and not talked about quite enough, but it's a pretty formidable retail space. Obviously a lot of brands are flowing through there and there's a lot of innovation happening on a lot of fronts, the tech cashierless checkout. [00:07:20] Retail media are starting to have that conversation and how it's used and deployed in C stores. And then really just the broader delivery and quick commerce space. That convenience is a huge, huge trend. In terms of driving consumer behavior. So I think all those things intersect in interesting ways and I was glad to be a part of that session. [00:07:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I agree when convenience is definitely an interesting one. That's the, one of the things I enjoyed in your session on There's a little bit different spin. I think, to how a lot of the technologies and things that, that the grocers are talking about that maybe get applied a little differently in convenience. [00:07:52] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. And you know, the one that's kind of interesting. cashierless checkout, for example, automated checkout. On the one hand convenience, you kind of want to get in and out, but also lines aren't that bad. [00:08:03] But We talk about it there because it, it kind of started with Amazon Go and that format, and that really was driven by the need for camera technology to be able to work in a space. And it worked better in small format [00:08:15] So I'm curious how that plays out longterm. Grocery store format, everybody hates the checkout line. So that's where, that's where the real strong use case is and now the technology is getting a lot better to enable that. [00:08:26] Ricardo Belmar: You mentioned retail media. And we've talked about that before, and I think that's clearly been a major trend here at the show, you see it everywhere that you walk around the halls with the Walmart connect advertising. What are you seeing in the context of retail media around convenience? [00:08:40] Andrew Lipsman: Well, I mean, I just think about. you know, I'm I'm a big proponent of the trend of in-store retail media. I think it's going to emerge. I think there's a lot of opportunity for digital signage and screens to start entering into the physical space more. [00:08:53] Where I think it's particularly interesting in convenience is that while you've got in most cases, the cooler aisle that is visible, right? When you walk in. So it's not on the periphery. Like it is in a grocery store. And, or in the center aisle. And I think that that visibility. maybe makes it more impactful. [00:09:10] And also. I can just see c-stores really taking to it. And so I'm watching that carefully. to see if, if we start to see a bigger rollout of that in the c-store format. [00:09:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's going to be interesting to compare how that kind of weighs in against what the grocery is doing now with their retail media networks. [00:09:27] Andrew Lipsman: And I think that's it. When you walk into a, C-store also, you're probably much more open to that brand and you don't necessarily know what you want I'm thirsty, right? Or I'm coming and going into grab beer. That's a perfect time to put that brand impression in front of the customer. [00:09:41] Ricardo Belmar: I did notice some of the speakers talking about how they're either seeing kind of a consumer shift in terms of thinking about, you know, what do I need to buy food wise for the week versus now more thinking around, what do I want to buy for tonight? [00:09:53] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. Instant delivery and quick commerce space. [00:09:56] I mean that that's so interesting. My, my biggest question here, as we see maybe some consolidation and some players leaving the market, what's going to happen. [00:10:04] Is there enough of a regular use case for most consumers? I've said first time I used goPuff it was amazing. I got my order in 14 minutes. [00:10:12] The second time it was during rush hour. And I got my order in 25 minutes. Still a [00:10:16] Ricardo Belmar: still. Pretty impressive. [00:10:17] Andrew Lipsman: Right. I was in the middle of preparing dinner, so that's good. But I haven't seen a lot of other occasions for me to keep using it. So that's really, my question is how, how often are people going to be doing this. Now?, I'm maybe not the core consumer. The millennial and gen Z consumer, I think is much more acclimated to this behavior. So maybe that's where the market grows from. [00:10:36] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that could be an I I noticed as you have a pretty much all of those now providers have been on stage at some point grocery shop. And I noticed every single one of them had mentioned the key metric for them is increasing order volume and order frequency. And I've noticed many of them talking about branching out from just food, into other retail spaces, as a way to kind of supplement and have a, I'll say it's kind of a reason to give the consumer why they should use that service multiple times a week. for example. So they need ways to drive that order volume. And if grocery and convenience isn't enough, then they'll go partner with other retailers to add onto it. [00:11:09] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. I mean for me, it's interesting how I branched out into more categories. My first was a, you know, a late night order, so it was ice cream and a indulgence. Right. [00:11:19] When I was in the middle of preparing dinner, I was missing an ingredient. But also, I was trying to do dishes as I was preparing dinner and I realized I was out of dish soap. And by the way, I could actually use a new scrubber. So, right. So. I ended up [00:11:32] Ricardo Belmar: could think of other things. [00:11:33] Yeah. [00:11:34] Andrew Lipsman: into household essential. So And then the other use case that has come up in my household is you're sick and you just. It's not easy for a parent to go out to Walgreens or CVS to get cold medicine. It's nice when it comes to you. [00:11:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's a good point. And that's one of those, kind of tangible use cases for why you have to have it now. [00:11:51] Andrew Lipsman: Yep. [00:11:51] Absolutely. [00:11:52] Ricardo Belmar: That makes sense. So another interesting I talked about this briefly before we were recording. Lots of talk about personalization. [00:11:59] And you know, the first thing I think of when I hear everybody talking about that as well, haven't we been talking about personalization in retail for, for years now. [00:12:07] And It's almost like there is an awakening with the grocery space that I actually need to worry about this, that, you know, if everybody's talking about. [00:12:15] omni-channel and, and how, like I'm going to use that to optimize my profitability and kind of compensate for high cost of e-commerce. What do you, what do you think is going on there in all this personalization talk that's happening? [00:12:28] Andrew Lipsman: Well, In general, I glaze over when I hear personalization because it's this big nebulous term. But then my, my second impulse is to say, well, let's break it down. What, when does personalization really matter? So in a digital experience, [00:12:40] Here's a perfect. example. When I go and do an Instacart order or another e-commerce order. [00:12:46] I like the fact that it knows what I got last time, and it can and can serve up those relevant, basket building, items right away. So that streamlines my trip and you know, it's already done half the work for me. [00:12:57] That's a nice version of personalization, Obviously coupons and things of that nature. Getting the right coupons. To the right consumers. [00:13:05] Is isn't a major benefit. So I think the applications are pretty strong. in the grocery category in a way that it isn't always elsewhere. [00:13:13] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes sense. [00:13:15] It has a little bit more, I guess I'm going to say direct value. For the consumer and something that, that speaks right to a need in the moment [00:13:23] Andrew Lipsman: Absolutely. But I'm the wrong consumer because I just it's too much noise to try and manage coupon. So I I know [00:13:29] Ricardo Belmar: I agree [00:13:29] Andrew Lipsman: I'm, I'm different than most consumers. But it just, I, I go right past that. [00:13:34] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Same here. I'm just like that. [00:13:37] Is there anything that surprises you that people are either not talking about at all, or that there's very little conversation going on. [00:13:43] Andrew Lipsman: I think I've only seen the word metaverse twice the whole conference on a couple of booths. [00:13:48] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah. [00:13:49] Andrew Lipsman: and that's a good thing. Although as you and I were talking about before we recorded [00:13:54] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:13:55] Andrew Lipsman: Maybe the metaverse, you know, the best use case for it isn't food shopping. [00:13:58] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Yeah. [00:13:59] And I did actually hear in, in fairness, right, did hear one of the CPG brands on stage bring up that point exactly in that way. [00:14:07] And She mentioned ,I can see a fashion use case. I think that's a pretty clear cut one, but if the consumer can't taste it or smell it or understand. [00:14:16] what it's really going to be for them in the metaverse, then what's the value in them engaging with, with a food brand. In this matter. And so. The conclusion was kind of, well, I just don't know how to, how do I define the value here for the consumer? If it's not valuable for our consumer, why should we invest in it. [00:14:32] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. Grocery shopping. I don't see that use case very strongly. But listen the metaverse today, I would say is really gaming and, and kind of the evolution of gaming. But gamers are an irrelevant audience, and so having brands, especially if you're a brand that, Mountain Dew or, or the like that, that really core to younger consumers That's relevant. So they should be in gaming. In game advertising. And if you want to call it a metaverse call a metaverse. [00:14:56] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah but it's still at the, so more of like a brand affinity brand awareness kind of play rather than the true commerce environment. [00:15:02] Here's another one for you, that There was an interesting announcement by Firework. It was a live streaming provider with a new partnership they have with Walmart. Now to bring livestreaming to Walmart's e-commerce. And I find this interesting and where I see these live streaming developments, I've been a big proponent that, that live streaming is going to be meaningful. For commerce, but I, I I've signed. [00:15:23] Altered my view, at least a little bit. I'm curious, but you think that It's not really being driven by the social media platforms anymore. It's this really seems to be more about very customized things with a core technology that a retailer or a brand can acquire. Integrate it with their platform at their own site, and then use that as their live streaming interface for consumers. And if you go to Firework's booth here at the show, I noticed that they're showing examples of, you know, a grocer who's doing the live cooking session. [00:15:50] And I'm going to assume here for the moment That that makes sense if they can somehow tie it into the e-commerce platform And I'm watching the live stream and they say, you know what? I'd like to make that tonight. Where's the button I click or tap to actually put in a grocery order for all those ingredients. [00:16:04] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. So I'll say that I do buy the premise of bringing that media experience to where it's contextually relevant. But I will also say that media is competing with viewing other media [00:16:17] Ricardo Belmar: Right. That's [00:16:18] Andrew Lipsman: And so the, I think there's a high quality bar. And so what I think you could also see as a lot of players experiment with the format. And they're just not going to do it all that well. We've seen Amazon live has not taken off. And part of it is like, [00:16:31] They haven't gotten the right influencers. the content is not there. And so, [00:16:35] Ricardo Belmar: Right. It's just not [00:16:35] Andrew Lipsman: consumers tune out. So I will just say that what I'm looking for for that to work is the content has to be great. [00:16:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that makes sense. [00:16:41] Now I agree. I agree. It definitely has to have the right content. A lot of it, I think, has to do again, like what you were saying earlier. It has to do with what the consumer is thinking and doing in the moment. And how applicable is it? [00:16:51] Andrew Lipsman: Absolutely. [00:16:52] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Andrew, once again, this has been an amazing discussion with you, so glad you can come back on the show again today. [00:16:58] If Listeners want to reach out to you get in touch with you, learn more about the work you're doing. What's the best way for them to reach out. [00:17:04] Andrew Lipsman: LinkedIn is the easiest. That's where I share my work and where I listen to all the smart people on LinkedIn and learn from them. That's a key input to my analysis is learning from the other smart people in the industry [00:17:16] Ricardo Belmar: have to agree with that, but we're always in a learning mode in this industry for sure [00:17:21] Andrew Lipsman: A hundred percent. [00:17:21] Ricardo Belmar: Great. Well, Thanks again, Andrew. [00:17:23] I appreciate you joining me today. [00:17:24] Andrew Lipsman: Thanks for inviting me. [00:17:25] [00:17:25] Krystina Gustafson Interview [00:17:25] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome to the retail razor show special grocery shop edition for 2022. [00:17:41] I'm here continuing our series of conversations with retail transformers and talking, all things, grocery and consumer goods, And I'm thrilled to be joined right now with Krystina Gustafson, SVP of content for Grocery shop, Krystina, it's fantastic to have you here. [00:17:57] Yeah, [00:17:57] Krystina Gustafson: I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for making it out to the show and taking the time to chat with me. [00:18:02] Ricardo Belmar: I appreciate it. So tell us a little bit about just some of the background. Like how is this Grocery shop comparing to past ones? What are you seeing is kind of the interesting things that have caught your attention. Maybe feedback from attendees versus past editions. [00:18:16] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah, it's a great question. I think first and foremost, just sort of a statistic wise, our biggest show to date. So we have 4,000 attendees joining us here in Las Vegas about double the size that we were last year, which was a little down just given the nature of where we were in the pandemic cycle. I have to say when, when we came back to Las Vegas last year, I thought there was going to be no similar buzz that would, that would sort of meet the bar of last year's. It was really just kind of the first time that everyone was getting back together after the pandemic, it sort of felt like people were, were running around just buzz, completely excited. [00:18:50] We actually were losing speakers because they'd come to the speaker lounge and then they'd get distracted because they saw someone that they knew they got very excited. They would, they would kind of run off. And so actually we've had to sort of implement a longer lead time for, for people to come to the speaker lounge ahead of their session. Exactly. Exactly. [00:19:05] But no, I think what's been really fascinating to see as it's just a different kind of buzz, this year right. It sort of feels like last year, it was just that, you know, first day of school, excitement, you know, you're, you're back with all your friends and it's so fun. And this year it feels like a very big buzz around the content again and just kind of what people are here to learn. They feel very hungry for knowledge. [00:19:23] And I think a lot of that is just this inflection point that we're at in the industry today where, you know they don't have to innovate anymore, quite frankly. Right? [00:19:30] If they kind of want to stop and say, Hey, we're seeing a slow down in the economy, consumers are going back to stores. You know, this isn't necessarily the top of our priority list anymore. And so I think everyone that's here are the folks that realize this transformation is real. [00:19:43] And so they're just really hungry to meet with other people who are of a similar mindset. And, and make those connections as well as kind of learn from from folks. [00:19:52] Either with their peers at table talks, which are, you know, sort of group discussions or in the more traditional sort of track session formats where they're hearing from, from other speakers. [00:19:59] Ricardo Belmar: I've been through different sessions at the show of this week, the content has been really, really wonderful. [00:20:05] There's been a good variety of things. You know, great, great, great choices on the speakers by the way. I think that's been really, really fantastic. [00:20:11] This year, I loved the, the mix of different retailers that you have with some of the brands. [00:20:15] I think it kind of felt to me I could be wrong, but it felt like compared to the last Grocery shop I was at was the 2019 one. And compared to that one, it was a lot more sessions that had a mix of retailers and brands, which always feels kind of interesting because you could expect sometimes there's gonna be a little bit of tension in that discussion topic, but I think it's worked out really, really well in a lot of the sessions. [00:20:33] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah, To be honest, it's something we've always strived for. So I'm glad to hear that. It's, it's something that you've, you've sort of seen come through in the sessions themselves. I agree with you, you know, I'm a reformed journalist. I like to say. So I always sorta think about, if you're reporting a story, you have to have your three different sources, right. [00:20:48] And so a lot of times you want those to be sort of, two folks within the industry. Maybe you want a consumer, maybe you want a regulatory board, but, but the point of it is by having three different perspectives, you kind of triangulate to something that everyone in the audience can relate to. And not just kind of have, retailer one, echo what retailer two saying, and then followed up by retailer three. So we work really, really hard, not just to curate the session topics, but the mix of perspectives that you're going to hear on any given topic. [00:21:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, so, one thing that I've found interesting this year. And again, I'm comparing to a few years back from my personal experience. But the kinds of technologies, that we're talking about, It feels to me like we're, we're not talking about the things I might necessarily have expected was had evolved from previous years. [00:21:27] And maybe that's to be expected just Because of where we are and you know, what, everything that happened through COVID for grocers and, and brands. [00:21:33] Are you seeing something similar? Does it look the same from your perspective? [00:21:36] Krystina Gustafson: It's a really good question. You know, we, we kind of came out with this thesis of just kind of where grocery e-comm is on a digital maturity scale, you know, pre pandemic throughout the pandemic and then where we are today. And I think previously, it was just kind of, people were testing and learning, you know, they were testing the waters, they were just kind of doing, quite frankly, the basics, right. [00:21:55] Whether it was working with third-party partners, for things like delivery, whether it was just kind of like, you know, testing and experimenting with personalization, I think to your point, those things are still very important today, but people are thinking about sort of, how can they take this one step farther? [00:22:07] So from our perspective, it went from kind of like the nuts and bolts to, Okay. [00:22:11] We have to stand this up because we quite frankly have no choice if [00:22:14] Ricardo Belmar: Right now it's table stakes. [00:22:15] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah, exactly, if we don't roll out curbside, no one's going to get their groceries. No one's going to be able to eat. So, so let's just kind of like push it out as fast as possible. I think from there, people have kind of been fine-tuning those products, But in addition to it, people are thinking about how the future of online grocery can look different. And what I mean by that is, you know, It's always been about convenience and it will still be about convenience. Heck we added an entire track dedicated to the theme of convenience. [00:22:37] Ricardo Belmar: I went to a number of those sessions. [00:22:38] Krystina Gustafson: But however, It also needs to be about experience. And so I think from our perspective, it's about, making sure you're still, you know, getting to see those technologies that you really need to run your business. We understand everyone has finite budget, so we need to make sure that we're still representing those sorts of businesses, but then also giving people the flexibility to imagine what it could look like in the future, whether it's using livestream shopping, you know, Is it going to be the metaverse. [00:23:02] So we didn't lean too heavily into that at the show, [00:23:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I noticed that. [00:23:05] Krystina Gustafson: it's not. I don't think As big of an opportunity. at least currently for grocery as maybe fashion [00:23:10] Ricardo Belmar: Maybe more maybe longterm. [00:23:11] Krystina Gustafson: Exactly, exactly. But, You know, we want to make sure that we do have some perspectives on that represented so that people can, you know, start thinking what? This might look like 10 years down the road. [00:23:20] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. You know, an Interesting note as you've mentioned on the convenience track, one theme that I heard a lot of are from both retailers and brands that they're seeing consumers take a perspective, that rather than thinking ,what do I need to buy for the week? [00:23:34] It's now what I want to buy for tonight. [00:23:36] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah. Well, it's so Interesting. [00:23:38] And you know, it was also, I I've heard this from a couple of other speakers. I think Fidji Simo from Instacart was one, one person to talk about it. And actually I think from door dash, they were talking about it as well. It just really depends on what the shopping occasion is. Right. I feel like we've constantly heard. [00:23:52] Oh, you know, 15 minutes delivery is so great when you forget a certain ingredient. It's like, how often does that actually [00:23:57] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. [00:23:58] Krystina Gustafson: We hear that phrase so [00:24:00] Ricardo Belmar: It's always like the first use case. Everyone brings up, But really how often, if you think about it yourself, how often are you in that position? [00:24:05] Krystina Gustafson: it's a Very very and quite frankly, if that happens, let's play my excuse to like order takeout. So I actually thought it was really interesting. [00:24:12] Oh, gosh, I wish I could remember the speaker who was talking about this, but It was essentially saying you know, 15 minute delivery isn't necessarily something that isn't going to work. It just needs to be a part of a broader portfolio. Right. So. If door dash is going to do, you know, 15 minute delivery. That's great. But they also need to have sort of a, the longer lead time sorts of options so that they can make those 15 minutes deliveries profitable and kind of the same thing to, to a retailer as well. [00:24:34] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right. So I have to ask you this question too, for your thoughts, because if I were to pick the one thing that I feel like almost everyone has talked about, and frankly, just walking down the hall. you see it visually everywhere. and that's retail media networks, [00:24:49] Krystina Gustafson: I knew you were going to say it. I [00:24:51] Ricardo Belmar: You knew where I was going with that. [00:24:53] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah. It's it's so funny. You know, when we are programming the show, We're always so careful because every single spot on our agenda is merit based. Right, We don't do any pay to play. That's a really big sort of sticking point for us. And so I think we've always been very careful when we're selecting technology vendors to speak on stage, it's, you know, we want you to be strategic. [00:25:11] Obviously we want you to talk about your solution, but we want you to, to sort of bring some thought leadership to this and talk about an authentic way. And we were laughing. We're like, we're going to have these conversations with the retailers, because all they want to do is go on stage and plug their retail media networks. [00:25:24] Ricardo Belmar: cause they're now in the business, right. Of selling to other businesses. They're suddenly a B2B business instead of just a B2C [00:25:29] Krystina Gustafson: Yes, it's getting very, very complicated. But no, I hear you. It's, it's been a huge theme of the show and I think just everyone Is very aware of the growth that is expected to come out of this. I think for me, a lot of the interesting discussions are about you know, sort of who's doing it well, what CPG brands need from their retail partners, thinking again, sort of about what's to come and sort of how these will play out in physical stores because I think that's also been kind of a big theme throughout the show is just kind of how, how the physical store is transforming. [00:25:54] And so it's going to be a really interesting space to walk over the next couple of years. [00:25:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it's interesting. I was talking with one of the speakers earlier that in one of my previous roles I did a lot of work with and this'll be dating a and I'll take them on a technology perspective of delivering digital signage solutions into stores. And I was joking with someone, you know, back in those days. As if we're only talking 2015, maybe. [00:26:18] You know, one of the pitches as a digital signage technology provider, we always had was to every retailer ,you know, you could turn this into a media network, right? You can talk to the brands that you sell and actually, so position advertising on these screens. Have you thought about doing that? [00:26:31] And what I find fascinating is that now everyone's talking about this now, right? We just don't use the words, digital signage, because that's, that has an awful connotation. Apparently. But I find that when we talked about it before, because I as the technology provider then was talking to someone in IT, about that. And it wasn't really an IT technology message. It was really more of a marketing, advertising message. [00:26:53] Oh, And it didn't involve people in store operations. So it tended to just go nowhere with most retailers that we tried that with, and it's just night and day difference with where we're at now [00:27:02] Krystina Gustafson: I love that point because I think that's so often what we kind of try to, I don't want to say the word preach, but I guess it is kind of preaching in some capacity. It's like you can't dismiss innovation at any capacity, right. [00:27:12] Like we were joking about the metaverse earlier and saying, okay, well we don't see the application today. It Doesn't mean there's [00:27:17] Ricardo Belmar: Doesn't mean there won't be. [00:27:18] Krystina Gustafson: Right. And there's going to be elements of that, AJ Dalal from Publicis Sapient actually did a presentation on, on what the applications for the metaverse could for the future of our industry and he was talking about it from, from, I would say more of a CPG perspective, but you think about sort of the opportunities for loyalty, you think about just kind of like actually assigning a value to some of these like NFTs or, or, you know, it doesn't have to be sort of this pie in the sky version of the metaverse that we're all reading about. Right. And so I think it's very easy to just kind of laugh and say, oh, that's never going to work. Right, But there are going to be certain building blocks to your point that even if they don't work today, maybe 10 years down the road, [00:27:52] Ricardo Belmar: right. right. [00:27:53] Krystina Gustafson: about [00:27:54] Ricardo Belmar: Or there could be, it could come surface up to the top and then priority for that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. [00:27:59] So last thing I wanted to ask you about. [00:28:01] What's your perspective on how the expo hall fits into the overall grocery shop experience, if there's anything in particular. that is catching your attention, that you're hearing feedback from folks about what they're experiencing walking through the expo hall. [00:28:15] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think from our perspective, all week. I shouldn't say all we care about but the biggest priority. is that it's buzzy. Right. And that there's a lot of energy. And I have to say our I can take absolutely no credit for this, but our sales team and our ops team have done a fantastic job. Just kind of reinventing. I always thought that our our expo hall was very elevated. Just from, from sort of an experience, but we've really built up our lounges. So we have a relaxed lounge where you can go and sort of get massages. We have a swag store this year. [00:28:41] We've never [00:28:42] Ricardo Belmar: I saw it. [00:28:42] Krystina Gustafson: store before, so you can kind of go in and grab your Shoptalk Cuddy, which by the way, We're not allowed to grab because we have to save them for the attendees. So I'm praying. There are a couple of leftover. [00:28:50] Yeah. I'm. There's some leftover after the show, but, you know, get your grocery shop, branded water bottle and there's stuff in there I'm from sponsor. So that's been really fun. So I think. For us, it's just kind of trying to make sure the exhibit hall is a place that people want to be quite frankly I would say the addition to that is our hosted retailers and brands program is always kind of the heart of what we're trying to do. [00:29:11] I think serendipitous connections are fantastic. And, and, and, you know, everyone comes here, right. To see who they're going to run into have spontaneous conversations. But at the end of the day, sometimes a little bit of pre-planning. It goes a really long way. And so I think. [00:29:24] It kind of pairing that just kind of buzzy fun exhibit hall experience with the hosted program, where you come into the event having pre-planned meetings with, if you're a solution provider retailers or brands, or, you know, vice versa. [00:29:36] You know you're going to get ROI. And so I think in those capacities, like it makes it a little bit easier for you to be like, yeah, I'm just going to go grab a margarita and kind of like, enjoy the ride. [00:29:44] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. [00:29:47] Well, Krystina, thank you so much for joining me here. It's been a pleasure chatting with you. I'd love going through all the ins and outs of what's going on here at grocery shop and you know, just kudos again, to pulling off such a great event. It's been a fantastic experience. [00:30:00] Krystina Gustafson: Awesome. Well, it's been good to have you here and thanks for having me join you. [00:30:03] Ricardo Belmar: Great. Thank you! [00:30:03] [00:30:03] Show Close [00:30:03] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:30:38] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:30:54] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:30:56] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the Retail razor Show. Missed Groceryshop 2022? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered! Welcome to another SPECIAL EDITION season 2, episode 3, Part 3, Groceryshop recap!


We’re bringing you 6 great interviews recorded live and in-person at Groceryshop in Las Vegas, NV, bundled up in 3 episodes with 2 interviews each. For part 3, we saved two very special guests for your listening pleasure. Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail and ecommerce at Insider Intelligence gives us a rundown of the top trends across Groceryshop, with a focus on retail media, convenience stores, and a unique perspective on personalization and omnichannel. Then you’ll hear from Krystina Gustafson, SVP Content for Groceryshop and Shoptalk. Krystina gives us the insider’s view of the show, how it’s produced, another view of top trends, and finally, a take on what was NOT talked about at the show. You'll be hard pressed to find a more jampacked 30 minutes of insights!


News alert! We’re back at #20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.

Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Swag Tag and Brag, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

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Host → Ricardo Belmar,

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Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey



TRANSCRIPT

SPECIAL Edition: Groceryshop 2022, Part 3

[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar:

[00:00:20] Introduction to Part 3

[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode three, part three of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:00:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome retail Razor Show listeners to our un apologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. 

[00:00:39] Ricardo Belmar: So Casey, what did you think of part two of our grocery shop interview series with those two incredible grocery retailers, Lisa Kinney from Albertsons and Dave Steck from Schnuck Markets.

[00:00:48] Casey Golden: Well, you did say that this episode would be thought provoking and you delivered. Lisa really sliced and diced what's happening in grocery with consumer data. I found it incredibly interesting and related right back to the future of retail media networks in a way I've just never heard anyone talk about it like that before. 

[00:01:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's right. I mean, Lisa really brought home issues around where the data comes from with all the tech partners that grocers are involved with now, and asked I think, some tough questions about how retail media would bring brands and retailers together and where all those dollars come from.

[00:01:22] Casey Golden: Yeah. And then Dave Steck, I mean, is there any emerging tech that he's not looking into yet? I mean, I don't know, maybe web three, but. 

[00:01:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Something tells me that that's not too far behind on his schedule . But yes, I mean, yeah, he, he really showed us how having the right corporate culture just opens the door to doing really creative and innovative things with New Tech in the store. I mean, he's got, he's not only has robots and IoT, he's looking at electronic shelf labels.

[00:01:50] I think there's no limit to where Schnuck's is going, and it's pretty impressive.

[00:01:53] Casey Golden: So for our listeners who haven't checked out part two. You should probably stop right now. Go back. Listen. We'll wait.

[00:02:00] Ricardo Belmar: So, So do we just stop talking now and wait for the listeners to come back or what?

[00:02:03] Casey Golden: Uh, Uh, not really. I mean, we're recording for a reason. We're not live. 

[00:02:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Okay. That, Yeah. All right. I know, I know. Just, just kidding. So let's talk about this episode then.

[00:02:10] Casey Golden: Who do you have lined up and tell me, did you save the best for last? Honestly, part two was jampacked full of insights coming at you every minute. 

[00:02:19] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I have to admit, yes, yes, Probably, possibly. Maybe. We did save the best for last, not to diminish anything about our previous guests in any way because they were all really amazing. We got lots of fantastic insights and, and knowledge from everybody. But , this time out, we've got two really amazing guests.

[00:02:37] One I, I would call a recent fan favorite Andrew Lipsman the principal analyst for retail and e-commerce at e-marketer, Insider Intelligence, and hot off of our Retail Media networks episode. That's quickly becoming one of our most downloaded episodes, by the way ,that I caught up with Andrew at Grocery shop after one of his sessions, and we talked about what some of the biggest trends were across the whole show.

[00:02:58] As we're pretty much near the end of the event at this point. So much of what Stewart told us in part one I think stayed the course for the rest of the show. But Andrew points out some really interesting tidbits about the convenience store segment . And it might just be a, a sleeping giant waiting to surface.

[00:03:13] Within all the talk around, around grocery and food in, in general. So we briefly touch on quick commerce and rapid delivery and the latest from the show on those providers. It was really interesting though to hear his take on personalization and omnichannel and how those, I mean, let's face it, those are not new trends.

[00:03:31] But suddenly they were just front and center at grocery shop. You, you'd think that the grocery industry hadn't heard of those two things before the way they were being talked about. So I think his position will surprise you on those two. And, you have to watch out for our discussion on what was not a trend at the show.

[00:03:48] I'll give you a hint. It rhymes with metaverse,

[00:03:50] Casey Golden: not a hint, 

[00:03:53] Ricardo Belmar: It's not

[00:03:55] Casey Golden: It's not a hint, way to give it away. Um, 

[00:04:00] Ricardo Belmar: on. Okay. You'll see, you'll, you'll see, there, there's a reason for why that's the case and it comes back again in fact, with the second guest for this episode 

[00:04:06] Casey Golden: Okay, so don't keep us in the suspense. I mean, I'm, I'm a co-host and I'm in suspense who's, two. 

[00:04:13] Ricardo Belmar: number two is none other than Krystina Gustafson, SVP of content for grocery shop and shop talk. And if you're like me, you probably remember Krystina from back in her cnbc, retail journalist days. So this is a, a, a real treat of an interview. Krystina and I talk about what makes grocery shop so special, how they put the show together.

[00:04:31] What are the key trends from her perspective ,from what they were trying to accomplish? And you know, while they're similar to what we've been hearing from the other guests, there is a bit of a unique twist, I think, to what she offered. So I won't give that away. You'll have to listen. But we do dig into what some of the big buzz was about, what was happening in the expo hall.

[00:04:49] And I asked her as well about what's not buzzing, You know, i e metaverse, which was not really buzzing at the show. And of course where retail media is headed because I don't think we can possibly do an episode about grocery shop and not talk about retail media. But it's a fascinating insider discussion that I think listeners will really enjoy.

[00:05:06] We have to have Krystina back on the show again. She's so much fun to talk to. 

[00:05:09] Casey Golden: All right, I'm sold. With that lead in there's nothing left to do, but head straight to the interviews. I'm excited to grab some popcorn, get comfy, grab a notepad, and dive right in. So let's listen together to Andrew Lipman and Krystina Gustafson recorded live and in person at Grocery Shop 2022. 

[00:05:28] Andrew Lipsman Interview

[00:05:28] Ricardo Belmar: and welcome To the retail Razor Show Special Edition episode at Grocery shop 2022. 

[00:05:42] I'm here at the show in Las Vegas, Continuing our series of amazing retail transformers to talk all things, grocery and consumer goods. I'm here now with Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail and e-commerce at Insider Intelligence. Andrew, it is awesome to have you back on the show again. 

[00:05:58] Andrew Lipsman: It's great to be back already. Ricardo. 

[00:06:00] Ricardo Belmar: So of course the existing listeners may have heard or watched our retail media networks episode, they'll already be familiar with you. But for new listeners give us a quick, intro to what you do at insider intelligence. 

[00:06:10] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. as you said, I'm a principal analyst covering retail and e-commerce. So I really cover the gamut of all things, retail, whether that's in store e-commerce and Increasingly advertising where retail and e-commerce intersect with other trends. So retail media Has certainly been in my cross hairs and I've also spent a, quite a bit of extra time in the last year or so focusing more and more on grocery and CPG.

[00:06:33] Ricardo Belmar: So since we are at grocery shop, let's talk about what some of the big trends are that you're seeing here. And they're getting all the buzz. I know you've spoken a couple of sessions that I attended. One panel was a session about emerging tech in the convenience store space. 

[00:06:47] So Kind of thinking back to that and anything else you've seen at the show, what, What are let's say two or three big trends that you're seeing here at the show. 

[00:06:53] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah, well, it's certainly biased towards the sessions that I was in. 

[00:06:56] And I've been running around. and haven't seen as many other sessions as I would've liked, but convenience does seem to be a bigger trend. They've done a nice job with the convenience track. 

[00:07:04] And I guess my viewpoint is that it's maybe under appreciated and not talked about quite enough, but it's a pretty formidable retail space. Obviously a lot of brands are flowing through there and there's a lot of innovation happening on a lot of fronts, the tech cashierless checkout. 

[00:07:20] Retail media are starting to have that conversation and how it's used and deployed in C stores. And then really just the broader delivery and quick commerce space. That convenience is a huge, huge trend. In terms of driving consumer behavior. So I think all those things intersect in interesting ways and I was glad to be a part of that session. 

[00:07:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I agree when convenience is definitely an interesting one. That's the, one of the things I enjoyed in your session on There's a little bit different spin. I think, to how a lot of the technologies and things that, that the grocers are talking about that maybe get applied a little differently in convenience. 

[00:07:52] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. And you know, the one that's kind of interesting. cashierless checkout, for example, automated checkout. On the one hand convenience, you kind of want to get in and out, but also lines aren't that bad. 

[00:08:03] But We talk about it there because it, it kind of started with Amazon Go and that format, and that really was driven by the need for camera technology to be able to work in a space. And it worked better in small format 

[00:08:15] So I'm curious how that plays out longterm. Grocery store format, everybody hates the checkout line. So that's where, that's where the real strong use case is and now the technology is getting a lot better to enable that. 

[00:08:26] Ricardo Belmar: You mentioned retail media. And we've talked about that before, and I think that's clearly been a major trend here at the show, you see it everywhere that you walk around the halls with the Walmart connect advertising. What are you seeing in the context of retail media around convenience? 

[00:08:40] Andrew Lipsman: Well, I mean, I just think about. you know, I'm I'm a big proponent of the trend of in-store retail media. I think it's going to emerge. I think there's a lot of opportunity for digital signage and screens to start entering into the physical space more. 

[00:08:53] Where I think it's particularly interesting in convenience is that while you've got in most cases, the cooler aisle that is visible, right? When you walk in. So it's not on the periphery. Like it is in a grocery store. And, or in the center aisle. And I think that that visibility. maybe makes it more impactful. 

[00:09:10] And also. I can just see c-stores really taking to it. And so I'm watching that carefully. to see if, if we start to see a bigger rollout of that in the c-store format. 

[00:09:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's going to be interesting to compare how that kind of weighs in against what the grocery is doing now with their retail media networks. 

[00:09:27] Andrew Lipsman: And I think that's it. When you walk into a, C-store also, you're probably much more open to that brand and you don't necessarily know what you want I'm thirsty, right? Or I'm coming and going into grab beer. That's a perfect time to put that brand impression in front of the customer.

[00:09:41] Ricardo Belmar: I did notice some of the speakers talking about how they're either seeing kind of a consumer shift in terms of thinking about, you know, what do I need to buy food wise for the week versus now more thinking around, what do I want to buy for tonight? 

[00:09:53] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. Instant delivery and quick commerce space. 

[00:09:56] I mean that that's so interesting. My, my biggest question here, as we see maybe some consolidation and some players leaving the market, what's going to happen. 

[00:10:04] Is there enough of a regular use case for most consumers? I've said first time I used goPuff it was amazing. I got my order in 14 minutes. 

[00:10:12] The second time it was during rush hour. And I got my order in 25 minutes. Still a 

[00:10:16] Ricardo Belmar: still. Pretty impressive. 

[00:10:17] Andrew Lipsman: Right. I was in the middle of preparing dinner, so that's good. But I haven't seen a lot of other occasions for me to keep using it. So that's really, my question is how, how often are people going to be doing this. Now?, I'm maybe not the core consumer. The millennial and gen Z consumer, I think is much more acclimated to this behavior. So maybe that's where the market grows from. 

[00:10:36] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that could be an I I noticed as you have a pretty much all of those now providers have been on stage at some point grocery shop. And I noticed every single one of them had mentioned the key metric for them is increasing order volume and order frequency. And I've noticed many of them talking about branching out from just food, into other retail spaces, as a way to kind of supplement and have a, I'll say it's kind of a reason to give the consumer why they should use that service multiple times a week. for example. So they need ways to drive that order volume. And if grocery and convenience isn't enough, then they'll go partner with other retailers to add onto it. 

[00:11:09] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. I mean for me, it's interesting how I branched out into more categories. My first was a, you know, a late night order, so it was ice cream and a indulgence. Right. 

[00:11:19] When I was in the middle of preparing dinner, I was missing an ingredient. But also, I was trying to do dishes as I was preparing dinner and I realized I was out of dish soap. And by the way, I could actually use a new scrubber. So, right. So. I ended up 

[00:11:32] Ricardo Belmar: could think of other things. 

[00:11:33] Yeah. 

[00:11:34] Andrew Lipsman: into household essential. So And then the other use case that has come up in my household is you're sick and you just. It's not easy for a parent to go out to Walgreens or CVS to get cold medicine. It's nice when it comes to you. 

[00:11:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's a good point. And that's one of those, kind of tangible use cases for why you have to have it now.

[00:11:51] Andrew Lipsman: Yep.

[00:11:51] Absolutely.

[00:11:52] Ricardo Belmar: That makes sense. So another interesting I talked about this briefly before we were recording. Lots of talk about personalization. 

[00:11:59] And you know, the first thing I think of when I hear everybody talking about that as well, haven't we been talking about personalization in retail for, for years now. 

[00:12:07] And It's almost like there is an awakening with the grocery space that I actually need to worry about this, that, you know, if everybody's talking about.

[00:12:15] omni-channel and, and how, like I'm going to use that to optimize my profitability and kind of compensate for high cost of e-commerce. What do you, what do you think is going on there in all this personalization talk that's happening?

[00:12:28] Andrew Lipsman: Well, In general, I glaze over when I hear personalization because it's this big nebulous term. But then my, my second impulse is to say, well, let's break it down. What, when does personalization really matter? So in a digital experience, 

[00:12:40] Here's a perfect. example. When I go and do an Instacart order or another e-commerce order. 

[00:12:46] I like the fact that it knows what I got last time, and it can and can serve up those relevant, basket building, items right away. So that streamlines my trip and you know, it's already done half the work for me. 

[00:12:57] That's a nice version of personalization, Obviously coupons and things of that nature. Getting the right coupons. To the right consumers. 

[00:13:05] Is isn't a major benefit. So I think the applications are pretty strong. in the grocery category in a way that it isn't always elsewhere. 

[00:13:13] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes sense. 

[00:13:15] It has a little bit more, I guess I'm going to say direct value. For the consumer and something that, that speaks right to a need in the moment 

[00:13:23] Andrew Lipsman: Absolutely. But I'm the wrong consumer because I just it's too much noise to try and manage coupon. So I I know

[00:13:29] Ricardo Belmar: I agree

[00:13:29] Andrew Lipsman: I'm, I'm different than most consumers. But it just, I, I go right past that.

[00:13:34] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Same here. I'm just like that. 

[00:13:37] Is there anything that surprises you that people are either not talking about at all, or that there's very little conversation going on. 

[00:13:43] Andrew Lipsman: I think I've only seen the word metaverse twice the whole conference on a couple of booths. 

[00:13:48] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah.

[00:13:49] Andrew Lipsman: and that's a good thing. Although as you and I were talking about before we recorded

[00:13:54] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:13:55] Andrew Lipsman: Maybe the metaverse, you know, the best use case for it isn't food shopping. 

[00:13:58] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Yeah. 

[00:13:59] And I did actually hear in, in fairness, right, did hear one of the CPG brands on stage bring up that point exactly in that way. 

[00:14:07] And She mentioned ,I can see a fashion use case. I think that's a pretty clear cut one, but if the consumer can't taste it or smell it or understand.

[00:14:16] what it's really going to be for them in the metaverse, then what's the value in them engaging with, with a food brand. In this matter. And so. The conclusion was kind of, well, I just don't know how to, how do I define the value here for the consumer? If it's not valuable for our consumer, why should we invest in it.

[00:14:32] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. Grocery shopping. I don't see that use case very strongly. But listen the metaverse today, I would say is really gaming and, and kind of the evolution of gaming. But gamers are an irrelevant audience, and so having brands, especially if you're a brand that, Mountain Dew or, or the like that, that really core to younger consumers That's relevant. So they should be in gaming. In game advertising. And if you want to call it a metaverse call a metaverse. 

[00:14:56] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah but it's still at the, so more of like a brand affinity brand awareness kind of play rather than the true commerce environment. 

[00:15:02] Here's another one for you, that There was an interesting announcement by Firework. It was a live streaming provider with a new partnership they have with Walmart. Now to bring livestreaming to Walmart's e-commerce. And I find this interesting and where I see these live streaming developments, I've been a big proponent that, that live streaming is going to be meaningful. For commerce, but I, I I've signed. 

[00:15:23] Altered my view, at least a little bit. I'm curious, but you think that It's not really being driven by the social media platforms anymore. It's this really seems to be more about very customized things with a core technology that a retailer or a brand can acquire. Integrate it with their platform at their own site, and then use that as their live streaming interface for consumers. And if you go to Firework's booth here at the show, I noticed that they're showing examples of, you know, a grocer who's doing the live cooking session.

[00:15:50] And I'm going to assume here for the moment That that makes sense if they can somehow tie it into the e-commerce platform And I'm watching the live stream and they say, you know what? I'd like to make that tonight. Where's the button I click or tap to actually put in a grocery order for all those ingredients. 

[00:16:04] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. So I'll say that I do buy the premise of bringing that media experience to where it's contextually relevant. But I will also say that media is competing with viewing other media

[00:16:17] Ricardo Belmar: Right. That's 

[00:16:18] Andrew Lipsman: And so the, I think there's a high quality bar. And so what I think you could also see as a lot of players experiment with the format. And they're just not going to do it all that well. We've seen Amazon live has not taken off. And part of it is like, 

[00:16:31] They haven't gotten the right influencers. the content is not there. And so, 

[00:16:35] Ricardo Belmar: Right. It's just not 

[00:16:35] Andrew Lipsman: consumers tune out. So I will just say that what I'm looking for for that to work is the content has to be great. 

[00:16:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that makes sense. 

[00:16:41] Now I agree. I agree. It definitely has to have the right content. A lot of it, I think, has to do again, like what you were saying earlier. It has to do with what the consumer is thinking and doing in the moment. And how applicable is it?

[00:16:51] Andrew Lipsman: Absolutely. 

[00:16:52] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Andrew, once again, this has been an amazing discussion with you, so glad you can come back on the show again today. 

[00:16:58] If Listeners want to reach out to you get in touch with you, learn more about the work you're doing. What's the best way for them to reach out.

[00:17:04] Andrew Lipsman: LinkedIn is the easiest. That's where I share my work and where I listen to all the smart people on LinkedIn and learn from them. That's a key input to my analysis is learning from the other smart people in the industry 

[00:17:16] Ricardo Belmar: have to agree with that, but we're always in a learning mode in this industry for sure 

[00:17:21] Andrew Lipsman: A hundred percent.

[00:17:21] Ricardo Belmar: Great. Well, Thanks again, Andrew.

[00:17:23] I appreciate you joining me today. 

[00:17:24] Andrew Lipsman: Thanks for inviting me. 

[00:17:25]

[00:17:25] Krystina Gustafson Interview

[00:17:25] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome to the retail razor show special grocery shop edition for 2022. 

[00:17:41] I'm here continuing our series of conversations with retail transformers and talking, all things, grocery and consumer goods, And I'm thrilled to be joined right now with Krystina Gustafson, SVP of content for Grocery shop, Krystina, it's fantastic to have you here. 

[00:17:57] Yeah, 

[00:17:57] Krystina Gustafson: I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for making it out to the show and taking the time to chat with me.

[00:18:02] Ricardo Belmar: I appreciate it. So tell us a little bit about just some of the background. Like how is this Grocery shop comparing to past ones? What are you seeing is kind of the interesting things that have caught your attention. Maybe feedback from attendees versus past editions. 

[00:18:16] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah, it's a great question. I think first and foremost, just sort of a statistic wise, our biggest show to date. So we have 4,000 attendees joining us here in Las Vegas about double the size that we were last year, which was a little down just given the nature of where we were in the pandemic cycle. I have to say when, when we came back to Las Vegas last year, I thought there was going to be no similar buzz that would, that would sort of meet the bar of last year's. It was really just kind of the first time that everyone was getting back together after the pandemic, it sort of felt like people were, were running around just buzz, completely excited. 

[00:18:50] We actually were losing speakers because they'd come to the speaker lounge and then they'd get distracted because they saw someone that they knew they got very excited. They would, they would kind of run off. And so actually we've had to sort of implement a longer lead time for, for people to come to the speaker lounge ahead of their session. Exactly. Exactly. 

[00:19:05] But no, I think what's been really fascinating to see as it's just a different kind of buzz, this year right. It sort of feels like last year, it was just that, you know, first day of school, excitement, you know, you're, you're back with all your friends and it's so fun. And this year it feels like a very big buzz around the content again and just kind of what people are here to learn. They feel very hungry for knowledge.

[00:19:23] And I think a lot of that is just this inflection point that we're at in the industry today where, you know they don't have to innovate anymore, quite frankly. Right?

[00:19:30] If they kind of want to stop and say, Hey, we're seeing a slow down in the economy, consumers are going back to stores. You know, this isn't necessarily the top of our priority list anymore. And so I think everyone that's here are the folks that realize this transformation is real.

[00:19:43] And so they're just really hungry to meet with other people who are of a similar mindset. And, and make those connections as well as kind of learn from from folks. 

[00:19:52] Either with their peers at table talks, which are, you know, sort of group discussions or in the more traditional sort of track session formats where they're hearing from, from other speakers. 

[00:19:59] Ricardo Belmar: I've been through different sessions at the show of this week, the content has been really, really wonderful.

[00:20:05] There's been a good variety of things. You know, great, great, great choices on the speakers by the way. I think that's been really, really fantastic. 

[00:20:11] This year, I loved the, the mix of different retailers that you have with some of the brands.

[00:20:15] I think it kind of felt to me I could be wrong, but it felt like compared to the last Grocery shop I was at was the 2019 one. And compared to that one, it was a lot more sessions that had a mix of retailers and brands, which always feels kind of interesting because you could expect sometimes there's gonna be a little bit of tension in that discussion topic, but I think it's worked out really, really well in a lot of the sessions. 

[00:20:33] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah, To be honest, it's something we've always strived for. So I'm glad to hear that. It's, it's something that you've, you've sort of seen come through in the sessions themselves. I agree with you, you know, I'm a reformed journalist. I like to say. So I always sorta think about, if you're reporting a story, you have to have your three different sources, right.

[00:20:48] And so a lot of times you want those to be sort of, two folks within the industry. Maybe you want a consumer, maybe you want a regulatory board, but, but the point of it is by having three different perspectives, you kind of triangulate to something that everyone in the audience can relate to. And not just kind of have, retailer one, echo what retailer two saying, and then followed up by retailer three. So we work really, really hard, not just to curate the session topics, but the mix of perspectives that you're going to hear on any given topic.

[00:21:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, so, one thing that I've found interesting this year. And again, I'm comparing to a few years back from my personal experience. But the kinds of technologies, that we're talking about, It feels to me like we're, we're not talking about the things I might necessarily have expected was had evolved from previous years.

[00:21:27] And maybe that's to be expected just Because of where we are and you know, what, everything that happened through COVID for grocers and, and brands. 

[00:21:33] Are you seeing something similar? Does it look the same from your perspective?

[00:21:36] Krystina Gustafson: It's a really good question. You know, we, we kind of came out with this thesis of just kind of where grocery e-comm is on a digital maturity scale, you know, pre pandemic throughout the pandemic and then where we are today. And I think previously, it was just kind of, people were testing and learning, you know, they were testing the waters, they were just kind of doing, quite frankly, the basics, right. 

[00:21:55] Whether it was working with third-party partners, for things like delivery, whether it was just kind of like, you know, testing and experimenting with personalization, I think to your point, those things are still very important today, but people are thinking about sort of, how can they take this one step farther? 

[00:22:07] So from our perspective, it went from kind of like the nuts and bolts to, Okay.

[00:22:11] We have to stand this up because we quite frankly have no choice if

[00:22:14] Ricardo Belmar: Right now it's table stakes. 

[00:22:15] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah, exactly, if we don't roll out curbside, no one's going to get their groceries. No one's going to be able to eat. So, so let's just kind of like push it out as fast as possible. I think from there, people have kind of been fine-tuning those products, But in addition to it, people are thinking about how the future of online grocery can look different. And what I mean by that is, you know, It's always been about convenience and it will still be about convenience. Heck we added an entire track dedicated to the theme of convenience.

[00:22:37] Ricardo Belmar: I went to a number of those sessions. 

[00:22:38] Krystina Gustafson: But however, It also needs to be about experience. And so I think from our perspective, it's about, making sure you're still, you know, getting to see those technologies that you really need to run your business. We understand everyone has finite budget, so we need to make sure that we're still representing those sorts of businesses, but then also giving people the flexibility to imagine what it could look like in the future, whether it's using livestream shopping, you know, Is it going to be the metaverse. 

[00:23:02] So we didn't lean too heavily into that at the show,

[00:23:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I noticed that.

[00:23:05] Krystina Gustafson: it's not. I don't think As big of an opportunity. at least currently for grocery as maybe fashion 

[00:23:10] Ricardo Belmar: Maybe more maybe longterm. 

[00:23:11] Krystina Gustafson: Exactly, exactly. But, You know, we want to make sure that we do have some perspectives on that represented so that people can, you know, start thinking what? This might look like 10 years down the road.

[00:23:20] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. You know, an Interesting note as you've mentioned on the convenience track, one theme that I heard a lot of are from both retailers and brands that they're seeing consumers take a perspective, that rather than thinking ,what do I need to buy for the week?

[00:23:34] It's now what I want to buy for tonight. 

[00:23:36] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah. Well, it's so Interesting.

[00:23:38] And you know, it was also, I I've heard this from a couple of other speakers. I think Fidji Simo from Instacart was one, one person to talk about it. And actually I think from door dash, they were talking about it as well. It just really depends on what the shopping occasion is. Right. I feel like we've constantly heard. 

[00:23:52] Oh, you know, 15 minutes delivery is so great when you forget a certain ingredient. It's like, how often does that actually 

[00:23:57] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. 

[00:23:58] Krystina Gustafson: We hear that phrase so 

[00:24:00] Ricardo Belmar: It's always like the first use case. Everyone brings up, But really how often, if you think about it yourself, how often are you in that position? 

[00:24:05] Krystina Gustafson: it's a Very very and quite frankly, if that happens, let's play my excuse to like order takeout. So I actually thought it was really interesting. 

[00:24:12] Oh, gosh, I wish I could remember the speaker who was talking about this, but It was essentially saying you know, 15 minute delivery isn't necessarily something that isn't going to work. It just needs to be a part of a broader portfolio. Right. So. If door dash is going to do, you know, 15 minute delivery. That's great. But they also need to have sort of a, the longer lead time sorts of options so that they can make those 15 minutes deliveries profitable and kind of the same thing to, to a retailer as well.

[00:24:34] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right. So I have to ask you this question too, for your thoughts, because if I were to pick the one thing that I feel like almost everyone has talked about, and frankly, just walking down the hall. you see it visually everywhere. and that's retail media networks,

[00:24:49] Krystina Gustafson: I knew you were going to say it. I 

[00:24:51] Ricardo Belmar: You knew where I was going with that. 

[00:24:53] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah. It's it's so funny. You know, when we are programming the show, We're always so careful because every single spot on our agenda is merit based. Right, We don't do any pay to play. That's a really big sort of sticking point for us. And so I think we've always been very careful when we're selecting technology vendors to speak on stage, it's, you know, we want you to be strategic. 

[00:25:11] Obviously we want you to talk about your solution, but we want you to, to sort of bring some thought leadership to this and talk about an authentic way. And we were laughing. We're like, we're going to have these conversations with the retailers, because all they want to do is go on stage and plug their retail media networks. 

[00:25:24] Ricardo Belmar: cause they're now in the business, right. Of selling to other businesses. They're suddenly a B2B business instead of just a B2C 

[00:25:29] Krystina Gustafson: Yes, it's getting very, very complicated. But no, I hear you. It's, it's been a huge theme of the show and I think just everyone Is very aware of the growth that is expected to come out of this. I think for me, a lot of the interesting discussions are about you know, sort of who's doing it well, what CPG brands need from their retail partners, thinking again, sort of about what's to come and sort of how these will play out in physical stores because I think that's also been kind of a big theme throughout the show is just kind of how, how the physical store is transforming. 

[00:25:54] And so it's going to be a really interesting space to walk over the next couple of years. 

[00:25:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it's interesting. I was talking with one of the speakers earlier that in one of my previous roles I did a lot of work with and this'll be dating a and I'll take them on a technology perspective of delivering digital signage solutions into stores. And I was joking with someone, you know, back in those days. As if we're only talking 2015, maybe. 

[00:26:18] You know, one of the pitches as a digital signage technology provider, we always had was to every retailer ,you know, you could turn this into a media network, right? You can talk to the brands that you sell and actually, so position advertising on these screens. Have you thought about doing that? 

[00:26:31] And what I find fascinating is that now everyone's talking about this now, right? We just don't use the words, digital signage, because that's, that has an awful connotation. Apparently. But I find that when we talked about it before, because I as the technology provider then was talking to someone in IT, about that. And it wasn't really an IT technology message. It was really more of a marketing, advertising message. 

[00:26:53] Oh, And it didn't involve people in store operations. So it tended to just go nowhere with most retailers that we tried that with, and it's just night and day difference with where we're at now 

[00:27:02] Krystina Gustafson: I love that point because I think that's so often what we kind of try to, I don't want to say the word preach, but I guess it is kind of preaching in some capacity. It's like you can't dismiss innovation at any capacity, right.

[00:27:12] Like we were joking about the metaverse earlier and saying, okay, well we don't see the application today. It Doesn't mean there's 

[00:27:17] Ricardo Belmar: Doesn't mean there won't be.

[00:27:18] Krystina Gustafson: Right. And there's going to be elements of that, AJ Dalal from Publicis Sapient actually did a presentation on, on what the applications for the metaverse could for the future of our industry and he was talking about it from, from, I would say more of a CPG perspective, but you think about sort of the opportunities for loyalty, you think about just kind of like actually assigning a value to some of these like NFTs or, or, you know, it doesn't have to be sort of this pie in the sky version of the metaverse that we're all reading about. Right. And so I think it's very easy to just kind of laugh and say, oh, that's never going to work. Right, But there are going to be certain building blocks to your point that even if they don't work today, maybe 10 years down the road, 

[00:27:52] Ricardo Belmar: right. right. 

[00:27:53] Krystina Gustafson: about 

[00:27:54] Ricardo Belmar: Or there could be, it could come surface up to the top and then priority for that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:27:59] So last thing I wanted to ask you about.

[00:28:01] What's your perspective on how the expo hall fits into the overall grocery shop experience, if there's anything in particular. that is catching your attention, that you're hearing feedback from folks about what they're experiencing walking through the expo hall. 

[00:28:15] Krystina Gustafson: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think from our perspective, all week. I shouldn't say all we care about but the biggest priority. is that it's buzzy. Right. And that there's a lot of energy. And I have to say our I can take absolutely no credit for this, but our sales team and our ops team have done a fantastic job. Just kind of reinventing. I always thought that our our expo hall was very elevated. Just from, from sort of an experience, but we've really built up our lounges. So we have a relaxed lounge where you can go and sort of get massages. We have a swag store this year.

[00:28:41] We've never 

[00:28:42] Ricardo Belmar: I saw it. 

[00:28:42] Krystina Gustafson: store before, so you can kind of go in and grab your Shoptalk Cuddy, which by the way, We're not allowed to grab because we have to save them for the attendees. So I'm praying. There are a couple of leftover.

[00:28:50] Yeah. I'm. There's some leftover after the show, but, you know, get your grocery shop, branded water bottle and there's stuff in there I'm from sponsor. So that's been really fun. So I think. For us, it's just kind of trying to make sure the exhibit hall is a place that people want to be quite frankly I would say the addition to that is our hosted retailers and brands program is always kind of the heart of what we're trying to do.

[00:29:11] I think serendipitous connections are fantastic. And, and, and, you know, everyone comes here, right. To see who they're going to run into have spontaneous conversations. But at the end of the day, sometimes a little bit of pre-planning. It goes a really long way. And so I think. 

[00:29:24] It kind of pairing that just kind of buzzy fun exhibit hall experience with the hosted program, where you come into the event having pre-planned meetings with, if you're a solution provider retailers or brands, or, you know, vice versa. 

[00:29:36] You know you're going to get ROI. And so I think in those capacities, like it makes it a little bit easier for you to be like, yeah, I'm just going to go grab a margarita and kind of like, enjoy the ride. 

[00:29:44] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. 

[00:29:47] Well, Krystina, thank you so much for joining me here. It's been a pleasure chatting with you. I'd love going through all the ins and outs of what's going on here at grocery shop and you know, just kudos again, to pulling off such a great event. It's been a fantastic experience. 

[00:30:00] Krystina Gustafson: Awesome. Well, it's been good to have you here and thanks for having me join you. 

[00:30:03] Ricardo Belmar: Great. Thank you! 

[00:30:03]

[00:30:03] Show Close

[00:30:03] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. 

[00:30:38] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:30:54] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:30:56] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the Retail razor Show. 

]]> <p>Missed Groceryshop 2022? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered! Welcome to another SPECIAL EDITION season 2, episode 3, <em>Part 3</em>, Groceryshop recap!</p><p><br></p><p>We’re bringing you 6 great interviews recorded live and in-person at Groceryshop in Las Vegas, NV, bundled up in 3 episodes with 2 interviews each. For part 3, we saved two very special guests for your listening pleasure. Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail and ecommerce at Insider Intelligence gives us a rundown of the top trends across Groceryshop, with a focus on retail media, convenience stores, and a unique perspective on personalization and omnichannel. Then you’ll hear from Krystina Gustafson, SVP Content for Groceryshop and Shoptalk. Krystina gives us the insider’s view of the show, how it’s produced, another view of top trends, and finally, a take on what was NOT talked about at the show. You&#39;ll be hard pressed to find a more jampacked 30 minutes of insights!</p><p><br></p><p>News alert! We’re back at #20 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Swag Tag and Brag</em>, and <em>Overclocked</em>, from the album <em>Beat Hype</em>, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>SPECIAL Edition: Groceryshop 2022, Part 3</strong></p><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong></p><h3>[00:00:20] Introduction to Part 3</h3><p>[00:00:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello, and welcome to season two, episode three, part three of the Retail Razor Show. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:00:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome retail Razor Show listeners to our un apologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike. </p><p>[00:00:39] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So Casey, what did you think of part two of our grocery shop interview series with those two incredible grocery retailers, Lisa Kinney from Albertsons and Dave Steck from Schnuck Markets.</p><p>[00:00:48] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, you did say that this episode would be thought provoking and you delivered. Lisa really sliced and diced what&#39;s happening in grocery with consumer data. I found it incredibly interesting and related right back to the future of retail media networks in a way I&#39;ve just never heard anyone talk about it like that before. </p><p>[00:01:07] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, that&#39;s right. I mean, Lisa really brought home issues around where the data comes from with all the tech partners that grocers are involved with now, and asked I think, some tough questions about how retail media would bring brands and retailers together and where all those dollars come from.</p><p>[00:01:22] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. And then Dave Steck, I mean, is there any emerging tech that he&#39;s not looking into yet? I mean, I don&#39;t know, maybe web three, but. </p><p>[00:01:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Something tells me that that&#39;s not too far behind on his schedule . But yes, I mean, yeah, he, he really showed us how having the right corporate culture just opens the door to doing really creative and innovative things with New Tech in the store. I mean, he&#39;s got, he&#39;s not only has robots and IoT, he&#39;s looking at electronic shelf labels.</p><p>[00:01:50] I think there&#39;s no limit to where Schnuck&#39;s is going, and it&#39;s pretty impressive.</p><p>[00:01:53] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So for our listeners who haven&#39;t checked out part two. You should probably stop right now. Go back. Listen. We&#39;ll wait.</p><p>[00:02:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So, So do we just stop talking now and wait for the listeners to come back or what?</p><p>[00:02:03] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> <s>Uh, </s>Uh, not really. I mean, we&#39;re recording for a reason. We&#39;re not live. </p><p>[00:02:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Okay. That, Yeah. All right. I know, I know. Just, just kidding. So let&#39;s talk about this episode then.</p><p>[00:02:10] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Who do you have lined up and tell me, did you save the best for last? Honestly, part two was jampacked full of insights coming at you every minute. </p><p>[00:02:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, I have to admit, yes, yes, Probably, possibly. Maybe. We did save the best for last, not to diminish anything about our previous guests in any way because they were all really amazing. We got lots of fantastic insights and, and knowledge from everybody. But , this time out, we&#39;ve got two really amazing guests.</p><p>[00:02:37] One I, I would call a recent fan favorite Andrew Lipsman the principal analyst for retail and e-commerce at e-marketer, Insider Intelligence, and hot off of our Retail Media networks episode. That&#39;s quickly becoming one of our most downloaded episodes, by the way ,that I caught up with Andrew at Grocery shop after one of his sessions, and we talked about what some of the biggest trends were across the whole show.</p><p>[00:02:58] As we&#39;re pretty much near the end of the event at this point. So much of what Stewart told us in part one I think stayed the course for the rest of the show. But Andrew points out some really interesting tidbits about the convenience store segment . And it might just be a, a sleeping giant waiting to surface.</p><p>[00:03:13] Within all the talk around, around grocery and food in, in general. So we briefly touch on quick commerce and rapid delivery and the latest from the show on those providers. It was really interesting though to hear his take on personalization and omnichannel and how those, I mean, let&#39;s face it, those are not new trends.</p><p>[00:03:31] But suddenly they were just front and center at grocery shop. You, you&#39;d think that the grocery industry hadn&#39;t heard of those two things before the way they were being talked about. So I think his position will surprise you on those two. And, you have to watch out for our discussion on what was not a trend at the show.</p><p>[00:03:48] I&#39;ll give you a hint. It rhymes with metaverse,</p><p>[00:03:50] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> not a hint, </p><p>[00:03:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It&#39;s not</p><p>[00:03:55] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It&#39;s not a hint, way to give it away. Um, </p><p>[00:04:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> on. Okay. You&#39;ll see, you&#39;ll, you&#39;ll see, there, there&#39;s a reason for why that&#39;s the case and it comes back again in fact, with the second guest for this episode </p><p>[00:04:06] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Okay, so don&#39;t keep us in the suspense. I mean, I&#39;m, I&#39;m a co-host and I&#39;m in suspense who&#39;s, two. </p><p>[00:04:13] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> number two is none other than Krystina Gustafson, SVP of content for grocery shop and shop talk. And if you&#39;re like me, you probably remember Krystina from back in her cnbc, retail journalist days. So this is a, a, a real treat of an interview. Krystina and I talk about what makes grocery shop so special, how they put the show together.</p><p>[00:04:31] What are the key trends from her perspective ,from what they were trying to accomplish? And you know, while they&#39;re similar to what we&#39;ve been hearing from the other guests, there is a bit of a unique twist, I think, to what she offered. So I won&#39;t give that away. You&#39;ll have to listen. But we do dig into what some of the big buzz was about, what was happening in the expo hall.</p><p>[00:04:49] And I asked her as well about what&#39;s not buzzing, You know, i e metaverse, which was not really buzzing at the show. And of course where retail media is headed because I don&#39;t think we can possibly do an episode about grocery shop and not talk about retail media. But it&#39;s a fascinating insider discussion that I think listeners will really enjoy.</p><p>[00:05:06] We have to have Krystina back on the show again. She&#39;s so much fun to talk to. </p><p>[00:05:09] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> All right, I&#39;m sold. With that lead in there&#39;s nothing left to do, but head straight to the interviews. I&#39;m excited to grab some popcorn, get comfy, grab a notepad, and dive right in. So let&#39;s listen together to Andrew Lipman and Krystina Gustafson recorded live and in person at Grocery Shop 2022. </p><h3>[00:05:28] Andrew Lipsman Interview</h3><p>[00:05:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> and welcome To the retail Razor Show Special Edition episode at Grocery shop 2022. </p><p>[00:05:42] I&#39;m here at the show in Las Vegas, Continuing our series of amazing retail transformers to talk all things, grocery and consumer goods. I&#39;m here now with Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail and e-commerce at Insider Intelligence. Andrew, it is awesome to have you back on the show again. </p><p>[00:05:58] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> It&#39;s great to be back already. Ricardo. </p><p>[00:06:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So of course the existing listeners may have heard or watched our retail media networks episode, they&#39;ll already be familiar with you. But for new listeners give us a quick, intro to what you do at insider intelligence. </p><p>[00:06:10] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. as you said, I&#39;m a principal analyst covering retail and e-commerce. So I really cover the gamut of all things, retail, whether that&#39;s in store e-commerce and Increasingly advertising where retail and e-commerce intersect with other trends. So retail media Has certainly been in my cross hairs and I&#39;ve also spent a, quite a bit of extra time in the last year or so focusing more and more on grocery and CPG.</p><p>[00:06:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So since we are at grocery shop, let&#39;s talk about what some of the big trends are that you&#39;re seeing here. And they&#39;re getting all the buzz. I know you&#39;ve spoken a couple of sessions that I attended. One panel was a session about emerging tech in the convenience store space. </p><p>[00:06:47] So Kind of thinking back to that and anything else you&#39;ve seen at the show, what, What are let&#39;s say two or three big trends that you&#39;re seeing here at the show. </p><p>[00:06:53] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah, well, it&#39;s certainly biased towards the sessions that I was in. </p><p>[00:06:56] And I&#39;ve been running around. and haven&#39;t seen as many other sessions as I would&#39;ve liked, but convenience does seem to be a bigger trend. They&#39;ve done a nice job with the convenience track. </p><p>[00:07:04] And I guess my viewpoint is that it&#39;s maybe under appreciated and not talked about quite enough, but it&#39;s a pretty formidable retail space. Obviously a lot of brands are flowing through there and there&#39;s a lot of innovation happening on a lot of fronts, the tech cashierless checkout. </p><p>[00:07:20] Retail media are starting to have that conversation and how it&#39;s used and deployed in C stores. And then really just the broader delivery and quick commerce space. That convenience is a huge, huge trend. In terms of driving consumer behavior. So I think all those things intersect in interesting ways and I was glad to be a part of that session. </p><p>[00:07:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I agree when convenience is definitely an interesting one. That&#39;s the, one of the things I enjoyed in your session on There&#39;s a little bit different spin. I think, to how a lot of the technologies and things that, that the grocers are talking about that maybe get applied a little differently in convenience. </p><p>[00:07:52] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. And you know, the one that&#39;s kind of interesting. cashierless checkout, for example, automated checkout. On the one hand convenience, you kind of want to get in and out, but also lines aren&#39;t that bad. </p><p>[00:08:03] But We talk about it there because it, it kind of started with Amazon Go and that format, and that really was driven by the need for camera technology to be able to work in a space. And it worked better in small format </p><p>[00:08:15] So I&#39;m curious how that plays out longterm. Grocery store format, everybody hates the checkout line. So that&#39;s where, that&#39;s where the real strong use case is and now the technology is getting a lot better to enable that. </p><p>[00:08:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You mentioned retail media. And we&#39;ve talked about that before, and I think that&#39;s clearly been a major trend here at the show, you see it everywhere that you walk around the halls with the Walmart connect advertising. What are you seeing in the context of retail media around convenience? </p><p>[00:08:40] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Well, I mean, I just think about. you know, I&#39;m I&#39;m a big proponent of the trend of in-store retail media. I think it&#39;s going to emerge. I think there&#39;s a lot of opportunity for digital signage and screens to start entering into the physical space more. </p><p>[00:08:53] Where I think it&#39;s particularly interesting in convenience is that while you&#39;ve got in most cases, the cooler aisle that is visible, right? When you walk in. So it&#39;s not on the periphery. Like it is in a grocery store. And, or in the center aisle. And I think that that visibility. maybe makes it more impactful. </p><p>[00:09:10] And also. I can just see c-stores really taking to it. And so I&#39;m watching that carefully. to see if, if we start to see a bigger rollout of that in the c-store format. </p><p>[00:09:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. That&#39;s going to be interesting to compare how that kind of weighs in against what the grocery is doing now with their retail media networks. </p><p>[00:09:27] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> And I think that&#39;s it. When you walk into a, C-store also, you&#39;re probably much more open to that brand and you don&#39;t necessarily know what you want I&#39;m thirsty, right? Or I&#39;m coming and going into grab beer. That&#39;s a perfect time to put that brand impression in front of the customer.</p><p>[00:09:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I did notice some of the speakers talking about how they&#39;re either seeing kind of a consumer shift in terms of thinking about, you know, what do I need to buy food wise for the week versus now more thinking around, what do I want to buy for tonight? </p><p>[00:09:53] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. Instant delivery and quick commerce space. </p><p>[00:09:56] I mean that that&#39;s so interesting. My, my biggest question here, as we see maybe some consolidation and some players leaving the market, what&#39;s going to happen. </p><p>[00:10:04] Is there enough of a regular use case for most consumers? I&#39;ve said first time I used goPuff it was amazing. I got my order in 14 minutes. </p><p>[00:10:12] The second time it was during rush hour. And I got my order in 25 minutes. Still a </p><p>[00:10:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> still. Pretty impressive. </p><p>[00:10:17] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Right. I was in the middle of preparing dinner, so that&#39;s good. But I haven&#39;t seen a lot of other occasions for me to keep using it. So that&#39;s really, my question is how, how often are people going to be doing this. Now?, I&#39;m maybe not the core consumer. The millennial and gen Z consumer, I think is much more acclimated to this behavior. So maybe that&#39;s where the market grows from. </p><p>[00:10:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, that could be an I I noticed as you have a pretty much all of those now providers have been on stage at some point grocery shop. And I noticed every single one of them had mentioned the key metric for them is increasing order volume and order frequency. And I&#39;ve noticed many of them talking about branching out from just food, into other retail spaces, as a way to kind of supplement and have a, I&#39;ll say it&#39;s kind of a reason to give the consumer why they should use that service multiple times a week. for example. So they need ways to drive that order volume. And if grocery and convenience isn&#39;t enough, then they&#39;ll go partner with other retailers to add onto it. </p><p>[00:11:09] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. I mean for me, it&#39;s interesting how I branched out into more categories. My first was a, you know, a late night order, so it was ice cream and a indulgence. Right. </p><p>[00:11:19] When I was in the middle of preparing dinner, I was missing an ingredient. But also, I was trying to do dishes as I was preparing dinner and I realized I was out of dish soap. And by the way, I could actually use a new scrubber. So, right. So. I ended up </p><p>[00:11:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> could think of other things. </p><p>[00:11:33] Yeah. </p><p>[00:11:34] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> into household essential. So And then the other use case that has come up in my household is you&#39;re sick and you just. It&#39;s not easy for a parent to go out to Walgreens or CVS to get cold medicine. It&#39;s nice when it comes to you. </p><p>[00:11:46] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, that&#39;s a good point. And that&#39;s one of those, kind of tangible use cases for why you have to have it now.</p><p>[00:11:51] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yep.</p><p>[00:11:51] Absolutely.</p><p>[00:11:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That makes sense. So another interesting I talked about this briefly before we were recording. Lots of talk about personalization. </p><p>[00:11:59] And you know, the first thing I think of when I hear everybody talking about that as well, haven&#39;t we been talking about personalization in retail for, for years now. </p><p>[00:12:07] And It&#39;s almost like there is an awakening with the grocery space that I actually need to worry about this, that, you know, if everybody&#39;s talking about.</p><p>[00:12:15] omni-channel and, and how, like I&#39;m going to use that to optimize my profitability and kind of compensate for high cost of e-commerce. What do you, what do you think is going on there in all this personalization talk that&#39;s happening?</p><p>[00:12:28] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Well, In general, I glaze over when I hear personalization because it&#39;s this big nebulous term. But then my, my second impulse is to say, well, let&#39;s break it down. What, when does personalization really matter? So in a digital experience, </p><p>[00:12:40] Here&#39;s a perfect. example. When I go and do an Instacart order or another e-commerce order. </p><p>[00:12:46] I like the fact that it knows what I got last time, and it can and can serve up those relevant, basket building, items right away. So that streamlines my trip and you know, it&#39;s already done half the work for me. </p><p>[00:12:57] That&#39;s a nice version of personalization, Obviously coupons and things of that nature. Getting the right coupons. To the right consumers. </p><p>[00:13:05] Is isn&#39;t a major benefit. So I think the applications are pretty strong. in the grocery category in a way that it isn&#39;t always elsewhere. </p><p>[00:13:13] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes sense. </p><p>[00:13:15] It has a little bit more, I guess I&#39;m going to say direct value. For the consumer and something that, that speaks right to a need in the moment </p><p>[00:13:23] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Absolutely. But I&#39;m the wrong consumer because I just it&#39;s too much noise to try and manage coupon. So I I know</p><p>[00:13:29] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I agree</p><p>[00:13:29] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> I&#39;m, I&#39;m different than most consumers. But it just, I, I go right past that.</p><p>[00:13:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Same here. I&#39;m just like that. </p><p>[00:13:37] Is there anything that surprises you that people are either not talking about at all, or that there&#39;s very little conversation going on. </p><p>[00:13:43] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> I think I&#39;ve only seen the word metaverse twice the whole conference on a couple of booths. </p><p>[00:13:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. Yeah.</p><p>[00:13:49] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> and that&#39;s a good thing. Although as you and I were talking about before we recorded</p><p>[00:13:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:13:55] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Maybe the metaverse, you know, the best use case for it isn&#39;t food shopping. </p><p>[00:13:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. Yeah. </p><p>[00:13:59] And I did actually hear in, in fairness, right, did hear one of the CPG brands on stage bring up that point exactly in that way. </p><p>[00:14:07] And She mentioned ,I can see a fashion use case. I think that&#39;s a pretty clear cut one, but if the consumer can&#39;t taste it or smell it or understand.</p><p>[00:14:16] what it&#39;s really going to be for them in the metaverse, then what&#39;s the value in them engaging with, with a food brand. In this matter. And so. The conclusion was kind of, well, I just don&#39;t know how to, how do I define the value here for the consumer? If it&#39;s not valuable for our consumer, why should we invest in it.</p><p>[00:14:32] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. Grocery shopping. I don&#39;t see that use case very strongly. But listen the metaverse today, I would say is really gaming and, and kind of the evolution of gaming. But gamers are an irrelevant audience, and so having brands, especially if you&#39;re a brand that, Mountain Dew or, or the like that, that really core to younger consumers That&#39;s relevant. So they should be in gaming. In game advertising. And if you want to call it a metaverse call a metaverse. </p><p>[00:14:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. Yeah but it&#39;s still at the, so more of like a brand affinity brand awareness kind of play rather than the true commerce environment. </p><p>[00:15:02] Here&#39;s another one for you, that There was an interesting announcement by Firework. It was a live streaming provider with a new partnership they have with Walmart. Now to bring livestreaming to Walmart&#39;s e-commerce. And I find this interesting and where I see these live streaming developments, I&#39;ve been a big proponent that, that live streaming is going to be meaningful. For commerce, but I, I I&#39;ve signed. </p><p>[00:15:23] Altered my view, at least a little bit. I&#39;m curious, but you think that It&#39;s not really being driven by the social media platforms anymore. It&#39;s this really seems to be more about very customized things with a core technology that a retailer or a brand can acquire. Integrate it with their platform at their own site, and then use that as their live streaming interface for consumers. And if you go to Firework&#39;s booth here at the show, I noticed that they&#39;re showing examples of, you know, a grocer who&#39;s doing the live cooking session.</p><p>[00:15:50] And I&#39;m going to assume here for the moment That that makes sense if they can somehow tie it into the e-commerce platform And I&#39;m watching the live stream and they say, you know what? I&#39;d like to make that tonight. Where&#39;s the button I click or tap to actually put in a grocery order for all those ingredients. </p><p>[00:16:04] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. So I&#39;ll say that I do buy the premise of bringing that media experience to where it&#39;s contextually relevant. But I will also say that media is competing with viewing other media</p><p>[00:16:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. That&#39;s </p><p>[00:16:18] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> And so the, I think there&#39;s a high quality bar. And so what I think you could also see as a lot of players experiment with the format. And they&#39;re just not going to do it all that well. We&#39;ve seen Amazon live has not taken off. And part of it is like, </p><p>[00:16:31] They haven&#39;t gotten the right influencers. the content is not there. And so, </p><p>[00:16:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. It&#39;s just not </p><p>[00:16:35] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> consumers tune out. So I will just say that what I&#39;m looking for for that to work is the content has to be great. </p><p>[00:16:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, that makes sense. </p><p>[00:16:41] Now I agree. I agree. It definitely has to have the right content. A lot of it, I think, has to do again, like what you were saying earlier. It has to do with what the consumer is thinking and doing in the moment. And how applicable is it?</p><p>[00:16:51] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Absolutely. </p><p>[00:16:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, Andrew, once again, this has been an amazing discussion with you, so glad you can come back on the show again today. </p><p>[00:16:58] If Listeners want to reach out to you get in touch with you, learn more about the work you&#39;re doing. What&#39;s the best way for them to reach out.</p><p>[00:17:04] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> LinkedIn is the easiest. That&#39;s where I share my work and where I listen to all the smart people on LinkedIn and learn from them. That&#39;s a key input to my analysis is learning from the other smart people in the industry </p><p>[00:17:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> have to agree with that, but we&#39;re always in a learning mode in this industry for sure </p><p>[00:17:21] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> A hundred percent.</p><p>[00:17:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Great. Well, Thanks again, Andrew.</p><p>[00:17:23] I appreciate you joining me today. </p><p>[00:17:24] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Thanks for inviting me. </p><p>[00:17:25]</p><h3>[00:17:25] Krystina Gustafson Interview</h3><p>[00:17:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Welcome to the retail razor show special grocery shop edition for 2022. </p><p>[00:17:41] I&#39;m here continuing our series of conversations with retail transformers and talking, all things, grocery and consumer goods, And I&#39;m thrilled to be joined right now with Krystina Gustafson, SVP of content for Grocery shop, Krystina, it&#39;s fantastic to have you here. </p><p>[00:17:57] Yeah, </p><p>[00:17:57] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> I&#39;m thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for making it out to the show and taking the time to chat with me.</p><p>[00:18:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I appreciate it. So tell us a little bit about just some of the background. Like how is this Grocery shop comparing to past ones? What are you seeing is kind of the interesting things that have caught your attention. Maybe feedback from attendees versus past editions. </p><p>[00:18:16] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Yeah, it&#39;s a great question. I think first and foremost, just sort of a statistic wise, our biggest show to date. So we have 4,000 attendees joining us here in Las Vegas about double the size that we were last year, which was a little down just given the nature of where we were in the pandemic cycle. I have to say when, when we came back to Las Vegas last year, I thought there was going to be no similar buzz that would, that would sort of meet the bar of last year&#39;s. It was really just kind of the first time that everyone was getting back together after the pandemic, it sort of felt like people were, were running around just buzz, completely excited. </p><p>[00:18:50] We actually were losing speakers because they&#39;d come to the speaker lounge and then they&#39;d get distracted because they saw someone that they knew they got very excited. They would, they would kind of run off. And so actually we&#39;ve had to sort of implement a longer lead time for, for people to come to the speaker lounge ahead of their session. Exactly. Exactly. </p><p>[00:19:05] But no, I think what&#39;s been really fascinating to see as it&#39;s just a different kind of buzz, this year right. It sort of feels like last year, it was just that, you know, first day of school, excitement, you know, you&#39;re, you&#39;re back with all your friends and it&#39;s so fun. And this year it feels like a very big buzz around the content again and just kind of what people are here to learn. They feel very hungry for knowledge.</p><p>[00:19:23] And I think a lot of that is just this inflection point that we&#39;re at in the industry today where, you know they don&#39;t have to innovate anymore, quite frankly. Right?</p><p>[00:19:30] If they kind of want to stop and say, Hey, we&#39;re seeing a slow down in the economy, consumers are going back to stores. You know, this isn&#39;t necessarily the top of our priority list anymore. And so I think everyone that&#39;s here are the folks that realize this transformation is real.</p><p>[00:19:43] And so they&#39;re just really hungry to meet with other people who are of a similar mindset. And, and make those connections as well as kind of learn from from folks. </p><p>[00:19:52] Either with their peers at table talks, which are, you know, sort of group discussions or in the more traditional sort of track session formats where they&#39;re hearing from, from other speakers. </p><p>[00:19:59] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I&#39;ve been through different sessions at the show of this week, the content has been really, really wonderful.</p><p>[00:20:05] There&#39;s been a good variety of things. You know, great, great, great choices on the speakers by the way. I think that&#39;s been really, really fantastic. </p><p>[00:20:11] This year, I loved the, the mix of different retailers that you have with some of the brands.</p><p>[00:20:15] I think it kind of felt to me I could be wrong, but it felt like compared to the last Grocery shop I was at was the 2019 one. And compared to that one, it was a lot more sessions that had a mix of retailers and brands, which always feels kind of interesting because you could expect sometimes there&#39;s gonna be a little bit of tension in that discussion topic, but I think it&#39;s worked out really, really well in a lot of the sessions. </p><p>[00:20:33] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Yeah, To be honest, it&#39;s something we&#39;ve always strived for. So I&#39;m glad to hear that. It&#39;s, it&#39;s something that you&#39;ve, you&#39;ve sort of seen come through in the sessions themselves. I agree with you, you know, I&#39;m a reformed journalist. I like to say. So I always sorta think about, if you&#39;re reporting a story, you have to have your three different sources, right.</p><p>[00:20:48] And so a lot of times you want those to be sort of, two folks within the industry. Maybe you want a consumer, maybe you want a regulatory board, but, but the point of it is by having three different perspectives, you kind of triangulate to something that everyone in the audience can relate to. And not just kind of have, retailer one, echo what retailer two saying, and then followed up by retailer three. So we work really, really hard, not just to curate the session topics, but the mix of perspectives that you&#39;re going to hear on any given topic.</p><p>[00:21:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, so, one thing that I&#39;ve found interesting this year. And again, I&#39;m comparing to a few years back from my personal experience. But the kinds of technologies, that we&#39;re talking about, It feels to me like we&#39;re, we&#39;re not talking about the things I might necessarily have expected was had evolved from previous years.</p><p>[00:21:27] And maybe that&#39;s to be expected just Because of where we are and you know, what, everything that happened through COVID for grocers and, and brands. </p><p>[00:21:33] Are you seeing something similar? Does it look the same from your perspective?</p><p>[00:21:36] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> It&#39;s a really good question. You know, we, we kind of came out with this thesis of just kind of where grocery e-comm is on a digital maturity scale, you know, pre pandemic throughout the pandemic and then where we are today. And I think previously, it was just kind of, people were testing and learning, you know, they were testing the waters, they were just kind of doing, quite frankly, the basics, right. </p><p>[00:21:55] Whether it was working with third-party partners, for things like delivery, whether it was just kind of like, you know, testing and experimenting with personalization, I think to your point, those things are still very important today, but people are thinking about sort of, how can they take this one step farther? </p><p>[00:22:07] So from our perspective, it went from kind of like the nuts and bolts to, Okay.</p><p>[00:22:11] We have to stand this up because we quite frankly have no choice if</p><p>[00:22:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right now it&#39;s table stakes. </p><p>[00:22:15] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Yeah, exactly, if we don&#39;t roll out curbside, no one&#39;s going to get their groceries. No one&#39;s going to be able to eat. So, so let&#39;s just kind of like push it out as fast as possible. I think from there, people have kind of been fine-tuning those products, But in addition to it, people are thinking about how the future of online grocery can look different. And what I mean by that is, you know, It&#39;s always been about convenience and it will still be about convenience. Heck we added an entire track dedicated to the theme of convenience.</p><p>[00:22:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I went to a number of those sessions. </p><p>[00:22:38] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> But however, It also needs to be about experience. And so I think from our perspective, it&#39;s about, making sure you&#39;re still, you know, getting to see those technologies that you really need to run your business. We understand everyone has finite budget, so we need to make sure that we&#39;re still representing those sorts of businesses, but then also giving people the flexibility to imagine what it could look like in the future, whether it&#39;s using livestream shopping, you know, Is it going to be the metaverse. </p><p>[00:23:02] So we didn&#39;t lean too heavily into that at the show,</p><p>[00:23:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I noticed that.</p><p>[00:23:05] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> it&#39;s not. I don&#39;t think As big of an opportunity. at least currently for grocery as maybe fashion </p><p>[00:23:10] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Maybe more maybe longterm. </p><p>[00:23:11] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Exactly, exactly. But, You know, we want to make sure that we do have some perspectives on that represented so that people can, you know, start thinking what? This might look like 10 years down the road.</p><p>[00:23:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. You know, an Interesting note as you&#39;ve mentioned on the convenience track, one theme that I heard a lot of are from both retailers and brands that they&#39;re seeing consumers take a perspective, that rather than thinking ,what do I need to buy for the week?</p><p>[00:23:34] It&#39;s now what I want to buy for tonight. </p><p>[00:23:36] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Yeah. Well, it&#39;s so Interesting.</p><p>[00:23:38] And you know, it was also, I I&#39;ve heard this from a couple of other speakers. I think Fidji Simo from Instacart was one, one person to talk about it. And actually I think from door dash, they were talking about it as well. It just really depends on what the shopping occasion is. Right. I feel like we&#39;ve constantly heard. </p><p>[00:23:52] Oh, you know, 15 minutes delivery is so great when you forget a certain ingredient. It&#39;s like, how often does that actually </p><p>[00:23:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Exactly. </p><p>[00:23:58] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> We hear that phrase so </p><p>[00:24:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It&#39;s always like the first use case. Everyone brings up, But really how often, if you think about it yourself, how often are you in that position? </p><p>[00:24:05] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> it&#39;s a Very very and quite frankly, if that happens, let&#39;s play my excuse to like order takeout. So I actually thought it was really interesting. </p><p>[00:24:12] Oh, gosh, I wish I could remember the speaker who was talking about this, but It was essentially saying you know, 15 minute delivery isn&#39;t necessarily something that isn&#39;t going to work. It just needs to be a part of a broader portfolio. Right. So. If door dash is going to do, you know, 15 minute delivery. That&#39;s great. But they also need to have sort of a, the longer lead time sorts of options so that they can make those 15 minutes deliveries profitable and kind of the same thing to, to a retailer as well.</p><p>[00:24:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right, right. So I have to ask you this question too, for your thoughts, because if I were to pick the one thing that I feel like almost everyone has talked about, and frankly, just walking down the hall. you see it visually everywhere. and that&#39;s retail media networks,</p><p>[00:24:49] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> I knew you were going to say it. I </p><p>[00:24:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You knew where I was going with that. </p><p>[00:24:53] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Yeah. It&#39;s it&#39;s so funny. You know, when we are programming the show, We&#39;re always so careful because every single spot on our agenda is merit based. Right, We don&#39;t do any pay to play. That&#39;s a really big sort of sticking point for us. And so I think we&#39;ve always been very careful when we&#39;re selecting technology vendors to speak on stage, it&#39;s, you know, we want you to be strategic. </p><p>[00:25:11] Obviously we want you to talk about your solution, but we want you to, to sort of bring some thought leadership to this and talk about an authentic way. And we were laughing. We&#39;re like, we&#39;re going to have these conversations with the retailers, because all they want to do is go on stage and plug their retail media networks. </p><p>[00:25:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> cause they&#39;re now in the business, right. Of selling to other businesses. They&#39;re suddenly a B2B business instead of just a B2C </p><p>[00:25:29] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Yes, it&#39;s getting very, very complicated. But no, I hear you. It&#39;s, it&#39;s been a huge theme of the show and I think just everyone Is very aware of the growth that is expected to come out of this. I think for me, a lot of the interesting discussions are about you know, sort of who&#39;s doing it well, what CPG brands need from their retail partners, thinking again, sort of about what&#39;s to come and sort of how these will play out in physical stores because I think that&#39;s also been kind of a big theme throughout the show is just kind of how, how the physical store is transforming. </p><p>[00:25:54] And so it&#39;s going to be a really interesting space to walk over the next couple of years. </p><p>[00:25:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, it&#39;s interesting. I was talking with one of the speakers earlier that in one of my previous roles I did a lot of work with and this&#39;ll be dating a and I&#39;ll take them on a technology perspective of delivering digital signage solutions into stores. And I was joking with someone, you know, back in those days. As if we&#39;re only talking 2015, maybe. </p><p>[00:26:18] You know, one of the pitches as a digital signage technology provider, we always had was to every retailer ,you know, you could turn this into a media network, right? You can talk to the brands that you sell and actually, so position advertising on these screens. Have you thought about doing that? </p><p>[00:26:31] And what I find fascinating is that now everyone&#39;s talking about this now, right? We just don&#39;t use the words, digital signage, because that&#39;s, that has an awful connotation. Apparently. But I find that when we talked about it before, because I as the technology provider then was talking to someone in IT, about that. And it wasn&#39;t really an IT technology message. It was really more of a marketing, advertising message. </p><p>[00:26:53] Oh, And it didn&#39;t involve people in store operations. So it tended to just go nowhere with most retailers that we tried that with, and it&#39;s just night and day difference with where we&#39;re at now </p><p>[00:27:02] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> I love that point because I think that&#39;s so often what we kind of try to, I don&#39;t want to say the word preach, but I guess it is kind of preaching in some capacity. It&#39;s like you can&#39;t dismiss innovation at any capacity, right.</p><p>[00:27:12] Like we were joking about the metaverse earlier and saying, okay, well we don&#39;t see the application today. It Doesn&#39;t mean there&#39;s </p><p>[00:27:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Doesn&#39;t mean there won&#39;t be.</p><p>[00:27:18] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Right. And there&#39;s going to be elements of that, AJ Dalal from Publicis Sapient actually did a presentation on, on what the applications for the metaverse could for the future of our industry and he was talking about it from, from, I would say more of a CPG perspective, but you think about sort of the opportunities for loyalty, you think about just kind of like actually assigning a value to some of these like NFTs or, or, you know, it doesn&#39;t have to be sort of this pie in the sky version of the metaverse that we&#39;re all reading about. Right. And so I think it&#39;s very easy to just kind of laugh and say, oh, that&#39;s never going to work. Right, But there are going to be certain building blocks to your point that even if they don&#39;t work today, maybe 10 years down the road, </p><p>[00:27:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right. right. </p><p>[00:27:53] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> about </p><p>[00:27:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Or there could be, it could come surface up to the top and then priority for that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. </p><p>[00:27:59] So last thing I wanted to ask you about.</p><p>[00:28:01] What&#39;s your perspective on how the expo hall fits into the overall grocery shop experience, if there&#39;s anything in particular. that is catching your attention, that you&#39;re hearing feedback from folks about what they&#39;re experiencing walking through the expo hall. </p><p>[00:28:15] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Yeah, it&#39;s a great question. I mean, I think from our perspective, all week. I shouldn&#39;t say all we care about but the biggest priority. is that it&#39;s buzzy. Right. And that there&#39;s a lot of energy. And I have to say our I can take absolutely no credit for this, but our sales team and our ops team have done a fantastic job. Just kind of reinventing. I always thought that our our expo hall was very elevated. Just from, from sort of an experience, but we&#39;ve really built up our lounges. So we have a relaxed lounge where you can go and sort of get massages. We have a swag store this year.</p><p>[00:28:41] We&#39;ve never </p><p>[00:28:42] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I saw it. </p><p>[00:28:42] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> store before, so you can kind of go in and grab your Shoptalk Cuddy, which by the way, We&#39;re not allowed to grab because we have to save them for the attendees. So I&#39;m praying. There are a couple of leftover.</p><p>[00:28:50] Yeah. I&#39;m. There&#39;s some leftover after the show, but, you know, get your grocery shop, branded water bottle and there&#39;s stuff in there I&#39;m from sponsor. So that&#39;s been really fun. So I think. For us, it&#39;s just kind of trying to make sure the exhibit hall is a place that people want to be quite frankly I would say the addition to that is our hosted retailers and brands program is always kind of the heart of what we&#39;re trying to do.</p><p>[00:29:11] I think serendipitous connections are fantastic. And, and, and, you know, everyone comes here, right. To see who they&#39;re going to run into have spontaneous conversations. But at the end of the day, sometimes a little bit of pre-planning. It goes a really long way. And so I think. </p><p>[00:29:24] It kind of pairing that just kind of buzzy fun exhibit hall experience with the hosted program, where you come into the event having pre-planned meetings with, if you&#39;re a solution provider retailers or brands, or, you know, vice versa. </p><p>[00:29:36] You know you&#39;re going to get ROI. And so I think in those capacities, like it makes it a little bit easier for you to be like, yeah, I&#39;m just going to go grab a margarita and kind of like, enjoy the ride. </p><p>[00:29:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right, right. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. </p><p>[00:29:47] Well, Krystina, thank you so much for joining me here. It&#39;s been a pleasure chatting with you. I&#39;d love going through all the ins and outs of what&#39;s going on here at grocery shop and you know, just kudos again, to pulling off such a great event. It&#39;s been a fantastic experience. </p><p>[00:30:00] <strong>Krystina Gustafson:</strong> Awesome. Well, it&#39;s been good to have you here and thanks for having me join you. </p><p>[00:30:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Great. Thank you! </p><p>[00:30:03]</p><h3>[00:30:03] Show Close</h3><p>[00:30:03] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We hope you enjoyed our show and we can&#39;t ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don&#39;t wanna miss a minute of what&#39;s next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don&#39;t forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden. </p><p>[00:30:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:30:54] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:30:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the Retail razor Show. </p> e8819cc3-05c6-4699-9106-12ee040e1299 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 14 Oct 2022 23:30:00 +0000 1876 no full S2E3b SPECIAL Groceryshop 2022 Part 2 - Lisa Kinney of Albertsons & Dave Steck of Schnuck Markets S2E3b SPECIAL Groceryshop 2022 Part 2 - Lisa Kinney of Albertsons & Dave Steck of Schnuck Markets 3 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert 3b SPECIAL Groceryshop 2022 Part 2 - Lisa Kinney of Albertsons & Dave Steck of Schnuck Markets Missed Groceryshop 2022? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered! Welcome to another SPECIAL EDITION season 2, episode 3, Part 2, Groceryshop recap! We’re bringing you 6 great interviews recorded live and in-person at Groceryshop in Las Vegas, NV, bundled up in 3 episodes with 2 interviews each. For part 2, we hear very unique perspectives from two amazing, experienced grocery retailers. First, we speak with Lisa Kinney, VP of Customer Market Intelligence for Albertsons, who talks about the value of data in grocery, and asks the “why” question in a way that no one really expresses on stage at a show like Grocery Shop. Then we chat with Dave Steck, VP of IT Infrastructure and Application Development for Schnuck Markets. We get into why his approach to emerging technologies at Schnuck Markets is so different from what we hear from other grocers. You'll be hard pressed to find more unique insights and commentary anywhere else in less than 30 minutes! We’ll be back soon with 2 more Groceryshop themed episodes and another 2 amazing interviews! News update! We’re at #21 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way deep into the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Swag Tag and Brag, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT SPECIAL Edition: Groceryshop 2022, Part 2 [00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: [00:00:20] Introduction to Part 2 [00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode three, part two of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar [00:00:27] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome Retail Razor Show listeners to our unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike. So Ricardo, part one of our grocery shop series was quite interesting. We heard from an awesome startup, Grocery Shopii and their CEO Katie Hotze. She was amazing and really makes me wanna go shop for groceries, which I haven't done in literally years. which is pretty incredible. [00:01:01] Ricardo Belmar: Katie is pretty amazing. You have to love her approach to making grocery shopping easier, healthier, and to me most importantly, faster while saving money. Definitely expect to hear more about Grocery Shopii in the future. [00:01:14] Casey Golden: Absolutely. And then you talked with Stuart Samuel about trends at the first half of the show. No surprise there, retail media networks, just as we predicted at the beginning of the year, were very p rominent [00:01:27] Ricardo Belmar: And no doubt about it. And he also talked about a few other trends around profitability with eCommerce, convenience services and current shopper trends driven by economic conditions. For listeners, if you haven't checked out part one, you definitely need to. [00:01:41] Casey Golden: So Ricardo, what do we have coming up in part two for this episode? [00:01:46] Ricardo Belmar: This episode may just blow your mind. I, I interviewed two experienced retailers in grocery, Lisa Kenney, VP of Customer Market Intelligence for Albertsons, and Dave Steck, VP of IT Infrastructure and Application Development for Schnuck Markets. Each of them gave a very unique perspective on many of the trends we heard about in part one. [00:02:06] In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find more unique insights and commentary anywhere else. If you're wondering why I say that, it's because both take a very different view of technology trends in grocery and start by asking one of my favorite questions, and quite frankly, probably one of the most valuable words in any language... why?. [00:02:24] Casey Golden: Wow, that's quite a setup you just dropped. Tell us some more. [00:02:28] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I wanna give everything away, but, Okay. A few spoilers. Lisa and I talk about the value of data in grocery, and she asks why in a way that no one really expressed on stage at the show. She goes into detail on the behind the scenes conversations grocers have at a show like Grocery Shop that you don't normally hear on stage. [00:02:47] And if that isn't shocking enough to listen to, she offers a very different take on retail media networks that may just completely change your perspective on this. [00:02:55] Casey Golden: Okay. Wow. Now I really wanna jump into this. Is your interview with Dave just as juicy. [00:03:01] Ricardo Belmar: You bet. Dave is practically an icon at Grocery Shop. He's been on stage at every Grocery Shop each year talking about emerging technology like robotics, IoT, and more. We get into why his approach and what Schnuck Markets is doing seems to be so different from what we hear from other grocers. And spoiler alert when you hear him explain why, you just might have some flashbacks to our episode with Andy Laudato from the Vitamin Shoppe about his book Fostering Innovation. [00:03:27] It all comes down to corporate culture, and you'll hear what I mean by that. It's pretty powerful. [00:03:31] Casey Golden: Okay, so I thought part one was jam packed with incredible nuggets. Now you're making me think part two is going to top that. [00:03:39] Ricardo Belmar: Well, don't say I didn't warn you. If you wanted to take notes during part one, then you better get some extra sheets of paper out for this one. It's just crazy. This is an episode that I would put under the column of things that make you go, hmm. [00:03:51] Casey Golden: All right. Now you're just going totally over the top with that kind of setup. We better just dive right in and get right to it. I'm stoked. Let's listen together to Lisa Kinney and Dave Steck recorded live and in person at Grocery Shop 2022. [00:04:08] [00:04:08] Lisa Kinney Interview [00:04:08] Ricardo Belmar: and welcome to the Retail Razor Show Special Edition Groceryshop Episode. I'm here today with special guest Lisa Kinney, VP of customer market intelligence. for Albertsons. Welcome to the show, Lisa. [00:04:28] Lisa Kinney: thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. [00:04:30] Ricardo Belmar: So you and I were chatting a little bit before we recorded about what seems to be the most interesting here at the show are the things that we're not hearing people talk about on stage. [00:04:39] Almost like a what's behind the scenes, really of interest and value to people in the industry. And we kind of ended up landing on a discussion about data. With which to be fair, right. Has been a big part of a lot of the discussions on stage, but they've all centered around what I would call the outcome of what you do with the data you have that might be customer facing and it might be more B2B facing because as a retailer, I'm going to sell a service around this to someone else, but you had a very unique and interesting perspective about how grocers are looking at the data. [00:05:13] Lisa Kinney: Yeah, I think. There's a few things, Thanks for teeing that up. I think. The things that aren't discussed on it, that are discussed amongst peers, which is wonderful that after 30 years in this business, We have, we have industry peers that work with competitors that work You know, that are in consultancy now. [00:05:33] And we've all been in the data game for quite some time, at least myself in particular. , and so it's nice that the conversations offstage are really about like, are you guys running into this problem too? [00:05:44] Are you worried about what I'm seeing or that isn't being talked about? And it's nice that we can put down the, I work for X company. [00:05:52] And I need to view you as a competitor and we actually then have a lot of off the record great conversations around what's really happening behind. You know, behind the tent per se. [00:06:03] And so on the data space as I was listening to, there's a couple of things first, I'll talk about just this, I think it's, been a revolution of technology. And I think we talked a little bit about. [00:06:13] Look. Yeah. The change that's happened has been out of an uncontrollable demand that really accelerated everyone to solve for things that have been problems for, for quite some time. Perpetual inventory, you know, finding ways to optimize labor, finding a shorter path to distance from farm to table. All of those things have been on the minds for all of us. [00:06:35] for quite some time, but I don't think has been quite as pressing up until now. So. When we think about the data side. Now we have all this new, cool technology like scan and go and new frictionless payment. [00:06:46] Systems and, and the smart cards and, And in my mind, having monetized data for so many years, I'm asking, gosh, I hope all these partners that are working with these new tech companies recognize that really the race is the data race. [00:07:02] it's all about the data. [00:07:04] Ricardo Belmar: all about the data. [00:07:05] Lisa Kinney: And even when we were talking, oh, We were talking offline about the Instacart proposition and it was very clear today that an advantage that they have built through the data that they're collecting and a very challenging channel to understand which is the e-commerce channel. So I look at it like, I hope that everyone is thinking about. [00:07:25] Who's really trying to, is it really about providing a service that's going to meet the needs of customers? Or is there an underpinning of data. that has high profitability, really high margins, and ultimately is really what they're going after. So I just think we have to be a little careful. [00:07:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. It's part who do you choose as the partner and then part, once you've chosen the partner, how do you define the relationship? [00:07:48] Lisa Kinney: How do you define the relationship? And I think one of the the most telling questions anyone could ask is how do you make money? [00:07:53] Ricardo Belmar: Right. What's their business model. [00:07:55] Lisa Kinney: What is your, like how do you make money? And ultimately when you start peeling the layers, you might find that it might even be not profitable at all. But they are banking on, you know, and I'm not, I'm not speaking disparagingly of [00:08:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, right, right, right. [00:08:08] Lisa Kinney: But, but I just think it's something that's woven throughout all of this. That's not necessarily Front and center in the discussion. [00:08:15] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And it's so something you have to think about to see how it solves your problem. Right. [00:08:19] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so along those lines, one of the other things we were talking about before that, that very directly relates to everything about data is what's happening around retail media networks. What are your thoughts there? [00:08:32] Lisa Kinney: Yeah. And so I'll speak. And As a reminder. and disclaimer, I am only speaking as Lisa Kinney. 30 years of being around the block a few times. And so this is just my opinion. [00:08:44] So my opinion is something's going to disrupt this whole retail media ecosystem that's being developed right now. I think every retailer is looking for ways to drive alternative revenue. I think that's of no surprise. I think the data game was really it 20 years ago. I think Kroger obviously, and, you know, having worked with them in that space. [00:09:05] In the very beginning. When that was being developed. it was a data play for a long time and then it, And then it's become a media play. And I think every retailer is my audience is bigger than your audience. or my partner is better than your partner. So, you know, I can I can now do. attribution and get brand dollars and the, in the digital TV world and I can do right. [00:09:26] Ricardo Belmar: right. Yep. All about making it more attractive to the [00:09:28] Lisa Kinney: Yes. Yes. And as a brand, having been a brand long, long ago. so really long time I start thinking about. okay, so now. I'm a trade planner. I'm in trade marketing. Where does. Where does. Retail media fit in to that? I know, I used to say it doesn't come out at trade dollars. I mean, that was my selling profit. That it doesn't come out a trade, it's it's, this is brand funded. [00:09:55] And perhaps it's a bit true, but as a brand then, so now I'm the brand owner, so I'm, I own brand X. And I've got to make a decision on how I take my media plan that I want to develop for my brand and now I've got to go sell it in and try and figure out how to activate. Against all these retail audiences and quite frankly. just so that we all understand. These audiences are all overlapping. [00:10:18] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:10:19] Lisa Kinney: It's an 80% of the cases. I'd say they're the same. So, So are you going to pay four times to reach that? So it's interesting. I mean, maybe I'm being too simplistic about it, but I'm like, I wonder, I wonder. Who's going to come in and say, you know what, don't worry about going direct to retail. Don't worry about each individual. RMN We've got the solution for you. I don't know if it's in the payment space. [00:10:43] I don't know if it's going to be, I mean, I hate to name company names, but I really feel like someone's going to come in and say, this is a really fragmented world to talk to the same shared common customer. And Somebody has access to that shared common customer And it might actually not be the retailer. [00:11:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:11:01] yeah, but they can kind of give you an aggregated view [00:11:03] Lisa Kinney: Sure [00:11:04] Sure [00:11:05] Ricardo Belmar: retailers, right? Because they know who they may know who the customer is. They may have a better data point that, that kind of fingers out at you. It's this customer [00:11:13] And they visit these four stores or these four different retailers. So I can help you target them much better than the individual retailers [00:11:20] Lisa Kinney: correct! Cause you're going to pay 10 X and that particular person's. to the highest bidder, like, [00:11:25] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. I think It's a fascinating. point because it kind of brings us almost back full circle, right. To how all advertising started. Where you had these access to gigantic audiences. In a more centralized way to reach as many people as you could. And in some ways, I guess for me, that goes a little bit against the retail media premise that you're trying to, I'm kind of pitching to you. I have a narrow focused audience that is therefore, because it's narrowly focused more valuable to you. At least I think that's the premise, and that's the pitch. [00:11:54] But to your point, if you're the brand well, is that really what I want is that helping me. [00:11:59] Is it too narrow? Do I need to kind of back up and say, well, I need, I need a broader reach because I'm a national brand. I need to reach as many. It's great that I know who I'm reaching more specifically, I'll use an example like where I live, there is, I don't know, four or five different grocery stores nearby. [00:12:15] So I'm pretty sure if I guessed the people in my neighborhood, don't all say I only ever go to that one store and I never visit the other three [00:12:23] Lisa Kinney: We'll call that never. [00:12:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that's the never use case. Nope. Nobody acts that I think if you asked everyone in my neighborhood and would say, oh yeah, of the five grocery stores, I probably regularly visit three [00:12:33] Lisa Kinney: Correct. [00:12:34] Correct. And I think that that's the interesting pieces because I, I. There's a part of me. that's at one point whichever. retailer just says, you know what, I'm not going to, I'm just going to, I'm going to take my data and I am just gonna pipe it to the top three agencies that do all the brand media. [00:12:52] Like the, you know, the top ones, right. I'm just going to pipe my data there. And, And and let them go, like, buy audiences you have all our behavior data. I mean, I'm talking a world of like what ifs and that would not happen, but you think about it. I'm like maybe that would be the first for winner. [00:13:08] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Well, maybe if there's that sort of aggregator out there that comes whether it's a revenue share or some other business model that. That you know, it helps create that incremental stream that. [00:13:17] Lisa Kinney: Or it's just not a retailer at all. And it's somebody [00:13:20] Ricardo Belmar: Whereas somebody else, it could be a, it could be a new tech company that hasn't come, come [00:13:23] Lisa Kinney: Correct. It's coming. [00:13:24] Ricardo Belmar: out how to do it. Yeah, [00:13:25] no that's a [00:13:25] Lisa Kinney: fragmented. I think, I think it's just, you know one plus one plus one. Yeah. [00:13:31] Ricardo Belmar: Equals five. [00:13:32] Lisa Kinney: Exactly. Exactly because it's all incremental. right. It's all incremental. That's impossible. [00:13:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, no, that's a great, great point. [00:13:41] Well, Lisa, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been fascinating. I mean, a really different kind of perspective. From everybody I've been talking to so far. I think I'm really intrigued by this idea you brought up that, there there's another solution out there that we're Not quite seeing yet. that somebody is going to come up with. That's going to solve this problem. In a bigger and better way. [00:14:00] Lisa Kinney: Until then. I think that the retail media spaces is transforming quickly. And I think that there's money to be had. And I think that It'll be a fun, profitable, ride for many for, for, for awhile. [00:14:13] But I just don't think that that's going to be the model that's for forever. I just can't envision it, but that's probably an unpopular opinion. So it's just mine. It's just my [00:14:21] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Well, we'll see how it plays out. We'll see how it plays out. And then we can, we can all see who was right about the prediction. [00:14:27] Lisa Kinney: Yeah, right. I know nothing. It's just an observation. [00:14:30] Ricardo Belmar: exactly. Well, Lisa, thanks again for joining me. It's been great talking with you about the grocery spac e [00:14:37] Lisa Kinney: Yes, it's been wonderful. Thanks for having me. [00:14:38] [00:14:38] Dave Steck Interview [00:14:38] Ricardo Belmar: welcome to the Retail Razor Show Special Edition at Grocery shop 2022. [00:14:53] Continuing our series of conversations with true retail transformers to talk all things, grocery and consumer goods. [00:15:00] I'm here now with Dave Steck VP of IT, Infrastructure and Application Development for Schnuck Markets. Dave it's great to have you on the show. And then I have to say you, You must be becoming a, a grocery shop, mainstay as I think you've been a speaker at every single grocery shop haven't you? [00:15:14] Dave Steck: That's correct. [00:15:15] Ricardo Belmar: Well, it's wonderful to have you with us here today. So I guess I have to say the, obviously the reason you've been invited year after year to be a speaker at the show is that you've, you've led a number of innovative technology initiatives at Schnuck Markets. and ranging from deploying robots, IOT, computer vision. and other things in store. [00:15:34] Let's get started by kind of walking me through all these different technologies that you've been talking about and then what your experience has been with them. And getting them deployed to stores and what challenges they're helping you solve. [00:15:44] Dave Steck: Well, obviously, I always talk about robots [00:15:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. [00:15:47] Dave Steck: that was really kind of the first big one that big splash, because everybody's interested in that. and that really started in 2017 with simbe robotics to just understand that technology and what the capabilities were. I think the, the The funny thing. I talk about. Quite often as when we first deployed those that got a lot of press and, I was interviewed. I was interviewed quite a bit by the local radio stations and one of the quotes that I remember saying is, you know, We're most interested in the data that comes back from this. I had no idea what I was talking about. It just sounded good at the time. [00:16:21] But the reality is. You start to understand that data that's coming back from a robot and all the different capabilities that it enables within the, within the business. And that data is just invaluable. [00:16:35] So that's, that's one of the big things that we've been doing. We've looked at lately. Look, electronic shelf labels is another big business enabler for us as well. And that's through different evaluations, we've evaluated three different. Three different types of tags and settled on pretty much settled on one at this point getting ready to, to roll that out across the chain. If the value proposition holds up, like we [00:16:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah Okay [00:17:00] Dave Steck: So, but that there's a lot that goes with electronic shelf label as well as far as capability. [00:17:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:17:09] what have been some of the things that, you know, you were really looking for. As like your, your top value that you want to get out of the electronic shelf labels [00:17:15] Dave Steck: Well, it's an interesting. That's an interesting question because when we first looked at this. Years ago, years ago, I've only been with the company for eight years, but you know three or four years ago. As a matter of fact, the reseller that, that we're working with came and quotes me back on this is. I told him the math equation doesn't work. And it didn't work, but post COVID. [00:17:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah Yeah [00:17:39] Dave Steck: when you're, You're looking at a dwindling labor pool. And you're trying to add the value to the customer and not just going through repetitive processes. You still have to have an ROI. But, but now you have to look at it a little differently. So. The. The math equation is is entirely different. [00:18:01] And that's what makes this kind of exciting is it's something now that. We can do. And now that we can do this. What is the value you can get out of [00:18:12] Ricardo Belmar: Okay you're kind of backing into it in a different way. [00:18:14] Dave Steck: Right. So, you know, understanding, pick to light. Stock to light. People think. Well, everybody in the store knows where everything's at, the store teammates know it. [00:18:24] Right. Yeah. You have to think about turnover. But even then, you know, I've been in the store where there's a stocker that's 10 years with a company. And he loves the ability to turn on the light when he can't find an item, he says, I don't know where everything's at. He said, I've been here years. I still don't know where everything's [00:18:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:18:43] Dave Steck: So you get that. You can get into other capabilities as well, which, you have all these AI pricing engines, Eversight is who we use, But with Eversight you have to be able to change tags on a fairly frequent basis. But with COVID and dwindling labor supply, you can only change so many tags. and then you really have no true way of verifying that that tag was actually hung. So you could be making some AI pricing decisions based off of bad data. With the ESL now, you've got, you know, that, that price was [00:19:20] Ricardo Belmar: You can verify and you've got the validation that the change is made. [00:19:22] Dave Steck: So we're not, we're not, we're not there yet because we don't have ESLs deployed across the company, but that is definitely something that we're looking at as far as capability. There's other, other value That comes from ESL, you can do day part pricing. Other special promotions. You [00:19:37] know for customers who are in your loyalty program ,if there's something that they're looking for. [00:19:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:19:43] Dave Steck: They can push. You know, light up the light as well within the app. So they can actually find the item that they're, that they're looking [00:19:50] Ricardo Belmar: So with a lot of these things that I've heard you talk about this before, and even in past grocery shops, the is the time-saving factor for the workforce in the store, is that typically a major factor that goes into the ROI for you? [00:20:04] Dave Steck: Good question. [00:20:05] Though the robot. So let's start with the robot robot. Everybody thought was well we're, we're cutting hours because you're using a robot [00:20:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah [00:20:12] Dave Steck: And the reality is It wasn't so much a time-saving as it was in accuracy. That the time that we, we allow for at the time. We were doing this. was Four hours a week for store teammates to scan outs. You can't get that done in four hours. When we, we did ourselves, we send it people in there, it took us 12 hours to you go. Yeah. So, doing the, robot wasn't I'm going to cut hours. It was, I'm going to get the experience. for the customers and get the products on the shelf. That's know, you, If you go in. I think it was every three hours or four hours. They had to use the laser temp sensors to go and check all the cases. And. I, if you look at the logs, You know that. The temp. Was never read. It was just somebody writing down. writing down. what they felt like writing down. So, [00:20:57] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. [00:20:58] Yeah. Most likely because of the time involved. Right. [00:21:00] If they want to get it done. [00:21:01] Dave Steck: And you also have no reliance on how they did. it. Everybody has A different way. of doing it. And if they're looking for a certain temperature, they can find it in the case and they can write that temperature down. So with, with temp sensing, you're you're getting a consistent location for the probe or the sensor. [00:21:21] And it's consistent time and you can again, build a data algorithm around that, to know. Your case health. And if there's something going wrong, you get notified about that. And I. We have other sensing within our cases. That is more sophisticated. That's looking at compressor temperatures. And pressure And all that, but getting it into each four foot door. It makes a big difference. [00:21:44] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. no, that makes sense. That makes sense. [00:21:45] So let me ask you this. Cause one thing I've noticed, I've kind of been looking for who else is talking about doing these same kinds of technology deployments that you've done. And I feel that I'm not hearing as much as I would think I would given the amount of time that you've already had these things in place. The years you've invested in getting it deployed. I'm curious what you think are the things holding back, other grocers from doing what you've already done? [00:22:12] Dave Steck: From our perspective. our, from my perspective, we have a mandate. I got, I guess you could say it's a mandate to try new things. And We are, we are constantly trying to try new things. So, there it's part of our reviews. Are you, are you trying new things? So that, that helps. We're family owned. 112 stores. So we don't have the bureaucracy that you get into these large corporations and I've worked for large corporations and I know that the ideation is great. But the execution just gets bogged down because everybody [00:22:48] Ricardo Belmar: Everybody has to have a say in it and be involved. [00:22:50] Dave Steck: Right Yeah. [00:22:51] Ricardo Belmar: it becomes your decision by massive committee. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right. [00:22:56] Dave Steck: analysis paralysis. [00:22:57] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly Yeah. So you're kind of saying it comes down to that corporate culture. And how innovation centric is that culture and their ability to execute on any given innovation. [00:23:06] Dave Steck: Yeah. And you also have a fear factor. [00:23:08] With that as well. Right. A lot of people are scared for their jobs. [00:23:11] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah [00:23:12] Dave Steck: And if you don't have that culture, which failure is okay. [00:23:18] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. that's [00:23:18] Dave Steck: nobody's, nobody's going to try it. [00:23:20] Yeah, [00:23:20] I'm not going to stick my neck out. It's you know, it's like why everybody bought IBM [00:23:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, because you couldn't go wrong. Nobody got fired [00:23:27] Dave Steck: Nobody got fired over [00:23:28] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah no that's a good point. . [00:23:28] So if, If you have someone who's trying to do the, these kinds of things and they look at you and say, Dave, what are some of the lessons you've learned that if you were to go back and do it all over again, What would you do differently? [00:23:40] Dave Steck: Yeah, there's been some big failures. [00:23:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:23:42] Dave Steck: Sometimes. You try Too hard to get to the end result. and you go too fast. There's been a number of things that we've rolled out that we just went crazy and got the implementation done to to get to the end result or the cost savings or whatever. And you stand back and you look at it and you go. Yeah, that was a big mistake. But then, but then you've you fight your way through it? It's. Failures only failure if you allow yourself to say I quit. Right. If If you fail. And keep trying. and fix the problem, then it's not really failure. It's [00:24:19] Ricardo Belmar: it's a learning [00:24:20] Dave Steck: It's a learning experience, and you still get to what you need to get to. It just is a little bit painful. [00:24:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I completely agree with you. It's one of those things that I think it goes back to that corporate culture and culture of innovation as to how the whole organization wants to support that. Because just like you mentioned earlier, there's that fear of failure. And if that's a valid fear, then nobody wants to fail. Right. nobody wants to try anything then because they might fail. [00:24:44] Are there any other technologies like this? You know, you, cause you've done a lot at this point, you've really made good use of all of these things we call emerging technologies in this space. Uh Apart from the electronic shelf labels, are there anything else catching your eye that you're really looking at, either studying or thinking about that's where we're going next. [00:25:01] Dave Steck: Well, a smart carts are, are one thing. Yeah, I've looked at the Amazon go type concepts. [00:25:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:25:07] Dave Steck: It's great, but the infrastructure that's associated with that, the retrofitting of a building I think. I think smart carts are one thing that's really got some, some traction in it. You see more and more of the self scanning as you're, as you're shopping. That's. Failing in places you have too much theft. There's a couple things that I've looked at that. I think our really cool. That I really don't know where the business cases for it. We were looking for indoor GPS. [00:25:33] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. [00:25:34] Dave Steck: So I went through a number of different things with beaconing and we went into visible Did you ever see visible light communication? [00:25:42] Ricardo Belmar: I I looked at them once before, too. [00:25:44] Dave Steck: Yeah. that's really. [00:25:45] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:25:46] Dave Steck: Really accurate. but the customers all hate you because you could kill their battery before they're finished their shopping journey and then You have orient out there, I don't know if you've seen orient or not which is an Israeli company. that does indoor positioning and they're using it on the, off the phone. super accurate but. It's it's understanding. As time. has evolved for us and we've gotten further away. It's how do we, how do we incorporate that, capability into our app and the experience for, for the end customer. And I think eventually we'll get there, but indoor positioning is going to is going to stick at some point. It's it's important. [00:26:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that's definitely [00:26:21] Customers want that, customers want the benefit from that one. [00:26:24] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. [00:26:26] Well, Dave, I really appreciate you joining me today. This has been a fascinating conversation. I love hearing all the different things that you're trying and hearing about the culture of your organization and how you guys go about trying new things. I think that's fantastic. Thanks so much for joining us [00:26:40] Dave Steck: Thank you for having me! [00:26:41] [00:26:41] Show Close [00:26:41] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:27:15] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:27:32] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:27:33] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. Missed Groceryshop 2022? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered! Welcome to another SPECIAL EDITION season 2, episode 3, Part 2, Groceryshop recap!


We’re bringing you 6 great interviews recorded live and in-person at Groceryshop in Las Vegas, NV, bundled up in 3 episodes with 2 interviews each. For part 2, we hear very unique perspectives from two amazing, experienced grocery retailers. First, we speak with Lisa Kinney, VP of Customer Market Intelligence for Albertsons, who talks about the value of data in grocery, and asks the “why” question in a way that no one really expresses on stage at a show like Grocery Shop. Then we chat with Dave Steck, VP of IT Infrastructure and Application Development for Schnuck Markets. We get into why his approach to emerging technologies at Schnuck Markets is so different from what we hear from other grocers. You'll be hard pressed to find more unique insights and commentary anywhere else in less than 30 minutes!


We’ll be back soon with 2 more Groceryshop themed episodes and another 2 amazing interviews!


News update! We’re at #21 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way deep into the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.

Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Swag Tag and Brag, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

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Host → Ricardo Belmar,

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TRANSCRIPT

SPECIAL Edition: Groceryshop 2022, Part 2

[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar:

[00:00:20] Introduction to Part 2

[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode three, part two of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar 

[00:00:27] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome Retail Razor Show listeners to our unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike. So Ricardo, part one of our grocery shop series was quite interesting. We heard from an awesome startup, Grocery Shopii and their CEO Katie Hotze. She was amazing and really makes me wanna go shop for groceries, which I haven't done in literally years. which is pretty incredible. 

[00:01:01] Ricardo Belmar: Katie is pretty amazing. You have to love her approach to making grocery shopping easier, healthier, and to me most importantly, faster while saving money. Definitely expect to hear more about Grocery Shopii in the future.

[00:01:14] Casey Golden: Absolutely. And then you talked with Stuart Samuel about trends at the first half of the show. No surprise there, retail media networks, just as we predicted at the beginning of the year, were very p rominent 

[00:01:27] Ricardo Belmar: And no doubt about it. And he also talked about a few other trends around profitability with eCommerce, convenience services and current shopper trends driven by economic conditions. For listeners, if you haven't checked out part one, you definitely need to. 

[00:01:41] Casey Golden: So Ricardo, what do we have coming up in part two for this episode? 

[00:01:46] Ricardo Belmar: This episode may just blow your mind. I, I interviewed two experienced retailers in grocery, Lisa Kenney, VP of Customer Market Intelligence for Albertsons, and Dave Steck, VP of IT Infrastructure and Application Development for Schnuck Markets. Each of them gave a very unique perspective on many of the trends we heard about in part one.

[00:02:06] In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find more unique insights and commentary anywhere else. If you're wondering why I say that, it's because both take a very different view of technology trends in grocery and start by asking one of my favorite questions, and quite frankly, probably one of the most valuable words in any language... why?.

[00:02:24] Casey Golden: Wow, that's quite a setup you just dropped. Tell us some more.

[00:02:28] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I wanna give everything away, but, Okay. A few spoilers. Lisa and I talk about the value of data in grocery, and she asks why in a way that no one really expressed on stage at the show. She goes into detail on the behind the scenes conversations grocers have at a show like Grocery Shop that you don't normally hear on stage.

[00:02:47] And if that isn't shocking enough to listen to, she offers a very different take on retail media networks that may just completely change your perspective on this.

[00:02:55] Casey Golden: Okay. Wow. Now I really wanna jump into this. Is your interview with Dave just as juicy. 

[00:03:01] Ricardo Belmar: You bet. Dave is practically an icon at Grocery Shop. He's been on stage at every Grocery Shop each year talking about emerging technology like robotics, IoT, and more. We get into why his approach and what Schnuck Markets is doing seems to be so different from what we hear from other grocers. And spoiler alert when you hear him explain why, you just might have some flashbacks to our episode with Andy Laudato from the Vitamin Shoppe about his book Fostering Innovation.

[00:03:27] It all comes down to corporate culture, and you'll hear what I mean by that. It's pretty powerful.

[00:03:31] Casey Golden: Okay, so I thought part one was jam packed with incredible nuggets. Now you're making me think part two is going to top that. 

[00:03:39] Ricardo Belmar: Well, don't say I didn't warn you. If you wanted to take notes during part one, then you better get some extra sheets of paper out for this one. It's just crazy. This is an episode that I would put under the column of things that make you go, hmm.

[00:03:51] Casey Golden: All right. Now you're just going totally over the top with that kind of setup. We better just dive right in and get right to it. I'm stoked. Let's listen together to Lisa Kinney and Dave Steck recorded live and in person at Grocery Shop 2022.

[00:04:08]

[00:04:08] Lisa Kinney Interview

[00:04:08] Ricardo Belmar: and welcome to the Retail Razor Show Special Edition Groceryshop Episode. I'm here today with special guest Lisa Kinney, VP of customer market intelligence. for Albertsons. Welcome to the show, Lisa. 

[00:04:28] Lisa Kinney: thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. 

[00:04:30] Ricardo Belmar: So you and I were chatting a little bit before we recorded about what seems to be the most interesting here at the show are the things that we're not hearing people talk about on stage. 

[00:04:39] Almost like a what's behind the scenes, really of interest and value to people in the industry. And we kind of ended up landing on a discussion about data. With which to be fair, right. Has been a big part of a lot of the discussions on stage, but they've all centered around what I would call the outcome of what you do with the data you have that might be customer facing and it might be more B2B facing because as a retailer, I'm going to sell a service around this to someone else, but you had a very unique and interesting perspective about how grocers are looking at the data. 

[00:05:13] Lisa Kinney: Yeah, I think. There's a few things, Thanks for teeing that up. I think. The things that aren't discussed on it, that are discussed amongst peers, which is wonderful that after 30 years in this business, We have, we have industry peers that work with competitors that work You know, that are in consultancy now. 

[00:05:33] And we've all been in the data game for quite some time, at least myself in particular. , and so it's nice that the conversations offstage are really about like, are you guys running into this problem too? 

[00:05:44] Are you worried about what I'm seeing or that isn't being talked about? And it's nice that we can put down the, I work for X company. 

[00:05:52] And I need to view you as a competitor and we actually then have a lot of off the record great conversations around what's really happening behind. You know, behind the tent per se. 

[00:06:03] And so on the data space as I was listening to, there's a couple of things first, I'll talk about just this, I think it's, been a revolution of technology. And I think we talked a little bit about.

[00:06:13] Look. Yeah. The change that's happened has been out of an uncontrollable demand that really accelerated everyone to solve for things that have been problems for, for quite some time. Perpetual inventory, you know, finding ways to optimize labor, finding a shorter path to distance from farm to table. All of those things have been on the minds for all of us.

[00:06:35] for quite some time, but I don't think has been quite as pressing up until now. So. When we think about the data side. Now we have all this new, cool technology like scan and go and new frictionless payment. 

[00:06:46] Systems and, and the smart cards and, And in my mind, having monetized data for so many years, I'm asking, gosh, I hope all these partners that are working with these new tech companies recognize that really the race is the data race.

[00:07:02] it's all about the data. 

[00:07:04] Ricardo Belmar: all about the data. 

[00:07:05] Lisa Kinney: And even when we were talking, oh, We were talking offline about the Instacart proposition and it was very clear today that an advantage that they have built through the data that they're collecting and a very challenging channel to understand which is the e-commerce channel. So I look at it like, I hope that everyone is thinking about.

[00:07:25] Who's really trying to, is it really about providing a service that's going to meet the needs of customers? Or is there an underpinning of data. that has high profitability, really high margins, and ultimately is really what they're going after. So I just think we have to be a little careful. 

[00:07:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. It's part who do you choose as the partner and then part, once you've chosen the partner, how do you define the relationship? 

[00:07:48] Lisa Kinney: How do you define the relationship? And I think one of the the most telling questions anyone could ask is how do you make money? 

[00:07:53] Ricardo Belmar: Right. What's their business model.

[00:07:55] Lisa Kinney: What is your, like how do you make money? And ultimately when you start peeling the layers, you might find that it might even be not profitable at all. But they are banking on, you know, and I'm not, I'm not speaking disparagingly of

[00:08:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, right, right, right. 

[00:08:08] Lisa Kinney: But, but I just think it's something that's woven throughout all of this. That's not necessarily Front and center in the discussion. 

[00:08:15] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And it's so something you have to think about to see how it solves your problem. Right.

[00:08:19] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so along those lines, one of the other things we were talking about before that, that very directly relates to everything about data is what's happening around retail media networks. What are your thoughts there? 

[00:08:32] Lisa Kinney: Yeah. And so I'll speak. And As a reminder. and disclaimer, I am only speaking as Lisa Kinney. 30 years of being around the block a few times. And so this is just my opinion.

[00:08:44] So my opinion is something's going to disrupt this whole retail media ecosystem that's being developed right now. I think every retailer is looking for ways to drive alternative revenue. I think that's of no surprise. I think the data game was really it 20 years ago. I think Kroger obviously, and, you know, having worked with them in that space. 

[00:09:05] In the very beginning. When that was being developed. it was a data play for a long time and then it, And then it's become a media play. And I think every retailer is my audience is bigger than your audience. or my partner is better than your partner. So, you know, I can I can now do. attribution and get brand dollars and the, in the digital TV world and I can do right.

[00:09:26] Ricardo Belmar: right. Yep. All about making it more attractive to the 

[00:09:28] Lisa Kinney: Yes. Yes. And as a brand, having been a brand long, long ago. so really long time I start thinking about. okay, so now. I'm a trade planner. I'm in trade marketing. Where does. Where does. Retail media fit in to that? I know, I used to say it doesn't come out at trade dollars. I mean, that was my selling profit. That it doesn't come out a trade, it's it's, this is brand funded. 

[00:09:55] And perhaps it's a bit true, but as a brand then, so now I'm the brand owner, so I'm, I own brand X. And I've got to make a decision on how I take my media plan that I want to develop for my brand and now I've got to go sell it in and try and figure out how to activate. Against all these retail audiences and quite frankly. just so that we all understand. These audiences are all overlapping. 

[00:10:18] Ricardo Belmar: Right.

[00:10:19] Lisa Kinney: It's an 80% of the cases. I'd say they're the same. So, So are you going to pay four times to reach that? So it's interesting. I mean, maybe I'm being too simplistic about it, but I'm like, I wonder, I wonder. Who's going to come in and say, you know what, don't worry about going direct to retail. Don't worry about each individual. RMN We've got the solution for you. I don't know if it's in the payment space.

[00:10:43] I don't know if it's going to be, I mean, I hate to name company names, but I really feel like someone's going to come in and say, this is a really fragmented world to talk to the same shared common customer. And Somebody has access to that shared common customer And it might actually not be the retailer. 

[00:11:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:11:01] yeah, but they can kind of give you an aggregated view 

[00:11:03] Lisa Kinney: Sure 

[00:11:04] Sure 

[00:11:05] Ricardo Belmar: retailers, right? Because they know who they may know who the customer is. They may have a better data point that, that kind of fingers out at you. It's this customer 

[00:11:13] And they visit these four stores or these four different retailers. So I can help you target them much better than the individual retailers 

[00:11:20] Lisa Kinney: correct! Cause you're going to pay 10 X and that particular person's. to the highest bidder, like, 

[00:11:25] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. I think It's a fascinating. point because it kind of brings us almost back full circle, right. To how all advertising started. Where you had these access to gigantic audiences. In a more centralized way to reach as many people as you could. And in some ways, I guess for me, that goes a little bit against the retail media premise that you're trying to, I'm kind of pitching to you. I have a narrow focused audience that is therefore, because it's narrowly focused more valuable to you. At least I think that's the premise, and that's the pitch. 

[00:11:54] But to your point, if you're the brand well, is that really what I want is that helping me. 

[00:11:59] Is it too narrow? Do I need to kind of back up and say, well, I need, I need a broader reach because I'm a national brand. I need to reach as many. It's great that I know who I'm reaching more specifically, I'll use an example like where I live, there is, I don't know, four or five different grocery stores nearby. 

[00:12:15] So I'm pretty sure if I guessed the people in my neighborhood, don't all say I only ever go to that one store and I never visit the other three 

[00:12:23] Lisa Kinney: We'll call that never. 

[00:12:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that's the never use case. Nope. Nobody acts that I think if you asked everyone in my neighborhood and would say, oh yeah, of the five grocery stores, I probably regularly visit three

[00:12:33] Lisa Kinney: Correct. 

[00:12:34] Correct. And I think that that's the interesting pieces because I, I. There's a part of me. that's at one point whichever. retailer just says, you know what, I'm not going to, I'm just going to, I'm going to take my data and I am just gonna pipe it to the top three agencies that do all the brand media. 

[00:12:52] Like the, you know, the top ones, right. I'm just going to pipe my data there. And, And and let them go, like, buy audiences you have all our behavior data. I mean, I'm talking a world of like what ifs and that would not happen, but you think about it. I'm like maybe that would be the first for winner. 

[00:13:08] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Well, maybe if there's that sort of aggregator out there that comes whether it's a revenue share or some other business model that. That you know, it helps create that incremental stream that.

[00:13:17] Lisa Kinney: Or it's just not a retailer at all. And it's somebody 

[00:13:20] Ricardo Belmar: Whereas somebody else, it could be a, it could be a new tech company that hasn't come, come

[00:13:23] Lisa Kinney: Correct. It's coming. 

[00:13:24] Ricardo Belmar: out how to do it. Yeah, 

[00:13:25] no that's a 

[00:13:25] Lisa Kinney: fragmented. I think, I think it's just, you know one plus one plus one. Yeah.

[00:13:31] Ricardo Belmar: Equals five. 

[00:13:32] Lisa Kinney: Exactly. Exactly because it's all incremental. right. It's all incremental. That's impossible.

[00:13:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, no, that's a great, great point. 

[00:13:41] Well, Lisa, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been fascinating. I mean, a really different kind of perspective. From everybody I've been talking to so far. I think I'm really intrigued by this idea you brought up that, there there's another solution out there that we're Not quite seeing yet. that somebody is going to come up with. That's going to solve this problem. In a bigger and better way. 

[00:14:00] Lisa Kinney: Until then. I think that the retail media spaces is transforming quickly. And I think that there's money to be had. And I think that It'll be a fun, profitable, ride for many for, for, for awhile.

[00:14:13] But I just don't think that that's going to be the model that's for forever. I just can't envision it, but that's probably an unpopular opinion. So it's just mine. It's just my

[00:14:21] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Well, we'll see how it plays out. We'll see how it plays out. And then we can, we can all see who was right about the prediction.

[00:14:27] Lisa Kinney: Yeah, right. I know nothing. It's just an observation. 

[00:14:30] Ricardo Belmar: exactly. Well, Lisa, thanks again for joining me. It's been great talking with you about the grocery spac e

[00:14:37] Lisa Kinney: Yes, it's been wonderful. Thanks for having me. 

[00:14:38]

[00:14:38] Dave Steck Interview

[00:14:38] Ricardo Belmar: welcome to the Retail Razor Show Special Edition at Grocery shop 2022. 

[00:14:53] Continuing our series of conversations with true retail transformers to talk all things, grocery and consumer goods.

[00:15:00] I'm here now with Dave Steck VP of IT, Infrastructure and Application Development for Schnuck Markets. Dave it's great to have you on the show. And then I have to say you, You must be becoming a, a grocery shop, mainstay as I think you've been a speaker at every single grocery shop haven't you? 

[00:15:14] Dave Steck: That's correct. 

[00:15:15] Ricardo Belmar: Well, it's wonderful to have you with us here today. So I guess I have to say the, obviously the reason you've been invited year after year to be a speaker at the show is that you've, you've led a number of innovative technology initiatives at Schnuck Markets. and ranging from deploying robots, IOT, computer vision. and other things in store. 

[00:15:34] Let's get started by kind of walking me through all these different technologies that you've been talking about and then what your experience has been with them. And getting them deployed to stores and what challenges they're helping you solve. 

[00:15:44] Dave Steck: Well, obviously, I always talk about robots

[00:15:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:15:47] Dave Steck: that was really kind of the first big one that big splash, because everybody's interested in that. and that really started in 2017 with simbe robotics to just understand that technology and what the capabilities were. I think the, the The funny thing. I talk about. Quite often as when we first deployed those that got a lot of press and, I was interviewed. I was interviewed quite a bit by the local radio stations and one of the quotes that I remember saying is, you know, We're most interested in the data that comes back from this. I had no idea what I was talking about. It just sounded good at the time. 

[00:16:21] But the reality is. You start to understand that data that's coming back from a robot and all the different capabilities that it enables within the, within the business. And that data is just invaluable. 

[00:16:35] So that's, that's one of the big things that we've been doing. We've looked at lately. Look, electronic shelf labels is another big business enabler for us as well. And that's through different evaluations, we've evaluated three different. Three different types of tags and settled on pretty much settled on one at this point getting ready to, to roll that out across the chain. If the value proposition holds up, like we 

[00:16:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah Okay 

[00:17:00] Dave Steck: So, but that there's a lot that goes with electronic shelf label as well as far as capability. 

[00:17:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:17:09] what have been some of the things that, you know, you were really looking for. As like your, your top value that you want to get out of the electronic shelf labels

[00:17:15] Dave Steck: Well, it's an interesting. That's an interesting question because when we first looked at this. Years ago, years ago, I've only been with the company for eight years, but you know three or four years ago. As a matter of fact, the reseller that, that we're working with came and quotes me back on this is. I told him the math equation doesn't work. And it didn't work, but post COVID.

[00:17:38] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah Yeah 

[00:17:39] Dave Steck: when you're, You're looking at a dwindling labor pool. And you're trying to add the value to the customer and not just going through repetitive processes. You still have to have an ROI. But, but now you have to look at it a little differently. So. The. The math equation is is entirely different.

[00:18:01] And that's what makes this kind of exciting is it's something now that. We can do. And now that we can do this. What is the value you can get out of 

[00:18:12] Ricardo Belmar: Okay you're kind of backing into it in a different way.

[00:18:14] Dave Steck: Right. So, you know, understanding, pick to light. Stock to light. People think. Well, everybody in the store knows where everything's at, the store teammates know it. 

[00:18:24] Right. Yeah. You have to think about turnover. But even then, you know, I've been in the store where there's a stocker that's 10 years with a company. And he loves the ability to turn on the light when he can't find an item, he says, I don't know where everything's at. He said, I've been here years. I still don't know where everything's

[00:18:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:18:43] Dave Steck: So you get that. You can get into other capabilities as well, which, you have all these AI pricing engines, Eversight is who we use, But with Eversight you have to be able to change tags on a fairly frequent basis. But with COVID and dwindling labor supply, you can only change so many tags. and then you really have no true way of verifying that that tag was actually hung. So you could be making some AI pricing decisions based off of bad data. With the ESL now, you've got, you know, that, that price was 

[00:19:20] Ricardo Belmar: You can verify and you've got the validation that the change is made. 

[00:19:22] Dave Steck: So we're not, we're not, we're not there yet because we don't have ESLs deployed across the company, but that is definitely something that we're looking at as far as capability. There's other, other value That comes from ESL, you can do day part pricing. Other special promotions. You

[00:19:37] know for customers who are in your loyalty program ,if there's something that they're looking for.

[00:19:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:19:43] Dave Steck: They can push. You know, light up the light as well within the app. So they can actually find the item that they're, that they're looking 

[00:19:50] Ricardo Belmar: So with a lot of these things that I've heard you talk about this before, and even in past grocery shops, the is the time-saving factor for the workforce in the store, is that typically a major factor that goes into the ROI for you? 

[00:20:04] Dave Steck: Good question. 

[00:20:05] Though the robot. So let's start with the robot robot. Everybody thought was well we're, we're cutting hours because you're using a robot 

[00:20:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah 

[00:20:12] Dave Steck: And the reality is It wasn't so much a time-saving as it was in accuracy. That the time that we, we allow for at the time. We were doing this. was Four hours a week for store teammates to scan outs. You can't get that done in four hours. When we, we did ourselves, we send it people in there, it took us 12 hours to you go. Yeah. So, doing the, robot wasn't I'm going to cut hours. It was, I'm going to get the experience. for the customers and get the products on the shelf. That's know, you, If you go in. I think it was every three hours or four hours. They had to use the laser temp sensors to go and check all the cases. And. I, if you look at the logs, You know that. The temp. Was never read. It was just somebody writing down. writing down. what they felt like writing down. So, 

[00:20:57] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. 

[00:20:58] Yeah. Most likely because of the time involved. Right.

[00:21:00] If they want to get it done. 

[00:21:01] Dave Steck: And you also have no reliance on how they did. it. Everybody has A different way. of doing it. And if they're looking for a certain temperature, they can find it in the case and they can write that temperature down. So with, with temp sensing, you're you're getting a consistent location for the probe or the sensor. 

[00:21:21] And it's consistent time and you can again, build a data algorithm around that, to know. Your case health. And if there's something going wrong, you get notified about that. And I. We have other sensing within our cases. That is more sophisticated. That's looking at compressor temperatures. And pressure And all that, but getting it into each four foot door. It makes a big difference. 

[00:21:44] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. no, that makes sense. That makes sense. 

[00:21:45] So let me ask you this. Cause one thing I've noticed, I've kind of been looking for who else is talking about doing these same kinds of technology deployments that you've done. And I feel that I'm not hearing as much as I would think I would given the amount of time that you've already had these things in place. The years you've invested in getting it deployed. I'm curious what you think are the things holding back, other grocers from doing what you've already done? 

[00:22:12] Dave Steck: From our perspective. our, from my perspective, we have a mandate. I got, I guess you could say it's a mandate to try new things. And We are, we are constantly trying to try new things. So, there it's part of our reviews. Are you, are you trying new things? So that, that helps. We're family owned. 112 stores. So we don't have the bureaucracy that you get into these large corporations and I've worked for large corporations and I know that the ideation is great. But the execution just gets bogged down because everybody 

[00:22:48] Ricardo Belmar: Everybody has to have a say in it and be involved. 

[00:22:50] Dave Steck: Right Yeah. 

[00:22:51] Ricardo Belmar: it becomes your decision by massive committee. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right.

[00:22:56] Dave Steck: analysis paralysis. 

[00:22:57] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly Yeah. So you're kind of saying it comes down to that corporate culture. And how innovation centric is that culture and their ability to execute on any given innovation.

[00:23:06] Dave Steck: Yeah. And you also have a fear factor. 

[00:23:08] With that as well. Right. A lot of people are scared for their jobs. 

[00:23:11] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah 

[00:23:12] Dave Steck: And if you don't have that culture, which failure is okay. 

[00:23:18] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. that's 

[00:23:18] Dave Steck: nobody's, nobody's going to try it. 

[00:23:20] Yeah, 

[00:23:20] I'm not going to stick my neck out. It's you know, it's like why everybody bought IBM 

[00:23:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, because you couldn't go wrong. Nobody got fired 

[00:23:27] Dave Steck: Nobody got fired over 

[00:23:28] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah no that's a good point. .

[00:23:28] So if, If you have someone who's trying to do the, these kinds of things and they look at you and say, Dave, what are some of the lessons you've learned that if you were to go back and do it all over again, What would you do differently? 

[00:23:40] Dave Steck: Yeah, there's been some big failures. 

[00:23:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.

[00:23:42] Dave Steck: Sometimes. You try Too hard to get to the end result. and you go too fast. There's been a number of things that we've rolled out that we just went crazy and got the implementation done to to get to the end result or the cost savings or whatever. And you stand back and you look at it and you go. Yeah, that was a big mistake. But then, but then you've you fight your way through it? It's. Failures only failure if you allow yourself to say I quit. Right. If If you fail. And keep trying. and fix the problem, then it's not really failure. It's 

[00:24:19] Ricardo Belmar: it's a learning 

[00:24:20] Dave Steck: It's a learning experience, and you still get to what you need to get to. It just is a little bit painful. 

[00:24:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I completely agree with you. It's one of those things that I think it goes back to that corporate culture and culture of innovation as to how the whole organization wants to support that. Because just like you mentioned earlier, there's that fear of failure. And if that's a valid fear, then nobody wants to fail. Right. nobody wants to try anything then because they might fail. 

[00:24:44] Are there any other technologies like this? You know, you, cause you've done a lot at this point, you've really made good use of all of these things we call emerging technologies in this space. Uh Apart from the electronic shelf labels, are there anything else catching your eye that you're really looking at, either studying or thinking about that's where we're going next. 

[00:25:01] Dave Steck: Well, a smart carts are, are one thing. Yeah, I've looked at the Amazon go type concepts. 

[00:25:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:25:07] Dave Steck: It's great, but the infrastructure that's associated with that, the retrofitting of a building I think. I think smart carts are one thing that's really got some, some traction in it. You see more and more of the self scanning as you're, as you're shopping. That's. Failing in places you have too much theft. There's a couple things that I've looked at that. I think our really cool. That I really don't know where the business cases for it. We were looking for indoor GPS. 

[00:25:33] Ricardo Belmar: Okay.

[00:25:34] Dave Steck: So I went through a number of different things with beaconing and we went into visible Did you ever see visible light communication? 

[00:25:42] Ricardo Belmar: I I looked at them once before, too. 

[00:25:44] Dave Steck: Yeah. that's really. 

[00:25:45] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:25:46] Dave Steck: Really accurate. but the customers all hate you because you could kill their battery before they're finished their shopping journey and then You have orient out there, I don't know if you've seen orient or not which is an Israeli company. that does indoor positioning and they're using it on the, off the phone. super accurate but. It's it's understanding. As time. has evolved for us and we've gotten further away. It's how do we, how do we incorporate that, capability into our app and the experience for, for the end customer. And I think eventually we'll get there, but indoor positioning is going to is going to stick at some point. It's it's important. 

[00:26:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that's definitely 

[00:26:21] Customers want that, customers want the benefit from that one. 

[00:26:24] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:26:26] Well, Dave, I really appreciate you joining me today. This has been a fascinating conversation. I love hearing all the different things that you're trying and hearing about the culture of your organization and how you guys go about trying new things. I think that's fantastic. Thanks so much for joining us

[00:26:40] Dave Steck: Thank you for having me! 

[00:26:41]

[00:26:41] Show Close

[00:26:41] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. 

[00:27:15] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:27:32] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:27:33] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. 

]]> <p>Missed Groceryshop 2022? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered! Welcome to another SPECIAL EDITION season 2, episode 3, <em>Part 2</em>, Groceryshop recap!</p><p><br></p><p>We’re bringing you 6 great interviews recorded live and in-person at Groceryshop in Las Vegas, NV, bundled up in 3 episodes with 2 interviews each. For part 2, we hear very unique perspectives from two amazing, experienced grocery retailers. First, we speak with Lisa Kinney, VP of Customer Market Intelligence for Albertsons, who talks about the value of data in grocery, and asks the “why” question in a way that no one really expresses on stage at a show like Grocery Shop. Then we chat with Dave Steck, VP of IT Infrastructure and Application Development for Schnuck Markets. We get into why his approach to emerging technologies at Schnuck Markets is so different from what we hear from other grocers. You&#39;ll be hard pressed to find more unique insights and commentary anywhere else in less than 30 minutes!</p><p><br></p><p>We’ll be back soon with 2 more Groceryshop themed episodes and another 2 amazing interviews!</p><p><br></p><p>News update! We’re at #21 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way deep into the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Swag Tag and Brag</em>, and <em>Overclocked</em>, from the album <em>Beat Hype</em>, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>SPECIAL Edition: Groceryshop 2022, Part 2</strong></p><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong></p><h3>[00:00:20] Introduction to Part 2</h3><p>[00:00:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello, and welcome to season two, episode three, part two of the Retail Razor Show. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar </p><p>[00:00:27] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome Retail Razor Show listeners to our unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike. So Ricardo, part one of our grocery shop series was quite interesting. We heard from an awesome startup, Grocery Shopii and their CEO Katie Hotze. She was amazing and really makes me wanna go shop for groceries, which I haven&#39;t done in literally years. which is pretty incredible. </p><p>[00:01:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Katie is pretty amazing. You have to love her approach to making grocery shopping easier, healthier, and to me most importantly, faster while saving money. Definitely expect to hear more about Grocery Shopii in the future.</p><p>[00:01:14] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Absolutely. And then you talked with Stuart Samuel about trends at the first half of the show. No surprise there, retail media networks, just as we predicted at the beginning of the year, were very p rominent </p><p>[00:01:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And no doubt about it. And he also talked about a few other trends around profitability with eCommerce, convenience services and current shopper trends driven by economic conditions. For listeners, if you haven&#39;t checked out part one, you definitely need to. </p><p>[00:01:41] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So Ricardo, what do we have coming up in part two for this episode? </p><p>[00:01:46] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> This episode may just blow your mind. I, I interviewed two experienced retailers in grocery, Lisa Kenney, VP of Customer Market Intelligence for Albertsons, and Dave Steck, VP of IT Infrastructure and Application Development for Schnuck Markets. Each of them gave a very unique perspective on many of the trends we heard about in part one.</p><p>[00:02:06] In fact, I think you&#39;d be hard pressed to find more unique insights and commentary anywhere else. If you&#39;re wondering why I say that, it&#39;s because both take a very different view of technology trends in grocery and start by asking one of my favorite questions, and quite frankly, probably one of the most valuable words in any language... why?.</p><p>[00:02:24] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Wow, that&#39;s quite a setup you just dropped. Tell us some more.</p><p>[00:02:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, I wanna give everything away, but, Okay. A few spoilers. Lisa and I talk about the value of data in grocery, and she asks why in a way that no one really expressed on stage at the show. She goes into detail on the behind the scenes conversations grocers have at a show like Grocery Shop that you don&#39;t normally hear on stage.</p><p>[00:02:47] And if that isn&#39;t shocking enough to listen to, she offers a very different take on retail media networks that may just completely change your perspective on this.</p><p>[00:02:55] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Okay. Wow. Now I really wanna jump into this. Is your interview with Dave just as juicy. </p><p>[00:03:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You bet. Dave is practically an icon at Grocery Shop. He&#39;s been on stage at every Grocery Shop each year talking about emerging technology like robotics, IoT, and more. We get into why his approach and what Schnuck Markets is doing seems to be so different from what we hear from other grocers. And spoiler alert when you hear him explain why, you just might have some flashbacks to our episode with Andy Laudato from the Vitamin Shoppe about his book Fostering Innovation.</p><p>[00:03:27] It all comes down to corporate culture, and you&#39;ll hear what I mean by that. It&#39;s pretty powerful.</p><p>[00:03:31] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Okay, so I thought part one was jam packed with incredible nuggets. Now you&#39;re making me think part two is going to top that. </p><p>[00:03:39] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, don&#39;t say I didn&#39;t warn you. If you wanted to take notes during part one, then you better get some extra sheets of paper out for this one. It&#39;s just crazy. This is an episode that I would put under the column of things that make you go, hmm.</p><p>[00:03:51] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> All right. Now you&#39;re just going totally over the top with that kind of setup. We better just dive right in and get right to it. I&#39;m stoked. Let&#39;s listen together to Lisa Kinney and Dave Steck recorded live and in person at Grocery Shop 2022.</p><p>[00:04:08]</p><h3>[00:04:08] Lisa Kinney Interview</h3><p>[00:04:08] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> and welcome to the Retail Razor Show Special Edition Groceryshop Episode. I&#39;m here today with special guest Lisa Kinney, VP of customer market intelligence. for Albertsons. Welcome to the show, Lisa. </p><p>[00:04:28] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> thanks for having me. It&#39;s a pleasure to be here. </p><p>[00:04:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So you and I were chatting a little bit before we recorded about what seems to be the most interesting here at the show are the things that we&#39;re not hearing people talk about on stage. </p><p>[00:04:39] Almost like a what&#39;s behind the scenes, really of interest and value to people in the industry. And we kind of ended up landing on a discussion about data. With which to be fair, right. Has been a big part of a lot of the discussions on stage, but they&#39;ve all centered around what I would call the outcome of what you do with the data you have that might be customer facing and it might be more B2B facing because as a retailer, I&#39;m going to sell a service around this to someone else, but you had a very unique and interesting perspective about how grocers are looking at the data. </p><p>[00:05:13] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> Yeah, I think. There&#39;s a few things, Thanks for teeing that up. I think. The things that aren&#39;t discussed on it, that are discussed amongst peers, which is wonderful that after 30 years in this business, We have, we have industry peers that work with competitors that work You know, that are in consultancy now. </p><p>[00:05:33] And we&#39;ve all been in the data game for quite some time, at least myself in particular. , and so it&#39;s nice that the conversations offstage are really about like, are you guys running into this problem too? </p><p>[00:05:44] Are you worried about what I&#39;m seeing or that isn&#39;t being talked about? And it&#39;s nice that we can put down the, I work for X company. </p><p>[00:05:52] And I need to view you as a competitor and we actually then have a lot of off the record great conversations around what&#39;s really happening behind. You know, behind the tent per se. </p><p>[00:06:03] And so on the data space as I was listening to, there&#39;s a couple of things first, I&#39;ll talk about just this, I think it&#39;s, been a revolution of technology. And I think we talked a little bit about.</p><p>[00:06:13] Look. Yeah. The change that&#39;s happened has been out of an uncontrollable demand that really accelerated everyone to solve for things that have been problems for, for quite some time. Perpetual inventory, you know, finding ways to optimize labor, finding a shorter path to distance from farm to table. All of those things have been on the minds for all of us.</p><p>[00:06:35] for quite some time, but I don&#39;t think has been quite as pressing up until now. So. When we think about the data side. Now we have all this new, cool technology like scan and go and new frictionless payment. </p><p>[00:06:46] Systems and, and the smart cards and, And in my mind, having monetized data for so many years, I&#39;m asking, gosh, I hope all these partners that are working with these new tech companies recognize that really the race is the data race.</p><p>[00:07:02] it&#39;s all about the data. </p><p>[00:07:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> all about the data. </p><p>[00:07:05] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> And even when we were talking, oh, We were talking offline about the Instacart proposition and it was very clear today that an advantage that they have built through the data that they&#39;re collecting and a very challenging channel to understand which is the e-commerce channel. So I look at it like, I hope that everyone is thinking about.</p><p>[00:07:25] Who&#39;s really trying to, is it really about providing a service that&#39;s going to meet the needs of customers? Or is there an underpinning of data. that has high profitability, really high margins, and ultimately is really what they&#39;re going after. So I just think we have to be a little careful. </p><p>[00:07:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. It&#39;s part who do you choose as the partner and then part, once you&#39;ve chosen the partner, how do you define the relationship? </p><p>[00:07:48] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> How do you define the relationship? And I think one of the the most telling questions anyone could ask is how do you make money? </p><p>[00:07:53] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. What&#39;s their business model.</p><p>[00:07:55] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> What is your, like how do you make money? And ultimately when you start peeling the layers, you might find that it might even be not profitable at all. But they are banking on, you know, and I&#39;m not, I&#39;m not speaking disparagingly of</p><p>[00:08:07] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, right, right, right. </p><p>[00:08:08] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> But, but I just think it&#39;s something that&#39;s woven throughout all of this. That&#39;s not necessarily Front and center in the discussion. </p><p>[00:08:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. And it&#39;s so something you have to think about to see how it solves your problem. Right.</p><p>[00:08:19] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so along those lines, one of the other things we were talking about before that, that very directly relates to everything about data is what&#39;s happening around retail media networks. What are your thoughts there? </p><p>[00:08:32] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> Yeah. And so I&#39;ll speak. And As a reminder. and disclaimer, I am only speaking as Lisa Kinney. 30 years of being around the block a few times. And so this is just my opinion.</p><p>[00:08:44] So my opinion is something&#39;s going to disrupt this whole retail media ecosystem that&#39;s being developed right now. I think every retailer is looking for ways to drive alternative revenue. I think that&#39;s of no surprise. I think the data game was really it 20 years ago. I think Kroger obviously, and, you know, having worked with them in that space. </p><p>[00:09:05] In the very beginning. When that was being developed. it was a data play for a long time and then it, And then it&#39;s become a media play. And I think every retailer is my audience is bigger than your audience. or my partner is better than your partner. So, you know, I can I can now do. attribution and get brand dollars and the, in the digital TV world and I can do right.</p><p>[00:09:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right. Yep. All about making it more attractive to the </p><p>[00:09:28] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> Yes. Yes. And as a brand, having been a brand long, long ago. so really long time I start thinking about. okay, so now. I&#39;m a trade planner. I&#39;m in trade marketing. Where does. Where does. Retail media fit in to that? I know, I used to say it doesn&#39;t come out at trade dollars. I mean, that was my selling profit. That it doesn&#39;t come out a trade, it&#39;s it&#39;s, this is brand funded. </p><p>[00:09:55] And perhaps it&#39;s a bit true, but as a brand then, so now I&#39;m the brand owner, so I&#39;m, I own brand X. And I&#39;ve got to make a decision on how I take my media plan that I want to develop for my brand and now I&#39;ve got to go sell it in and try and figure out how to activate. Against all these retail audiences and quite frankly. just so that we all understand. These audiences are all overlapping. </p><p>[00:10:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right.</p><p>[00:10:19] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> It&#39;s an 80% of the cases. I&#39;d say they&#39;re the same. So, So are you going to pay four times to reach that? So it&#39;s interesting. I mean, maybe I&#39;m being too simplistic about it, but I&#39;m like, I wonder, I wonder. Who&#39;s going to come in and say, you know what, don&#39;t worry about going direct to retail. Don&#39;t worry about each individual. RMN We&#39;ve got the solution for you. I don&#39;t know if it&#39;s in the payment space.</p><p>[00:10:43] I don&#39;t know if it&#39;s going to be, I mean, I hate to name company names, but I really feel like someone&#39;s going to come in and say, this is a really fragmented world to talk to the same shared common customer. And Somebody has access to that shared common customer And it might actually not be the retailer. </p><p>[00:11:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:11:01] yeah, but they can kind of give you an aggregated view </p><p>[00:11:03] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> Sure </p><p>[00:11:04] Sure </p><p>[00:11:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> retailers, right? Because they know who they may know who the customer is. They may have a better data point that, that kind of fingers out at you. It&#39;s this customer </p><p>[00:11:13] And they visit these four stores or these four different retailers. So I can help you target them much better than the individual retailers </p><p>[00:11:20] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> correct! Cause you&#39;re going to pay 10 X and that particular person&#39;s. to the highest bidder, like, </p><p>[00:11:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Exactly. I think It&#39;s a fascinating. point because it kind of brings us almost back full circle, right. To how all advertising started. Where you had these access to gigantic audiences. In a more centralized way to reach as many people as you could. And in some ways, I guess for me, that goes a little bit against the retail media premise that you&#39;re trying to, I&#39;m kind of pitching to you. I have a narrow focused audience that is therefore, because it&#39;s narrowly focused more valuable to you. At least I think that&#39;s the premise, and that&#39;s the pitch. </p><p>[00:11:54] But to your point, if you&#39;re the brand well, is that really what I want is that helping me. </p><p>[00:11:59] Is it too narrow? Do I need to kind of back up and say, well, I need, I need a broader reach because I&#39;m a national brand. I need to reach as many. It&#39;s great that I know who I&#39;m reaching more specifically, I&#39;ll use an example like where I live, there is, I don&#39;t know, four or five different grocery stores nearby. </p><p>[00:12:15] So I&#39;m pretty sure if I guessed the people in my neighborhood, don&#39;t all say I only ever go to that one store and I never visit the other three </p><p>[00:12:23] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> We&#39;ll call that never. </p><p>[00:12:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I think that&#39;s the never use case. Nope. Nobody acts that I think if you asked everyone in my neighborhood and would say, oh yeah, of the five grocery stores, I probably regularly visit three</p><p>[00:12:33] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> Correct. </p><p>[00:12:34] Correct. And I think that that&#39;s the interesting pieces because I, I. There&#39;s a part of me. that&#39;s at one point whichever. retailer just says, you know what, I&#39;m not going to, I&#39;m just going to, I&#39;m going to take my data and I am just gonna pipe it to the top three agencies that do all the brand media. </p><p>[00:12:52] Like the, you know, the top ones, right. I&#39;m just going to pipe my data there. And, And and let them go, like, buy audiences you have all our behavior data. I mean, I&#39;m talking a world of like what ifs and that would not happen, but you think about it. I&#39;m like maybe that would be the first for winner. </p><p>[00:13:08] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Well, maybe if there&#39;s that sort of aggregator out there that comes whether it&#39;s a revenue share or some other business model that. That you know, it helps create that incremental stream that.</p><p>[00:13:17] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> Or it&#39;s just not a retailer at all. And it&#39;s somebody </p><p>[00:13:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Whereas somebody else, it could be a, it could be a new tech company that hasn&#39;t come, come</p><p>[00:13:23] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> Correct. It&#39;s coming. </p><p>[00:13:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> out how to do it. Yeah, </p><p>[00:13:25] no that&#39;s a </p><p>[00:13:25] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> fragmented. I think, I think it&#39;s just, you know one plus one plus one. Yeah.</p><p>[00:13:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Equals five. </p><p>[00:13:32] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> Exactly. Exactly because it&#39;s all incremental. right. It&#39;s all incremental. That&#39;s impossible.</p><p>[00:13:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, no, that&#39;s a great, great point. </p><p>[00:13:41] Well, Lisa, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been fascinating. I mean, a really different kind of perspective. From everybody I&#39;ve been talking to so far. I think I&#39;m really intrigued by this idea you brought up that, there there&#39;s another solution out there that we&#39;re Not quite seeing yet. that somebody is going to come up with. That&#39;s going to solve this problem. In a bigger and better way. </p><p>[00:14:00] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> Until then. I think that the retail media spaces is transforming quickly. And I think that there&#39;s money to be had. And I think that It&#39;ll be a fun, profitable, ride for many for, for, for awhile.</p><p>[00:14:13] But I just don&#39;t think that that&#39;s going to be the model that&#39;s for forever. I just can&#39;t envision it, but that&#39;s probably an unpopular opinion. So it&#39;s just mine. It&#39;s just my</p><p>[00:14:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Well, we&#39;ll see how it plays out. We&#39;ll see how it plays out. And then we can, we can all see who was right about the prediction.</p><p>[00:14:27] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> Yeah, right. I know nothing. It&#39;s just an observation. </p><p>[00:14:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> exactly. Well, Lisa, thanks again for joining me. It&#39;s been great talking with you about the grocery spac e</p><p>[00:14:37] <strong>Lisa Kinney:</strong> Yes, it&#39;s been wonderful. Thanks for having me. </p><p>[00:14:38]</p><h3>[00:14:38] Dave Steck Interview</h3><p>[00:14:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> welcome to the Retail Razor Show Special Edition at Grocery shop 2022. </p><p>[00:14:53] Continuing our series of conversations with true retail transformers to talk all things, grocery and consumer goods.</p><p>[00:15:00] I&#39;m here now with Dave Steck VP of IT, Infrastructure and Application Development for Schnuck Markets. Dave it&#39;s great to have you on the show. And then I have to say you, You must be becoming a, a grocery shop, mainstay as I think you&#39;ve been a speaker at every single grocery shop haven&#39;t you? </p><p>[00:15:14] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> That&#39;s correct. </p><p>[00:15:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, it&#39;s wonderful to have you with us here today. So I guess I have to say the, obviously the reason you&#39;ve been invited year after year to be a speaker at the show is that you&#39;ve, you&#39;ve led a number of innovative technology initiatives at Schnuck Markets. and ranging from deploying robots, IOT, computer vision. and other things in store. </p><p>[00:15:34] Let&#39;s get started by kind of walking me through all these different technologies that you&#39;ve been talking about and then what your experience has been with them. And getting them deployed to stores and what challenges they&#39;re helping you solve. </p><p>[00:15:44] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> Well, obviously, I always talk about robots</p><p>[00:15:46] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. </p><p>[00:15:47] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> that was really kind of the first big one that big splash, because everybody&#39;s interested in that. and that really started in 2017 with simbe robotics to just understand that technology and what the capabilities were. I think the, the The funny thing. I talk about. Quite often as when we first deployed those that got a lot of press and, I was interviewed. I was interviewed quite a bit by the local radio stations and one of the quotes that I remember saying is, you know, We&#39;re most interested in the data that comes back from this. I had no idea what I was talking about. It just sounded good at the time. </p><p>[00:16:21] But the reality is. You start to understand that data that&#39;s coming back from a robot and all the different capabilities that it enables within the, within the business. And that data is just invaluable. </p><p>[00:16:35] So that&#39;s, that&#39;s one of the big things that we&#39;ve been doing. We&#39;ve looked at lately. Look, electronic shelf labels is another big business enabler for us as well. And that&#39;s through different evaluations, we&#39;ve evaluated three different. Three different types of tags and settled on pretty much settled on one at this point getting ready to, to roll that out across the chain. If the value proposition holds up, like we </p><p>[00:16:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah Okay </p><p>[00:17:00] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> So, but that there&#39;s a lot that goes with electronic shelf label as well as far as capability. </p><p>[00:17:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:17:09] what have been some of the things that, you know, you were really looking for. As like your, your top value that you want to get out of the electronic shelf labels</p><p>[00:17:15] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> Well, it&#39;s an interesting. That&#39;s an interesting question because when we first looked at this. Years ago, years ago, I&#39;ve only been with the company for eight years, but you know three or four years ago. As a matter of fact, the reseller that, that we&#39;re working with came and quotes me back on this is. I told him the math equation doesn&#39;t work. And it didn&#39;t work, but post COVID.</p><p>[00:17:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah Yeah </p><p>[00:17:39] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> when you&#39;re, You&#39;re looking at a dwindling labor pool. And you&#39;re trying to add the value to the customer and not just going through repetitive processes. You still have to have an ROI. But, but now you have to look at it a little differently. So. The. The math equation is is entirely different.</p><p>[00:18:01] And that&#39;s what makes this kind of exciting is it&#39;s something now that. We can do. And now that we can do this. What is the value you can get out of </p><p>[00:18:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay you&#39;re kind of backing into it in a different way.</p><p>[00:18:14] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> Right. So, you know, understanding, pick to light. Stock to light. People think. Well, everybody in the store knows where everything&#39;s at, the store teammates know it. </p><p>[00:18:24] Right. Yeah. You have to think about turnover. But even then, you know, I&#39;ve been in the store where there&#39;s a stocker that&#39;s 10 years with a company. And he loves the ability to turn on the light when he can&#39;t find an item, he says, I don&#39;t know where everything&#39;s at. He said, I&#39;ve been here years. I still don&#39;t know where everything&#39;s</p><p>[00:18:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:18:43] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> So you get that. You can get into other capabilities as well, which, you have all these AI pricing engines, Eversight is who we use, But with Eversight you have to be able to change tags on a fairly frequent basis. But with COVID and dwindling labor supply, you can only change so many tags. and then you really have no true way of verifying that that tag was actually hung. So you could be making some AI pricing decisions based off of bad data. With the ESL now, you&#39;ve got, you know, that, that price was </p><p>[00:19:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You can verify and you&#39;ve got the validation that the change is made. </p><p>[00:19:22] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> So we&#39;re not, we&#39;re not, we&#39;re not there yet because we don&#39;t have ESLs deployed across the company, but that is definitely something that we&#39;re looking at as far as capability. There&#39;s other, other value That comes from ESL, you can do day part pricing. Other special promotions. You</p><p>[00:19:37] know for customers who are in your loyalty program ,if there&#39;s something that they&#39;re looking for.</p><p>[00:19:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:19:43] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> They can push. You know, light up the light as well within the app. So they can actually find the item that they&#39;re, that they&#39;re looking </p><p>[00:19:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So with a lot of these things that I&#39;ve heard you talk about this before, and even in past grocery shops, the is the time-saving factor for the workforce in the store, is that typically a major factor that goes into the ROI for you? </p><p>[00:20:04] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> Good question. </p><p>[00:20:05] Though the robot. So let&#39;s start with the robot robot. Everybody thought was well we&#39;re, we&#39;re cutting hours because you&#39;re using a robot </p><p>[00:20:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah </p><p>[00:20:12] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> And the reality is It wasn&#39;t so much a time-saving as it was in accuracy. That the time that we, we allow for at the time. We were doing this. was Four hours a week for store teammates to scan outs. You can&#39;t get that done in four hours. When we, we did ourselves, we send it people in there, it took us 12 hours to you go. Yeah. So, doing the, robot wasn&#39;t I&#39;m going to cut hours. It was, I&#39;m going to get the experience. for the customers and get the products on the shelf. That&#39;s know, you, If you go in. I think it was every three hours or four hours. They had to use the laser temp sensors to go and check all the cases. And. I, if you look at the logs, You know that. The temp. Was never read. It was just somebody writing down. writing down. what they felt like writing down. So, </p><p>[00:20:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah. </p><p>[00:20:58] Yeah. Most likely because of the time involved. Right.</p><p>[00:21:00] If they want to get it done. </p><p>[00:21:01] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> And you also have no reliance on how they did. it. Everybody has A different way. of doing it. And if they&#39;re looking for a certain temperature, they can find it in the case and they can write that temperature down. So with, with temp sensing, you&#39;re you&#39;re getting a consistent location for the probe or the sensor. </p><p>[00:21:21] And it&#39;s consistent time and you can again, build a data algorithm around that, to know. Your case health. And if there&#39;s something going wrong, you get notified about that. And I. We have other sensing within our cases. That is more sophisticated. That&#39;s looking at compressor temperatures. And pressure And all that, but getting it into each four foot door. It makes a big difference. </p><p>[00:21:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah. no, that makes sense. That makes sense. </p><p>[00:21:45] So let me ask you this. Cause one thing I&#39;ve noticed, I&#39;ve kind of been looking for who else is talking about doing these same kinds of technology deployments that you&#39;ve done. And I feel that I&#39;m not hearing as much as I would think I would given the amount of time that you&#39;ve already had these things in place. The years you&#39;ve invested in getting it deployed. I&#39;m curious what you think are the things holding back, other grocers from doing what you&#39;ve already done? </p><p>[00:22:12] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> From our perspective. our, from my perspective, we have a mandate. I got, I guess you could say it&#39;s a mandate to try new things. And We are, we are constantly trying to try new things. So, there it&#39;s part of our reviews. Are you, are you trying new things? So that, that helps. We&#39;re family owned. 112 stores. So we don&#39;t have the bureaucracy that you get into these large corporations and I&#39;ve worked for large corporations and I know that the ideation is great. But the execution just gets bogged down because everybody </p><p>[00:22:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Everybody has to have a say in it and be involved. </p><p>[00:22:50] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> Right Yeah. </p><p>[00:22:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it becomes your decision by massive committee. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right.</p><p>[00:22:56] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> analysis paralysis. </p><p>[00:22:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Exactly Yeah. So you&#39;re kind of saying it comes down to that corporate culture. And how innovation centric is that culture and their ability to execute on any given innovation.</p><p>[00:23:06] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> Yeah. And you also have a fear factor. </p><p>[00:23:08] With that as well. Right. A lot of people are scared for their jobs. </p><p>[00:23:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah </p><p>[00:23:12] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> And if you don&#39;t have that culture, which failure is okay. </p><p>[00:23:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah. that&#39;s </p><p>[00:23:18] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> nobody&#39;s, nobody&#39;s going to try it. </p><p>[00:23:20] Yeah, </p><p>[00:23:20] I&#39;m not going to stick my neck out. It&#39;s you know, it&#39;s like why everybody bought IBM </p><p>[00:23:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, because you couldn&#39;t go wrong. Nobody got fired </p><p>[00:23:27] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> Nobody got fired over </p><p>[00:23:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah no that&#39;s a good point. .</p><p>[00:23:28] So if, If you have someone who&#39;s trying to do the, these kinds of things and they look at you and say, Dave, what are some of the lessons you&#39;ve learned that if you were to go back and do it all over again, What would you do differently? </p><p>[00:23:40] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> Yeah, there&#39;s been some big failures. </p><p>[00:23:42] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah.</p><p>[00:23:42] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> Sometimes. You try Too hard to get to the end result. and you go too fast. There&#39;s been a number of things that we&#39;ve rolled out that we just went crazy and got the implementation done to to get to the end result or the cost savings or whatever. And you stand back and you look at it and you go. Yeah, that was a big mistake. But then, but then you&#39;ve you fight your way through it? It&#39;s. Failures only failure if you allow yourself to say I quit. Right. If If you fail. And keep trying. and fix the problem, then it&#39;s not really failure. It&#39;s </p><p>[00:24:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it&#39;s a learning </p><p>[00:24:20] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> It&#39;s a learning experience, and you still get to what you need to get to. It just is a little bit painful. </p><p>[00:24:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I completely agree with you. It&#39;s one of those things that I think it goes back to that corporate culture and culture of innovation as to how the whole organization wants to support that. Because just like you mentioned earlier, there&#39;s that fear of failure. And if that&#39;s a valid fear, then nobody wants to fail. Right. nobody wants to try anything then because they might fail. </p><p>[00:24:44] Are there any other technologies like this? You know, you, cause you&#39;ve done a lot at this point, you&#39;ve really made good use of all of these things we call emerging technologies in this space. Uh Apart from the electronic shelf labels, are there anything else catching your eye that you&#39;re really looking at, either studying or thinking about that&#39;s where we&#39;re going next. </p><p>[00:25:01] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> Well, a smart carts are, are one thing. Yeah, I&#39;ve looked at the Amazon go type concepts. </p><p>[00:25:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:25:07] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> It&#39;s great, but the infrastructure that&#39;s associated with that, the retrofitting of a building I think. I think smart carts are one thing that&#39;s really got some, some traction in it. You see more and more of the self scanning as you&#39;re, as you&#39;re shopping. That&#39;s. Failing in places you have too much theft. There&#39;s a couple things that I&#39;ve looked at that. I think our really cool. That I really don&#39;t know where the business cases for it. We were looking for indoor GPS. </p><p>[00:25:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay.</p><p>[00:25:34] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> So I went through a number of different things with beaconing and we went into visible Did you ever see visible light communication? </p><p>[00:25:42] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I I looked at them once before, too. </p><p>[00:25:44] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> Yeah. that&#39;s really. </p><p>[00:25:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:25:46] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> Really accurate. but the customers all hate you because you could kill their battery before they&#39;re finished their shopping journey and then You have orient out there, I don&#39;t know if you&#39;ve seen orient or not which is an Israeli company. that does indoor positioning and they&#39;re using it on the, off the phone. super accurate but. It&#39;s it&#39;s understanding. As time. has evolved for us and we&#39;ve gotten further away. It&#39;s how do we, how do we incorporate that, capability into our app and the experience for, for the end customer. And I think eventually we&#39;ll get there, but indoor positioning is going to is going to stick at some point. It&#39;s it&#39;s important. </p><p>[00:26:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I think that&#39;s definitely </p><p>[00:26:21] Customers want that, customers want the benefit from that one. </p><p>[00:26:24] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. </p><p>[00:26:26] Well, Dave, I really appreciate you joining me today. This has been a fascinating conversation. I love hearing all the different things that you&#39;re trying and hearing about the culture of your organization and how you guys go about trying new things. I think that&#39;s fantastic. Thanks so much for joining us</p><p>[00:26:40] <strong>Dave Steck:</strong> Thank you for having me! </p><p>[00:26:41]</p><h3>[00:26:41] Show Close</h3><p>[00:26:41] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We hope you enjoyed our show and we can&#39;t ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don&#39;t wanna miss a minute of what&#39;s next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don&#39;t forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden. </p><p>[00:27:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:27:32] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:27:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. </p> f8ddc86f-4343-446a-81e5-d995c964248e https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Tue, 11 Oct 2022 10:05:00 +0000 1674 no full S2E3a SPECIAL Groceryshop 2022 Part 1 – Katie Hotze of Grocery Shopii & Stewart Samuel of IGD S2E3a SPECIAL Groceryshop 2022 Part 1 – Katie Hotze of Grocery Shopii & Stewart Samuel of IGD 3 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E3a – SPECIAL: Groceryshop 2022 Part 1 – Katie Hotze of Grocery Shopii & Stewart Samuel of IGD Missed Groceryshop 2022? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered! Welcome to our SPECIAL EDITION season 2, episode 3, Part 1, Groceryshop recap! We’re bringing you 6 great interviews recorded live and in-person at Groceryshop in Las Vegas, NV, bundled up in 3 episodes with 2 interviews each. First up, we talk with Katie Hotze, CEO and Founder of Grocery Shopii, a grocery tech startup you’ll be hearing more about if you haven’t already. Katie is helping busy families experience grocery shopping in a fun and healthy new way with endless recipes and maximum convenience. All while saving them money – what could be better? Then we catch up with Stewart Samuel, global insights leader at IGD for the scoop on what’s trending during the first half of Groceryshop. Naturally, retail media networks take center stage, but that’s not the only trend Stewart highlights. Be sure and catch our season 1, episode 4 Predictions for 2022 episode for Ricardo & Casey’s take on retail media networks! We’ll be back soon with 2 more Groceryshop themed episodes and 4 amazing interviews with grocers, analysts, and a special guest! News update! We’re sitting at #21 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your loyal help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20 in no time! Leave us a review and we’ll mention you in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT SPECIAL Edition: Groceryshop 2022, Part 1 [00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: [00:00:20] Introduction to Part 1 [00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode three, part one of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:00:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome Retail Razor Show listeners to our unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike. Now, Ricardo, did I hear you right? You said part one? [00:00:45] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. This is our special edition episode on grocery shop. I was fortunate enough to attend the show and managed to sit down live and in person with six people to record a few interviews for our listeners. [00:00:58] Casey Golden: I wish I could have been there and that's probably the first time. I will admit that I wanted to go to grocery shop. I hear it was a great show. [00:01:06] Ricardo Belmar: It, it was, it definitely was. Of course it wasn't as big as shop talk. But there were about 4,000 attendees and I'd say a pretty good percentage of retailers and CPG brands there. That was probably the best grocery shop yet. And, you know, we'll hear more about that through some of the interviews too. [00:01:21] Casey Golden: that, explains these special episodes and everything. But why part one? what what's coming up [00:01:26] after that? [00:01:27] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I did mention six interviews, so we're gonna stitch these together two interviews at a time in this episode, and then we'll quickly release part two and part three right behind this one with the other interviews, so you get some bites sized episodes in rapid fire from us. [00:01:41] Casey Golden: Awesome. No one's ever accused us of having episodes that are too short. So who do we, Who do we have lined up for this show? [00:01:51] Ricardo Belmar: We are gonna jump in to highlight a very cool grocery tech startup that I'm sure we're gonna be seeing a lot more of In the months to come, we'll have Katie Hotze, the CEO of Grocery Shopii. She's amazing, wonderful. Can't wait for everyone to learn more about Katie and what she's doing helping busy families shop for groceries in a more experiential way, leveraging a never ending collection of recipe. [00:02:16] All while saving you money doing it. I mean, what could be better? [00:02:18] Casey Golden: Does she cook? [00:02:19] Ricardo Belmar: almost Yeah. I guess you could maybe if they cooked it for but know. [00:02:25] Casey Golden: No. I'm all in for startup spotlights and looking forward to that guest. [00:02:31] Who's our second guest? [00:02:32] Ricardo Belmar: So from there, we are gonna jump to an industry analyst perspective. About halfway through grocery shop, I sat down with good friend, Stewart Samuel, Global Insights Leader at I G D, Now to talk about the trends that we're surfacing halfway through the show. You know, we, we did manage to overcome some kind of annoying technical challenges in the podcast room for this interview with the equipment in the room. [00:02:54] But I think we came out with some really good insights for grocers and brands. So of course we are gonna hear about one of the biggest trends coming outta grocery shop, retail media networks. [00:03:04] Casey Golden: We really nailed that prediction for the year, didn't we?. [00:03:06] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. , and you couldn't walk down a hallway at the show without seeing somebody's branded ad from a retailer promoting their retail media networks. I mean, Walmart Connect was everywhere to the point where I, I'm not even sure anyone from Walmart was there to actually attend the show. [00:03:22] They were there to sell their own retail media services to other retailers. [00:03:26] Casey Golden: wow. Now wait, you said one of the top trends. What else was trending? Was there something bigger than retail media? [00:03:34] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, there were other trends, you know, like convenience, the, the omnipresent omnichannel that you know, shows its head at every show. And an oldy but a goody, personalization. I'm not sure about that one. Maybe grocery industry was just figuring that one out. Cause it's not like we haven't been talking about that one for a while. [00:03:49] But for, for the absolute top trend for that answer, you're just gonna have to listen to the interviews. Believe me, part two and part three will be very illuminating. Let's just say we've saved the best for last while sprinkling a few important nuggets here and there along the way, but there'll definitely be some surprises. [00:04:04] Casey Golden: Wow. With that kind of setup, this must be the most jam packed full of value hitting you every minute series of episodes we've done, and I can't wait to hear it because I will be hearing it for the first time with our listeners as well. So let's dive in and get right to the live recording in person interviews from Grocery Shop 2022. [00:04:25] Katie Hotze Interview [00:04:25] Ricardo Belmar: welcome to the retail razor show. Special edition episode at grocery shop 2022. I'm here at the show in Las Vegas with a series of amazing guests, as part of our retail transformers series to talk all things, grocery and consumer goods, and to kick off the series, I'm here with Katie Hotze and the CEO and founder of Grocery Shopii. [00:04:52] I'm thrilled to have you here, Katie. Welcome to the show. [00:04:54] Katie Hotze: Thank you for having me. It's a lot of fun! [00:04:56] Ricardo Belmar: So to get started. Why don't you tell us about yourself and what led you to create Grocery Shopii? You can give us the background and what Grocery Shopii is all about. [00:05:03] Katie Hotze: Sure, sure. So so myself I am a digital marketer and I spent about 18 years in management technology consulting. [00:05:10] This was an idea that I had off the side of my desk because I was super busy mom. And was trying to figure out how to get the recipe process of finding them and getting them. Getting the ingredients. And having it all in the kitchen. At five 30 on a Tuesday when I roll in hot from work and I've got kids, you know, grabbing my leg, telling me they're starving. [00:05:31] And so yeah. Yeah, there was you know, we, I lived in Chicago at the time and the grocer that you know, could deliver to the house, I'd opened the app and. Or the web browser and would add a couple of random items to cart and I'd never checked out. And so I knew there had to be a better way. And so I ended up creating a prototype myself to do so. [00:05:50] so the company evolved over, gosh, You know, 20, 19, 20 20. We, we just really began this journey of figuring out what types of need really existed was my need unique. It turns out it's not. And yeah, so we've been off to the races really since 2019, but with the Grocery shopii meal planning applications since 2020. And yeah, we are a digital meal planning application for grocery e-commerce. We actually integrate directly with the grocers existing e-commerce platform. And we become a connection point to their front end web site. And so we grab approximately one out of every nine shoppers interest into our platform to do meal planning and online grocery shopping in five minutes flat. [00:06:30] And then yep. So we get them to, and through check out as fast as possible. And when we do, they come back four times as and they spend 18 to 30% more per cart. [00:06:38] Ricardo Belmar: So I'm sure a lot of people hearing those numbers are literally going to say, wow, that's pretty amazing. I have to say, being someone who reluctantly does grocery shopping every week in my household. And particularly I'm one of those people from the pandemic who thoroughly took advantage of online ordering to avoid going to the store. and I have to say you put a really unique spin on that whole process of kind of adding a discovery process in my mind, right? To grocery shopping, which I've personally always kind of viewed as a pretty mundane exercise. [00:07:09] You know, most people probably have a list of things that they think they want. They go to the store and shop, and you've added this layer that I think is pretty interesting because you're almost telling everyone to start with what you want to have. And then kind of work into or at least, allow through the interface, the grocer kind of provide what you need to do that and then get an order done [00:07:27] Katie Hotze: That's the beauty of digital. You just automate it. And so I think that's what annoyed me the most. I truly like funny story. I was that mom on the playground and my friends would bring me recipes printed out. Spent my whole career in digital. And they go here, here are the burritos we make and here's the da ta ta. I'm like, don't tell him. This to me, I don't have [00:07:48] Ricardo Belmar: You can do with that paper [00:07:49] Katie Hotze: and do That piece of paper. And so I think just, just the natural you know, design of a piece of tech that explodes to cart that was not new. You know, a couple of years ago, I was, I was, trying to get this off the ground. And I had a, I was trying to get a speaking opportunity at a big conference and I had the head of content called me. He goes, ah, shoppable recipes, nothing new, [00:08:07] And I was like, no, but we do it differently. Cause we're not B-to-C we're B to B. Right? We're complimentary retail application. And, you know, we're, we're like the Starbucks app on your phone. It's got one job. It does it really, really well. Right? [00:08:18] That's us. We're an incredibly narrow tech platform. We've got one job and and we can work with all the different grocers out there. And it's a very simple process. We can spin it if we're on their e-commerce, if we have the integration written already, it's literally hours to stand them up [00:08:31] If not, it's a couple of weeks, so it's a really interesting model, but it's it's very serving for our end consumer, like per your example, [00:08:39] you know, it exists with reason because there's a 70 to 84% cart abandonment rate with grocery websites. People go there. They're looking at COVID shot links, bakery links, order your flowers for Valentine's day. I mean the front page of a grocer's website is just cluttered. But people are coming with a very specific purpose. [00:08:57] When you're buying ingredients at the grocery store, you're going to mix them together. You're going to make something with [00:09:01] Ricardo Belmar: that's right, y Yeah, [00:09:02] Katie Hotze: right. And I think a lot of times it takes the person who owns that responsibility in the household, which tends to be north of 90%, a woman who also, you know, our data's agnostic. If you work, if you stay at home you need to have a solution. And so when we built it, we built it with that busy parent in mind [00:09:18] Ricardo Belmar: I think that makes so much sense and it really adds this almost experiential layer to grocery shopping. I almost feel like it makes it a lot more interesting now as the shopper, because you've got that end goal already in mind. And the technology is helping hand that to you. [00:09:34] Katie Hotze: Yeah, totally. And you know, the thing about machine learning is when, when you build a content deployment tool of any sort and you fuel it with ML, [00:09:43] You're allowing the code to be written from the moment of first to use and it constantly gets better. And I think that's, what's really cool about the way that we personalize the recipes. Every time you go in and you look at fresh recipe content, that's an imperative. That that is the secret sauce of making sure that you pull people back over and over again. No one wants to see your stagnant recipe content. There's 300 recipes that you've had living on your website since 1995. No one wants to see them. [00:10:11] And people go, oh, Katie, you know, we have recipes, no one clicks on them. Yes. I know because recipe content is deployed every second. On Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, [00:10:20] Ricardo Belmar: it gets old quickly.. [00:10:21] Katie Hotze: Yes. Yes. I mean, you can't compete with that. Grocers can't compete with that. We have large retailers tell us, like, you mean, we can just hand this to you. We don't have to deal with the recipes and you just do it all. Yes. That's what we do. That's all we do. [00:10:34] And so it's it's a, it's an interesting model where it's it's I didn't realize it was a burden. In the industry. I think the grocers, particularly the grocers north of like 70 a hundred stores. They're the ones that are, they're just working through bloggers constantly and they are, tethered to that blogger, if it is July 4th and they've got to get the July 4th recipes out the door, I'm telling you that blogger might pop that content back to them at two o'clock and the newsletter hits out at four o'clock and it's just impossible. Right? [00:10:57] But when you have access to us, you have access to all of our recipe content. You can do a 365 day omni-channel contact calendar and deploy it all out there. So it's just, it's just an interesting convenience that there's a lot of benefits we didn't see, we came in to solve a problem for the shopper. [00:11:14] You know, and it's in the, I truly, I told everyone from day one, like the rest will come. Yeah. Trust. Yeah. Right, right. We'll never charge that shopper. We will always be free. Period. I can't tell you how many times I've been challenged on this. [00:11:26] Ricardo Belmar: Really? [00:11:26] Katie Hotze: Oh, I am the mom. I'm 43.. I've had a 25 year career already almost. And , it's really important that it stays free. You don't put up paywalls. It's really important that you know what is most important to your shopper. our shopper's between 25 and 50 years old and has at least one child in the home. [00:11:44] Speed is her number one. Priority. That blows people's minds and I'm like, oh no, she's looking for healthy, healthy diets. Yes, she is. But that is about rank three or four on the list. Speed is number one. And so you have to figure out what's most important. You have to answer to that. And so, and I think that's where user feedback comes in and just Just just the essence of continuing to evolve through the feedback from our super-users is really, I think how we have gotten to where we are today. And I do think that it's different than grocers who are trying to build in house. And there's a lot behind the curtain. [00:12:15] Ricardo Belmar: Right. And you've seen from what I read in one article about one of your customers it seems that you actually know from the data. You know when that customer is coming back and you can compare versus someone that's not using the recipe tools. How do they, how do their basket size compare? What's their shopping frequency and you can see the difference. [00:12:35] Katie Hotze: We follow everything. Yep. And it's quite simple to follow. But yeah, we, we, isolate a retailer. [00:12:40] Segment the data. Make sure you're looking at just accurate local data, right. And they've either accessed our platform or they haven't and you just map those two fields together. That gives you the chance to realize that our shoppers, when they play with our recipes they returned to the grocery site four times more often than a shopper who does not. [00:12:59] Ricardo Belmar: Wow! Four times more often. [00:13:00] Katie Hotze: They've never visited our platform before. Yep. They our, our shoppers have a four X increase. Compared to them. Yeah. And I mean, think about like today I have six grocery stores I can drive to in any given moment. [00:13:12] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:13:12] Katie Hotze: Loyalty is everything Especially in post pandemic world. You mentioned online ordering. I just get a chill down my spine if I have to walk in the grocery store. [00:13:21] Ricardo Belmar: I do too [00:13:23] Katie Hotze: such a brat. [00:13:25] I mean it's, it's. It's really been disturbing lately. I literally pull up in front of the grocery store and go, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to go home and do this on my sofa. [00:13:32] Ricardo Belmar: Right? [00:13:32] Katie Hotze: And so, and you know, online ordering in the United States year over year in July, increased 17. Percent. [00:13:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:13:42] Katie Hotze: I, a year ago, I sat at the table. [00:13:45] I mean, I've been trying to close deals this whole time. And I sat at the table with retailers and I would have someone look across the table at me and say, Online, grocery shopping is going to contract. A lot of these, But the shopper's going right back in the store. Katie they're going right back in the store. [00:13:58] And when you challenge that, it's like, you know, there, there were people smart enough to sign on with us and light it up. And there are people that have waited and we've closed some of those contracts now that, you know, a year ago, they, they, their theory was bust. You know, I mean, online grocery shopping is exploded. [00:14:13] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah, I agree.. [00:14:14] Katie Hotze: People don't want to go to the store anymore. I don't have 45 minutes to go walk the store. [00:14:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, [00:14:17] Katie Hotze: you know. [00:14:17] Ricardo Belmar: And I think for a lot of people, it's not that you may never go back in. It's just that the frequency of what you're going to do that is going to be so much lower than before, because you want to take advantage of the convenience factor, but you still want to get the same outcome. [00:14:29] And I think that's, what's fascinating with what you're doing is you're able to deliver something more than what the customer could get before with that online experience, without having to go into the store. [00:14:37] Katie Hotze: Yes, because you used the word discovery earlier and that's what I always associate that word with Costco, just, you know, [00:14:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, [00:14:43] Katie Hotze: that's the essence of what they want you to do is go in there and find something new. And the cool thing about recipes is that it's a bundle, but it's also an impulse buy, right? So when you hit that button and explode to cart, There, there is a computation taking place and the statistical likelihood that you're going to accept that and check out it's very, very high. And so what, what just landed in your cart? [00:15:05] Some shoppers care, some shoppers don't. [00:15:07] Ricardo Belmar: Right [00:15:07] Katie Hotze: listen, if you, if you fit into our target persona, you do not care what brand those diced tomatoes are. Just put them in the cart. That's why we fill primarily with private label. It's very important as part of our algorithm [00:15:16] Ricardo Belmar: which has a margin impact for the grocer [00:15:18] Katie Hotze: Yes, but it also keeps the recipes nice and inexpensive for the shopper. [00:15:22] Again, we're always shopper first. Everything that we do, we have to reverse. It's guys go behind the curtain figure out how it's going to work. You know, from a revenue standpoint, but it is imperative that the shopper wins and low price wins every time getting. Getting the acceptance of the recipes as they moved to cart. [00:15:39] Ricardo Belmar: Well, this, this is really been fantastic. And just fascinating talking with you, Katie. I know we're going to be seeing and hearing a lot more about Grocery Shopii. W with the kind of trends that I expect to see here this week at grocery shop. For a listeners, if they want to get in touch with you, learn more about Grocery Shopii, what's the best way for them to reach out to you. [00:15:56] Katie Hotze: Sure me personally, my LinkedIn is always open. I check my DMS every day, So Katie H hosts. On LinkedIn. For the company, groceryshopii.com it's grocery shop ii.com. We have a contacts page, when you fill out that contact form. It tends depending on what your category is, comes straight to me. And so we love hearing from people we love being able to follow up whether it's clients, partnerships, etc. [00:16:20] Ricardo Belmar: Perfect. [00:16:21] Well, thanks again for joining me, Katie. It's been a real pleasure. [00:16:24] Katie Hotze: Thank you. I appreciate this I enjoyed this [00:16:26] [00:16:26] Stewart Samuel Interview [00:16:26] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome to the retail razor show special edition episode at grocery shop 2022. I'm here at the show in Las Vegas, continuing our series of amazing retail transformers. To talk all things, grocery and consumer goods. And today I'm here with Stuart Samuel global insight leader for IGD. Stewart, we've known each other for a while now. And we seem to often run into each other at these conferences all the time. [00:16:59] So I'm just thrilled to have you on the show today [00:17:00] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, Hi Ricardo, it's great to be here and I'm real excited to share some thoughts with you today. [00:17:05] Ricardo Belmar: Well, let's start by having you give us some about your background and what you do at IGD. [00:17:09] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, so I've been at IGD quite a long time actually, last 17 years. probably the, last 12, 13 years. Tracking develops in the U S market, and more recently. Leading our global insights. Teams are looking at trends innovations. What does the future of commerce look like? What does the store of the future look like, over the next three to five years and then extending that work up maybe over the next five to 10 years as well. [00:17:31] Ricardo Belmar: so you are really in a pretty unique position, I'd say in your role to see firsthand, what the impact is of all the latest trends and across grocery, CPG. W what have you seen? We're about half way through this week's grocery shop. What are you seeing so far? What what are you most excited about? What are you hearing? [00:17:50] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, It's been interesting over the last sort of day and a half the amount of times that retail media has been discussed Definitely. I see you sort of nodding away though. It's been a hot topic and. I think I was in the session with seven 11, earlier this morning. [00:18:03] They talked with their new platform. That's coming out, I love with the fact that they're calling it Gulp Which is kind of. [00:18:07] Ricardo Belmar: That's great. That's great! [00:18:09] [00:18:09] Stewart Samuel: It's definitely a hot topic and it's one we've been watching. A little bit as well and, ah, I think it's going to be interesting You know, we work with the retailers and manufacturers and. When you're seeing so many of these sort of retail platforms being launched, I think what's going to be interesting from a manufacturer point of view is how do you prioritize? How do you invest. [00:18:29] How do you benchmark these different platforms because suddenly, you know, there's probably, you know, 15 to 20 of these up and running in the us right now. How delicate resources. [00:18:37] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right. [00:18:39] Stewart Samuel: Where to focus in on, so, yeah, that's definitely been up in a hot topic. That I've had a lot of both personalization that the P word has come back! [00:18:45] Ricardo Belmar: Of course it's back. Yeah [00:18:46] Stewart Samuel: it had disappeared for a while. Right. And you know, as I think, you know, it's, it's kind of linked a little bit to retail media. Do you have the ability to really deliver that personalization at scale? Within the digital environment. I don't think, I think we're a long way away from maybe get the true personalization, but it's more about contextual and relevant experiences [00:19:05] online. Omnichannel. It's still growing strong and I think sort of what we've seen over the last couple of years is coming to life at this conference that most retailers now accept that Omni channel is the best way forward, it's where the most profitable customers. Kind of set for the retailers saw yeah. A lot of focus [00:19:22] Those three areas. In particular. [00:19:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Lots to cover there. I'm going to go back to the first one on retail media only because we've talked about retail media quite a bit on our show. It was one of our big, big bets or big predictions for the year that it was just going to be one of the great hot topics. And I think one of the things that struck me here at grocery shop. As you know, as soon as you come in, if you judge just by all of the branded advertising, you see all over the hall, you would think that everything about the show is retailers who want to sell retail media to brands just from all the signage that I see everywhere. [00:19:52] Stewart Samuel: Yeah. And there's definitely a strong presence, you know,. [00:19:54] I think that the leaders. Walmart, Amazon, eBay, their in fourth,. They have some great standards. They have a strong presence and a really sort of pushing their, you know, digital platforms. What I think it was also interesting from those organizations just kind of maybe a little off topic, little bit. Actually here to sell their tech. As well I've seen it, in the Walmart Commerce Lounge and its stand. You know, Amazon has just walk out group here as well. So these retailers are really sort of expanding their reach in that sort of digital and technical world into other retail organizations as well. Yeah, but coming back to regional media, yeah. It's going to be you know, for all the retailers, they're seeing it as a, as an answer to the e-commerce profitability. I mean how can we make , money from a, from all this delivery and pick up activity we're doing in our stores, and y ou know, I think suddenly the light bulb was going off with a lot of companies to say, Hey, We know this is a really high margin product here that we can make a lot of money out of. And it can sort of offset some of those additional costs. Actually it can also help ecommerce business as well, because you can drive them scalable volume. [00:20:52] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:20:52] Stewart Samuel: through their channel for the retailers, but yeah, it's definitely a interesting topic. [00:20:57] Ricardo Belmar: And it really seems to me to be a natural fit for grocery. [00:21:01] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, I think so. Just because the number of touch points that, you know, people have every day. So, you know, people are typically, you know, interacting with food 20 to 25 times a week. [00:21:10] And we know that people aren't just ordering once a week anymore for grocery deliveries. And even when they are doing a one, one last grocery delivery, they're actually building an order three or four times at different points during the week on their devices. So. There's eyeballs online so many times that I think for the CPG partners, it's just a great opportunity to get their brands. In front of consumers and, I guess [00:21:30] what's made a true test is, how relevant those ads can be, but to your point, for grocery retail specifically. You know, those with the loyalty programs that the leaders have a closed loop, the measurement right. And really sort of, show the ROI to the advertisers is such a strength, but maybe it doesn't exist in other channels yet as well. [00:21:48] Ricardo Belmar: and do you see. With the grocers particular retail media networks. It seems to me there's a better opportunity perhaps than in other retail segments to have that closed loop data capability either because of the loyalty programs. Or just different ways that grocers have to collect data about their customers over the lifetime, because they have such a regular recurring relationship with the customers or maybe other retail segments, it's much more sporadic in their interaction with customers. It seems like the, the opportunity to deliver on that ROI to your point, back to the brand should be better in a, in a grocery retail media network. [00:22:22] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, I think that in terms of vertical grocery is probably better positioned than others yeah, just The frequency of interaction. Just the amount of data that the readers already have on their consumers and then the ability to. Align that with the, ads their serving up so you know, you can sort of show an ad to the consumer. [00:22:37] And provide that consumer is locked in on the system you know, the changes and cookies and things, part of a loyalty program They can then say to the advertiser, Hey, we showed this person this ad and this is what that person then went on to do, either in store or online. That's really powerful. And particularly with the limitations that's going to come with I think that we, that even means recession. In a better position and yeah, they can really make the case that, you know, Advertiser that's better than going to a third party platform. [00:23:04] Ricardo Belmar: Have you seen in, in the discussions here this week on retail media? Connecting the dots, so to speak between the focus on the e-commerce side of the business, but also bringing that retail media network in store. [00:23:15] Stewart Samuel: Not yet. But it's definitely something that we've seen happen in store. So. Amazon's a bit of an example with their Amazon Fresh stores and so in those stores. There's a lot of digital screens. Up in those stores and also so for other retailers like Walmart who might bring TV sort of channels in the stores. For a long time, there's a lot more they can do in store. As well, it doesn't have to be just digital stuff in store. It can be something as as like floor stickers, [00:23:36] Ricardo Belmar: right yeah [00:23:37] Stewart Samuel: could have bigger events. In-store as well. I think over time. I think that will nuance and change and right now the big focus is on selling of those digital But I think there'll be an opportunity to expand that off into the physical store as well [00:23:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think it just, it just makes sense. Do you see a tie in with things like electronic shelf labels? [00:23:55] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, you. Kroger's tried that before. They have this stuff where depending, how far away you were from the shelf, right. That the ad would change. The big picture message from far away and the closer you got to the shelf [00:24:06] Ricardo Belmar: More narrow, more specific. [00:24:07] Stewart Samuel: And give you a more contextual message. So I think there is opportunity that there is a, I think a. Yeah, significant costs with that type of setup of as well. [00:24:17] Across the whole store. We have seen some some tests with. With a promotional ends being digitized only in certain categories, having digital boards above, Asda. in the UK has done some of that. So yeah, I think all the time, but until, Digitizing the whole sort of store on shelf strips. [00:24:34] it's just a cost internally [00:24:36] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, that, that can kind of make sense. I think on the cost implication. Especially, if you think about it, we're talking about large physical spaces, a lot, a lot of ground to cover with that. But I think maybe at the same time, this kind of goes to your second trend about the personalization is back. Right. And we're talking more again about how to personalize. I heard at least one, maybe two different brands talk about earlier today. Just how personalization is just table stakes. You have to be doing this now. And it made me think and, I think we've heard that before, too in, in past events like this, but there, there seems to be a different kind of context to it. And maybe it's because of the retail media networks where you want, you obviously want to leverage that personalization, but maybe there's something else happening. [00:25:15] I think that's causing this to be more important than we used to talk about it. [00:25:19] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, I'd agree. It's kind of a sort of you know, pre pandemic has been talked about quite a bit and then the pndemic came, and it was like, Well, let's just sell everything [00:25:26] Ricardo Belmar: I've got other priorities. [00:25:28] Stewart Samuel: kind of sort of just drop off the radar, so I agree. retail media is one aspect, which is enabling more contextual ads to be served up. This is a form of personalization. I think the other thing as well is changing intentions to go in with consumers on mobile devices. As well, I think. Sort of it's much easier to deliver that personalized experience to a mobile device. We also assume this has been more and more time on those mobile devices. [00:25:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree that that makes sense. So, and again, that sort of ties into the third trend that you highlighted, which, you know, for most of us would say, well, it's not a new trend, but it's kind of back again in this space and that's be more omni-channel. [00:26:04] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, it's definitely, not a new trend, right [00:26:07] yeah, it seems to be that Just the, you know, all those other elements coming together, retail media, personalization. [00:26:13] I think Retail is also, you know, the, the cost challenge we've had with e-commerce. The work they put in over the last few years to add more capacity. We've seen a bit of leveling off of growth. In e-commerce this year. All those factors coming together, that leaders are now really sort of. Refining and fine tuning really [00:26:31] For online orders. And returns. I was at a new target store in New York last week. And they have a whole pack of checkups. And registered for selling stuff. And then the whole of You know, and that's just for collecting online orders. So, retailers are thinking about their spaces. I think sort of a pre pandemic and during the pandemic there wasn't like a ton of thought into sort of how much space is needed for this stuff. How are we going to set up? Set up the customer service aspect. There's more capacity in the market. There's more competition. The retailers are really sort of wanting in that service elements so you know, when a customer comes to the store. How quickly can we say to that customer, by having that sort of stage and space set up, be close the store entrance, having a team with them. I think that's where retailers are now focusing on being omni-channel [00:27:14] the systems are set up, the processes are set up right. the tech is there, the infrastructure is there. [00:27:19] Ricardo Belmar: That makes sense. , finding the right ways to optimize, to start making all of these things more profitable And more consistent, I would say probably for that customer experience. [00:27:27] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, I agree. And I think a lot of retailers have scaled up a lot during the pandemic. And whilst, you know, maybe to both slow this year, The penetration for most retailers is significantly above where it was pre pandemic. So that's a big part of that business. It's a big potential, you know, challenging. [00:27:40] For the business that we needed to get it right and fine tuning. Looking at different form of models. As it gets to scale, do we need a dark store or do we [00:27:47] microfulfillment doing it, something away from the store so all the things that sort of. Well, I see it being looked at in a lot of detail. , [00:27:54] Ricardo Belmar: one of the things that I guess strikes me with that is. Maybe I'd describe it as. I'll put it. I know I heard this in a couple of sessions today where there's the ongoing debate of, you know, which of these You know, trends during pandemic are lasting. Today and beyond, you know, we saw that the large increases in online and e-commerce for grocery and then there's been sort of a leveling off, and I've heard a couple of different viewpoints in, in sessions today on people expressing their thoughts as to what's that level going to now level off and stay at that rate. Or are we just going to see a slow down in the increasing. Rate year over year of this, but it's still always going to be a significant enough proportion to the channel mix that, you know, we need to find ways to, to be better at Omni channel. [00:28:36] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, definitely. The data we have at IGD shows that incremental growth. To come. Definitely growth is slowing this year. Probably for a lot of companies, it will be pretty flat. This year compared to last year. [00:28:47] But going forward. I've seen since, you know, good, healthy growth, including here. In the us and a again, A lot of us here have tried e-comm for the first time during the pandemic. [00:28:56] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:28:56] Stewart Samuel: A lot of us have converted. To being regular customers. There's also more capacity coming on stream. So more opportunities. [00:29:01] For, you know, Shoppers to order I'm also I was just in the door dash session seeing sort of there's more in a more missions being served. So going more for the convenience. [00:29:11] Ricardo Belmar: mm-hmm, right. [00:29:11] Stewart Samuel: Which, are actually enabling large grocers. To do that. So people like Albertsons in us, Loblaw in Canada. We don't have convenience format stores. But now through that partnership with Dash mart, it's actually served that [00:29:22] Ricardo Belmar: that convenience customer. [00:29:24] Stewart Samuel: Yeah. That's bringing up a different type of offer. Yeah. Some of the stuff we're seeing on experimentation around live streaming. That social commerce, TV commerce, right. This kind of idea of, yeah, always on shopping, right. Yeah. lots of new pilots and tests being announced this week [00:29:39] And we'll just underpin that growth. [00:29:42] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, what do you see happening from your perspective on grocery with livestreaming. I mean you know Walmart made a big announcement this week with firework. Right. And, and teaming up on live streaming. And I find that's an interesting topic. I generally, for retail, I'm a big proponent of live streaming taking off, maybe not in the same way that it did in China and throughout Asia, a little differently here. [00:30:02] But I'm curious what you think that the, the angle is in the grocery segment for live streaming. [00:30:07] Stewart Samuel: Yeah. I'm a big fan actually of Fila. I think they're doing some great stuff from the, some of the pilots with Albertson's and the announcement with Walmart. I think there's a huge opportunity to food retailers to keep people in their own ecosystems, if you like. So rather than going to maybe Tik TOK for a recipe inspiration. Actually can we, can we have that kind of content on our platform, actually, can we set it up in a way that is easily generated content. Right. [00:30:32] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Okay. Yeah. [00:30:34] Stewart Samuel: You know that CPG coming through just, you know,. Some branded content. I think that what I expect to see is that more of an user generated content sitting on retailer's site. [00:30:43] Yeah. I'm with you. I think livestreaming is an opportunity in this market. I think it's a slow burn though. I think it will be different to what happened how it evolved in Asia but I think that there is no to that just because I think the appetite for that kind of. [00:30:59] You know, real time video based content is huge. And it's growing with us in your consumers. So I think over time, there's just an expectation that they can sort of tap into that type of content, and actually experience that on the retailer's platform [00:31:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Then kind of keep, owning that relationship versus giving up that relationship to a social media platform. [00:31:16] Stewart Samuel: Exactly. Yeah. But it is interesting. They, they are making their products available through those different platforms. As well as us. It's kind of like covering all bases. [00:31:25] Ricardo Belmar: I guess it sort of plays into their whole omni-channel plan, right. Is to be everywhere in a sense. [00:31:31] I know there was a session earlier I was in the president of Campbell snacks, gave example of a campaign they did on Tik TOK that generated 10 billion views. On just [00:31:40] Stewart Samuel: they were like three days, [00:31:41] Ricardo Belmar: right. Over three days. And just how many goldfish can you hold in your hand? Yeah, it was amazing [00:31:46] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, it was amazing, but yeah, we know that a particularly on tiktok. There is opportunities to go viral. [00:31:53] Typically, I think when their. Imaginative when their, around some of those. Yeah. I wouldn't say nostalgia brands, but those well-known brands and Cielo the Oreo campaigns right [00:32:04] I think so. I think it's been really interesting actually to see a lot of traditional brands. Tap into those new mediums. Quite a big week for some of you they expected, maybe it would be some of the newer challenges, startup grounds that would be sort of occupying that space for that. We've seen it from people like Kraft-Heinz right from Mondelez. [00:32:21] Ricardo Belmar: All the traditional brands, [00:32:22] Stewart Samuel: all the traditional brands [00:32:24] they'll look the job in that space. [00:32:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So it's the last thing. I want to ask you, , is there anything that strikes you. Is interesting. That's not being talked about so far this week. [00:32:35] Stewart Samuel: Yeah. Tell me what I haven't heard a lot about is two things. We, we're still very much focused on his health and sustainability. [00:32:40] It's interesting because when I was. Before sustainability was the biggest shield and it was on the agenda. Quite a bit. You know, there's a big sort discussion point right now, whether, does the cost of living crisis sort of , pull back on some of the stability, focus that a lot of shoppers have or do they continue to sort of pursue it and support all those things. So I haven't seen a lot In this event. Certainly sort of it's one we're watching to see just, what happens with a lot of those efforts? Cause let's super interesting right now, is that a lot of the milestones, The shorter term. Focused on 2025. [00:33:12] And 2030. So 20 25 is like less than. So less than a thousand days, right? So. There's a lot of packaging initiatives, a lot of proof points retailers have made. that and we know most retailers tell us net-zero over 24. Yeah, a little bit longer up actually between 2025 and 2030. That's cool of deliverables. If you begin to release those ESG reports. [00:33:32] I think we will see more coming through and it will seem like activity. In that space, just haven't heard a lot of it. If you had today and then then health is another one. Sort of. We know. Thinking longer term shift. In the industry. But again, it's not been much on the agenda here [00:33:46] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah, no, I agree up. [00:33:47] I've been kind of surprised that we don't see more agenda items on, on those topics here this week Well, Stuart, this has been a fantastic discussion. I'm so glad you could take the time to join me today. If listeners want to get in touch with you. Follow your work at IGD. Learn more about you know, the great data insights you guys have. What's the best way for them to reach out to you [00:34:08] Stewart Samuel: With me on LinkedIn. Yeah, you'll probably see some store photos now and again. Again, almost every day. Either on LinkedIn or my email just samuel@igd.com and yeah have a talk about the work we do at IGD. [00:34:19] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Great. Well, thanks again Stewart for joining me today. [00:34:22] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, thanks Ricardo! [00:34:23] Show Close [00:34:23] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:34:57] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [00:35:14] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:35:15] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. Missed Groceryshop 2022? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered! Welcome to our SPECIAL EDITION season 2, episode 3, Part 1, Groceryshop recap!


We’re bringing you 6 great interviews recorded live and in-person at Groceryshop in Las Vegas, NV, bundled up in 3 episodes with 2 interviews each. First up, we talk with Katie Hotze, CEO and Founder of Grocery Shopii, a grocery tech startup you’ll be hearing more about if you haven’t already. Katie is helping busy families experience grocery shopping in a fun and healthy new way with endless recipes and maximum convenience. All while saving them money – what could be better? Then we catch up with Stewart Samuel, global insights leader at IGD for the scoop on what’s trending during the first half of Groceryshop. Naturally, retail media networks take center stage, but that’s not the only trend Stewart highlights. Be sure and catch our season 1, episode 4 Predictions for 2022 episode for Ricardo & Casey’s take on retail media networks!


We’ll be back soon with 2 more Groceryshop themed episodes and 4 amazing interviews with grocers, analysts, and a special guest!


News update! We’re at #21 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way deep into the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.

Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Swag Tag and Brag, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

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Host → Ricardo Belmar,

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Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey



TRANSCRIPT

SPECIAL Edition: Groceryshop 2022, Part 1

[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar:

[00:00:20] Introduction to Part 1

[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode three, part one of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:00:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome Retail Razor Show listeners to our unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike. Now, Ricardo, did I hear you right? You said part one? 

[00:00:45] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. This is our special edition episode on grocery shop. I was fortunate enough to attend the show and managed to sit down live and in person with six people to record a few interviews for our listeners.

[00:00:58] Casey Golden: I wish I could have been there and that's probably the first time. I will admit that I wanted to go to grocery shop. I hear it was a great show. 

[00:01:06] Ricardo Belmar: It, it was, it definitely was. Of course it wasn't as big as shop talk. But there were about 4,000 attendees and I'd say a pretty good percentage of retailers and CPG brands there. That was probably the best grocery shop yet. And, you know, we'll hear more about that through some of the interviews too.

[00:01:21] Casey Golden: that, explains these special episodes and everything. But why part one? what what's coming up 

[00:01:26] after that? 

[00:01:27] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I did mention six interviews, so we're gonna stitch these together two interviews at a time in this episode, and then we'll quickly release part two and part three right behind this one with the other interviews, so you get some bites sized episodes in rapid fire from us.

[00:01:41] Casey Golden: Awesome. No one's ever accused us of having episodes that are too short. So who do we, Who do we have lined up for this show? 

[00:01:51] Ricardo Belmar: We are gonna jump in to highlight a very cool grocery tech startup that I'm sure we're gonna be seeing a lot more of In the months to come, we'll have Katie Hotze, the CEO of Grocery Shopii. She's amazing, wonderful. Can't wait for everyone to learn more about Katie and what she's doing helping busy families shop for groceries in a more experiential way, leveraging a never ending collection of recipe.

[00:02:16] All while saving you money doing it. I mean, what could be better?

[00:02:18] Casey Golden: Does she cook?

[00:02:19] Ricardo Belmar: almost Yeah. I guess you could maybe if they cooked it for but know. 

[00:02:25] Casey Golden: No. I'm all in for startup spotlights and looking forward to that guest. 

[00:02:31] Who's our second guest? 

[00:02:32] Ricardo Belmar: So from there, we are gonna jump to an industry analyst perspective. About halfway through grocery shop, I sat down with good friend, Stewart Samuel, Global Insights Leader at I G D, Now to talk about the trends that we're surfacing halfway through the show. You know, we, we did manage to overcome some kind of annoying technical challenges in the podcast room for this interview with the equipment in the room.

[00:02:54] But I think we came out with some really good insights for grocers and brands. So of course we are gonna hear about one of the biggest trends coming outta grocery shop, retail media networks.

[00:03:04] Casey Golden: We really nailed that prediction for the year, didn't we?. 

[00:03:06] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. , and you couldn't walk down a hallway at the show without seeing somebody's branded ad from a retailer promoting their retail media networks. I mean, Walmart Connect was everywhere to the point where I, I'm not even sure anyone from Walmart was there to actually attend the show.

[00:03:22] They were there to sell their own retail media services to other retailers.

[00:03:26] Casey Golden: wow. Now wait, you said one of the top trends. What else was trending? Was there something bigger than retail media? 

[00:03:34] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, there were other trends, you know, like convenience, the, the omnipresent omnichannel that you know, shows its head at every show. And an oldy but a goody, personalization. I'm not sure about that one. Maybe grocery industry was just figuring that one out. Cause it's not like we haven't been talking about that one for a while.

[00:03:49] But for, for the absolute top trend for that answer, you're just gonna have to listen to the interviews. Believe me, part two and part three will be very illuminating. Let's just say we've saved the best for last while sprinkling a few important nuggets here and there along the way, but there'll definitely be some surprises.

[00:04:04] Casey Golden: Wow. With that kind of setup, this must be the most jam packed full of value hitting you every minute series of episodes we've done, and I can't wait to hear it because I will be hearing it for the first time with our listeners as well. So let's dive in and get right to the live recording in person interviews from Grocery Shop 2022. 

[00:04:25] Katie Hotze Interview

[00:04:25] Ricardo Belmar: welcome to the retail razor show. Special edition episode at grocery shop 2022. I'm here at the show in Las Vegas with a series of amazing guests, as part of our retail transformers series to talk all things, grocery and consumer goods, and to kick off the series, I'm here with Katie Hotze and the CEO and founder of Grocery Shopii. 

[00:04:52] I'm thrilled to have you here, Katie. Welcome to the show. 

[00:04:54] Katie Hotze: Thank you for having me. It's a lot of fun! 

[00:04:56] Ricardo Belmar: So to get started. Why don't you tell us about yourself and what led you to create Grocery Shopii? You can give us the background and what Grocery Shopii is all about. 

[00:05:03] Katie Hotze: Sure, sure. So so myself I am a digital marketer and I spent about 18 years in management technology consulting. 

[00:05:10] This was an idea that I had off the side of my desk because I was super busy mom. And was trying to figure out how to get the recipe process of finding them and getting them. Getting the ingredients. And having it all in the kitchen. At five 30 on a Tuesday when I roll in hot from work and I've got kids, you know, grabbing my leg, telling me they're starving. 

[00:05:31] And so yeah. Yeah, there was you know, we, I lived in Chicago at the time and the grocer that you know, could deliver to the house, I'd opened the app and. Or the web browser and would add a couple of random items to cart and I'd never checked out. And so I knew there had to be a better way. And so I ended up creating a prototype myself to do so. 

[00:05:50] so the company evolved over, gosh, You know, 20, 19, 20 20. We, we just really began this journey of figuring out what types of need really existed was my need unique. It turns out it's not. And yeah, so we've been off to the races really since 2019, but with the Grocery shopii meal planning applications since 2020. And yeah, we are a digital meal planning application for grocery e-commerce. We actually integrate directly with the grocers existing e-commerce platform. And we become a connection point to their front end web site. And so we grab approximately one out of every nine shoppers interest into our platform to do meal planning and online grocery shopping in five minutes flat. 

[00:06:30] And then yep. So we get them to, and through check out as fast as possible. And when we do, they come back four times as and they spend 18 to 30% more per cart. 

[00:06:38] Ricardo Belmar: So I'm sure a lot of people hearing those numbers are literally going to say, wow, that's pretty amazing. I have to say, being someone who reluctantly does grocery shopping every week in my household. And particularly I'm one of those people from the pandemic who thoroughly took advantage of online ordering to avoid going to the store. and I have to say you put a really unique spin on that whole process of kind of adding a discovery process in my mind, right? To grocery shopping, which I've personally always kind of viewed as a pretty mundane exercise. 

[00:07:09] You know, most people probably have a list of things that they think they want. They go to the store and shop, and you've added this layer that I think is pretty interesting because you're almost telling everyone to start with what you want to have. And then kind of work into or at least, allow through the interface, the grocer kind of provide what you need to do that and then get an order done 

[00:07:27] Katie Hotze: That's the beauty of digital. You just automate it. And so I think that's what annoyed me the most. I truly like funny story. I was that mom on the playground and my friends would bring me recipes printed out. Spent my whole career in digital. And they go here, here are the burritos we make and here's the da ta ta. I'm like, don't tell him. This to me, I don't have 

[00:07:48] Ricardo Belmar: You can do with that paper 

[00:07:49] Katie Hotze: and do That piece of paper. And so I think just, just the natural you know, design of a piece of tech that explodes to cart that was not new. You know, a couple of years ago, I was, I was, trying to get this off the ground. And I had a, I was trying to get a speaking opportunity at a big conference and I had the head of content called me. He goes, ah, shoppable recipes, nothing new, 

[00:08:07] And I was like, no, but we do it differently. Cause we're not B-to-C we're B to B. Right? We're complimentary retail application. And, you know, we're, we're like the Starbucks app on your phone. It's got one job. It does it really, really well. Right?

[00:08:18] That's us. We're an incredibly narrow tech platform. We've got one job and and we can work with all the different grocers out there. And it's a very simple process. We can spin it if we're on their e-commerce, if we have the integration written already, it's literally hours to stand them up 

[00:08:31] If not, it's a couple of weeks, so it's a really interesting model, but it's it's very serving for our end consumer, like per your example,

[00:08:39] you know, it exists with reason because there's a 70 to 84% cart abandonment rate with grocery websites. People go there. They're looking at COVID shot links, bakery links, order your flowers for Valentine's day. I mean the front page of a grocer's website is just cluttered. But people are coming with a very specific purpose. 

[00:08:57] When you're buying ingredients at the grocery store, you're going to mix them together. You're going to make something with

[00:09:01] Ricardo Belmar: that's right, y Yeah, 

[00:09:02] Katie Hotze: right. And I think a lot of times it takes the person who owns that responsibility in the household, which tends to be north of 90%, a woman who also, you know, our data's agnostic. If you work, if you stay at home you need to have a solution. And so when we built it, we built it with that busy parent in mind 

[00:09:18] Ricardo Belmar: I think that makes so much sense and it really adds this almost experiential layer to grocery shopping. I almost feel like it makes it a lot more interesting now as the shopper, because you've got that end goal already in mind. And the technology is helping hand that to you. 

[00:09:34] Katie Hotze: Yeah, totally. And you know, the thing about machine learning is when, when you build a content deployment tool of any sort and you fuel it with ML, 

[00:09:43] You're allowing the code to be written from the moment of first to use and it constantly gets better. And I think that's, what's really cool about the way that we personalize the recipes. Every time you go in and you look at fresh recipe content, that's an imperative. That that is the secret sauce of making sure that you pull people back over and over again. No one wants to see your stagnant recipe content. There's 300 recipes that you've had living on your website since 1995. No one wants to see them. 

[00:10:11] And people go, oh, Katie, you know, we have recipes, no one clicks on them. Yes. I know because recipe content is deployed every second. On Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, 

[00:10:20] Ricardo Belmar: it gets old quickly.. 

[00:10:21] Katie Hotze: Yes. Yes. I mean, you can't compete with that. Grocers can't compete with that. We have large retailers tell us, like, you mean, we can just hand this to you. We don't have to deal with the recipes and you just do it all. Yes. That's what we do. That's all we do. 

[00:10:34] And so it's it's a, it's an interesting model where it's it's I didn't realize it was a burden. In the industry. I think the grocers, particularly the grocers north of like 70 a hundred stores. They're the ones that are, they're just working through bloggers constantly and they are, tethered to that blogger, if it is July 4th and they've got to get the July 4th recipes out the door, I'm telling you that blogger might pop that content back to them at two o'clock and the newsletter hits out at four o'clock and it's just impossible. Right? 

[00:10:57] But when you have access to us, you have access to all of our recipe content. You can do a 365 day omni-channel contact calendar and deploy it all out there. So it's just, it's just an interesting convenience that there's a lot of benefits we didn't see, we came in to solve a problem for the shopper. 

[00:11:14] You know, and it's in the, I truly, I told everyone from day one, like the rest will come. Yeah. Trust. Yeah. Right, right. We'll never charge that shopper. We will always be free. Period. I can't tell you how many times I've been challenged on this.

[00:11:26] Ricardo Belmar: Really? 

[00:11:26] Katie Hotze: Oh, I am the mom. I'm 43.. I've had a 25 year career already almost. And , it's really important that it stays free. You don't put up paywalls. It's really important that you know what is most important to your shopper. our shopper's between 25 and 50 years old and has at least one child in the home. 

[00:11:44] Speed is her number one. Priority. That blows people's minds and I'm like, oh no, she's looking for healthy, healthy diets. Yes, she is. But that is about rank three or four on the list. Speed is number one. And so you have to figure out what's most important. You have to answer to that. And so, and I think that's where user feedback comes in and just Just just the essence of continuing to evolve through the feedback from our super-users is really, I think how we have gotten to where we are today. And I do think that it's different than grocers who are trying to build in house. And there's a lot behind the curtain. 

[00:12:15] Ricardo Belmar: Right. And you've seen from what I read in one article about one of your customers it seems that you actually know from the data. You know when that customer is coming back and you can compare versus someone that's not using the recipe tools. How do they, how do their basket size compare? What's their shopping frequency and you can see the difference. 

[00:12:35] Katie Hotze: We follow everything. Yep. And it's quite simple to follow. But yeah, we, we, isolate a retailer. 

[00:12:40] Segment the data. Make sure you're looking at just accurate local data, right. And they've either accessed our platform or they haven't and you just map those two fields together. That gives you the chance to realize that our shoppers, when they play with our recipes they returned to the grocery site four times more often than a shopper who does not. 

[00:12:59] Ricardo Belmar: Wow! Four times more often. 

[00:13:00] Katie Hotze: They've never visited our platform before. Yep. They our, our shoppers have a four X increase. Compared to them. Yeah. And I mean, think about like today I have six grocery stores I can drive to in any given moment. 

[00:13:12] Ricardo Belmar: Right. 

[00:13:12] Katie Hotze: Loyalty is everything Especially in post pandemic world. You mentioned online ordering. I just get a chill down my spine if I have to walk in the grocery store. 

[00:13:21] Ricardo Belmar: I do too 

[00:13:23] Katie Hotze: such a brat. 

[00:13:25] I mean it's, it's. It's really been disturbing lately. I literally pull up in front of the grocery store and go, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to go home and do this on my sofa. 

[00:13:32] Ricardo Belmar: Right? 

[00:13:32] Katie Hotze: And so, and you know, online ordering in the United States year over year in July, increased 17. Percent. 

[00:13:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:13:42] Katie Hotze: I, a year ago, I sat at the table. 

[00:13:45] I mean, I've been trying to close deals this whole time. And I sat at the table with retailers and I would have someone look across the table at me and say, Online, grocery shopping is going to contract. A lot of these, But the shopper's going right back in the store. Katie they're going right back in the store. 

[00:13:58] And when you challenge that, it's like, you know, there, there were people smart enough to sign on with us and light it up. And there are people that have waited and we've closed some of those contracts now that, you know, a year ago, they, they, their theory was bust. You know, I mean, online grocery shopping is exploded. 

[00:14:13] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah, I agree.. 

[00:14:14] Katie Hotze: People don't want to go to the store anymore. I don't have 45 minutes to go walk the store. 

[00:14:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah,

[00:14:17] Katie Hotze: you know. 

[00:14:17] Ricardo Belmar: And I think for a lot of people, it's not that you may never go back in. It's just that the frequency of what you're going to do that is going to be so much lower than before, because you want to take advantage of the convenience factor, but you still want to get the same outcome. 

[00:14:29] And I think that's, what's fascinating with what you're doing is you're able to deliver something more than what the customer could get before with that online experience, without having to go into the store. 

[00:14:37] Katie Hotze: Yes, because you used the word discovery earlier and that's what I always associate that word with Costco, just, you know, 

[00:14:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, 

[00:14:43] Katie Hotze: that's the essence of what they want you to do is go in there and find something new. And the cool thing about recipes is that it's a bundle, but it's also an impulse buy, right? So when you hit that button and explode to cart, There, there is a computation taking place and the statistical likelihood that you're going to accept that and check out it's very, very high. And so what, what just landed in your cart? 

[00:15:05] Some shoppers care, some shoppers don't. 

[00:15:07] Ricardo Belmar: Right 

[00:15:07] Katie Hotze: listen, if you, if you fit into our target persona, you do not care what brand those diced tomatoes are. Just put them in the cart. That's why we fill primarily with private label. It's very important as part of our algorithm 

[00:15:16] Ricardo Belmar: which has a margin impact for the grocer 

[00:15:18] Katie Hotze: Yes, but it also keeps the recipes nice and inexpensive for the shopper. 

[00:15:22] Again, we're always shopper first. Everything that we do, we have to reverse. It's guys go behind the curtain figure out how it's going to work. You know, from a revenue standpoint, but it is imperative that the shopper wins and low price wins every time getting. Getting the acceptance of the recipes as they moved to cart. 

[00:15:39] Ricardo Belmar: Well, this, this is really been fantastic. And just fascinating talking with you, Katie. I know we're going to be seeing and hearing a lot more about Grocery Shopii. W with the kind of trends that I expect to see here this week at grocery shop. For a listeners, if they want to get in touch with you, learn more about Grocery Shopii, what's the best way for them to reach out to you. 

[00:15:56] Katie Hotze: Sure me personally, my LinkedIn is always open. I check my DMS every day, So Katie H hosts. On LinkedIn. For the company, groceryshopii.com it's grocery shop ii.com. We have a contacts page, when you fill out that contact form. It tends depending on what your category is, comes straight to me. And so we love hearing from people we love being able to follow up whether it's clients, partnerships, etc. 

[00:16:20] Ricardo Belmar: Perfect. 

[00:16:21] Well, thanks again for joining me, Katie. It's been a real pleasure. 

[00:16:24] Katie Hotze: Thank you. I appreciate this I enjoyed this

[00:16:26]

[00:16:26] Stewart Samuel Interview

[00:16:26] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome to the retail razor show special edition episode at grocery shop 2022. I'm here at the show in Las Vegas, continuing our series of amazing retail transformers. To talk all things, grocery and consumer goods. And today I'm here with Stuart Samuel global insight leader for IGD. Stewart, we've known each other for a while now. And we seem to often run into each other at these conferences all the time. 

[00:16:59] So I'm just thrilled to have you on the show today 

[00:17:00] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, Hi Ricardo, it's great to be here and I'm real excited to share some thoughts with you today. 

[00:17:05] Ricardo Belmar: Well, let's start by having you give us some about your background and what you do at IGD. 

[00:17:09] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, so I've been at IGD quite a long time actually, last 17 years. probably the, last 12, 13 years. Tracking develops in the U S market, and more recently. Leading our global insights. Teams are looking at trends innovations. What does the future of commerce look like? What does the store of the future look like, over the next three to five years and then extending that work up maybe over the next five to 10 years as well. 

[00:17:31] Ricardo Belmar: so you are really in a pretty unique position, I'd say in your role to see firsthand, what the impact is of all the latest trends and across grocery, CPG. W what have you seen? We're about half way through this week's grocery shop. What are you seeing so far? What what are you most excited about? What are you hearing?

[00:17:50] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, It's been interesting over the last sort of day and a half the amount of times that retail media has been discussed Definitely. I see you sort of nodding away though. It's been a hot topic and. I think I was in the session with seven 11, earlier this morning. 

[00:18:03] They talked with their new platform. That's coming out, I love with the fact that they're calling it Gulp Which is kind of. 

[00:18:07] Ricardo Belmar: That's great. That's great!

[00:18:09]

[00:18:09] Stewart Samuel: It's definitely a hot topic and it's one we've been watching. A little bit as well and, ah, I think it's going to be interesting You know, we work with the retailers and manufacturers and. When you're seeing so many of these sort of retail platforms being launched, I think what's going to be interesting from a manufacturer point of view is how do you prioritize? How do you invest. 

[00:18:29] How do you benchmark these different platforms because suddenly, you know, there's probably, you know, 15 to 20 of these up and running in the us right now. How delicate resources. 

[00:18:37] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right. 

[00:18:39] Stewart Samuel: Where to focus in on, so, yeah, that's definitely been up in a hot topic. That I've had a lot of both personalization that the P word has come back!

[00:18:45] Ricardo Belmar: Of course it's back. Yeah 

[00:18:46] Stewart Samuel: it had disappeared for a while. Right. And you know, as I think, you know, it's, it's kind of linked a little bit to retail media. Do you have the ability to really deliver that personalization at scale? Within the digital environment. I don't think, I think we're a long way away from maybe get the true personalization, but it's more about contextual and relevant experiences 

[00:19:05] online. Omnichannel. It's still growing strong and I think sort of what we've seen over the last couple of years is coming to life at this conference that most retailers now accept that Omni channel is the best way forward, it's where the most profitable customers. Kind of set for the retailers saw yeah. A lot of focus 

[00:19:22] Those three areas. In particular. 

[00:19:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Lots to cover there. I'm going to go back to the first one on retail media only because we've talked about retail media quite a bit on our show. It was one of our big, big bets or big predictions for the year that it was just going to be one of the great hot topics. And I think one of the things that struck me here at grocery shop. As you know, as soon as you come in, if you judge just by all of the branded advertising, you see all over the hall, you would think that everything about the show is retailers who want to sell retail media to brands just from all the signage that I see everywhere. 

[00:19:52] Stewart Samuel: Yeah. And there's definitely a strong presence, you know,. 

[00:19:54] I think that the leaders. Walmart, Amazon, eBay, their in fourth,. They have some great standards. They have a strong presence and a really sort of pushing their, you know, digital platforms. What I think it was also interesting from those organizations just kind of maybe a little off topic, little bit. Actually here to sell their tech. As well I've seen it, in the Walmart Commerce Lounge and its stand. You know, Amazon has just walk out group here as well. So these retailers are really sort of expanding their reach in that sort of digital and technical world into other retail organizations as well. Yeah, but coming back to regional media, yeah. It's going to be you know, for all the retailers, they're seeing it as a, as an answer to the e-commerce profitability. I mean how can we make , money from a, from all this delivery and pick up activity we're doing in our stores, and y ou know, I think suddenly the light bulb was going off with a lot of companies to say, Hey, We know this is a really high margin product here that we can make a lot of money out of. And it can sort of offset some of those additional costs. Actually it can also help ecommerce business as well, because you can drive them scalable volume. 

[00:20:52] Ricardo Belmar: Right. 

[00:20:52] Stewart Samuel: through their channel for the retailers, but yeah, it's definitely a interesting topic.

[00:20:57] Ricardo Belmar: And it really seems to me to be a natural fit for grocery. 

[00:21:01] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, I think so. Just because the number of touch points that, you know, people have every day. So, you know, people are typically, you know, interacting with food 20 to 25 times a week. 

[00:21:10] And we know that people aren't just ordering once a week anymore for grocery deliveries. And even when they are doing a one, one last grocery delivery, they're actually building an order three or four times at different points during the week on their devices. So. There's eyeballs online so many times that I think for the CPG partners, it's just a great opportunity to get their brands. In front of consumers and, I guess 

[00:21:30] what's made a true test is, how relevant those ads can be, but to your point, for grocery retail specifically. You know, those with the loyalty programs that the leaders have a closed loop, the measurement right. And really sort of, show the ROI to the advertisers is such a strength, but maybe it doesn't exist in other channels yet as well. 

[00:21:48] Ricardo Belmar: and do you see. With the grocers particular retail media networks. It seems to me there's a better opportunity perhaps than in other retail segments to have that closed loop data capability either because of the loyalty programs. Or just different ways that grocers have to collect data about their customers over the lifetime, because they have such a regular recurring relationship with the customers or maybe other retail segments, it's much more sporadic in their interaction with customers. It seems like the, the opportunity to deliver on that ROI to your point, back to the brand should be better in a, in a grocery retail media network. 

[00:22:22] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, I think that in terms of vertical grocery is probably better positioned than others yeah, just The frequency of interaction. Just the amount of data that the readers already have on their consumers and then the ability to. Align that with the, ads their serving up so you know, you can sort of show an ad to the consumer. 

[00:22:37] And provide that consumer is locked in on the system you know, the changes and cookies and things, part of a loyalty program They can then say to the advertiser, Hey, we showed this person this ad and this is what that person then went on to do, either in store or online. That's really powerful. And particularly with the limitations that's going to come with I think that we, that even means recession. In a better position and yeah, they can really make the case that, you know, Advertiser that's better than going to a third party platform. 

[00:23:04] Ricardo Belmar: Have you seen in, in the discussions here this week on retail media? Connecting the dots, so to speak between the focus on the e-commerce side of the business, but also bringing that retail media network in store. 

[00:23:15] Stewart Samuel: Not yet. But it's definitely something that we've seen happen in store. So. Amazon's a bit of an example with their Amazon Fresh stores and so in those stores. There's a lot of digital screens. Up in those stores and also so for other retailers like Walmart who might bring TV sort of channels in the stores. For a long time, there's a lot more they can do in store. As well, it doesn't have to be just digital stuff in store. It can be something as as like floor stickers, 

[00:23:36] Ricardo Belmar: right yeah 

[00:23:37] Stewart Samuel: could have bigger events. In-store as well. I think over time. I think that will nuance and change and right now the big focus is on selling of those digital But I think there'll be an opportunity to expand that off into the physical store as well 

[00:23:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think it just, it just makes sense. Do you see a tie in with things like electronic shelf labels? 

[00:23:55] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, you. Kroger's tried that before. They have this stuff where depending, how far away you were from the shelf, right. That the ad would change. The big picture message from far away and the closer you got to the shelf 

[00:24:06] Ricardo Belmar: More narrow, more specific. 

[00:24:07] Stewart Samuel: And give you a more contextual message. So I think there is opportunity that there is a, I think a. Yeah, significant costs with that type of setup of as well. 

[00:24:17] Across the whole store. We have seen some some tests with. With a promotional ends being digitized only in certain categories, having digital boards above, Asda. in the UK has done some of that. So yeah, I think all the time, but until, Digitizing the whole sort of store on shelf strips. 

[00:24:34] it's just a cost internally 

[00:24:36] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, that, that can kind of make sense. I think on the cost implication. Especially, if you think about it, we're talking about large physical spaces, a lot, a lot of ground to cover with that. But I think maybe at the same time, this kind of goes to your second trend about the personalization is back. Right. And we're talking more again about how to personalize. I heard at least one, maybe two different brands talk about earlier today. Just how personalization is just table stakes. You have to be doing this now. And it made me think and, I think we've heard that before, too in, in past events like this, but there, there seems to be a different kind of context to it. And maybe it's because of the retail media networks where you want, you obviously want to leverage that personalization, but maybe there's something else happening. 

[00:25:15] I think that's causing this to be more important than we used to talk about it. 

[00:25:19] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, I'd agree. It's kind of a sort of you know, pre pandemic has been talked about quite a bit and then the pndemic came, and it was like, Well, let's just sell everything 

[00:25:26] Ricardo Belmar: I've got other priorities. 

[00:25:28] Stewart Samuel: kind of sort of just drop off the radar, so I agree. retail media is one aspect, which is enabling more contextual ads to be served up. This is a form of personalization. I think the other thing as well is changing intentions to go in with consumers on mobile devices. As well, I think. Sort of it's much easier to deliver that personalized experience to a mobile device. We also assume this has been more and more time on those mobile devices. 

[00:25:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree that that makes sense. So, and again, that sort of ties into the third trend that you highlighted, which, you know, for most of us would say, well, it's not a new trend, but it's kind of back again in this space and that's be more omni-channel. 

[00:26:04] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, it's definitely, not a new trend, right 

[00:26:07] yeah, it seems to be that Just the, you know, all those other elements coming together, retail media, personalization. 

[00:26:13] I think Retail is also, you know, the, the cost challenge we've had with e-commerce. The work they put in over the last few years to add more capacity. We've seen a bit of leveling off of growth. In e-commerce this year. All those factors coming together, that leaders are now really sort of. Refining and fine tuning really 

[00:26:31] For online orders. And returns. I was at a new target store in New York last week. And they have a whole pack of checkups. And registered for selling stuff. And then the whole of You know, and that's just for collecting online orders. So, retailers are thinking about their spaces. I think sort of a pre pandemic and during the pandemic there wasn't like a ton of thought into sort of how much space is needed for this stuff. How are we going to set up? Set up the customer service aspect. There's more capacity in the market. There's more competition. The retailers are really sort of wanting in that service elements so you know, when a customer comes to the store. How quickly can we say to that customer, by having that sort of stage and space set up, be close the store entrance, having a team with them. I think that's where retailers are now focusing on being omni-channel 

[00:27:14] the systems are set up, the processes are set up right. the tech is there, the infrastructure is there.

[00:27:19] Ricardo Belmar: That makes sense. , finding the right ways to optimize, to start making all of these things more profitable And more consistent, I would say probably for that customer experience. 

[00:27:27] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, I agree. And I think a lot of retailers have scaled up a lot during the pandemic. And whilst, you know, maybe to both slow this year, The penetration for most retailers is significantly above where it was pre pandemic. So that's a big part of that business. It's a big potential, you know, challenging. 

[00:27:40] For the business that we needed to get it right and fine tuning. Looking at different form of models. As it gets to scale, do we need a dark store or do we 

[00:27:47] microfulfillment doing it, something away from the store so all the things that sort of. Well, I see it being looked at in a lot of detail. , 

[00:27:54] Ricardo Belmar: one of the things that I guess strikes me with that is. Maybe I'd describe it as. I'll put it. I know I heard this in a couple of sessions today where there's the ongoing debate of, you know, which of these You know, trends during pandemic are lasting. Today and beyond, you know, we saw that the large increases in online and e-commerce for grocery and then there's been sort of a leveling off, and I've heard a couple of different viewpoints in, in sessions today on people expressing their thoughts as to what's that level going to now level off and stay at that rate. Or are we just going to see a slow down in the increasing. Rate year over year of this, but it's still always going to be a significant enough proportion to the channel mix that, you know, we need to find ways to, to be better at Omni channel. 

[00:28:36] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, definitely. The data we have at IGD shows that incremental growth. To come. Definitely growth is slowing this year. Probably for a lot of companies, it will be pretty flat. This year compared to last year. 

[00:28:47] But going forward. I've seen since, you know, good, healthy growth, including here. In the us and a again, A lot of us here have tried e-comm for the first time during the pandemic. 

[00:28:56] Ricardo Belmar: Right. 

[00:28:56] Stewart Samuel: A lot of us have converted. To being regular customers. There's also more capacity coming on stream. So more opportunities. 

[00:29:01] For, you know, Shoppers to order I'm also I was just in the door dash session seeing sort of there's more in a more missions being served. So going more for the convenience.

[00:29:11] Ricardo Belmar: mm-hmm, right. 

[00:29:11] Stewart Samuel: Which, are actually enabling large grocers. To do that. So people like Albertsons in us, Loblaw in Canada. We don't have convenience format stores. But now through that partnership with Dash mart, it's actually served that

[00:29:22] Ricardo Belmar: that convenience customer. 

[00:29:24] Stewart Samuel: Yeah. That's bringing up a different type of offer. Yeah. Some of the stuff we're seeing on experimentation around live streaming. That social commerce, TV commerce, right. This kind of idea of, yeah, always on shopping, right. Yeah. lots of new pilots and tests being announced this week 

[00:29:39] And we'll just underpin that growth. 

[00:29:42] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, what do you see happening from your perspective on grocery with livestreaming. I mean you know Walmart made a big announcement this week with firework. Right. And, and teaming up on live streaming. And I find that's an interesting topic. I generally, for retail, I'm a big proponent of live streaming taking off, maybe not in the same way that it did in China and throughout Asia, a little differently here. 

[00:30:02] But I'm curious what you think that the, the angle is in the grocery segment for live streaming. 

[00:30:07] Stewart Samuel: Yeah. I'm a big fan actually of Fila. I think they're doing some great stuff from the, some of the pilots with Albertson's and the announcement with Walmart. I think there's a huge opportunity to food retailers to keep people in their own ecosystems, if you like. So rather than going to maybe Tik TOK for a recipe inspiration. Actually can we, can we have that kind of content on our platform, actually, can we set it up in a way that is easily generated content. Right. 

[00:30:32] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Okay. Yeah. 

[00:30:34] Stewart Samuel: You know that CPG coming through just, you know,. Some branded content. I think that what I expect to see is that more of an user generated content sitting on retailer's site. 

[00:30:43] Yeah. I'm with you. I think livestreaming is an opportunity in this market. I think it's a slow burn though. I think it will be different to what happened how it evolved in Asia but I think that there is no to that just because I think the appetite for that kind of. 

[00:30:59] You know, real time video based content is huge. And it's growing with us in your consumers. So I think over time, there's just an expectation that they can sort of tap into that type of content, and actually experience that on the retailer's platform 

[00:31:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Then kind of keep, owning that relationship versus giving up that relationship to a social media platform. 

[00:31:16] Stewart Samuel: Exactly. Yeah. But it is interesting. They, they are making their products available through those different platforms. As well as us. It's kind of like covering all bases. 

[00:31:25] Ricardo Belmar: I guess it sort of plays into their whole omni-channel plan, right. Is to be everywhere in a sense. 

[00:31:31] I know there was a session earlier I was in the president of Campbell snacks, gave example of a campaign they did on Tik TOK that generated 10 billion views. On just 

[00:31:40] Stewart Samuel: they were like three days, 

[00:31:41] Ricardo Belmar: right. Over three days. And just how many goldfish can you hold in your hand? Yeah, it was amazing 

[00:31:46] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, it was amazing, but yeah, we know that a particularly on tiktok. There is opportunities to go viral. 

[00:31:53] Typically, I think when their. Imaginative when their, around some of those. Yeah. I wouldn't say nostalgia brands, but those well-known brands and Cielo the Oreo campaigns right 

[00:32:04] I think so. I think it's been really interesting actually to see a lot of traditional brands. Tap into those new mediums. Quite a big week for some of you they expected, maybe it would be some of the newer challenges, startup grounds that would be sort of occupying that space for that. We've seen it from people like Kraft-Heinz right from Mondelez. 

[00:32:21] Ricardo Belmar: All the traditional brands, 

[00:32:22] Stewart Samuel: all the traditional brands 

[00:32:24] they'll look the job in that space. 

[00:32:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So it's the last thing. I want to ask you, , is there anything that strikes you. Is interesting. That's not being talked about so far this week. 

[00:32:35] Stewart Samuel: Yeah. Tell me what I haven't heard a lot about is two things. We, we're still very much focused on his health and sustainability. 

[00:32:40] It's interesting because when I was. Before sustainability was the biggest shield and it was on the agenda. Quite a bit. You know, there's a big sort discussion point right now, whether, does the cost of living crisis sort of , pull back on some of the stability, focus that a lot of shoppers have or do they continue to sort of pursue it and support all those things. So I haven't seen a lot In this event. Certainly sort of it's one we're watching to see just, what happens with a lot of those efforts? Cause let's super interesting right now, is that a lot of the milestones, The shorter term. Focused on 2025. 

[00:33:12] And 2030. So 20 25 is like less than. So less than a thousand days, right? So. There's a lot of packaging initiatives, a lot of proof points retailers have made. that and we know most retailers tell us net-zero over 24. Yeah, a little bit longer up actually between 2025 and 2030. That's cool of deliverables. If you begin to release those ESG reports. 

[00:33:32] I think we will see more coming through and it will seem like activity. In that space, just haven't heard a lot of it. If you had today and then then health is another one. Sort of. We know. Thinking longer term shift. In the industry. But again, it's not been much on the agenda here 

[00:33:46] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah, no, I agree up. 

[00:33:47] I've been kind of surprised that we don't see more agenda items on, on those topics here this week Well, Stuart, this has been a fantastic discussion. I'm so glad you could take the time to join me today. If listeners want to get in touch with you. Follow your work at IGD. Learn more about you know, the great data insights you guys have. What's the best way for them to reach out to you 

[00:34:08] Stewart Samuel: With me on LinkedIn. Yeah, you'll probably see some store photos now and again. Again, almost every day. Either on LinkedIn or my email just samuel@igd.com and yeah have a talk about the work we do at IGD.

[00:34:19] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Great. Well, thanks again Stewart for joining me today. 

[00:34:22] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, thanks Ricardo! 

[00:34:23] Show Close

[00:34:23] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. 

[00:34:57] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:35:14] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:35:15] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. 

]]> <p>Missed Groceryshop 2022? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered! Welcome to our SPECIAL EDITION season 2, episode 3, Part 1, Groceryshop recap!</p><p><br></p><p>We’re bringing you 6 great interviews recorded live and in-person at Groceryshop in Las Vegas, NV, bundled up in 3 episodes with 2 interviews each. First up, we talk with Katie Hotze, CEO and Founder of Grocery Shopii, a grocery tech startup you’ll be hearing more about if you haven’t already. Katie is helping busy families experience grocery shopping in a fun and healthy new way with endless recipes and maximum convenience. All while saving them money – what could be better? Then we catch up with Stewart Samuel, global insights leader at IGD for the scoop on what’s trending during the first half of Groceryshop. Naturally, retail media networks take center stage, but that’s not the only trend Stewart highlights. Be sure and catch our season 1, episode 4 Predictions for 2022 episode for Ricardo &amp; Casey’s take on retail media networks!</p><p><br></p><p>We’ll be back soon with 2 more Groceryshop themed episodes and 4 amazing interviews with grocers, analysts, and a special guest!</p><p><br></p><p>News update! We’re at #21 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way deep into the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring <em>Swag Tag and Brag</em>, and <em>Overclocked</em>, from the album <em>Beat Hype</em>, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>SPECIAL Edition: Groceryshop 2022, Part 1</strong></p><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong></p><h3>[00:00:20] Introduction to Part 1</h3><p>[00:00:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello, and welcome to season two, episode three, part one of the Retail Razor Show. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:00:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome Retail Razor Show listeners to our unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike. Now, Ricardo, did I hear you right? You said part one? </p><p>[00:00:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s right. This is our special edition episode on grocery shop. I was fortunate enough to attend the show and managed to sit down live and in person with six people to record a few interviews for our listeners.</p><p>[00:00:58] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I wish I could have been there and that&#39;s probably the first time. I will admit that I wanted to go to grocery shop. I hear it was a great show. </p><p>[00:01:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It, it was, it definitely was. Of course it wasn&#39;t as big as shop talk. But there were about 4,000 attendees and I&#39;d say a pretty good percentage of retailers and CPG brands there. That was probably the best grocery shop yet. And, you know, we&#39;ll hear more about that through some of the interviews too.</p><p>[00:01:21] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> that, explains these special episodes and everything. But why part one? what what&#39;s coming up </p><p>[00:01:26] after that? </p><p>[00:01:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, I did mention six interviews, so we&#39;re gonna stitch these together two interviews at a time in this episode, and then we&#39;ll quickly release part two and part three right behind this one with the other interviews, so you get some bites sized episodes in rapid fire from us.</p><p>[00:01:41] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Awesome. No one&#39;s ever accused us of having episodes that are too short. So who do we, Who do we have lined up for this show? </p><p>[00:01:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> We are gonna jump in to highlight a very cool grocery tech startup that I&#39;m sure we&#39;re gonna be seeing a lot more of In the months to come, we&#39;ll have Katie Hotze, the CEO of Grocery Shopii. She&#39;s amazing, wonderful. Can&#39;t wait for everyone to learn more about Katie and what she&#39;s doing helping busy families shop for groceries in a more experiential way, leveraging a never ending collection of recipe.</p><p>[00:02:16] All while saving you money doing it. I mean, what could be better?</p><p>[00:02:18] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Does she cook?</p><p>[00:02:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> almost Yeah. I guess you could maybe if they cooked it for but know. </p><p>[00:02:25] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> No. I&#39;m all in for startup spotlights and looking forward to that guest. </p><p>[00:02:31] Who&#39;s our second guest? </p><p>[00:02:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So from there, we are gonna jump to an industry analyst perspective. About halfway through grocery shop, I sat down with good friend, Stewart Samuel, Global Insights Leader at I G D, Now to talk about the trends that we&#39;re surfacing halfway through the show. You know, we, we did manage to overcome some kind of annoying technical challenges in the podcast room for this interview with the equipment in the room.</p><p>[00:02:54] But I think we came out with some really good insights for grocers and brands. So of course we are gonna hear about one of the biggest trends coming outta grocery shop, retail media networks.</p><p>[00:03:04] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We really nailed that prediction for the year, didn&#39;t we?. </p><p>[00:03:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. , and you couldn&#39;t walk down a hallway at the show without seeing somebody&#39;s branded ad from a retailer promoting their retail media networks. I mean, Walmart Connect was everywhere to the point where I, I&#39;m not even sure anyone from Walmart was there to actually attend the show.</p><p>[00:03:22] They were there to sell their own retail media services to other retailers.</p><p>[00:03:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> wow. Now wait, you said one of the top trends. What else was trending? Was there something bigger than retail media? </p><p>[00:03:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah, there were other trends, you know, like convenience, the, the omnipresent omnichannel that you know, shows its head at every show. And an oldy but a goody, personalization. I&#39;m not sure about that one. Maybe grocery industry was just figuring that one out. Cause it&#39;s not like we haven&#39;t been talking about that one for a while.</p><p>[00:03:49] But for, for the absolute top trend for that answer, you&#39;re just gonna have to listen to the interviews. Believe me, part two and part three will be very illuminating. Let&#39;s just say we&#39;ve saved the best for last while sprinkling a few important nuggets here and there along the way, but there&#39;ll definitely be some surprises.</p><p>[00:04:04] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Wow. With that kind of setup, this must be the most jam packed full of value hitting you every minute series of episodes we&#39;ve done, and I can&#39;t wait to hear it because I will be hearing it for the first time with our listeners as well. So let&#39;s dive in and get right to the live recording in person interviews from Grocery Shop 2022. </p><h3>[00:04:25] Katie Hotze Interview</h3><p>[00:04:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> welcome to the retail razor show. Special edition episode at grocery shop 2022. I&#39;m here at the show in Las Vegas with a series of amazing guests, as part of our retail transformers series to talk all things, grocery and consumer goods, and to kick off the series, I&#39;m here with Katie Hotze and the CEO and founder of Grocery Shopii. </p><p>[00:04:52] I&#39;m thrilled to have you here, Katie. Welcome to the show. </p><p>[00:04:54] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> Thank you for having me. It&#39;s a lot of fun! </p><p>[00:04:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So to get started. Why don&#39;t you tell us about yourself and what led you to create Grocery Shopii? You can give us the background and what Grocery Shopii is all about. </p><p>[00:05:03] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> Sure, sure. So so myself I am a digital marketer and I spent about 18 years in management technology consulting. </p><p>[00:05:10] This was an idea that I had off the side of my desk because I was super busy mom. And was trying to figure out how to get the recipe process of finding them and getting them. Getting the ingredients. And having it all in the kitchen. At five 30 on a Tuesday when I roll in hot from work and I&#39;ve got kids, you know, grabbing my leg, telling me they&#39;re starving. </p><p>[00:05:31] And so yeah. Yeah, there was you know, we, I lived in Chicago at the time and the grocer that you know, could deliver to the house, I&#39;d opened the app and. Or the web browser and would add a couple of random items to cart and I&#39;d never checked out. And so I knew there had to be a better way. And so I ended up creating a prototype myself to do so. </p><p>[00:05:50] so the company evolved over, gosh, You know, 20, 19, 20 20. We, we just really began this journey of figuring out what types of need really existed was my need unique. It turns out it&#39;s not. And yeah, so we&#39;ve been off to the races really since 2019, but with the Grocery shopii meal planning applications since 2020. And yeah, we are a digital meal planning application for grocery e-commerce. We actually integrate directly with the grocers existing e-commerce platform. And we become a connection point to their front end web site. And so we grab approximately one out of every nine shoppers interest into our platform to do meal planning and online grocery shopping in five minutes flat. </p><p>[00:06:30] And then yep. So we get them to, and through check out as fast as possible. And when we do, they come back four times as and they spend 18 to 30% more per cart. </p><p>[00:06:38] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So I&#39;m sure a lot of people hearing those numbers are literally going to say, wow, that&#39;s pretty amazing. I have to say, being someone who reluctantly does grocery shopping every week in my household. And particularly I&#39;m one of those people from the pandemic who thoroughly took advantage of online ordering to avoid going to the store. and I have to say you put a really unique spin on that whole process of kind of adding a discovery process in my mind, right? To grocery shopping, which I&#39;ve personally always kind of viewed as a pretty mundane exercise. </p><p>[00:07:09] You know, most people probably have a list of things that they think they want. They go to the store and shop, and you&#39;ve added this layer that I think is pretty interesting because you&#39;re almost telling everyone to start with what you want to have. And then kind of work into or at least, allow through the interface, the grocer kind of provide what you need to do that and then get an order done </p><p>[00:07:27] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> That&#39;s the beauty of digital. You just automate it. And so I think that&#39;s what annoyed me the most. I truly like funny story. I was that mom on the playground and my friends would bring me recipes printed out. Spent my whole career in digital. And they go here, here are the burritos we make and here&#39;s the da ta ta. I&#39;m like, don&#39;t tell him. This to me, I don&#39;t have </p><p>[00:07:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You can do with that paper </p><p>[00:07:49] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> and do That piece of paper. And so I think just, just the natural you know, design of a piece of tech that explodes to cart that was not new. You know, a couple of years ago, I was, I was, trying to get this off the ground. And I had a, I was trying to get a speaking opportunity at a big conference and I had the head of content called me. He goes, ah, shoppable recipes, nothing new, </p><p>[00:08:07] And I was like, no, but we do it differently. Cause we&#39;re not B-to-C we&#39;re B to B. Right? We&#39;re complimentary retail application. And, you know, we&#39;re, we&#39;re like the Starbucks app on your phone. It&#39;s got one job. It does it really, really well. Right?</p><p>[00:08:18] That&#39;s us. We&#39;re an incredibly narrow tech platform. We&#39;ve got one job and and we can work with all the different grocers out there. And it&#39;s a very simple process. We can spin it if we&#39;re on their e-commerce, if we have the integration written already, it&#39;s literally hours to stand them up </p><p>[00:08:31] If not, it&#39;s a couple of weeks, so it&#39;s a really interesting model, but it&#39;s it&#39;s very serving for our end consumer, like per your example,</p><p>[00:08:39] you know, it exists with reason because there&#39;s a 70 to 84% cart abandonment rate with grocery websites. People go there. They&#39;re looking at COVID shot links, bakery links, order your flowers for Valentine&#39;s day. I mean the front page of a grocer&#39;s website is just cluttered. But people are coming with a very specific purpose. </p><p>[00:08:57] When you&#39;re buying ingredients at the grocery store, you&#39;re going to mix them together. You&#39;re going to make something with</p><p>[00:09:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> that&#39;s right, y Yeah, </p><p>[00:09:02] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> right. And I think a lot of times it takes the person who owns that responsibility in the household, which tends to be north of 90%, a woman who also, you know, our data&#39;s agnostic. If you work, if you stay at home you need to have a solution. And so when we built it, we built it with that busy parent in mind </p><p>[00:09:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I think that makes so much sense and it really adds this almost experiential layer to grocery shopping. I almost feel like it makes it a lot more interesting now as the shopper, because you&#39;ve got that end goal already in mind. And the technology is helping hand that to you. </p><p>[00:09:34] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> Yeah, totally. And you know, the thing about machine learning is when, when you build a content deployment tool of any sort and you fuel it with ML, </p><p>[00:09:43] You&#39;re allowing the code to be written from the moment of first to use and it constantly gets better. And I think that&#39;s, what&#39;s really cool about the way that we personalize the recipes. Every time you go in and you look at fresh recipe content, that&#39;s an imperative. That that is the secret sauce of making sure that you pull people back over and over again. No one wants to see your stagnant recipe content. There&#39;s 300 recipes that you&#39;ve had living on your website since 1995. No one wants to see them. </p><p>[00:10:11] And people go, oh, Katie, you know, we have recipes, no one clicks on them. Yes. I know because recipe content is deployed every second. On Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, </p><p>[00:10:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it gets old quickly.. </p><p>[00:10:21] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> Yes. Yes. I mean, you can&#39;t compete with that. Grocers can&#39;t compete with that. We have large retailers tell us, like, you mean, we can just hand this to you. We don&#39;t have to deal with the recipes and you just do it all. Yes. That&#39;s what we do. That&#39;s all we do. </p><p>[00:10:34] And so it&#39;s it&#39;s a, it&#39;s an interesting model where it&#39;s it&#39;s I didn&#39;t realize it was a burden. In the industry. I think the grocers, particularly the grocers north of like 70 a hundred stores. They&#39;re the ones that are, they&#39;re just working through bloggers constantly and they are, tethered to that blogger, if it is July 4th and they&#39;ve got to get the July 4th recipes out the door, I&#39;m telling you that blogger might pop that content back to them at two o&#39;clock and the newsletter hits out at four o&#39;clock and it&#39;s just impossible. Right? </p><p>[00:10:57] But when you have access to us, you have access to all of our recipe content. You can do a 365 day omni-channel contact calendar and deploy it all out there. So it&#39;s just, it&#39;s just an interesting convenience that there&#39;s a lot of benefits we didn&#39;t see, we came in to solve a problem for the shopper. </p><p>[00:11:14] You know, and it&#39;s in the, I truly, I told everyone from day one, like the rest will come. Yeah. Trust. Yeah. Right, right. We&#39;ll never charge that shopper. We will always be free. Period. I can&#39;t tell you how many times I&#39;ve been challenged on this.</p><p>[00:11:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Really? </p><p>[00:11:26] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> Oh, I am the mom. I&#39;m 43.. I&#39;ve had a 25 year career already almost. And , it&#39;s really important that it stays free. You don&#39;t put up paywalls. It&#39;s really important that you know what is most important to your shopper. our shopper&#39;s between 25 and 50 years old and has at least one child in the home. </p><p>[00:11:44] Speed is her number one. Priority. That blows people&#39;s minds and I&#39;m like, oh no, she&#39;s looking for healthy, healthy diets. Yes, she is. But that is about rank three or four on the list. Speed is number one. And so you have to figure out what&#39;s most important. You have to answer to that. And so, and I think that&#39;s where user feedback comes in and just Just just the essence of continuing to evolve through the feedback from our super-users is really, I think how we have gotten to where we are today. And I do think that it&#39;s different than grocers who are trying to build in house. And there&#39;s a lot behind the curtain. </p><p>[00:12:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. And you&#39;ve seen from what I read in one article about one of your customers it seems that you actually know from the data. You know when that customer is coming back and you can compare versus someone that&#39;s not using the recipe tools. How do they, how do their basket size compare? What&#39;s their shopping frequency and you can see the difference. </p><p>[00:12:35] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> We follow everything. Yep. And it&#39;s quite simple to follow. But yeah, we, we, isolate a retailer. </p><p>[00:12:40] Segment the data. Make sure you&#39;re looking at just accurate local data, right. And they&#39;ve either accessed our platform or they haven&#39;t and you just map those two fields together. That gives you the chance to realize that our shoppers, when they play with our recipes they returned to the grocery site four times more often than a shopper who does not. </p><p>[00:12:59] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Wow! Four times more often. </p><p>[00:13:00] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> They&#39;ve never visited our platform before. Yep. They our, our shoppers have a four X increase. Compared to them. Yeah. And I mean, think about like today I have six grocery stores I can drive to in any given moment. </p><p>[00:13:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. </p><p>[00:13:12] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> Loyalty is everything Especially in post pandemic world. You mentioned online ordering. I just get a chill down my spine if I have to walk in the grocery store. </p><p>[00:13:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I do too </p><p>[00:13:23] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> such a brat. </p><p>[00:13:25] I mean it&#39;s, it&#39;s. It&#39;s really been disturbing lately. I literally pull up in front of the grocery store and go, no, no, no, no, no. I&#39;m going to go home and do this on my sofa. </p><p>[00:13:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right? </p><p>[00:13:32] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> And so, and you know, online ordering in the United States year over year in July, increased 17. Percent. </p><p>[00:13:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:13:42] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> I, a year ago, I sat at the table. </p><p>[00:13:45] I mean, I&#39;ve been trying to close deals this whole time. And I sat at the table with retailers and I would have someone look across the table at me and say, Online, grocery shopping is going to contract. A lot of these, But the shopper&#39;s going right back in the store. Katie they&#39;re going right back in the store. </p><p>[00:13:58] And when you challenge that, it&#39;s like, you know, there, there were people smart enough to sign on with us and light it up. And there are people that have waited and we&#39;ve closed some of those contracts now that, you know, a year ago, they, they, their theory was bust. You know, I mean, online grocery shopping is exploded. </p><p>[00:14:13] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. Yeah, I agree.. </p><p>[00:14:14] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> People don&#39;t want to go to the store anymore. I don&#39;t have 45 minutes to go walk the store. </p><p>[00:14:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah,</p><p>[00:14:17] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> you know. </p><p>[00:14:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And I think for a lot of people, it&#39;s not that you may never go back in. It&#39;s just that the frequency of what you&#39;re going to do that is going to be so much lower than before, because you want to take advantage of the convenience factor, but you still want to get the same outcome. </p><p>[00:14:29] And I think that&#39;s, what&#39;s fascinating with what you&#39;re doing is you&#39;re able to deliver something more than what the customer could get before with that online experience, without having to go into the store. </p><p>[00:14:37] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> Yes, because you used the word discovery earlier and that&#39;s what I always associate that word with Costco, just, you know, </p><p>[00:14:42] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, </p><p>[00:14:43] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> that&#39;s the essence of what they want you to do is go in there and find something new. And the cool thing about recipes is that it&#39;s a bundle, but it&#39;s also an impulse buy, right? So when you hit that button and explode to cart, There, there is a computation taking place and the statistical likelihood that you&#39;re going to accept that and check out it&#39;s very, very high. And so what, what just landed in your cart? </p><p>[00:15:05] Some shoppers care, some shoppers don&#39;t. </p><p>[00:15:07] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right </p><p>[00:15:07] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> listen, if you, if you fit into our target persona, you do not care what brand those diced tomatoes are. Just put them in the cart. That&#39;s why we fill primarily with private label. It&#39;s very important as part of our algorithm </p><p>[00:15:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> which has a margin impact for the grocer </p><p>[00:15:18] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> Yes, but it also keeps the recipes nice and inexpensive for the shopper. </p><p>[00:15:22] Again, we&#39;re always shopper first. Everything that we do, we have to reverse. It&#39;s guys go behind the curtain figure out how it&#39;s going to work. You know, from a revenue standpoint, but it is imperative that the shopper wins and low price wins every time getting. Getting the acceptance of the recipes as they moved to cart. </p><p>[00:15:39] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, this, this is really been fantastic. And just fascinating talking with you, Katie. I know we&#39;re going to be seeing and hearing a lot more about Grocery Shopii. W with the kind of trends that I expect to see here this week at grocery shop. For a listeners, if they want to get in touch with you, learn more about Grocery Shopii, what&#39;s the best way for them to reach out to you. </p><p>[00:15:56] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> Sure me personally, my LinkedIn is always open. I check my DMS every day, So Katie H hosts. On LinkedIn. For the company, groceryshopii.com it&#39;s grocery shop ii.com. We have a contacts page, when you fill out that contact form. It tends depending on what your category is, comes straight to me. And so we love hearing from people we love being able to follow up whether it&#39;s clients, partnerships, etc. </p><p>[00:16:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Perfect. </p><p>[00:16:21] Well, thanks again for joining me, Katie. It&#39;s been a real pleasure. </p><p>[00:16:24] <strong>Katie Hotze:</strong> Thank you. I appreciate this I enjoyed this</p><p>[00:16:26]</p><h3>[00:16:26] Stewart Samuel Interview</h3><p>[00:16:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Welcome to the retail razor show special edition episode at grocery shop 2022. I&#39;m here at the show in Las Vegas, continuing our series of amazing retail transformers. To talk all things, grocery and consumer goods. And today I&#39;m here with Stuart Samuel global insight leader for IGD. Stewart, we&#39;ve known each other for a while now. And we seem to often run into each other at these conferences all the time. </p><p>[00:16:59] So I&#39;m just thrilled to have you on the show today </p><p>[00:17:00] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah, Hi Ricardo, it&#39;s great to be here and I&#39;m real excited to share some thoughts with you today. </p><p>[00:17:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, let&#39;s start by having you give us some about your background and what you do at IGD. </p><p>[00:17:09] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah, so I&#39;ve been at IGD quite a long time actually, last 17 years. probably the, last 12, 13 years. Tracking develops in the U S market, and more recently. Leading our global insights. Teams are looking at trends innovations. What does the future of commerce look like? What does the store of the future look like, over the next three to five years and then extending that work up maybe over the next five to 10 years as well. </p><p>[00:17:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> so you are really in a pretty unique position, I&#39;d say in your role to see firsthand, what the impact is of all the latest trends and across grocery, CPG. W what have you seen? We&#39;re about half way through this week&#39;s grocery shop. What are you seeing so far? What what are you most excited about? What are you hearing?</p><p>[00:17:50] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah, It&#39;s been interesting over the last sort of day and a half the amount of times that retail media has been discussed Definitely. I see you sort of nodding away though. It&#39;s been a hot topic and. I think I was in the session with seven 11, earlier this morning. </p><p>[00:18:03] They talked with their new platform. That&#39;s coming out, I love with the fact that they&#39;re calling it Gulp Which is kind of. </p><p>[00:18:07] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s great. That&#39;s great!</p><p>[00:18:09]</p><p>[00:18:09] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> It&#39;s definitely a hot topic and it&#39;s one we&#39;ve been watching. A little bit as well and, ah, I think it&#39;s going to be interesting You know, we work with the retailers and manufacturers and. When you&#39;re seeing so many of these sort of retail platforms being launched, I think what&#39;s going to be interesting from a manufacturer point of view is how do you prioritize? How do you invest. </p><p>[00:18:29] How do you benchmark these different platforms because suddenly, you know, there&#39;s probably, you know, 15 to 20 of these up and running in the us right now. How delicate resources. </p><p>[00:18:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right, right. </p><p>[00:18:39] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Where to focus in on, so, yeah, that&#39;s definitely been up in a hot topic. That I&#39;ve had a lot of both personalization that the P word has come back!</p><p>[00:18:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Of course it&#39;s back. Yeah </p><p>[00:18:46] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> it had disappeared for a while. Right. And you know, as I think, you know, it&#39;s, it&#39;s kind of linked a little bit to retail media. Do you have the ability to really deliver that personalization at scale? Within the digital environment. I don&#39;t think, I think we&#39;re a long way away from maybe get the true personalization, but it&#39;s more about contextual and relevant experiences </p><p>[00:19:05] online. Omnichannel. It&#39;s still growing strong and I think sort of what we&#39;ve seen over the last couple of years is coming to life at this conference that most retailers now accept that Omni channel is the best way forward, it&#39;s where the most profitable customers. Kind of set for the retailers saw yeah. A lot of focus </p><p>[00:19:22] Those three areas. In particular. </p><p>[00:19:23] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Lots to cover there. I&#39;m going to go back to the first one on retail media only because we&#39;ve talked about retail media quite a bit on our show. It was one of our big, big bets or big predictions for the year that it was just going to be one of the great hot topics. And I think one of the things that struck me here at grocery shop. As you know, as soon as you come in, if you judge just by all of the branded advertising, you see all over the hall, you would think that everything about the show is retailers who want to sell retail media to brands just from all the signage that I see everywhere. </p><p>[00:19:52] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah. And there&#39;s definitely a strong presence, you know,. </p><p>[00:19:54] I think that the leaders. Walmart, Amazon, eBay, their in fourth,. They have some great standards. They have a strong presence and a really sort of pushing their, you know, digital platforms. What I think it was also interesting from those organizations just kind of maybe a little off topic, little bit. Actually here to sell their tech. As well I&#39;ve seen it, in the Walmart Commerce Lounge and its stand. You know, Amazon has just walk out group here as well. So these retailers are really sort of expanding their reach in that sort of digital and technical world into other retail organizations as well. Yeah, but coming back to regional media, yeah. It&#39;s going to be you know, for all the retailers, they&#39;re seeing it as a, as an answer to the e-commerce profitability. I mean how can we make , money from a, from all this delivery and pick up activity we&#39;re doing in our stores, and y ou know, I think suddenly the light bulb was going off with a lot of companies to say, Hey, We know this is a really high margin product here that we can make a lot of money out of. And it can sort of offset some of those additional costs. Actually it can also help ecommerce business as well, because you can drive them scalable volume. </p><p>[00:20:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. </p><p>[00:20:52] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> through their channel for the retailers, but yeah, it&#39;s definitely a interesting topic.</p><p>[00:20:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And it really seems to me to be a natural fit for grocery. </p><p>[00:21:01] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah, I think so. Just because the number of touch points that, you know, people have every day. So, you know, people are typically, you know, interacting with food 20 to 25 times a week. </p><p>[00:21:10] And we know that people aren&#39;t just ordering once a week anymore for grocery deliveries. And even when they are doing a one, one last grocery delivery, they&#39;re actually building an order three or four times at different points during the week on their devices. So. There&#39;s eyeballs online so many times that I think for the CPG partners, it&#39;s just a great opportunity to get their brands. In front of consumers and, I guess </p><p>[00:21:30] what&#39;s made a true test is, how relevant those ads can be, but to your point, for grocery retail specifically. You know, those with the loyalty programs that the leaders have a closed loop, the measurement right. And really sort of, show the ROI to the advertisers is such a strength, but maybe it doesn&#39;t exist in other channels yet as well. </p><p>[00:21:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> and do you see. With the grocers particular retail media networks. It seems to me there&#39;s a better opportunity perhaps than in other retail segments to have that closed loop data capability either because of the loyalty programs. Or just different ways that grocers have to collect data about their customers over the lifetime, because they have such a regular recurring relationship with the customers or maybe other retail segments, it&#39;s much more sporadic in their interaction with customers. It seems like the, the opportunity to deliver on that ROI to your point, back to the brand should be better in a, in a grocery retail media network. </p><p>[00:22:22] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah, I think that in terms of vertical grocery is probably better positioned than others yeah, just The frequency of interaction. Just the amount of data that the readers already have on their consumers and then the ability to. Align that with the, ads their serving up so you know, you can sort of show an ad to the consumer. </p><p>[00:22:37] And provide that consumer is locked in on the system you know, the changes and cookies and things, part of a loyalty program They can then say to the advertiser, Hey, we showed this person this ad and this is what that person then went on to do, either in store or online. That&#39;s really powerful. And particularly with the limitations that&#39;s going to come with I think that we, that even means recession. In a better position and yeah, they can really make the case that, you know, Advertiser that&#39;s better than going to a third party platform. </p><p>[00:23:04] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Have you seen in, in the discussions here this week on retail media? Connecting the dots, so to speak between the focus on the e-commerce side of the business, but also bringing that retail media network in store. </p><p>[00:23:15] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Not yet. But it&#39;s definitely something that we&#39;ve seen happen in store. So. Amazon&#39;s a bit of an example with their Amazon Fresh stores and so in those stores. There&#39;s a lot of digital screens. Up in those stores and also so for other retailers like Walmart who might bring TV sort of channels in the stores. For a long time, there&#39;s a lot more they can do in store. As well, it doesn&#39;t have to be just digital stuff in store. It can be something as as like floor stickers, </p><p>[00:23:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right yeah </p><p>[00:23:37] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> could have bigger events. In-store as well. I think over time. I think that will nuance and change and right now the big focus is on selling of those digital But I think there&#39;ll be an opportunity to expand that off into the physical store as well </p><p>[00:23:49] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I think it just, it just makes sense. Do you see a tie in with things like electronic shelf labels? </p><p>[00:23:55] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah, you. Kroger&#39;s tried that before. They have this stuff where depending, how far away you were from the shelf, right. That the ad would change. The big picture message from far away and the closer you got to the shelf </p><p>[00:24:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> More narrow, more specific. </p><p>[00:24:07] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> And give you a more contextual message. So I think there is opportunity that there is a, I think a. Yeah, significant costs with that type of setup of as well. </p><p>[00:24:17] Across the whole store. We have seen some some tests with. With a promotional ends being digitized only in certain categories, having digital boards above, Asda. in the UK has done some of that. So yeah, I think all the time, but until, Digitizing the whole sort of store on shelf strips. </p><p>[00:24:34] it&#39;s just a cost internally </p><p>[00:24:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah, that, that can kind of make sense. I think on the cost implication. Especially, if you think about it, we&#39;re talking about large physical spaces, a lot, a lot of ground to cover with that. But I think maybe at the same time, this kind of goes to your second trend about the personalization is back. Right. And we&#39;re talking more again about how to personalize. I heard at least one, maybe two different brands talk about earlier today. Just how personalization is just table stakes. You have to be doing this now. And it made me think and, I think we&#39;ve heard that before, too in, in past events like this, but there, there seems to be a different kind of context to it. And maybe it&#39;s because of the retail media networks where you want, you obviously want to leverage that personalization, but maybe there&#39;s something else happening. </p><p>[00:25:15] I think that&#39;s causing this to be more important than we used to talk about it. </p><p>[00:25:19] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah, I&#39;d agree. It&#39;s kind of a sort of you know, pre pandemic has been talked about quite a bit and then the pndemic came, and it was like, Well, let&#39;s just sell everything </p><p>[00:25:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I&#39;ve got other priorities. </p><p>[00:25:28] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> kind of sort of just drop off the radar, so I agree. retail media is one aspect, which is enabling more contextual ads to be served up. This is a form of personalization. I think the other thing as well is changing intentions to go in with consumers on mobile devices. As well, I think. Sort of it&#39;s much easier to deliver that personalized experience to a mobile device. We also assume this has been more and more time on those mobile devices. </p><p>[00:25:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I agree that that makes sense. So, and again, that sort of ties into the third trend that you highlighted, which, you know, for most of us would say, well, it&#39;s not a new trend, but it&#39;s kind of back again in this space and that&#39;s be more omni-channel. </p><p>[00:26:04] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah, it&#39;s definitely, not a new trend, right </p><p>[00:26:07] yeah, it seems to be that Just the, you know, all those other elements coming together, retail media, personalization. </p><p>[00:26:13] I think Retail is also, you know, the, the cost challenge we&#39;ve had with e-commerce. The work they put in over the last few years to add more capacity. We&#39;ve seen a bit of leveling off of growth. In e-commerce this year. All those factors coming together, that leaders are now really sort of. Refining and fine tuning really </p><p>[00:26:31] For online orders. And returns. I was at a new target store in New York last week. And they have a whole pack of checkups. And registered for selling stuff. And then the whole of You know, and that&#39;s just for collecting online orders. So, retailers are thinking about their spaces. I think sort of a pre pandemic and during the pandemic there wasn&#39;t like a ton of thought into sort of how much space is needed for this stuff. How are we going to set up? Set up the customer service aspect. There&#39;s more capacity in the market. There&#39;s more competition. The retailers are really sort of wanting in that service elements so you know, when a customer comes to the store. How quickly can we say to that customer, by having that sort of stage and space set up, be close the store entrance, having a team with them. I think that&#39;s where retailers are now focusing on being omni-channel </p><p>[00:27:14] the systems are set up, the processes are set up right. the tech is there, the infrastructure is there.</p><p>[00:27:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That makes sense. , finding the right ways to optimize, to start making all of these things more profitable And more consistent, I would say probably for that customer experience. </p><p>[00:27:27] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah, I agree. And I think a lot of retailers have scaled up a lot during the pandemic. And whilst, you know, maybe to both slow this year, The penetration for most retailers is significantly above where it was pre pandemic. So that&#39;s a big part of that business. It&#39;s a big potential, you know, challenging. </p><p>[00:27:40] For the business that we needed to get it right and fine tuning. Looking at different form of models. As it gets to scale, do we need a dark store or do we </p><p>[00:27:47] microfulfillment doing it, something away from the store so all the things that sort of. Well, I see it being looked at in a lot of detail. , </p><p>[00:27:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> one of the things that I guess strikes me with that is. Maybe I&#39;d describe it as. I&#39;ll put it. I know I heard this in a couple of sessions today where there&#39;s the ongoing debate of, you know, which of these You know, trends during pandemic are lasting. Today and beyond, you know, we saw that the large increases in online and e-commerce for grocery and then there&#39;s been sort of a leveling off, and I&#39;ve heard a couple of different viewpoints in, in sessions today on people expressing their thoughts as to what&#39;s that level going to now level off and stay at that rate. Or are we just going to see a slow down in the increasing. Rate year over year of this, but it&#39;s still always going to be a significant enough proportion to the channel mix that, you know, we need to find ways to, to be better at Omni channel. </p><p>[00:28:36] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah, definitely. The data we have at IGD shows that incremental growth. To come. Definitely growth is slowing this year. Probably for a lot of companies, it will be pretty flat. This year compared to last year. </p><p>[00:28:47] But going forward. I&#39;ve seen since, you know, good, healthy growth, including here. In the us and a again, A lot of us here have tried e-comm for the first time during the pandemic. </p><p>[00:28:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. </p><p>[00:28:56] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> A lot of us have converted. To being regular customers. There&#39;s also more capacity coming on stream. So more opportunities. </p><p>[00:29:01] For, you know, Shoppers to order I&#39;m also I was just in the door dash session seeing sort of there&#39;s more in a more missions being served. So going more for the convenience.</p><p>[00:29:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> mm-hmm, right. </p><p>[00:29:11] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Which, are actually enabling large grocers. To do that. So people like Albertsons in us, Loblaw in Canada. We don&#39;t have convenience format stores. But now through that partnership with Dash mart, it&#39;s actually served that</p><p>[00:29:22] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> that convenience customer. </p><p>[00:29:24] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah. That&#39;s bringing up a different type of offer. Yeah. Some of the stuff we&#39;re seeing on experimentation around live streaming. That social commerce, TV commerce, right. This kind of idea of, yeah, always on shopping, right. Yeah. lots of new pilots and tests being announced this week </p><p>[00:29:39] And we&#39;ll just underpin that growth. </p><p>[00:29:42] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah, what do you see happening from your perspective on grocery with livestreaming. I mean you know Walmart made a big announcement this week with firework. Right. And, and teaming up on live streaming. And I find that&#39;s an interesting topic. I generally, for retail, I&#39;m a big proponent of live streaming taking off, maybe not in the same way that it did in China and throughout Asia, a little differently here. </p><p>[00:30:02] But I&#39;m curious what you think that the, the angle is in the grocery segment for live streaming. </p><p>[00:30:07] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah. I&#39;m a big fan actually of Fila. I think they&#39;re doing some great stuff from the, some of the pilots with Albertson&#39;s and the announcement with Walmart. I think there&#39;s a huge opportunity to food retailers to keep people in their own ecosystems, if you like. So rather than going to maybe Tik TOK for a recipe inspiration. Actually can we, can we have that kind of content on our platform, actually, can we set it up in a way that is easily generated content. Right. </p><p>[00:30:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. Okay. Yeah. </p><p>[00:30:34] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> You know that CPG coming through just, you know,. Some branded content. I think that what I expect to see is that more of an user generated content sitting on retailer&#39;s site. </p><p>[00:30:43] Yeah. I&#39;m with you. I think livestreaming is an opportunity in this market. I think it&#39;s a slow burn though. I think it will be different to what happened how it evolved in Asia but I think that there is no to that just because I think the appetite for that kind of. </p><p>[00:30:59] You know, real time video based content is huge. And it&#39;s growing with us in your consumers. So I think over time, there&#39;s just an expectation that they can sort of tap into that type of content, and actually experience that on the retailer&#39;s platform </p><p>[00:31:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Then kind of keep, owning that relationship versus giving up that relationship to a social media platform. </p><p>[00:31:16] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Exactly. Yeah. But it is interesting. They, they are making their products available through those different platforms. As well as us. It&#39;s kind of like covering all bases. </p><p>[00:31:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I guess it sort of plays into their whole omni-channel plan, right. Is to be everywhere in a sense. </p><p>[00:31:31] I know there was a session earlier I was in the president of Campbell snacks, gave example of a campaign they did on Tik TOK that generated 10 billion views. On just </p><p>[00:31:40] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> they were like three days, </p><p>[00:31:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right. Over three days. And just how many goldfish can you hold in your hand? Yeah, it was amazing </p><p>[00:31:46] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah, it was amazing, but yeah, we know that a particularly on tiktok. There is opportunities to go viral. </p><p>[00:31:53] Typically, I think when their. Imaginative when their, around some of those. Yeah. I wouldn&#39;t say nostalgia brands, but those well-known brands and Cielo the Oreo campaigns right </p><p>[00:32:04] I think so. I think it&#39;s been really interesting actually to see a lot of traditional brands. Tap into those new mediums. Quite a big week for some of you they expected, maybe it would be some of the newer challenges, startup grounds that would be sort of occupying that space for that. We&#39;ve seen it from people like Kraft-Heinz right from Mondelez. </p><p>[00:32:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All the traditional brands, </p><p>[00:32:22] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> all the traditional brands </p><p>[00:32:24] they&#39;ll look the job in that space. </p><p>[00:32:25] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So it&#39;s the last thing. I want to ask you, , is there anything that strikes you. Is interesting. That&#39;s not being talked about so far this week. </p><p>[00:32:35] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah. Tell me what I haven&#39;t heard a lot about is two things. We, we&#39;re still very much focused on his health and sustainability. </p><p>[00:32:40] It&#39;s interesting because when I was. Before sustainability was the biggest shield and it was on the agenda. Quite a bit. You know, there&#39;s a big sort discussion point right now, whether, does the cost of living crisis sort of , pull back on some of the stability, focus that a lot of shoppers have or do they continue to sort of pursue it and support all those things. So I haven&#39;t seen a lot In this event. Certainly sort of it&#39;s one we&#39;re watching to see just, what happens with a lot of those efforts? Cause let&#39;s super interesting right now, is that a lot of the milestones, The shorter term. Focused on 2025. </p><p>[00:33:12] And 2030. So 20 25 is like less than. So less than a thousand days, right? So. There&#39;s a lot of packaging initiatives, a lot of proof points retailers have made. that and we know most retailers tell us net-zero over 24. Yeah, a little bit longer up actually between 2025 and 2030. That&#39;s cool of deliverables. If you begin to release those ESG reports. </p><p>[00:33:32] I think we will see more coming through and it will seem like activity. In that space, just haven&#39;t heard a lot of it. If you had today and then then health is another one. Sort of. We know. Thinking longer term shift. In the industry. But again, it&#39;s not been much on the agenda here </p><p>[00:33:46] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. Yeah, no, I agree up. </p><p>[00:33:47] I&#39;ve been kind of surprised that we don&#39;t see more agenda items on, on those topics here this week Well, Stuart, this has been a fantastic discussion. I&#39;m so glad you could take the time to join me today. If listeners want to get in touch with you. Follow your work at IGD. Learn more about you know, the great data insights you guys have. What&#39;s the best way for them to reach out to you </p><p>[00:34:08] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> With me on LinkedIn. Yeah, you&#39;ll probably see some store photos now and again. Again, almost every day. Either on LinkedIn or my email just samuel@igd.com and yeah have a talk about the work we do at IGD.</p><p>[00:34:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right. Great. Well, thanks again Stewart for joining me today. </p><p>[00:34:22] <strong>Stewart Samuel:</strong> Yeah, thanks Ricardo! </p><h3>[00:34:23] Show Close</h3><p>[00:34:23] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We hope you enjoyed our show and we can&#39;t ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don&#39;t wanna miss a minute of what&#39;s next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don&#39;t forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden. </p><p>[00:34:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:35:14] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[00:35:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. </p> 75120c50-68c7-40d8-a579-485ee0df28d4 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Wed, 05 Oct 2022 12:55:00 +0000 2136 no full S2E2 The Retail Avengers & The Power of Retail Media Networks S2E2 The Retail Avengers & The Power of Retail Media Networks 2 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E2 – The Retail Avengers & The Power of Retail Media Networks It’s Season 2, Episode 2 of The Retail Razor Show and we’re tackling one of the biggest trends you need to understand in retail today – Retail Media Networks! Our Retail Avengers team has been eagerly anticipating this topic and recently held the discussion in our Clubhouse room, to uncover the truth about retail media networks and why retailers should (or should not) care about them. Is it about top-line revenue? Margin? First-party customer data? Or all of the above? To help cut through the clutter we invited the industry’s leading analyst and expert on the topic – Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail & ecommerce at Insider Intelligence, to give us the scoop! Your hosts, Ricardo and Casey, are then joined by Andrew one more time to dig into what’s happened since the Clubhouse recording and consider the reality retailers and brands should think about when evaluating retail media networks. This episode is tailor-made for retailers, brands, marketing and advertising agencies – there’s something for everyone, and you’ll want to take notes during this one! News update! We’re sitting at #21 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your loyal help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20 in no time! Leave us a review and we’ll mention you in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT The Retail Avengers & The Power of Retail Media Networks [00:00:00] Pre-Show Intro [00:00:00] Casey Golden: So Ricardo, there are two kinds of people in this business, those that love and depend on ads and those that can't stand it and strategize to avoid it. Which one are you? [00:00:11] Ricardo Belmar: I admitted I am of two minds here on the one. The marketer in me loves talking about advertising when it comes to creating messaging and finding the right mediums or reach your audience. But then on the other hand, I'm also a consumer and I can't help, but consider advertising to be just like what professor Scott Galloway puts it attacks on the poor, who can't buy their way out of it. [00:00:31] Casey Golden: Okay. That's like cheating. You have to pick one. You can't be in both camps. [00:00:36] Ricardo Belmar: Why not? You know, the world of commerce is very gray. It's not black and white. [00:00:39] Casey Golden: Hm, you have to pick one. I will die on my sword. You have to pick it's either one or the other. You can't be on both teams. [00:00:47] Ricardo Belmar: But what? So now there are teams? [00:00:48] Casey Golden: There's always teams There are only two kinds of people and you went and created a third person. [00:00:55] Ricardo Belmar: I I'm just expressing thoughts on this topic. I didn't realize I was choosing which team I'm on or creating an entirely new person. I mean, I don't know what kind of podcast starts the show by creating new kinds of people and putting everyone into one bucket or another. [00:01:08] Casey Golden: Who said anything about buckets? [00:01:10] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Fine. Not, not buckets. How about different brands of vodka? [00:01:12] Casey Golden: different brands of vodka have nothing to do with this. [00:01:16] Ricardo Belmar: It's a metaphor. [00:01:17] Casey Golden: are you sure? I have a feeling you're just making us run out of time to intro your topic. [00:01:22] Ricardo Belmar: Well, you brought up advertising and then we branched off into buckets. [00:01:26] Casey Golden: No really buckets of vodka have nothing to do with this week's show with all this talk of buckets. We're not going to have time to talk about retail me.... [00:01:36] [00:01:36] Show Intro [00:01:56] Introduction [00:01:56] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode two of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host Ricardo Belmar. [00:02:02] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host Casey Golden. Welcome. Retail Razor Show listeners to our unapologetically, authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and tech alike. [00:02:14] Ricardo Belmar: So Casey, here we are second episode of the new season coming right off our strong opening with the Metaverse, which by the way is quickly becoming a very popular episode. [00:02:23] Casey Golden: It's an important topic. I'm not so sure it's popular. I mean, there's so much hype out there about the metaverse. If there was one topic that needed someone to cut through the clutter. This is it. [00:02:33] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, no doubt about it. Well, if that's the number one, I have to say this week's topic is pretty darn close if not tied right up there with the metaverse plus it's one of my favorites. [00:02:42] Casey Golden: That can only mean one thing. This must be the week we're covering retail media networks. [00:02:47] Ricardo Belmar: You got it! Yes. This week is all about retail media networks. One of our top 10 predictions for 2022 back in season one, episode four. And it's another hot topic that our Retail Avengers crew had been anxiously waiting to cover for so long. And we go pretty deep on this one. [00:03:03] Casey Golden: That's right. But when we cover a topic, we really, really cover a topic. We bring in the big shots to dive in, bring it home. We had an awesome special guest that joined us on clubhouse for this topic. [00:03:18] Ricardo Belmar: And when you want a big shot to step in and talk, retail media networks, who ya gonna call? [00:03:21] Casey Golden: I'm guessing it's not Ghostbusters, but yeah, I see what you did there. Um, you're really gonna try to get this back into referencing eighties, pop culture. [00:03:31] Ricardo Belmar: I am all in for that challenge. Indeed but, but no, of course it's not the Ghostbusters it's even better. We brought in none other than Andrew Lipsman, principle analyst covering retail, and e-commerce at e-marketer insider intelligence. [00:03:44] Casey Golden: Andrew has done so much research and forecasting into retail media networks. This was such a good session on clubhouse. We of course, had to bring Andrew back to talk with us again for an update. So after we listen to clubhouse, which was recorded a few months ago, we'll come back and chat with Andrew to see what the latest happenings are in the world of retail media [00:04:06] Ricardo Belmar: It'll definitely be worth the wait. So with that said, since this is a topic that needs no further introduction, let's dive right in and listen to the Retail Avengers and the Rise of Retail Media Networks. [00:04:23] Clubhouse Session [00:04:23] Ricardo Belmar: And welcome everybody. Welcome back to the retail razor room. We've got a great topic today. The room title says the Retail Avengers and the Rise of Retail Media Networks, which is absolutely one of my favorite topics lately. [00:04:35] And as anyone who's following along in our podcast knows it was one of our top 10 predictions for 2022. I'm thrilled to have someone I consider an expert in retail media networks, Andrew Lipsman, and Andrew. I'll let you introduce yourself in just a moment. For those of you who might be new to our rooms, I'm gonna let each member here of the team introduce themselves quickly. And Casey, why don't we start with you? [00:04:58] Casey Golden: Hi, I'm Casey golden. I'm the founder of Luxlock, a retail experience platform. [00:05:04] And I have spent my career on the fashion and supply chain tech side of the business building Franken stacks, and now I'm slay ' em [00:05:12] Ricardo Belmar: fantastic. And Jeff, [00:05:14] Jeff Roster: hi Jeff Roster, former Gartner and IHL retail sector analyst. Now serving on several boards, including the Center for Retail Transformation at George Mason University and the host and producer of This Week in Innovation [00:05:27] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Great. Thanks, Jeff. And Brandon. [00:05:29] Brandon Rael: Good afternoon everyone, Brandon Rael in the New York area. I've been in around the retail industry, my whole career, and lately I've worked abroad with fortune 100 companies to drive business and innovation transformations and really to adjust their operating models to the current consumer and digital trends and behaviors. [00:05:48] Happy to have to be back on this platform. [00:05:50] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks Brandon. And Andrew to introduce yourself as well to the audience here. [00:05:54] Andrew Lipsman: Thanks Ricardo. So I'm Andrew Lipman, the principal analyst covering retail and e-commerce at e-marketer. So retail and e-commerce is a, is a pretty wide purview, but I'd have to say in the past year or so 70% of my time has gone pretty exclusively to retail media. It's just become such a hot topic. I do have a background in digital advertising as well. So the fact that commerce and advertising have intersected so nicely in the form of retail media has just become a, a coverage sweet spot. So I have leaned into it. [00:06:25] I I've been a part of the forecast that we've done at e-marketer to help round out the picture of the space. But I, I often say that I, I think, you know, we're just getting started. I mean, we're really in the second or third inning of what I think is just one of the biggest trends that we will see in digital advertising and commerce. [00:06:41] So I'm excited about where we are and, and also what's next. [00:06:45] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Great. And I, I gotta say, I, I share that enthusiasm for this space. It's also one of my favorite topics and we've been saving this one for the room. So I'm glad to see that we have some loyal fans here that are joining us in the audience. [00:06:59] And so really quickly, I'm Ricardo Belmar. For those of you in the audience that don't know me, I host the retail razor room here and also co-host with Casey golden, the retail razor podcast. So if you're not to subscribe to that, I encourage everyone to check that out. You'll hear some of our favorite past clubhouse sessions there, as well as some other interesting interviews and other topics that we're, we're bringing to that medium. I'm currently lead partner marketing advisor at Microsoft for retail and consumer goods. And let's go ahead and jump into this topic and I'm gonna lean over to you, Andrew, cuz as, as you just kind of nicely put, you were spending so much time on, on retail media networks. [00:07:37] It was one of your, I think top five trends you, you gave for 2022, right at the end of last year as well. Can you kind of set the stage for us? Tell us a little bit about where retail media networks stand currently in terms of, ad spending, what, what are you forecasting as growth for that? [00:07:54] And also give us a definition of what you would call a retail media network. What is it? What is it not. [00:07:59] Defining Retail Media Networks [00:07:59] Andrew Lipsman: Sure. So let's maybe start with the definition. I mean, I think of a retail media network as any sort of an ad network that exists on a retailer's owned and operated assets, which historically really has, has kind of met in store. [00:08:13] More recently it's been on e-commerce sites and apps. But I'd also widen the definition a bit to include any media that is powered by retailer first party data. That's a, a reasonable slice of what we're seeing in retail media ad spend today. It's about 10% of the market. But it's a part of the market that's only gonna grow as you start seeing that first party data kind of connect into all sorts of inventory, whether that's display and video online, increasingly connected TV and then other digital media assets. [00:08:45] So that's kind of how I, I define the space our definition of, of digital retail media ad spend for 2022 in the us showed just under 41 billion in spending growing in about 30, over 30% for the year. This year that's down in terms of growth rate from the previous years were, were upwards of 50% growth. [00:09:05] But it's actually about the same amount of incremental spending coming into this market every year. In fact, if you go from 2020 on it went from about 21 billion to 31 billion to 41 billion, 2023, we're projecting 51 billion and then 61 billion. So it just sort of lands nicely that way, where it's about 10 billion in incremental spend every year to date and then also what we're projecting for the next few years going forward. So that's a big reason why this is such a, a big emerging opportunity. And, and just to put that, those numbers in context, cuz you know, you hear a big multibillion dollar number. You don't just have the context for it. [00:09:42] By the end of that period, when it's 61 billion, that will be about one in every five digital advertising dollars, obviously an enormous very profitable market. [00:09:52] Ricardo Belmar: So that was going to be my next question, when you look at that growth, as you said, it was going to be one in five of every ad spend dollar. If you're a brand, how are you deciding where to put that spend? What's the appeal to be spending your money with these retail media networks. And maybe even before that question, let me make this a two parter question and then I'll turn to some of the other speakers up here for their thoughts, but for the retailer themselves, cuz it does seem like every week we hear of yet another retailer who's launching their new retail media network. [00:10:22] I think Ulta beauty was the most recent that that comes to my mind. What's the appeal for the retailer? Is it really just the incremental revenue and margin from this ad spend that they're getting from brands? Or is it about getting more data? Is it a combination of both? [00:10:36] Andrew Lipsman: So everything that you mentioned is true, but just to get right to the heart of the matter, it's the margin. In most cases, the incremental revenue is, is gonna be pretty modest. [00:10:45] There's not that many retailers that have the potential to grow their top line in a huge way from this. But if you're a retailer who's treading on, you know, modest to thin margins and you, all of a sudden can introduce a new revenue stream that maybe drives 30 or 40% net margins, it changes the whole profit profile for your company. [00:11:06] So that's what everyone's chasing. They've seen what's happened to Amazon. Maybe, the last two quarters, not withstanding, if you pay close attention to Amazon's earnings, you would've noticed that amid the pandemic as their ad revenues really grew. And for a few quarters, I think it was growing 60, 70, 80% year over year. [00:11:23] All of a sudden Amazon was just blowing its profit expectations out of the water by like multiples by two or three times what, what wall street was expecting. So everyone's seeing that and they're paying attention to it and realizing that it can totally transform the bottom line of, of their business. [00:11:38] But the big question is whether they can get there. And as you've said, everyone's a media network today. They've all flooded into the space. And the question is realistically how much incremental revenue and margin can they drive at the end of the day? [00:11:51] Ricardo Belmar: So I, do have a follow up to that, but before I get to it, I want to ask the other analyst on stage, Jeff, what are your thoughts on, everything Andrew just described about where we're at with retail media networks. [00:12:02] Jeff Roster: Well, it's, it's [00:12:03] really such a fascinating area typically. I mean, it's not a, an it spend area, so it's, it's something I haven't really studied and we knew about it. We, you know, the Walmart radio network we've always talked about. [00:12:14] And when I saw Andrew numbers, I I almost had almost fainted. I mean, it's just, you know, incredibly large and growing. So as somebody that understands how retailers operate, I mean, incremental revenue , is, dang good at revenue. And so I can see them clearly trying to not only just continue to expand this, but I think also add some power into their negotiations with, with their brands, people that wanna market with them. [00:12:40] I mean, we've always talked about slotting fees. Now we have, media advertising fees. So somebody that's always championing the innovation. I love seeing it. I love the experimentation. I love the, the growth, the, the exploitation of a new market, new opportunities. [00:12:52] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks. And Brandon one are your thoughts. [00:12:54] Brandon Rael: Yeah, I think it's amazing to see the the vertical integration where the retailers and brands can controlled the experience , and the media and the marketing. So it's they're controlling, what's communicated their customers and what's proprietary to them. So this is another channel, another opportunity, like to where there can be revenue growth and less dependency on third party media companies. [00:13:13] So I think it's a fascinating development [00:13:14] Casey Golden: Yeah, I think that's a really good, point's just really about them managing their own proprietary content and, and that distribution I think it's, it's gonna be interesting to see how the third party ad networks adjust over the next few years. [00:13:28] Jeff Roster: So Andrew, could I ask a question to better understand the numbers? [00:13:32] Andrew Lipsman: Absolutely. [00:13:32] Jeff Roster: So really before Ricardo and Casey started talking about this as a major trend. I mean, I, I knew it and I understood sort of what it was. I just always assumed what we were talking about or just the Walmart radio network, just music and ads playing inside their physical stores. Certainly high value for, for them. [00:13:50] And then all of a sudden, now we're talking about selling ads. Could you maybe just unpack what it means, or an example of where these dollars are coming from who's who's paying and who's receiving those dollars. [00:14:00] Advertising Spend vs Retail Media [00:14:00] Andrew Lipsman: Sure. So let me start by just kind of defining the space. So the, the, the vast majority of the numbers I referenced. [00:14:07] Almost about 75% of it actually is Amazon like sponsored product ads on Amazon. When you search on e-commerce sites, Walmart, eBay, Instacart, all of those players are driving the bulk of the market. The in-store media that you're speaking to is, is frankly a pretty modest sliver piece. That said, I think it's going to be transformative. [00:14:32] I think you're gonna see all sorts of digital media entering the stores. And there's a lot of innovation that's gonna happen in both digital you know, display, video and audio. So it's all of that. Where are the budgets coming from? So it's, I would say, a big thing that spurred the growth of this market in the last two years was the pandemic and obviously the, the boom and e-commerce, and those ad dollars started to follow commerce dollars. [00:14:54] You know, obviously Amazon was a big part of drawing those dollars online. So those dollars largely were incremental budgets. There's a lot of incremental budget during the pandemic as you know, T and E budgets were held back. So there, a lot of that got poured into advertising. Obviously consumer demand came back, so everybody wanted to spend ads into that. [00:15:17] But the big question really is as the market rationalizes, the advertising market rationalize, where do the budgets in the future come from when it's not gonna be so heavily dependent on incremental dollars? There it's, there are a few places. I mean, there's really three. So the first one is other digital ad spend Facebook and Google. [00:15:37] And I would say right now Google's holding up pretty well amid the deprecation of third party, identifiers Facebook, not so much. So you will start to see some budgets shift. Away from Facebook and in the direction of retail media. There's not a ton of overlap though in the specific types of advertisers and the types of advertising today. [00:15:56] So it's not kind of a, a direct line between one and the other. The next big bucket of ad spend that it will pull from his TV. These TV dollars have just been sitting there for years and years. Viewership continues to decline and those dollars don't have anywhere better to go. Now that said those TV dollars still wanna chase TV like inventory, they want video. [00:16:17] So the, the opportunity for retail media is either in store video, or I mentioned connected TV. Like Amazon is, is powering more and more of that. You're gonna see a lot of those TV dollars go into those formats. And the last one that if, if you're coming from, physical retail world is shopper and trade dollars huge, huge budgets starting to shift. [00:16:38] We saw a big pronounced shift from between 2020 and 2021 from those budgets specifically. There's a lot more to come. Now, the interesting aspect of that is that the brands will pull from shopper and trade marketing and put it into retail media. But retailers don't necessarily want that because it's just, you know, taking out one of their pockets and putting it in another. [00:17:00] So the brands in many, in most cases would much prefer that those dollars come from the other buckets that I mentioned, basically Facebook and TV. [00:17:08] Casey Golden: I think it's really interesting the opportunity here we have to essentially hold those retailers accountable for the distribution of the funds. When I was at Ralph, I would negotiate the margin agreements as well as a bucket of ad spend for our brand. [00:17:26] And I would just blindly write a check. I wouldn't get any KPIs back. I wasn't deploying it to a specific medium or. A specific location necessarily. We just had to blindly write a check to say here's a few million dollars for ad spend for you. Great. So I think that it really just empowers a lot of the brands to be able to hold accountability to the retail media networks. [00:17:50] If they're, they're gonna start doing that. I think it's a win-win for both sides. A lot of companies have been doing it without any insights in return. [00:17:58] Ricardo Belmar: And Andrew question for you on, on Casey's point here, I mean, are, are the metrics there? What are you finding brands are, let's say pleased with the kind of reporting they get on the, the performance of their dollars on these retail media networks, or are they struggling to find the ROI and the return on ad spend. [00:18:14] Andrew Lipsman: No, they're, they're really not struggling. I can talk, there is a little bit of friction that I can mention in a moment, but let me talk about the, the bigger picture first here. Casey's point is right. They were spending these dollars anyway but there wasn't accountability. My, my thesis before this, this space exploded a few years ago, I actually wrote my first report on retail media networks in 2019, when this was bar barely a blip on people's radar. [00:18:37] And my thesis was essentially that measurement makes markets, especially digital advertising markets. If you think about digital ad dollars that got pulled online in the early days, it was Google because people could see that closed loop on performance. You put, you know, dollars into Google. You could see that you got a, a dollar 25 out. [00:18:56] Then the social era happened and Facebook built an amazing apparatus of targeting and measurement. And when you just see, and when brands large and small, see that you put dollars in and you get more dollars out. They keep pushing spend in that direction. So it was it's kind of obvious or, or, or that we would see this parallel in retail media because it links so directly to e-commerce and that measurement is gonna move those budgets and, and certainly brands like accountability. [00:19:25] Now I mentioned a, a couple minutes ago that retailers may not necessarily like the fact that if it's just pulling from shopper and trade spend, it's not necessarily a net benefit for them. But in some sense, it is if those dollars are moving from not being accountable to accountable because of how that can unlock incremental dollars. [00:19:44] Right. I, I mean that, that is what's gonna fuel the biggest portion of this growth going forward still. Maybe not quite as much as it did here as, as it's rationalized, but there's still a lot of incremental spend. That's gonna come into digital advertising over the years and it will disproportionately move into retail media for, for exactly those reasons. [00:20:03] As far as the, the friction points, what you hear is that the, the ROAS right, the first metric that everyone looks at return on ad spend for Amazon in particular, it's, it's coming down as ad prices go up. But it's still proving really strong. And if you just cross compare it to other digital advertising channels, it still looks better than, than most of them. [00:20:22] I think the friction that's happening is with so many networks and with Amazon as the default buy starting to see that return on ad spend going down. I think there's a lot more questioning of how do I allocate my budgets within and across different retail media networks. So, so there is some handwringing going on and trying to figure out where is the best place to allocate that next dollar. [00:20:43] But broadly speaking, I think brands feel really good about putting their, their dollars into the bucket of retail media. And they're pretty happy with networks across the board and the metrics that they're getting. [00:20:55] Ricardo Belmar: One thing I wonder a lot about this, is there a opportunity for agencies that manage ad spend for brands as they interact with more and more of these retail media networks to help them with that allocation? Is, is that helping on the agency side or is it more, more of an indifferent kind of change. [00:21:12] Andrew Lipsman: You know, agencies are getting really involved and they have to be because th this is in, in our research and other, other third party research has, has shown similar things. Brands can only manage so many platforms, right? They're already managing a bunch of different digital advertising platforms outside of retail media. [00:21:27] And then now they have to go into new walled gardens and try and understand the idiosyncrasies of each one of those. And most of them are basically saying I can put my dollars in two to three retail media networks, and, and then it gets too hard. I'm spread too thin. So that's where agencies can help them spread it a little bit further into four or five, six different networks. But yeah, I think they need that, that handholding, if they're gonna be able to allocate it most appropriately. [00:21:54] Ricardo Belmar: So, as we mentioned earlier, that we've seen so many additional networks pop up every week. I'm curious if you, are you keeping track of how many of these and I'll use the word official? Maybe there's such a thing as an unofficial retail media network, but are you tracking how many there are to date? [00:22:09] Andrew Lipsman: Loosely. I, I would say if, if you asked me to, to write down as many as I could, I could knock out a fair amount of them. It's it's definitely dozens and dozens. There's, there's probably not really room for all of them. So I, I think the space is getting crowded now, in some sense, there's surprisingly more space than you would imagine because you have kind of the networks that cut across a lot of categories, thinking Amazon, Walmart, target Costco, a few of those ones. [00:22:33] But then you have some category specific ones that are just highly, highly relevant to their categories that a best buy or a home Depot. So they have really viable, healthy, strong networks for their advertisers. It's it's, once you get out of that kind of category leadership position, you see the second and third players within a category, trying to start a network where you start to question the, the opportunity. [00:22:55] I will say for everyone, if they have enough traffic on their sites and apps, there's kind of the low hanging fruit of just monetizing that search. And you can partner, with some platform partners the Criteo's and Citrus ads of the world to, to do the basic monetization that would be kind of low lift. [00:23:10] I don't know if it's gonna add up to a lot, but I, if it's minimal effort and you can get something out of it, It may be very well be worth it for all these networks. I just don't think most of them will kind of ultimately emerge as having this more, walled garden status, where people are coming in, hands on keyboard, analyzing the data, doing different types of ad buys beyond just basic sponsored product listings. [00:23:35] One RMN To Rule Them All? [00:23:35] Jeff Roster: Well, Andrew, if, there's 600 tier one retailers, which , by my definition is greater than a billion dollars in revenue. And if we're assuming e-com is anywhere from, 10 to 20% of those that you know, that revenue there's a fair amount of traffic in all those websites. Wouldn't each one of those, players be wouldn't it be worth them to have some kind of a, network set up? If they have enough traffic, it's gotta, they obviously have to have traffic, but if they do? [00:23:59] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. Like I said, if, if it, if it's minimal investment and you can get something out of it, I just think most should not expect it to add up to a whole lot. So you mentioned, how would you say 600? [00:24:10] Jeff Roster: Well, it's between four to 600 retail, north American retailers that are graded a billion dollars in revenue. [00:24:15] Andrew Lipsman: So I, I shared data that said it's about a 40 billion dollar market this year, next year, 50 billion. If you have a half, a percentage point of that market, that's 500 million in I'm sorry, if you have a full percentage point, that's 500 million in revenue. Not that many are gonna get to a full percentage point of that market. If your name isn't Amazon. It's a small handful. So let's say 0.1% of the market. Now you're talking about 50 million in revenue. If you're a billion dollar company is 50 billion in revenue, a big deal. [00:24:45] Jeff Roster: It's not moving though. It depends on if it's driving value to what you're trying to accomplish. And I guess that may be where, where we get into the definition of what we're, what we're actually doing. [00:24:55] If we're just selling ads, it's probably not, but if we're somehow supporting the brand and I don't know, you know, all the good stuff may, maybe so I don't know. [00:25:03] Andrew Lipsman: Right. I, if you're, if you're able to more deeply engage your, brand partners within retail physical retail, I mean, I think this is where it starts to get more interesting is when you start to look at it in an omnichannel basis and think about the in-store impact. [00:25:16] Yes. That, that can certainly help there. And then the other thing I would say is, traffic for, online e-commerce is what you need in order to have some sort of a viable business here. Most of these retailers have way, way, way more foot traffic than they do online traffic. And if you start to think about that in-store traffic as the audience the, the calculation can change for a lot of these companies. [00:25:42] I mean, if you think, a CVS or a Walgreens, right, they may have 10 or 20 million, 30 million visitors online in a given month. They could have well over a hundred million in stores in a given month. So there are many examples where, where that in-store traffic is multiples higher than than that online traffic. [00:25:59] And, and Jeff and Andrew is all great points knowing that the customer journey is so fragmented. And, and so, so that they're disparate between digital, physical channels. Now it's, it's almost saying it's intuitive people will actually go by default code to Amazon for the search results. So it's the first thing that comes up when you Google something. [00:26:16] Brandon Rael: Amazon certainly has a foothold and it, the dominant leader in this, retail media, you know, what can a mid-level retail expect if they, when they, the foray try to compete with an Amazon or Walmart or, or target hurry as well, established in dominant? What, what can they do to branching themselves? [00:26:31] Is it something, some other methods or storytelling or authentic way of reaching customers that these larger brand are doing? [00:26:38] Andrew Lipsman: I don't think anyone's gonna be particularly successful. If Amazon is the bar, Amazon's got 75 plus percent of the market. And as the market grows, they're gonna maintain mostly that percentage going forward for at least the next several years. They're innovating faster than anyone else. They've got bigger opportunities in front of them. I mentioned connected TV. They're just getting started there. They've got NFL Thursday night football, exclusive rights. They're building out their footprint of Amazon fresh stores. I mean, that, that is the single biggest thing that nobody's paying attention to with Amazon's advertising ambitions, cuz they're getting all this first party data on what people are buying in stores using that to target ads through any platform. [00:27:18] And then they can measure the impact of those ads on on sales. Do people buy more of that once it's in store? Now Amazon is limited by their footprint in physical retail today, but they'll build it out to the critical mass needed to power that full closed loop. So I don't think anybody can really compete with Amazon. [00:27:35] The question is can they build a big enough business that it starts to make a real difference to their financial prospects? And I think the answer is a resounding yes, for a few key players. And I think for most of the rest, the mid tail and the long tail, I would say probably barely worth their effort, but still, maybe worth their effort. [00:27:53] But I think everybody's really chasing the dream of what Amazon has, which is reasonable, incremental revenue, which for Amazon is like, I don't know, five to 7% on their top line. But it, you know, crazy high margins. [00:28:04] Brandon Rael: Yeah. I think it's a losing some game to even think of competing directly with Amazon. [00:28:08] Having, you have to find a way or niche that's not dominated by that, presence. Yeah, that's a great point. There's no reason to probably go head to head with these, these goliaths. [00:28:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And at the end of the day, right. They're not really in competition or are they, but I mean, I suppose if we're particularly talking about you know, as Brandon mentioned earlier, if you're like a midsize or maybe even a specialty retailer, your target isn't really to compete with Amazon's media network, is it? [00:28:31] Andrew Lipsman: No, I, I think that what you wanna do is, is court more brand dollars. And, and as I mentioned, they're gonna come from several different places. The question is, how can you do that effectively? You have to have a value proposition that's really strong. If you're a category leader like a home Depot or a best buy, right. [00:28:48] You know, you're already a destination for people who are in market for those categories. There's also, you know, different dynamics category by category where you could do something kind of interesting. The one that I'm looking at right now is so like Ulta was a recent one that you mentioned they got into the market, right? [00:29:05] Beauty is, is kind of interesting because there's the potential to layer in product sampling in that category as part of the ad network buy. So not only can you, have advertising across different touchpoints along the path to purchase, but you could also then introduce that user to a free sample of some product and then see what the purchase patterns are like after that trial. [00:29:29] And there's potentially a lot of value in that. I think product sampling is something you haven't heard a lot about in the space. Instacart and go puff have talked about it the most to this point in time, Amazon actually had a sampling initiative that they walked back a year or so ago. I think they'll probably reintroduce it at some point, but in, in consumer package goods and beauty, those are categories where I think product sampling can start to make things really interesting. [00:29:51] And we just haven't seen that come into play in any meaningful way yet. [00:29:55] Ricardo Belmar: And as you say that, that really tells me that shouldn't we see more of this in grocery. So I know Kroger, has a pretty successful media network today. And Instacart obviously in that space, but would we expect then that just about all of the large groceries should be doing this if they're not already? [00:30:11] Andrew Lipsman: Absolutely. Absolutely. They should. Yeah, it's it, it's, it's a no brainer and to me, this is like the next frontier of advertising, right. We always think about how do you formulate that brand impression, but it it's never coupled with then the product experience on the back end, right. [00:30:25] Sampling exists, but it's completely isolated. And it's from a promotions budget or it's off to the side and there's rarely if ever a link between the person who is receiving the brand messages and also then experiencing the product. I think this could be transformative and anybody who's into marketing analytics, I think would just salivate it at getting that data back to understand right. [00:30:46] How to optimize not just, trial and adoption, but lifetime value around brand purchase. [00:30:52] Ricardo Belmar: and I think what I'm really hearing is, the key here as this goes forward and grows as a medium, is the I'll use the word bundling of multiple mediums, if you will. It's not just about if I'm not Amazon, I'm not just trying to sell ad units on my e-commerce marketplace. [00:31:07] It's really more about how am I combining this with physical placements in store or, or anywhere else. It's really the, the advertising analogy to an omnichannel experience, right. For, for the brand. It's how do I, as the retailer bring the brand in, in multiple places, bundled and wrapping it around that overall shopping journey using all of these ad units, right? [00:31:27] Andrew Lipsman: Yep. From the furthest up the funnel, like TV or connected TV, [00:31:32] Ricardo Belmar: right. [00:31:32] Andrew Lipsman: Display and video online working its way down the funnel to that search or if you're in a physical store at, at the shelf. [00:31:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, coming back to how, how is a retailer gonna rate this a successful attempt, if you will, at a retail media network, they can't all be Amazon. They can't all be Walmart nor nor do they need to necessarily aspire to be that successful with, with their retail media network. What, what's good enough if you will, to, to kind of declare success. [00:32:00] Andrew Lipsman: Good enough. I, for most, I would say is don't sink a ton of investment and think that you can do it by yourself. partner, you know, pay, pay to partner, structure the deal in a way that makes sense where you're not paying through the nose just to get something basic off the ground. In most cases, there's, there's not gonna be the density of advertiser interest to make it really worthwhile. [00:32:23] You're just competing for too much attention. So as long as you can minimize your investment and take whatever happens from preexisting traffic as gravy. I think that's gonna be successful because it, you know, we'll move the needle. As I said, a little bit on revenue, but actually can, can make some meaningful and noticeable improvements on the bottom line. [00:32:43] I mentioned Amazon, obviously not everyone's Amazon, but you know, Walmart has started to see at least in the end of 2021, they were starting to see some margin expansion that they were attributing to advertising as that ad business finally started to scale for them. [00:32:56] The Consumer Perspective [00:32:56] Ricardo Belmar: So let's kind of move a little bit and look at this from the consumer's perspective, because one, one of the things, if there is a complaint or negative that I I've seen plenty of folks writing about, and we can use Amazon as the example , at what point is too many ads, just too many ads from the consumer's point of view, especially if we're talking about, and this maybe is more applicable of an argument in the digital space when we're looking at product search results. At what point is too many ads, just, just ruining the experience and hindering the shopping journey versus helping it from the consumer's perspective. [00:33:27] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. I mean, this is a huge issue that is not talked about nearly enough. Advertising in retail environments can create a customer experience, problem, both online and in store. Now what's interesting is Amazon, the ad loads on Amazon because there's so much more density of, of a advertisers on there is way higher than everyone else. [00:33:48] I think on first page sponsored impressions is about eight to nine for Amazon. And you know, the next biggest players are between two and four at best. So there's a lot of ads. If, if you're doing searches for a lot of products in Amazon these days here, you'll see a lot of ads. What's interesting is consumers seem to be tolerating them pretty well. [00:34:07] We did research. One of the things Amazon, I think has done very well is they have improved their advertising relevance. So as long as you're putting relevant ads in front of people, it's not taking them away from what they were searching for in the first place. I think that it's gonna be well tolerated. That said I've personally had experiences searching on Amazon where using specific terms, I've gotten bad ad impressions that just did not meet the criteria I was looking for at all. And did take me further from the purchase. So it does happen. I think there's an opportunity now, as Amazon has gotten very crowded, there's higher and growing return on ad spend on other networks. [00:34:41] So this is now I, I look at this period of time as like the chance for the second wave, the second tier of retail media networks to really flourish. They've got competitive differentiation against Amazon to start to court those budgets. So I think we're in this, this phase where we are gonna start to see a lot more flowers bloom in a meaningful way. [00:35:02] Ricardo Belmar: And are there particular retail segments that you think are there are less tapped today? And one, one in particular that I, I kinda keep coming back to in my head is what about, where are luxury brands fitting into this? Is there a luxury retailer that can leverage this to become more successful that we haven't seen yet? [00:35:21] And then maybe the second part to this is if there's a category or group of retailers that maybe can use this in a, in a way to produce a better experience, maybe it's department stores, because they're kind of like that physical marketplace as it is today, but as a segment, right, let's face it. [00:35:36] They're, they're kind of floundering. But my understanding for example, is that Macy's has been seeing some success with their retail media network. So you know, should we expect that department stores will see a lot of success with this? [00:35:46] Andrew Lipsman: I, I think you hit the nail on the head with department stores as a big opportunity and Macy's is doing a good job outta the gate. [00:35:52] Nordstrom getting into the space. It makes a lot of sense there because you have categories with, healthier margins in general, you've got scale. You've got enough traffic. So I, I do think that application will work well. The luxury one depends how you define luxury, but I'll provide kind of an argument for and against the argument for is. [00:36:11] Very high margins in luxury. So this is where ads can be really valuable. And you've got more margin for error. At the same time, luxury is the category where you least want to be interruptive of the, consumer experience. I don't know that luxury shoppers are gonna enjoy being barraged with overly promotional, advertising, driven things. [00:36:31] They like, brand experience. So if you can use data from retail media to, to power, really high quality brand advertising, those applications may work really well. But beyond that, I just, you know, I can't think of like luxury and, and marketplace offerings. Like one is more commodity, one is more premium and I just don't know how well they intersect in this application. [00:36:53] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, I know Farfetch has been. Obviously takes dollars for ad spend from the brands. But they've also been reselling their first party, the brand's first party or second party data back to them. So a brand can buy their customer data from Farfetch, [00:37:10] Andrew Lipsman: which is interesting, cuz that's one of the things because luxury has always been so analog. [00:37:15] Right. I mean they were the last ones to, to have e-commerce sites at all, a [00:37:18] Casey Golden: amount of data on their own customers and they've been around the longest . [00:37:22] Andrew Lipsman: Yep. Yeah. Right. So that, that's actually an interesting way to kind of make it work is yes. They, they, they're sitting there with absolutely no first party data and this is a way to get access to it. [00:37:32] Audience Q&A [00:37:32] Ricardo Belmar: Hey, well this is probably a good time for me to let everyone in the audience know if you've got any questions for any, any of us up here on the stage. Now's a good time to raise your hand and we'll bring you up on stage. Yeah. And Cynthia, welcome to the stage. [00:37:44] Cynthia Hollen: Hey everybody. [00:37:45] Welcome back. [00:37:47] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you. [00:37:48] Cynthia Hollen: Hey, I have a question on retail media network that I I think you guys can best answer, which is that I'm trying to differentiate between the retail media networks that we've had for a hundred years where we've paid extra to have a different position on a shelf or paid for an end cap or cetera, cetera, et cetera, paid for a, a co-op advertising in the newspaper or something. [00:38:15] How are retailers thinking differently about that spend and why is it strategically different? [00:38:22] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah, I mean, the rise of retail media, as we talk about it today really is about digital coming from the vantage point of digital. So I think what what's kind of happened is digital budgets. E-commerce budgets started moving towards its opportunity and it wasn't necessarily the same decision makers. [00:38:40] Then as this opportunity started to mesh more in, omnichannel as, as, as retailers started to become more omnichannel in their thinking. I think that's why it created all these organizational issues and starting to wrestle over and rationalize budgets. I, I mean, I don't know that they're, that they are doing it in any uniform way or that there's consistency. [00:39:03] I think it's actually been a really messy process from everything I've heard inside of companies. And it isn't just the like migration of preexisting retail media that as you said, has been around for a long time and starting to move that into digital. It, it it's been a very indirect path. [00:39:18] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think I, I would come back to what we were talking earlier, right? It's this ability to bundle in so many different channels and, and mediums right into one, one collective spend that the retailer offers to the brand. I, I kind of see that as being the, I'll use the word innovation. I don't know if Jeff May argue with me on using that term in this case, but I'm gonna call it the innovation in, in all of this is that sure. [00:39:39] We've had different ways to have that advertising relationship between retail and brand before, but I think it's, it's just the ability to combine into so many different mediums and offer a more data around the, the consumer at the same time. [00:39:50] Do we answer your question, Cynthia? Or are we not getting to it? [00:39:52] Cynthia Hollen: No. I, I think that you're, you're definitely talking about both or organizationally and strategically inside the corporations it's different. And also that it allows for, that allows for different kinds of combinations or a different way of looking at it. I'm not sure that from the consumer standpoint, when we argue about is when is advertising going to be too much, if the consumer wasn't already being hit with, with all kinds of subtle and not subtle promotions in store, and if they're necessarily sensing the difference, except that they had kind of a refuge in digital for 10 years away from the barrage of, of retail media in store. [00:40:37] And now it's coming back to digital. So on the consumer side, I, I wonder if the consumer sees it as differently as we see it. [00:40:47] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think that's kind of what we were starting to get at to earlier. And that, at what point is it just too much from the consumer's point of view? I think you're right. That on the digital side, consumers probably didn't notice at first that they were getting more and more ads incrementally in different places. [00:41:02] I think, you know, there was an understanding and when I did that Google search, yeah. It was going to get some ad placement at the top of my search results page. And then when I got to an e-commerce site, I think everyone assumed for a long while that the search I was getting was just the results of the search, right. [00:41:15] Based on the retailer having indexed the product catalog. But then we started to see more and more ad placement by Amazon, and then other retailers saw that and all kind of snowballed into where we're at today. But it's a great question. I, I do ask that a lot is that what's too much. [00:41:29] When does it become too many ads? And maybe the answer is a lot like what we've said in this room, in, in past sessions about integration of technology in general, in that shopping experience, that the more seamless and transparent you make it. So it's not quite in your face, the less noticed it will get that it is blatantly an advertisement, right to that consumer. [00:41:49] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. I think consumers are, are generally more tolerant of native ad units, which is what these are. The frog has been slowly boiling here and I, I think people tolerate it and have tolerated and will tolerate it. The question is what's that point at which they'll, finally, jump out. I frankly, am surprised with Amazon specifically, given what the ad loads are like today that all the research I've seen says that consumers don't have a problem with it, or minimally have a problem with it. [00:42:17] So that suggests it's, they're highly tolerant of it. They, they expect it. They've gotten used to it. I mean, go do a Google search today. I mean, it's unbelievable from my standpoint, when you see how many ads you have to scroll through just to get to a basic search result now. [00:42:33] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, absolutely. [00:42:34] Andrew Lipsman: It's just, this is what's been happening over the years. [00:42:36] So in context that, searching on Amazon probably doesn't seem any worse. Like I said, though, that the relevance is really what matters. Consumers don't care if somebody paid to put a product listing in front of you, if it's the product listing that warrants being in front of you, based on what you're searching for, if it's totally off base that's when consumers really get annoyed. [00:42:57] Casey Golden: Andrew. What are your thoughts on, you know, as we're talking about, when is enough, enough, or too much, too much, a lot of TV shows or stations, you can go ahead and pay for an episode without ads. Do you think that eCommerce will kind of move potentially to have part of that model where you'll pay for your Google engine or you'll pay for shopping on a brand like Sans ad? [00:43:27] Andrew Lipsman: There's always the possibility of something like that being introduced and it will always be a very, very tiny fragment. do that. Right. Like you can do that on Twitter today. I think right. You actually have an ad free experience there now. [00:43:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. With Twitter blue, [00:43:42] Andrew Lipsman: Twitter blue. Like I, [00:43:43] Casey Golden: I pay for Twitter, [00:43:44] Andrew Lipsman: not a whole lot of uptake on, on that offering. [00:43:47] Casey Golden: Yeah. It's interesting. [00:43:48] Brandon Rael: Great question, Casey. At what point does it come overwhelming? So I'm curious, what's your sense, Andrew, and where things is going from a social selling perspective like Instagram and TikTok other platforms. [00:43:57] Andrew Lipsman: Well, so I I'm, I'm comparing ads on entertainment experiences versus a shopping experience. I will say maybe I'm speaking for myself, but I think this is maybe broadly true be because shopping is often a more utilitarian experience. You're people don't have as much of a problem. It's already a commercial engagement. [00:44:15] People probably have less issue with brand impressions. Whereas with media, we're accustomed to advertising around it, but it's interrupted to the content experience. So I just don't think that the, content experience for retail is as interruptible. Which is why ultimately like I said, I, I think consumers are tolerating these ads and maybe there's a future where it gets to a point where they've had enough, but I think it's pretty far out into the future. [00:44:39] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think it's probably telling that Netflix is considering adding a lower ad based tier. [00:44:44] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. [00:44:45] RMN vs Livestreaming vs Metaverse [00:44:45] Ricardo Belmar: One question I've been saving here towards the end that I wanna go around the whole group of speakers. Let's do this in like a rapid fire response. I wanna know what everyone thinks of intersection between retail media networks and live streaming and the metaverse. Andrew, let's start with you. I'm curious what you're thinking. [00:45:01] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. So I'm more skeptical on these trends, I think, than most people. Live streaming, I just don't think the US at least is anywhere close to what China is. So where live streaming is relevant on some sites you've seen Amazon live and some other instances yes, it's natural that advertising may be sprinkled into that. [00:45:20] I don't think it's gonna be a key driver of, of those retail media engagements. Metaverse. I don't know. I just feel like this is so far out into the future and I actually don't think it's gonna be the next big platform at all. I think mobile is the next big platform. And I say that as a joke, I mean, I think mobile isn't going anywhere. [00:45:37] And if the metaverse gets enough adoption and people spend enough time and becomes an advertising paradigm, then sure. Retail media will, will be a part of that. I don't expect us to ever get there. I tend to think of the metaverse as really just the extension of gaming. So why aren't we talking about in-game advertising more? [00:45:55] that's [00:45:56] Ricardo Belmar: well, that's a good point. That's a good point. [00:45:57] Andrew Lipsman: Like that's that engagement's there today and there's been some innovation, Ricardo, you're Microsoft, you know, one of the best places to do it. I'm, I'm bullish on the opportunity for Microsoft in in-game advertising, but to me, right? Like let's, let's figure that out and, and see that ramp before we start talking about metaverse advertising. [00:46:15] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think to, to your point, we've, we've seen recent announcements of more and more of that in game advertising. It seems like every week I see another major brand announcing that they're opening up a, storefront in Roblox. [00:46:26] Andrew Lipsman: yeah. And that's real today. Like that's where our, [00:46:28] Ricardo Belmar: and that's happening today. No, that's a great point. Yeah. Great point, Jeff. What's your take. [00:46:32] Jeff Roster: So live streaming is really fascinating. Couldn't spell it about what a year ago. And since then really, spent a lot of time looking at what's happened in AsiaPac have done one interview with it and I have another one that's just gonna be insane. [00:46:44] We are starting to see some very legit money being put from the VC community into efforts here in the us and north America. So is that gonna explode, you know, the next 18 months? No, but I, I think in three to five year increments, so I'm very, very bullish on north America and live streaming. As an event, I think that content will, that that is generated in livestream and will also become video assets that will be deployed all across digital signage and stores and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. [00:47:10] So we'll just get into this giant circle. So, I don't know if that turns into ad revenue, but it is going to be a major, major, major focus probably out in the next two years. The metaverse, I'm a little more bullish. If you're talking in, the three to five year window. You know, I'm a pilot, I'm multi engine pilot. [00:47:24] I've used augmented reality for, for, for 20 years. There's nothing new about that. It's just, will it become viable? I have certain dietary requirements for my wife and I would love to use augmented reality to, to see what ingredients are appropriate and what aren't, that's kind of a metaverse scenario. [00:47:40] So used correctly I'm super bullish on that. And I could validate that with a bunch of IT or a bunch of VC spend that direction, but again, that's a five year window that I'm talking about. [00:47:49] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Okay. Casey, what's your thought. [00:47:51] Casey Golden: Live streaming and the metaverse. I'm obviously pro metaverse just for culture change for brands to be more experiential and learn how to fail. [00:48:02] And I think it's gonna be a great place for product discovery and brand discovery for engagement. That's a little bit more meaningful than a live stream, which is one to many. I'm a big fan of two way conversations and two way engagement versus one. But I think there's a heavy level of consumer education or consumer attention span that it takes to stop multitasking, to pay attention to a live stream or join the metaverse. [00:48:29] So I think it, the consumer adoption and their bandwidth and attention span will depict a lot of it on how fast or what is adopted. [00:48:37] Ricardo Belmar: That's a good point. Brendan, what are your thoughts? [00:48:39] Brandon Rael: Yes. So I'm in agreement with, Jeff and, and Casey. [00:48:41] I, I think we're looking at a long term window of opportunity with the VC spending. I also think in terms of the target audience, you know, we're seeing all the strides that the luxury brands are made, especially Louis Vitton and Gucci, and now Nike and especially space in the metaverse. So there's a significant growth opportunity in revenue opportunity, but I think the target customers using that, virtual reality world, it already exists. You know, it's our, it's the gen Z or gen alpha whatever's coming next. That's gonna be that target customer who is already in that environment and already live in, in those worlds. [00:49:12] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. And just to close that thought out, I'm somewhere , in the middle, but as far as live streaming, I do think that like, Jeff and Casey, and Brandon I guess I am a little more bullish on that one. [00:49:22] It may not be in the next year, but certainly with, I think Jeff, you said within the next, maybe one to two years or something like that, but ultimately it's just gonna become yet another sales channel and it's one that everyone's gonna take advantage of and have in their collection of sales channels. [00:49:36] So I think it has a place. Metaverse I think is just earlier in that adoption curve. [00:49:40] We're still in the experimentation phase. I think that we'll see more and more brands do it. I think Andrew, I think you're spot on, on your comment about gaming, advertising and product placement. We're gonna see a lot more of that before we see more consumer adoption and relevance in what I'll call the mainstream metaverse that everyone wants to hype up these days. [00:49:58] So that will come first cuz it's already here. It's happening. That's gonna be the stepping stone for consumers to a broader metaverse through the, through the gaming. [00:50:06] Andrew Lipsman: Can I just make one final point here? By the way, I'm, fine swimming against the grain on, both of these behaviors. One of the reasons I'm a little bit more measured or skeptical on them is because they both require immersive engagement. [00:50:18] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm okay. [00:50:19] Andrew Lipsman: Right. That there there's more effort involved. Now, if you can get over that hurdle on immersive engagement on live streaming, you've got something, cuz somebody's already in, in a commercial instance, we've seen it happen in Asia. [00:50:30] We just haven't seen it move over here. That's one that I feel like I'm happy to be wrong about that I just, I haven't seen the movement on the consumer here yet. The metaverse though. I will say this all major advertising mediums, the biggest ones, TV, radio, and social media depend on ambient or passive engagement. [00:50:50] That's where you rack up time spent. Time spent is, is what drives major brand advertising. I can't ever see a point where everybody is going into VR worlds. And spend where you'll have a segment of, of the audience. Like you have gamers today. And, and some people may spend quite a lot of time, but I can't ever see that being more than, you know, a meaningful sliver of the advertising market as opposed to the next dominant platform. [00:51:12] That that's the biggest reason for my skepticism there. [00:51:17] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Yeah, that's a fair [00:51:18] point. That's a fair point about passive versus actively engaged as, a medium. And I, probably do have to agree with you there that that certainly slows adoption for something that's not passive in that sense for, for becoming a large scale medium. [00:51:31] But it's definitely gonna be interesting to see how this plays out. I think there's room for all of these things. It's, more a question of, what's the mix, what's the balance gonna be? And I think that really just comes down to speed of adoption for each of these different mediums. [00:51:43] So with that, it's a good time for us to wrap up and close out the room. Andrew, it has been a pleasure having you. This has been a fantastic discussion. Thank you so much for joining us. [00:51:52] Andrew Lipsman: This was really fun. Thanks for having me. [00:51:54] Ricardo Belmar: I hope you come back and join us again. [00:51:55] And wanna thank all the other Retail Avengers on stage . Thanks everybody here in the audience, thanks everyone. Have a great evening! [00:52:01] Casey Golden: Thanks Andrew! [00:52:02] Jeff Roster: See ya! [00:52:03] Andrew Lipsman Recap Interview [00:52:03] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome back Retail Razor Show listeners. We hope you enjoyed another truly amazing Clubhouse discussion on retail media networks. [00:52:15] Casey Golden: It's a super hot topic right now. And since that discussion happened a few months ago, we brought Andrew Lipsman back to the show to check in, see what's new and learn a little bit more. What's changed and what's yet to come. Welcome back, Andrew. [00:52:30] Andrew Lipsman: Thanks for having me. [00:52:31] Ricardo Belmar: So Andrew, since we last spoke on this, it was about early June. So what has changed? I mean, what's changed in, the wonderful land of retail media, one of my favorite topics. And I guess I'll, I'll get a guess. Judging from recent earnings reports across different retailers, Amazon Walmart seemed to keep doing well with their media networks is, is, do things look as rosy as they did three months ago for this space. [00:52:54] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. In some ways a little bit better in some ways, maybe slightly worse. I, I haven't really changed my viewpoint on the space at all, because I, I think you have to take a long term view and there's such a huge opportunity still in front. So is it gonna be affected by some of the advertising headwinds? [00:53:12] Yes. Right. If ad spend dries up, that's gonna pull from everywhere. These are, it seems like the, the most resistant. To those dollars being pulled, be in, in large part because there's clear return on ad spend and that closed loop. And I think dollars just migrate towards performance in more recessionary times. [00:53:32] But what has also changed is that things looked a lot worse in Q2 than at this current moment. Right. I, I personally am a lot more optimistic about the state of the consumer economy and where it's at headed into the back half of the year. And what that means for eCommerce and as eCommerce goes, so goes retail, media advertising. [00:53:50] So I think we can be a bit more optimistic for the back half of the year. And really no reason at all to change the long term view of retail media. You mentioned Amazon and Walmart. You know, those growth rates came down from what they had previously reported. And yet at the same time, they were clearly way, way better than everyone else in the digital advertising space. [00:54:11] So I think that's kind of an appropriate way to look at. [00:54:13] Ricardo Belmar: Well, so my quick follow up to that, in the clubhouse, one of our topics was how many new retail media networks are being announced from, different retailers. Do you still see that trending or is that slowed down at all? [00:54:24] Andrew Lipsman: It's starting to slow down. Right. It just, it seemed like for the past 18 months or so it was one after another, after another. And I, I think fairly recently, somebody kind of predicted that Dick's sporting goods had to be the next one, cuz it seemed like the only white space. It was an obvious category leader. [00:54:39] Ricardo Belmar: right [00:54:40] Andrew Lipsman: and oh, low and behold, there's Dick sporting goods, retail media network. So at this point I think a lot of the white space is covered. And we'll start to bleed more into, I guess, what people are putting under the banner of commerce media, which is kind of moving into other verticals, think Marriott media network, as an example, that's, you know, serving travel. [00:54:58] So we'll start to, we'll see more of those, but I think at this point. This space is starting to get more saturated and frankly, listen, not all of them are gonna really, really succeed. So at some point in the future, I don't know how long it'll take, but some of these will probably kind of die on the vine and, and just not continue to be invested in, but we're probably a couple of years away from that happening. [00:55:17] Casey Golden: Okay. So in our clubhouse session, we, we spoke of which type types of retailers are best suited for building media networks. At the time, Ulta had just announced theirs, any new, interesting announcements, as far as who is suitable? If it's getting saturated, like who are the players that should be playing or that you think are going to make it through the saturation? [00:55:41] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. I mean, I think you have to look at it from the brand's standpoint first, right? There's only so many retail media networks, walled garden types that they can operate with at, at one time they're already stretched pretty thin. So they're not necessarily inclined to go deeper and deeper into more channels. [00:55:57] It has to really have relevance, which is why you see some category leaders carve out viable businesses, or you just have to have that scale, which is, you know, where the big marketplaces, the Amazons and Walmarts and, and others are gonna play. I, I think that's where, where this market sort of nets out. [00:56:15] And I think where, where you start to see some of the shakeout is if you are a vertical retailer and you're not the clear number one in your space. If you're not dicks or you're not best buy or whomever else, I think those ones might have a tougher time. [00:56:30] Ricardo Belmar: So on this subject, of which categories are the ones that make sense, for example, you just gave some, some good examples there. And I think in my mind, you know, we've been through all, all the mass merchandisers, right? The Walmarts, the Targets, they're the, the category leaders, right? Like a best buy you know, we, we had beauty was new at the time we did in the clubhouse with Ulta having announced then that seems like another natural one. Are, are we seeing these in categories? And I just can't remember now because it's so easy to lose track of all the announcements, but I'm thinking like pharmacy drug stores, you know, Walgreens, CVS, Rite aid. And, and then from what about would it be odd to think of convenience stores as another possibility? [00:57:06] And then my favorite one that I still feel like other than Macy's we never see examples of is department stores. [00:57:11] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. Well, so department stores, you do have Kohl's, Nordstrom, Macy's. So I think they're viable players and, you know, Macy's has gotten off to a pretty good start with, with their network for sure. Drug stores, you know, Walmart and CVS are viable. I think anyone who has scale and serves consumer package goods broadly can play. [00:57:30] So, so CVS and, and Walgreens, and it's easy to overlook. They have, they don't get as much website traffic, but their mobile traffic is really, really high. So that traffic, I think, will support their businesses. And the last segment you mentioned is convenience. I think that's also really interesting. [00:57:47] So you've got go puff and then go puff can definitely be a viable player. And I've talked to a lot of CPG brands who are interested in that. Then you kind of get into Uber and DoorDash and then maybe the seven elevens of the world. That's where my question comes in is like seven 11, huge, huge footprint. [00:58:02] I think that network though, Is viable, but I think it's gonna depend a lot more on store traffic and in store retail media than it will on that that app traffic essentially. [00:58:15] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, that kinda makes sense for them. Yeah. And then what, what about grocery? Do we have all the major grocery players, have they all started in their retail media network? [00:58:23] Andrew Lipsman: They're they're all in the game, except you have this one kind of outlier with Costco, which hasn't really built out anything. And yet, like it's, it's, it's very analog and, and yet, because they're so big people still play and it seems to be working. So that one is just kind of a funny outlier to me, but yeah, every major player in grocery is in the game now. [00:58:43] Casey Golden: So based on your research, I think earlier in the year, you had forecasted around 40 billion this year growing to 60 billion by 2024, are those numbers still tracking for you or are you expecting a little bit more shakeout? [00:58:58] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. So I don't wanna speak completely on behalf of our forecasting team, but cuz we don't have an updated forecast, but I will say this like the numbers for Q2 tracked a little bit below what our expectations were for that quarter. But I could also see it making up that ground in Q3 and Q4. [00:59:15] So I think wherever it nets out, it's it's not gonna be much of a difference from, from where we're at currently the fundamentals are are, as they were before. [00:59:23] Casey Golden: When you guys are looking at these forecasts. Is there anything specific, like one thing that you're looking out for in this space? [00:59:30] Andrew Lipsman: If there's one thing you have to look at what's happening with Amazon, just because Amazon is still currently three quarters of the market. So it's gonna drive the market. Very deliberately. And so, part, part of the bullishness, I guess, for Q3 and Q4 is Amazon has a prime day in both of those quarters this year. [00:59:47] So they, the advertising really ratchets up for both of those events so that that's gonna drive. The the whole space maybe even give it some upside. But also, the next tier of players, I'm seeing a lot of evidence that they are really getting their feet underneath them. They're starting to scale the business. [01:00:04] I'll use Walmart as an example, one of the things that they did recently is they instituted a second price auction. I mean, that was the big impediment that I kept hearing from brands. And once Walmart instituted that, that Auction model, it gave brands a lot more confidence to invest. [01:00:20] So the interesting thing is in the very short term, CPCs on Walmart went down, right? So that actually hurts. It dings Walmart's ability to monetize in the short term, long term, those budgets are gonna flow a lot more freely. So it's really gonna be a smart, long term move for Walmart. So I, I think their trajectory is gonna be strong. [01:00:38] Kroger seems to be doing really good things. Just a lot of these other players are, are executing better and better and starting to make up ground and providing all the tools that that advertisers want and need to fully invest. And at the same time, you look around at market conditions, there's all these macro factors affecting the marketing ecosystem that provide a lot of reason for budgets to move in this direction. [01:01:00] I've said that retail media is digital advertising's third big wave. And I'm now convinced that it's destined to be the biggest of the three waves, eventually surpassing search and social. And the reason that I believe that is because to date, we've mostly monetized through search. [01:01:16] There's still runway for search to grow, but there's so many other layers. To drive growth in the future, whether that's going up the funnel into connected TV, whether that's making better use of offline sales data or whether that's the rise of in-store media. [01:01:31] Ricardo Belmar: And, and let me ask you, I don't think we got to touch on this too much in, in the clubhouse session. When I think about this, it seems like the key factors for success here in terms of what the, the retailer's media network is offering to brands. It's how they're taking the first party data they have, how they might be able to combine with other data sets to offer in some way, right. a more. guess I'm gonna choose my words carefully here, a more precise capability, right? To target that customer than the other retail networks that the brands may be considering putting their spend into. And maybe I have to put Amazon kind of to one side, cuz to your point, that's like three fourths of the spend right now. [01:02:08] But, and I maintain that for other brands, the mission isn't to out Amazon, Amazon on this is just to look at your own media network and what can you do to make that offering special to the brands you support and, and not worry about whether you're stealing any share from, from Amazon or not, because that's not the, the most important piece, but is it really come down to differences in the technology that each retailer bases their media network on? [01:02:33] Andrew Lipsman: It, I think it comes down to ultimately what data they have. This is fueled by first party data, first party purchase data, shopping and purchase data. And that can be used for better targeting. Right? If the status quo is behavioral targeting through Facebook and, and other behaviorally targeted networks. [01:02:50] Now it's purchase based targeting. So that's more important. So you got that targeting and then you got the measurement on the back end, cuz you can see if it drives purchase. So that value proposition is really what unlocks budgets historically. Right? When you can see the return on ad spend, that's what brought dollars to Google initially. It's what Facebook then perfected it in its market. And Amazon has already kind of done that. But if you wanna know who's gonna do well in the future, look to where the data is. And Walmart is sitting on this huge piece of data because they've, they have in-store sales data. It hasn't been fully operationalized. [01:03:25] And what I mean by that is campaigns don't really pull that information to see how an online ad might drive offline sales. Immediately, they do this stuff, but it needs to get faster and faster and more real time because digital ads get optimized in real time as that gap narrows and we get to real time optimization or near realtime optimization, that's where the spend just starts to really flow in. [01:03:48] So. I'd say the mandate for the big brick and mortar retailers should be, get that data operationalized as fast as you possibly can and watch the budgets flow. But guess what? That's a big advantage for all of them over Amazon, because Amazon is still early in building out their footprint. [01:04:03] Ricardo Belmar: and, I was gonna say then, in that sense, then the, key becomes how quickly can those brick and mortar retailers combine their in-store generated data, with any, other data sets they have to make that offering more unique. And so that you can actually start tracking conversion to in-store through all of the digital placements they may offer the brand. [01:04:20] Andrew Lipsman: Absolutely. And, and the thing about in-store, you know, that's the other 85% of sales now linking online to in-store. I'm not gonna say that it's gonna drive the same percentage lift as online to online, right. You would expect online to be a bit more, maybe even significantly more effective at driving an online sale, but even if it's three times less effective, But it represents six times more dollars give or take. [01:04:47] That's actually saying that offline is two times as important as online, right? I'm just doing some quick math there, but like there's a lot of leverage on that offline piece, even if it's a more subtle effect. [01:04:56] Ricardo Belmar: Just when you're looking at the volume of sales to begin with. [01:04:59] Well, Andrew, I wanna really thank you for coming back on the show. This is always enjoyable to talk to you about, one of my favorite topics with retail media, but honestly, it's always a pleasure to talk to you about any of these topics in retail with all the great insights that you bring from all the research that you're involved in. [01:05:15] So thanks again so much for, for coming back with us. [01:05:17] Andrew Lipsman: Thanks Ricardo. Thanks Casey. [01:05:19] Casey Golden: If any of our listeners wanna learn more from you and your research at insider intelligence, how should they reach out? How do they follow? [01:05:26] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. So I am minimally on Twitter at alipsman. But the easier way is on LinkedIn. I think that's where a lot of the discussion happens and where I share most of my research. So, so come check me on LinkedIn. [01:05:37] Casey Golden: Thanks again for joining us. [01:05:39] Andrew Lipsman: My pleasure. Thanks. [01:05:41] [01:05:44] Clubhouse Thank You [01:05:44] Ricardo Belmar: Before we close. We'd like to thank everyone who joined us on clubhouse to talk retail media networks and ask questions. So a special shout out to [01:05:52] Casey Golden: Cynthia Holland, always insightful CEO of Mavi.io, retail on the go. [01:05:57] Ricardo Belmar: thank you, Cynthia. [01:05:58] Casey Golden: So Ricardo, I think that's a wrap for our episode two [01:06:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yes, indeed. It is. [01:06:03] Show Close [01:06:03] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [01:06:31] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [01:06:47] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [01:06:49] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. It’s Season 2, Episode 2 of The Retail Razor Show and we’re tackling one of the biggest trends you need to understand in retail today – Retail Media Networks!


Our Retail Avengers team has been eagerly anticipating this topic and recently held the discussion in our Clubhouse room, to uncover the truth about retail media networks and why retailers should (or should not) care about them. Is it about top line revenue? Margin? First-party customer data? Or all of the above? To help cut through the clutter we invited the industry’s leading analyst and expert on the topic – Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail & ecommerce at Insider Intelligence, to give us the scoop!


Your hosts, Ricardo and Casey, are then joined by Andrew one more time to dig into what’s happened since the Clubhouse recording and consider the reality retailers and brands should think about when evaluating retail media networks. This episode is tailor-made for retailers, brands, marketing and advertising agencies – there’s something for everyone, and you’ll want to take notes during this one!


News update! We’re sitting at #21 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your loyal help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20 in no time! Leave us a review and we’ll mention you in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.

Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, including E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

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Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey


TRANSCRIPT

S2E2 The Retail Avengers & The Power of Retail Media Networks

[00:00:00] Pre-Show Intro

[00:00:00] Casey Golden: So Ricardo, there are two kinds of people in this business, those that love and depend on ads and those that can't stand it and strategize to avoid it. Which one are you?

[00:00:11] Ricardo Belmar: I admitted I am of two minds here on the one. The marketer in me loves talking about advertising when it comes to creating messaging and finding the right mediums or reach your audience. But then on the other hand, I'm also a consumer and I can't help, but consider advertising to be just like what professor Scott Galloway puts it attacks on the poor, who can't buy their way out of it.

[00:00:31] Casey Golden: Okay. That's like cheating. You have to pick one. You can't be in both camps.

[00:00:36] Ricardo Belmar: Why not? You know, the world of commerce is very gray. It's not black and white.

[00:00:39] Casey Golden: Hm, you have to pick one. I will die on my sword. You have to pick it's either one or the other. You can't be on both teams. 

[00:00:47] Ricardo Belmar: But what? So now there are teams?

[00:00:48] Casey Golden: There's always teams There are only two kinds of people and you went and created a third person.

[00:00:55] Ricardo Belmar: I I'm just expressing thoughts on this topic. I didn't realize I was choosing which team I'm on or creating an entirely new person. I mean, I don't know what kind of podcast starts the show by creating new kinds of people and putting everyone into one bucket or another.

[00:01:08] Casey Golden: Who said anything about buckets?

[00:01:10] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Fine. Not, not buckets. How about different brands of vodka?

[00:01:12] Casey Golden: different brands of vodka have nothing to do with this. 

[00:01:16] Ricardo Belmar: It's a metaphor. 

[00:01:17] Casey Golden: are you sure? I have a feeling you're just making us run out of time to intro your topic.

[00:01:22] Ricardo Belmar: Well, you brought up advertising and then we branched off into buckets.

[00:01:26] Casey Golden: No really buckets of vodka have nothing to do with this week's show with all this talk of buckets. We're not going to have time to talk about retail me....

[00:01:36]

[00:01:36] Show Intro

[00:01:56] Introduction

[00:01:56] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode two of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host Ricardo Belmar.

[00:02:02] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host Casey Golden. Welcome. Retail Razor Show listeners to our unapologetically, authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and tech alike.

[00:02:14] Ricardo Belmar: So Casey, here we are second episode of the new season coming right off our strong opening with the Metaverse, which by the way is quickly becoming a very popular episode.

[00:02:23] Casey Golden: It's an important topic. I'm not so sure it's popular. I mean, there's so much hype out there about the metaverse. If there was one topic that needed someone to cut through the clutter. This is it. 

[00:02:33] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, no doubt about it. Well, if that's the number one, I have to say this week's topic is pretty darn close if not tied right up there with the metaverse plus it's one of my favorites.

[00:02:42] Casey Golden: That can only mean one thing. This must be the week we're covering retail media networks. 

[00:02:47] Ricardo Belmar: You got it! Yes. This week is all about retail media networks. One of our top 10 predictions for 2022 back in season one, episode four. And it's another hot topic that our Retail Avengers crew had been anxiously waiting to cover for so long. And we go pretty deep on this one.

[00:03:03] Casey Golden: That's right. But when we cover a topic, we really, really cover a topic. We bring in the big shots to dive in, bring it home. We had an awesome special guest that joined us on clubhouse for this topic.

[00:03:18] Ricardo Belmar: And when you want a big shot to step in and talk, retail media networks, who ya gonna call?

[00:03:21] Casey Golden: I'm guessing it's not Ghostbusters, but yeah, I see what you did there. Um, you're really gonna try to get this back into referencing eighties, pop culture.

[00:03:31] Ricardo Belmar: I am all in for that challenge. Indeed but, but no, of course it's not the Ghostbusters it's even better. We brought in none other than Andrew Lipsman, principle analyst covering retail, and e-commerce at e-marketer insider intelligence.

[00:03:44] Casey Golden: Andrew has done so much research and forecasting into retail media networks. This was such a good session on clubhouse. We of course, had to bring Andrew back to talk with us again for an update. So after we listen to clubhouse, which was recorded a few months ago, we'll come back and chat with Andrew to see what the latest happenings are in the world of retail media

[00:04:06] Ricardo Belmar: It'll definitely be worth the wait. So with that said, since this is a topic that needs no further introduction, let's dive right in and listen to the Retail Avengers and the Rise of Retail Media Networks. 

[00:04:23] Clubhouse Session

[00:04:23] Ricardo Belmar: And welcome everybody. Welcome back to the retail razor room. We've got a great topic today. The room title says the Retail Avengers and the Rise of Retail Media Networks, which is absolutely one of my favorite topics lately.

[00:04:35] And as anyone who's following along in our podcast knows it was one of our top 10 predictions for 2022. I'm thrilled to have someone I consider an expert in retail media networks, Andrew Lipsman, and Andrew. I'll let you introduce yourself in just a moment. For those of you who might be new to our rooms, I'm gonna let each member here of the team introduce themselves quickly. And Casey, why don't we start with you? 

[00:04:58] Casey Golden: Hi, I'm Casey golden. I'm the founder of Luxlock, a retail experience platform.

[00:05:04] And I have spent my career on the fashion and supply chain tech side of the business building Franken stacks, and now I'm slay ' em 

[00:05:12] Ricardo Belmar: fantastic. And Jeff, 

[00:05:14] Jeff Roster: hi Jeff Roster, former Gartner and IHL retail sector analyst. Now serving on several boards, including the Center for Retail Transformation at George Mason University and the host and producer of This Week in Innovation

[00:05:27] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Great. Thanks, Jeff. And Brandon. 

[00:05:29] Brandon Rael: Good afternoon everyone, Brandon Rael in the New York area. I've been in around the retail industry, my whole career, and lately I've worked abroad with fortune 100 companies to drive business and innovation transformations and really to adjust their operating models to the current consumer and digital trends and behaviors.

[00:05:48] Happy to have to be back on this platform. 

[00:05:50] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks Brandon. And Andrew to introduce yourself as well to the audience here. 

[00:05:54] Andrew Lipsman: Thanks Ricardo. So I'm Andrew Lipman, the principal analyst covering retail and e-commerce at e-marketer. So retail and e-commerce is a, is a pretty wide purview, but I'd have to say in the past year or so 70% of my time has gone pretty exclusively to retail media. It's just become such a hot topic. I do have a background in digital advertising as well. So the fact that commerce and advertising have intersected so nicely in the form of retail media has just become a, a coverage sweet spot. So I have leaned into it.

[00:06:25] I I've been a part of the forecast that we've done at e-marketer to help round out the picture of the space. But I, I often say that I, I think, you know, we're just getting started. I mean, we're really in the second or third inning of what I think is just one of the biggest trends that we will see in digital advertising and commerce.

[00:06:41] So I'm excited about where we are and, and also what's next. 

[00:06:45] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Great. And I, I gotta say, I, I share that enthusiasm for this space. It's also one of my favorite topics and we've been saving this one for the room. So I'm glad to see that we have some loyal fans here that are joining us in the audience.

[00:06:59] And so really quickly, I'm Ricardo Belmar. For those of you in the audience that don't know me, I host the retail razor room here and also co-host with Casey golden, the retail razor podcast. So if you're not to subscribe to that, I encourage everyone to check that out. You'll hear some of our favorite past clubhouse sessions there, as well as some other interesting interviews and other topics that we're, we're bringing to that medium. I'm currently lead partner marketing advisor at Microsoft for retail and consumer goods. And let's go ahead and jump into this topic and I'm gonna lean over to you, Andrew, cuz as, as you just kind of nicely put, you were spending so much time on, on retail media networks.

[00:07:37] It was one of your, I think top five trends you, you gave for 2022, right at the end of last year as well. Can you kind of set the stage for us? Tell us a little bit about where retail media networks stand currently in terms of, ad spending, what, what are you forecasting as growth for that?

[00:07:54] And also give us a definition of what you would call a retail media network. What is it? What is it not. 

[00:07:59] Defining Retail Media Networks

[00:07:59] Andrew Lipsman: Sure. So let's maybe start with the definition. I mean, I think of a retail media network as any sort of an ad network that exists on a retailer's owned and operated assets, which historically really has, has kind of met in store.

[00:08:13] More recently it's been on e-commerce sites and apps. But I'd also widen the definition a bit to include any media that is powered by retailer first party data. That's a, a reasonable slice of what we're seeing in retail media ad spend today. It's about 10% of the market. But it's a part of the market that's only gonna grow as you start seeing that first party data kind of connect into all sorts of inventory, whether that's display and video online, increasingly connected TV and then other digital media assets.

[00:08:45] So that's kind of how I, I define the space our definition of, of digital retail media ad spend for 2022 in the us showed just under 41 billion in spending growing in about 30, over 30% for the year. This year that's down in terms of growth rate from the previous years were, were upwards of 50% growth.

[00:09:05] But it's actually about the same amount of incremental spending coming into this market every year. In fact, if you go from 2020 on it went from about 21 billion to 31 billion to 41 billion, 2023, we're projecting 51 billion and then 61 billion. So it just sort of lands nicely that way, where it's about 10 billion in incremental spend every year to date and then also what we're projecting for the next few years going forward. So that's a big reason why this is such a, a big emerging opportunity. And, and just to put that, those numbers in context, cuz you know, you hear a big multibillion dollar number. You don't just have the context for it.

[00:09:42] By the end of that period, when it's 61 billion, that will be about one in every five digital advertising dollars, obviously an enormous very profitable market.

[00:09:52] Ricardo Belmar: So that was going to be my next question, when you look at that growth, as you said, it was going to be one in five of every ad spend dollar. If you're a brand, how are you deciding where to put that spend? What's the appeal to be spending your money with these retail media networks. And maybe even before that question, let me make this a two parter question and then I'll turn to some of the other speakers up here for their thoughts, but for the retailer themselves, cuz it does seem like every week we hear of yet another retailer who's launching their new retail media network.

[00:10:22] I think Ulta beauty was the most recent that that comes to my mind. What's the appeal for the retailer? Is it really just the incremental revenue and margin from this ad spend that they're getting from brands? Or is it about getting more data? Is it a combination of both? 

[00:10:36] Andrew Lipsman: So everything that you mentioned is true, but just to get right to the heart of the matter, it's the margin. In most cases, the incremental revenue is, is gonna be pretty modest.

[00:10:45] There's not that many retailers that have the potential to grow their top line in a huge way from this. But if you're a retailer who's treading on, you know, modest to thin margins and you, all of a sudden can introduce a new revenue stream that maybe drives 30 or 40% net margins, it changes the whole profit profile for your company.

[00:11:06] So that's what everyone's chasing. They've seen what's happened to Amazon. Maybe, the last two quarters, not withstanding, if you pay close attention to Amazon's earnings, you would've noticed that amid the pandemic as their ad revenues really grew. And for a few quarters, I think it was growing 60, 70, 80% year over year.

[00:11:23] All of a sudden Amazon was just blowing its profit expectations out of the water by like multiples by two or three times what, what wall street was expecting. So everyone's seeing that and they're paying attention to it and realizing that it can totally transform the bottom line of, of their business.

[00:11:38] But the big question is whether they can get there. And as you've said, everyone's a media network today. They've all flooded into the space. And the question is realistically how much incremental revenue and margin can they drive at the end of the day? 

[00:11:51] Ricardo Belmar: So I, do have a follow up to that, but before I get to it, I want to ask the other analyst on stage, Jeff, what are your thoughts on, everything Andrew just described about where we're at with retail media networks. 

[00:12:02] Jeff Roster: Well, it's, it's 

[00:12:03] really such a fascinating area typically. I mean, it's not a, an it spend area, so it's, it's something I haven't really studied and we knew about it. We, you know, the Walmart radio network we've always talked about.

[00:12:14] And when I saw Andrew numbers, I I almost had almost fainted. I mean, it's just, you know, incredibly large and growing. So as somebody that understands how retailers operate, I mean, incremental revenue , is, dang good at revenue. And so I can see them clearly trying to not only just continue to expand this, but I think also add some power into their negotiations with, with their brands, people that wanna market with them.

[00:12:40] I mean, we've always talked about slotting fees. Now we have, media advertising fees. So somebody that's always championing the innovation. I love seeing it. I love the experimentation. I love the, the growth, the, the exploitation of a new market, new opportunities.

[00:12:52] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks. And Brandon one are your thoughts.

[00:12:54] Brandon Rael: Yeah, I think it's amazing to see the the vertical integration where the retailers and brands can controlled the experience , and the media and the marketing. So it's they're controlling, what's communicated their customers and what's proprietary to them. So this is another channel, another opportunity, like to where there can be revenue growth and less dependency on third party media companies.

[00:13:13] So I think it's a fascinating development 

[00:13:14] Casey Golden: Yeah, I think that's a really good, point's just really about them managing their own proprietary content and, and that distribution I think it's, it's gonna be interesting to see how the third party ad networks adjust over the next few years. 

[00:13:28] Jeff Roster: So Andrew, could I ask a question to better understand the numbers?

[00:13:32] Andrew Lipsman: Absolutely. 

[00:13:32] Jeff Roster: So really before Ricardo and Casey started talking about this as a major trend. I mean, I, I knew it and I understood sort of what it was. I just always assumed what we were talking about or just the Walmart radio network, just music and ads playing inside their physical stores. Certainly high value for, for them.

[00:13:50] And then all of a sudden, now we're talking about selling ads. Could you maybe just unpack what it means, or an example of where these dollars are coming from who's who's paying and who's receiving those dollars. 

[00:14:00] Advertising Spend vs Retail Media

[00:14:00] Andrew Lipsman: Sure. So let me start by just kind of defining the space. So the, the, the vast majority of the numbers I referenced.

[00:14:07] Almost about 75% of it actually is Amazon like sponsored product ads on Amazon. When you search on e-commerce sites, Walmart, eBay, Instacart, all of those players are driving the bulk of the market. The in-store media that you're speaking to is, is frankly a pretty modest sliver piece. That said, I think it's going to be transformative.

[00:14:32] I think you're gonna see all sorts of digital media entering the stores. And there's a lot of innovation that's gonna happen in both digital you know, display, video and audio. So it's all of that. Where are the budgets coming from? So it's, I would say, a big thing that spurred the growth of this market in the last two years was the pandemic and obviously the, the boom and e-commerce, and those ad dollars started to follow commerce dollars.

[00:14:54] You know, obviously Amazon was a big part of drawing those dollars online. So those dollars largely were incremental budgets. There's a lot of incremental budget during the pandemic as you know, T and E budgets were held back. So there, a lot of that got poured into advertising. Obviously consumer demand came back, so everybody wanted to spend ads into that.

[00:15:17] But the big question really is as the market rationalizes, the advertising market rationalize, where do the budgets in the future come from when it's not gonna be so heavily dependent on incremental dollars? There it's, there are a few places. I mean, there's really three. So the first one is other digital ad spend Facebook and Google.

[00:15:37] And I would say right now Google's holding up pretty well amid the deprecation of third party, identifiers Facebook, not so much. So you will start to see some budgets shift. Away from Facebook and in the direction of retail media. There's not a ton of overlap though in the specific types of advertisers and the types of advertising today.

[00:15:56] So it's not kind of a, a direct line between one and the other. The next big bucket of ad spend that it will pull from his TV. These TV dollars have just been sitting there for years and years. Viewership continues to decline and those dollars don't have anywhere better to go. Now that said those TV dollars still wanna chase TV like inventory, they want video.

[00:16:17] So the, the opportunity for retail media is either in store video, or I mentioned connected TV. Like Amazon is, is powering more and more of that. You're gonna see a lot of those TV dollars go into those formats. And the last one that if, if you're coming from, physical retail world is shopper and trade dollars huge, huge budgets starting to shift.

[00:16:38] We saw a big pronounced shift from between 2020 and 2021 from those budgets specifically. There's a lot more to come. Now, the interesting aspect of that is that the brands will pull from shopper and trade marketing and put it into retail media. But retailers don't necessarily want that because it's just, you know, taking out one of their pockets and putting it in another.

[00:17:00] So the brands in many, in most cases would much prefer that those dollars come from the other buckets that I mentioned, basically Facebook and TV. 

[00:17:08] Casey Golden: I think it's really interesting the opportunity here we have to essentially hold those retailers accountable for the distribution of the funds. When I was at Ralph, I would negotiate the margin agreements as well as a bucket of ad spend for our brand.

[00:17:26] And I would just blindly write a check. I wouldn't get any KPIs back. I wasn't deploying it to a specific medium or. A specific location necessarily. We just had to blindly write a check to say here's a few million dollars for ad spend for you. Great. So I think that it really just empowers a lot of the brands to be able to hold accountability to the retail media networks.

[00:17:50] If they're, they're gonna start doing that. I think it's a win-win for both sides. A lot of companies have been doing it without any insights in return. 

[00:17:58] Ricardo Belmar: And Andrew question for you on, on Casey's point here, I mean, are, are the metrics there? What are you finding brands are, let's say pleased with the kind of reporting they get on the, the performance of their dollars on these retail media networks, or are they struggling to find the ROI and the return on ad spend.

[00:18:14] Andrew Lipsman: No, they're, they're really not struggling. I can talk, there is a little bit of friction that I can mention in a moment, but let me talk about the, the bigger picture first here. Casey's point is right. They were spending these dollars anyway but there wasn't accountability. My, my thesis before this, this space exploded a few years ago, I actually wrote my first report on retail media networks in 2019, when this was bar barely a blip on people's radar.

[00:18:37] And my thesis was essentially that measurement makes markets, especially digital advertising markets. If you think about digital ad dollars that got pulled online in the early days, it was Google because people could see that closed loop on performance. You put, you know, dollars into Google. You could see that you got a, a dollar 25 out.

[00:18:56] Then the social era happened and Facebook built an amazing apparatus of targeting and measurement. And when you just see, and when brands large and small, see that you put dollars in and you get more dollars out. They keep pushing spend in that direction. So it was it's kind of obvious or, or, or that we would see this parallel in retail media because it links so directly to e-commerce and that measurement is gonna move those budgets and, and certainly brands like accountability.

[00:19:25] Now I mentioned a, a couple minutes ago that retailers may not necessarily like the fact that if it's just pulling from shopper and trade spend, it's not necessarily a net benefit for them. But in some sense, it is if those dollars are moving from not being accountable to accountable because of how that can unlock incremental dollars.

[00:19:44] Right. I, I mean that, that is what's gonna fuel the biggest portion of this growth going forward still. Maybe not quite as much as it did here as, as it's rationalized, but there's still a lot of incremental spend. That's gonna come into digital advertising over the years and it will disproportionately move into retail media for, for exactly those reasons.

[00:20:03] As far as the, the friction points, what you hear is that the, the ROAS right, the first metric that everyone looks at return on ad spend for Amazon in particular, it's, it's coming down as ad prices go up. But it's still proving really strong. And if you just cross compare it to other digital advertising channels, it still looks better than, than most of them.

[00:20:22] I think the friction that's happening is with so many networks and with Amazon as the default buy starting to see that return on ad spend going down. I think there's a lot more questioning of how do I allocate my budgets within and across different retail media networks. So, so there is some handwringing going on and trying to figure out where is the best place to allocate that next dollar.

[00:20:43] But broadly speaking, I think brands feel really good about putting their, their dollars into the bucket of retail media. And they're pretty happy with networks across the board and the metrics that they're getting.

[00:20:55] Ricardo Belmar: One thing I wonder a lot about this, is there a opportunity for agencies that manage ad spend for brands as they interact with more and more of these retail media networks to help them with that allocation? Is, is that helping on the agency side or is it more, more of an indifferent kind of change. 

[00:21:12] Andrew Lipsman: You know, agencies are getting really involved and they have to be because th this is in, in our research and other, other third party research has, has shown similar things. Brands can only manage so many platforms, right? They're already managing a bunch of different digital advertising platforms outside of retail media.

[00:21:27] And then now they have to go into new walled gardens and try and understand the idiosyncrasies of each one of those. And most of them are basically saying I can put my dollars in two to three retail media networks, and, and then it gets too hard. I'm spread too thin. So that's where agencies can help them spread it a little bit further into four or five, six different networks. But yeah, I think they need that, that handholding, if they're gonna be able to allocate it most appropriately.

[00:21:54] Ricardo Belmar: So, as we mentioned earlier, that we've seen so many additional networks pop up every week. I'm curious if you, are you keeping track of how many of these and I'll use the word official? Maybe there's such a thing as an unofficial retail media network, but are you tracking how many there are to date?

[00:22:09] Andrew Lipsman: Loosely. I, I would say if, if you asked me to, to write down as many as I could, I could knock out a fair amount of them. It's it's definitely dozens and dozens. There's, there's probably not really room for all of them. So I, I think the space is getting crowded now, in some sense, there's surprisingly more space than you would imagine because you have kind of the networks that cut across a lot of categories, thinking Amazon, Walmart, target Costco, a few of those ones.

[00:22:33] But then you have some category specific ones that are just highly, highly relevant to their categories that a best buy or a home Depot. So they have really viable, healthy, strong networks for their advertisers. It's it's, once you get out of that kind of category leadership position, you see the second and third players within a category, trying to start a network where you start to question the, the opportunity.

[00:22:55] I will say for everyone, if they have enough traffic on their sites and apps, there's kind of the low hanging fruit of just monetizing that search. And you can partner, with some platform partners the Criteo's and Citrus ads of the world to, to do the basic monetization that would be kind of low lift.

[00:23:10] I don't know if it's gonna add up to a lot, but I, if it's minimal effort and you can get something out of it, It may be very well be worth it for all these networks. I just don't think most of them will kind of ultimately emerge as having this more, walled garden status, where people are coming in, hands on keyboard, analyzing the data, doing different types of ad buys beyond just basic sponsored product listings.

[00:23:35] One RMN To Rule Them All?

[00:23:35] Jeff Roster: Well, Andrew, if, there's 600 tier one retailers, which , by my definition is greater than a billion dollars in revenue. And if we're assuming e-com is anywhere from, 10 to 20% of those that you know, that revenue there's a fair amount of traffic in all those websites. Wouldn't each one of those, players be wouldn't it be worth them to have some kind of a, network set up? If they have enough traffic, it's gotta, they obviously have to have traffic, but if they do?

[00:23:59] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. Like I said, if, if it, if it's minimal investment and you can get something out of it, I just think most should not expect it to add up to a whole lot. So you mentioned, how would you say 600? 

[00:24:10] Jeff Roster: Well, it's between four to 600 retail, north American retailers that are graded a billion dollars in revenue.

[00:24:15] Andrew Lipsman: So I, I shared data that said it's about a 40 billion dollar market this year, next year, 50 billion. If you have a half, a percentage point of that market, that's 500 million in I'm sorry, if you have a full percentage point, that's 500 million in revenue. Not that many are gonna get to a full percentage point of that market. If your name isn't Amazon. It's a small handful. So let's say 0.1% of the market. Now you're talking about 50 million in revenue. If you're a billion dollar company is 50 billion in revenue, a big deal. 

[00:24:45] Jeff Roster: It's not moving though. It depends on if it's driving value to what you're trying to accomplish. And I guess that may be where, where we get into the definition of what we're, what we're actually doing.

[00:24:55] If we're just selling ads, it's probably not, but if we're somehow supporting the brand and I don't know, you know, all the good stuff may, maybe so I don't know. 

[00:25:03] Andrew Lipsman: Right. I, if you're, if you're able to more deeply engage your, brand partners within retail physical retail, I mean, I think this is where it starts to get more interesting is when you start to look at it in an omnichannel basis and think about the in-store impact.

[00:25:16] Yes. That, that can certainly help there. And then the other thing I would say is, traffic for, online e-commerce is what you need in order to have some sort of a viable business here. Most of these retailers have way, way, way more foot traffic than they do online traffic. And if you start to think about that in-store traffic as the audience the, the calculation can change for a lot of these companies.

[00:25:42] I mean, if you think, a CVS or a Walgreens, right, they may have 10 or 20 million, 30 million visitors online in a given month. They could have well over a hundred million in stores in a given month. So there are many examples where, where that in-store traffic is multiples higher than than that online traffic.

[00:25:59] And, and Jeff and Andrew is all great points knowing that the customer journey is so fragmented. And, and so, so that they're disparate between digital, physical channels. Now it's, it's almost saying it's intuitive people will actually go by default code to Amazon for the search results. So it's the first thing that comes up when you Google something.

[00:26:16] Brandon Rael: Amazon certainly has a foothold and it, the dominant leader in this, retail media, you know, what can a mid-level retail expect if they, when they, the foray try to compete with an Amazon or Walmart or, or target hurry as well, established in dominant? What, what can they do to branching themselves?

[00:26:31] Is it something, some other methods or storytelling or authentic way of reaching customers that these larger brand are doing? 

[00:26:38] Andrew Lipsman: I don't think anyone's gonna be particularly successful. If Amazon is the bar, Amazon's got 75 plus percent of the market. And as the market grows, they're gonna maintain mostly that percentage going forward for at least the next several years. They're innovating faster than anyone else. They've got bigger opportunities in front of them. I mentioned connected TV. They're just getting started there. They've got NFL Thursday night football, exclusive rights. They're building out their footprint of Amazon fresh stores. I mean, that, that is the single biggest thing that nobody's paying attention to with Amazon's advertising ambitions, cuz they're getting all this first party data on what people are buying in stores using that to target ads through any platform.

[00:27:18] And then they can measure the impact of those ads on on sales. Do people buy more of that once it's in store? Now Amazon is limited by their footprint in physical retail today, but they'll build it out to the critical mass needed to power that full closed loop. So I don't think anybody can really compete with Amazon.

[00:27:35] The question is can they build a big enough business that it starts to make a real difference to their financial prospects? And I think the answer is a resounding yes, for a few key players. And I think for most of the rest, the mid tail and the long tail, I would say probably barely worth their effort, but still, maybe worth their effort.

[00:27:53] But I think everybody's really chasing the dream of what Amazon has, which is reasonable, incremental revenue, which for Amazon is like, I don't know, five to 7% on their top line. But it, you know, crazy high margins. 

[00:28:04] Brandon Rael: Yeah. I think it's a losing some game to even think of competing directly with Amazon.

[00:28:08] Having, you have to find a way or niche that's not dominated by that, presence. Yeah, that's a great point. There's no reason to probably go head to head with these, these goliaths. 

[00:28:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And at the end of the day, right. They're not really in competition or are they, but I mean, I suppose if we're particularly talking about you know, as Brandon mentioned earlier, if you're like a midsize or maybe even a specialty retailer, your target isn't really to compete with Amazon's media network, is it?

[00:28:31] Andrew Lipsman: No, I, I think that what you wanna do is, is court more brand dollars. And, and as I mentioned, they're gonna come from several different places. The question is, how can you do that effectively? You have to have a value proposition that's really strong. If you're a category leader like a home Depot or a best buy, right.

[00:28:48] You know, you're already a destination for people who are in market for those categories. There's also, you know, different dynamics category by category where you could do something kind of interesting. The one that I'm looking at right now is so like Ulta was a recent one that you mentioned they got into the market, right?

[00:29:05] Beauty is, is kind of interesting because there's the potential to layer in product sampling in that category as part of the ad network buy. So not only can you, have advertising across different touchpoints along the path to purchase, but you could also then introduce that user to a free sample of some product and then see what the purchase patterns are like after that trial.

[00:29:29] And there's potentially a lot of value in that. I think product sampling is something you haven't heard a lot about in the space. Instacart and go puff have talked about it the most to this point in time, Amazon actually had a sampling initiative that they walked back a year or so ago. I think they'll probably reintroduce it at some point, but in, in consumer package goods and beauty, those are categories where I think product sampling can start to make things really interesting.

[00:29:51] And we just haven't seen that come into play in any meaningful way yet. 

[00:29:55] Ricardo Belmar: And as you say that, that really tells me that shouldn't we see more of this in grocery. So I know Kroger, has a pretty successful media network today. And Instacart obviously in that space, but would we expect then that just about all of the large groceries should be doing this if they're not already?

[00:30:11] Andrew Lipsman: Absolutely. Absolutely. They should. Yeah, it's it, it's, it's a no brainer and to me, this is like the next frontier of advertising, right. We always think about how do you formulate that brand impression, but it it's never coupled with then the product experience on the back end, right.

[00:30:25] Sampling exists, but it's completely isolated. And it's from a promotions budget or it's off to the side and there's rarely if ever a link between the person who is receiving the brand messages and also then experiencing the product. I think this could be transformative and anybody who's into marketing analytics, I think would just salivate it at getting that data back to understand right.

[00:30:46] How to optimize not just, trial and adoption, but lifetime value around brand purchase. 

[00:30:52] Ricardo Belmar: and I think what I'm really hearing is, the key here as this goes forward and grows as a medium, is the I'll use the word bundling of multiple mediums, if you will. It's not just about if I'm not Amazon, I'm not just trying to sell ad units on my e-commerce marketplace.

[00:31:07] It's really more about how am I combining this with physical placements in store or, or anywhere else. It's really the, the advertising analogy to an omnichannel experience, right. For, for the brand. It's how do I, as the retailer bring the brand in, in multiple places, bundled and wrapping it around that overall shopping journey using all of these ad units, right?

[00:31:27] Andrew Lipsman: Yep. From the furthest up the funnel, like TV or connected TV,

[00:31:32] Ricardo Belmar: right. 

[00:31:32] Andrew Lipsman: Display and video online working its way down the funnel to that search or if you're in a physical store at, at the shelf. 

[00:31:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, coming back to how, how is a retailer gonna rate this a successful attempt, if you will, at a retail media network, they can't all be Amazon. They can't all be Walmart nor nor do they need to necessarily aspire to be that successful with, with their retail media network. What, what's good enough if you will, to, to kind of declare success.

[00:32:00] Andrew Lipsman: Good enough. I, for most, I would say is don't sink a ton of investment and think that you can do it by yourself. partner, you know, pay, pay to partner, structure the deal in a way that makes sense where you're not paying through the nose just to get something basic off the ground. In most cases, there's, there's not gonna be the density of advertiser interest to make it really worthwhile.

[00:32:23] You're just competing for too much attention. So as long as you can minimize your investment and take whatever happens from preexisting traffic as gravy. I think that's gonna be successful because it, you know, we'll move the needle. As I said, a little bit on revenue, but actually can, can make some meaningful and noticeable improvements on the bottom line.

[00:32:43] I mentioned Amazon, obviously not everyone's Amazon, but you know, Walmart has started to see at least in the end of 2021, they were starting to see some margin expansion that they were attributing to advertising as that ad business finally started to scale for them. 

[00:32:56] The Consumer Perspective

[00:32:56] Ricardo Belmar: So let's kind of move a little bit and look at this from the consumer's perspective, because one, one of the things, if there is a complaint or negative that I I've seen plenty of folks writing about, and we can use Amazon as the example , at what point is too many ads, just too many ads from the consumer's point of view, especially if we're talking about, and this maybe is more applicable of an argument in the digital space when we're looking at product search results. At what point is too many ads, just, just ruining the experience and hindering the shopping journey versus helping it from the consumer's perspective.

[00:33:27] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. I mean, this is a huge issue that is not talked about nearly enough. Advertising in retail environments can create a customer experience, problem, both online and in store. Now what's interesting is Amazon, the ad loads on Amazon because there's so much more density of, of a advertisers on there is way higher than everyone else.

[00:33:48] I think on first page sponsored impressions is about eight to nine for Amazon. And you know, the next biggest players are between two and four at best. So there's a lot of ads. If, if you're doing searches for a lot of products in Amazon these days here, you'll see a lot of ads. What's interesting is consumers seem to be tolerating them pretty well.

[00:34:07] We did research. One of the things Amazon, I think has done very well is they have improved their advertising relevance. So as long as you're putting relevant ads in front of people, it's not taking them away from what they were searching for in the first place. I think that it's gonna be well tolerated. That said I've personally had experiences searching on Amazon where using specific terms, I've gotten bad ad impressions that just did not meet the criteria I was looking for at all. And did take me further from the purchase. So it does happen. I think there's an opportunity now, as Amazon has gotten very crowded, there's higher and growing return on ad spend on other networks.

[00:34:41] So this is now I, I look at this period of time as like the chance for the second wave, the second tier of retail media networks to really flourish. They've got competitive differentiation against Amazon to start to court those budgets. So I think we're in this, this phase where we are gonna start to see a lot more flowers bloom in a meaningful way.

[00:35:02] Ricardo Belmar: And are there particular retail segments that you think are there are less tapped today? And one, one in particular that I, I kinda keep coming back to in my head is what about, where are luxury brands fitting into this? Is there a luxury retailer that can leverage this to become more successful that we haven't seen yet?

[00:35:21] And then maybe the second part to this is if there's a category or group of retailers that maybe can use this in a, in a way to produce a better experience, maybe it's department stores, because they're kind of like that physical marketplace as it is today, but as a segment, right, let's face it.

[00:35:36] They're, they're kind of floundering. But my understanding for example, is that Macy's has been seeing some success with their retail media network. So you know, should we expect that department stores will see a lot of success with this? 

[00:35:46] Andrew Lipsman: I, I think you hit the nail on the head with department stores as a big opportunity and Macy's is doing a good job outta the gate.

[00:35:52] Nordstrom getting into the space. It makes a lot of sense there because you have categories with, healthier margins in general, you've got scale. You've got enough traffic. So I, I do think that application will work well. The luxury one depends how you define luxury, but I'll provide kind of an argument for and against the argument for is.

[00:36:11] Very high margins in luxury. So this is where ads can be really valuable. And you've got more margin for error. At the same time, luxury is the category where you least want to be interruptive of the, consumer experience. I don't know that luxury shoppers are gonna enjoy being barraged with overly promotional, advertising, driven things.

[00:36:31] They like, brand experience. So if you can use data from retail media to, to power, really high quality brand advertising, those applications may work really well. But beyond that, I just, you know, I can't think of like luxury and, and marketplace offerings. Like one is more commodity, one is more premium and I just don't know how well they intersect in this application.

[00:36:53] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, I know Farfetch has been. Obviously takes dollars for ad spend from the brands. But they've also been reselling their first party, the brand's first party or second party data back to them. So a brand can buy their customer data from Farfetch, 

[00:37:10] Andrew Lipsman: which is interesting, cuz that's one of the things because luxury has always been so analog.

[00:37:15] Right. I mean they were the last ones to, to have e-commerce sites at all, a 

[00:37:18] Casey Golden: amount of data on their own customers and they've been around the longest . 

[00:37:22] Andrew Lipsman: Yep. Yeah. Right. So that, that's actually an interesting way to kind of make it work is yes. They, they, they're sitting there with absolutely no first party data and this is a way to get access to it.

[00:37:32] Audience Q&A

[00:37:32] Ricardo Belmar: Hey, well this is probably a good time for me to let everyone in the audience know if you've got any questions for any, any of us up here on the stage. Now's a good time to raise your hand and we'll bring you up on stage. Yeah. And Cynthia, welcome to the stage. 

[00:37:44] Cynthia Hollen: Hey everybody. 

[00:37:45] Welcome back. 

[00:37:47] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you.

[00:37:48] Cynthia Hollen: Hey, I have a question on retail media network that I I think you guys can best answer, which is that I'm trying to differentiate between the retail media networks that we've had for a hundred years where we've paid extra to have a different position on a shelf or paid for an end cap or cetera, cetera, et cetera, paid for a, a co-op advertising in the newspaper or something.

[00:38:15] How are retailers thinking differently about that spend and why is it strategically different?

[00:38:22] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah, I mean, the rise of retail media, as we talk about it today really is about digital coming from the vantage point of digital. So I think what what's kind of happened is digital budgets. E-commerce budgets started moving towards its opportunity and it wasn't necessarily the same decision makers.

[00:38:40] Then as this opportunity started to mesh more in, omnichannel as, as, as retailers started to become more omnichannel in their thinking. I think that's why it created all these organizational issues and starting to wrestle over and rationalize budgets. I, I mean, I don't know that they're, that they are doing it in any uniform way or that there's consistency.

[00:39:03] I think it's actually been a really messy process from everything I've heard inside of companies. And it isn't just the like migration of preexisting retail media that as you said, has been around for a long time and starting to move that into digital. It, it it's been a very indirect path.

[00:39:18] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think I, I would come back to what we were talking earlier, right? It's this ability to bundle in so many different channels and, and mediums right into one, one collective spend that the retailer offers to the brand. I, I kind of see that as being the, I'll use the word innovation. I don't know if Jeff May argue with me on using that term in this case, but I'm gonna call it the innovation in, in all of this is that sure.

[00:39:39] We've had different ways to have that advertising relationship between retail and brand before, but I think it's, it's just the ability to combine into so many different mediums and offer a more data around the, the consumer at the same time.

[00:39:50] Do we answer your question, Cynthia? Or are we not getting to it?

[00:39:52] Cynthia Hollen: No. I, I think that you're, you're definitely talking about both or organizationally and strategically inside the corporations it's different. And also that it allows for, that allows for different kinds of combinations or a different way of looking at it. I'm not sure that from the consumer standpoint, when we argue about is when is advertising going to be too much, if the consumer wasn't already being hit with, with all kinds of subtle and not subtle promotions in store, and if they're necessarily sensing the difference, except that they had kind of a refuge in digital for 10 years away from the barrage of, of retail media in store.

[00:40:37] And now it's coming back to digital. So on the consumer side, I, I wonder if the consumer sees it as differently as we see it. 

[00:40:47] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think that's kind of what we were starting to get at to earlier. And that, at what point is it just too much from the consumer's point of view? I think you're right. That on the digital side, consumers probably didn't notice at first that they were getting more and more ads incrementally in different places.

[00:41:02] I think, you know, there was an understanding and when I did that Google search, yeah. It was going to get some ad placement at the top of my search results page. And then when I got to an e-commerce site, I think everyone assumed for a long while that the search I was getting was just the results of the search, right.

[00:41:15] Based on the retailer having indexed the product catalog. But then we started to see more and more ad placement by Amazon, and then other retailers saw that and all kind of snowballed into where we're at today. But it's a great question. I, I do ask that a lot is that what's too much.

[00:41:29] When does it become too many ads? And maybe the answer is a lot like what we've said in this room, in, in past sessions about integration of technology in general, in that shopping experience, that the more seamless and transparent you make it. So it's not quite in your face, the less noticed it will get that it is blatantly an advertisement, right to that consumer.

[00:41:49] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. I think consumers are, are generally more tolerant of native ad units, which is what these are. The frog has been slowly boiling here and I, I think people tolerate it and have tolerated and will tolerate it. The question is what's that point at which they'll, finally, jump out. I frankly, am surprised with Amazon specifically, given what the ad loads are like today that all the research I've seen says that consumers don't have a problem with it, or minimally have a problem with it.

[00:42:17] So that suggests it's, they're highly tolerant of it. They, they expect it. They've gotten used to it. I mean, go do a Google search today. I mean, it's unbelievable from my standpoint, when you see how many ads you have to scroll through just to get to a basic search result now.

[00:42:33] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, absolutely.

[00:42:34] Andrew Lipsman: It's just, this is what's been happening over the years.

[00:42:36] So in context that, searching on Amazon probably doesn't seem any worse. Like I said, though, that the relevance is really what matters. Consumers don't care if somebody paid to put a product listing in front of you, if it's the product listing that warrants being in front of you, based on what you're searching for, if it's totally off base that's when consumers really get annoyed.

[00:42:57] Casey Golden: Andrew. What are your thoughts on, you know, as we're talking about, when is enough, enough, or too much, too much, a lot of TV shows or stations, you can go ahead and pay for an episode without ads. Do you think that eCommerce will kind of move potentially to have part of that model where you'll pay for your Google engine or you'll pay for shopping on a brand like Sans ad?

[00:43:27] Andrew Lipsman: There's always the possibility of something like that being introduced and it will always be a very, very tiny fragment. do that. Right. Like you can do that on Twitter today. I think right. You actually have an ad free experience there now. 

[00:43:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. With Twitter blue, 

[00:43:42] Andrew Lipsman: Twitter blue. Like I,

[00:43:43] Casey Golden: I pay for Twitter, 

[00:43:44] Andrew Lipsman: not a whole lot of uptake on, on that offering.

[00:43:47] Casey Golden: Yeah. It's interesting. 

[00:43:48] Brandon Rael: Great question, Casey. At what point does it come overwhelming? So I'm curious, what's your sense, Andrew, and where things is going from a social selling perspective like Instagram and TikTok other platforms.

[00:43:57] Andrew Lipsman: Well, so I I'm, I'm comparing ads on entertainment experiences versus a shopping experience. I will say maybe I'm speaking for myself, but I think this is maybe broadly true be because shopping is often a more utilitarian experience. You're people don't have as much of a problem. It's already a commercial engagement.

[00:44:15] People probably have less issue with brand impressions. Whereas with media, we're accustomed to advertising around it, but it's interrupted to the content experience. So I just don't think that the, content experience for retail is as interruptible. Which is why ultimately like I said, I, I think consumers are tolerating these ads and maybe there's a future where it gets to a point where they've had enough, but I think it's pretty far out into the future.

[00:44:39] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think it's probably telling that Netflix is considering adding a lower ad based tier. 

[00:44:44] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah.

[00:44:45] RMN vs Livestreaming vs Metaverse

[00:44:45] Ricardo Belmar: One question I've been saving here towards the end that I wanna go around the whole group of speakers. Let's do this in like a rapid fire response. I wanna know what everyone thinks of intersection between retail media networks and live streaming and the metaverse. Andrew, let's start with you. I'm curious what you're thinking. 

[00:45:01] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. So I'm more skeptical on these trends, I think, than most people. Live streaming, I just don't think the US at least is anywhere close to what China is. So where live streaming is relevant on some sites you've seen Amazon live and some other instances yes, it's natural that advertising may be sprinkled into that.

[00:45:20] I don't think it's gonna be a key driver of, of those retail media engagements. Metaverse. I don't know. I just feel like this is so far out into the future and I actually don't think it's gonna be the next big platform at all. I think mobile is the next big platform. And I say that as a joke, I mean, I think mobile isn't going anywhere.

[00:45:37] And if the metaverse gets enough adoption and people spend enough time and becomes an advertising paradigm, then sure. Retail media will, will be a part of that. I don't expect us to ever get there. I tend to think of the metaverse as really just the extension of gaming. So why aren't we talking about in-game advertising more?

[00:45:55] that's 

[00:45:56] Ricardo Belmar: well, that's a good point. That's a good point. 

[00:45:57] Andrew Lipsman: Like that's that engagement's there today and there's been some innovation, Ricardo, you're Microsoft, you know, one of the best places to do it. I'm, I'm bullish on the opportunity for Microsoft in in-game advertising, but to me, right? Like let's, let's figure that out and, and see that ramp before we start talking about metaverse advertising. 

[00:46:15] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think to, to your point, we've, we've seen recent announcements of more and more of that in game advertising. It seems like every week I see another major brand announcing that they're opening up a, storefront in Roblox.

[00:46:26] Andrew Lipsman: yeah. And that's real today. Like that's where our, 

[00:46:28] Ricardo Belmar: and that's happening today. No, that's a great point. Yeah. Great point, Jeff. What's your take. 

[00:46:32] Jeff Roster: So live streaming is really fascinating. Couldn't spell it about what a year ago. And since then really, spent a lot of time looking at what's happened in AsiaPac have done one interview with it and I have another one that's just gonna be insane.

[00:46:44] We are starting to see some very legit money being put from the VC community into efforts here in the us and north America. So is that gonna explode, you know, the next 18 months? No, but I, I think in three to five year increments, so I'm very, very bullish on north America and live streaming. As an event, I think that content will, that that is generated in livestream and will also become video assets that will be deployed all across digital signage and stores and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:47:10] So we'll just get into this giant circle. So, I don't know if that turns into ad revenue, but it is going to be a major, major, major focus probably out in the next two years. The metaverse, I'm a little more bullish. If you're talking in, the three to five year window. You know, I'm a pilot, I'm multi engine pilot.

[00:47:24] I've used augmented reality for, for, for 20 years. There's nothing new about that. It's just, will it become viable? I have certain dietary requirements for my wife and I would love to use augmented reality to, to see what ingredients are appropriate and what aren't, that's kind of a metaverse scenario.

[00:47:40] So used correctly I'm super bullish on that. And I could validate that with a bunch of IT or a bunch of VC spend that direction, but again, that's a five year window that I'm talking about. 

[00:47:49] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Okay. Casey, what's your thought. 

[00:47:51] Casey Golden: Live streaming and the metaverse. I'm obviously pro metaverse just for culture change for brands to be more experiential and learn how to fail.

[00:48:02] And I think it's gonna be a great place for product discovery and brand discovery for engagement. That's a little bit more meaningful than a live stream, which is one to many. I'm a big fan of two way conversations and two way engagement versus one. But I think there's a heavy level of consumer education or consumer attention span that it takes to stop multitasking, to pay attention to a live stream or join the metaverse.

[00:48:29] So I think it, the consumer adoption and their bandwidth and attention span will depict a lot of it on how fast or what is adopted. 

[00:48:37] Ricardo Belmar: That's a good point. Brendan, what are your thoughts? 

[00:48:39] Brandon Rael: Yes. So I'm in agreement with, Jeff and, and Casey.

[00:48:41] I, I think we're looking at a long term window of opportunity with the VC spending. I also think in terms of the target audience, you know, we're seeing all the strides that the luxury brands are made, especially Louis Vitton and Gucci, and now Nike and especially space in the metaverse. So there's a significant growth opportunity in revenue opportunity, but I think the target customers using that, virtual reality world, it already exists. You know, it's our, it's the gen Z or gen alpha whatever's coming next. That's gonna be that target customer who is already in that environment and already live in, in those worlds. 

[00:49:12] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. And just to close that thought out, I'm somewhere , in the middle, but as far as live streaming, I do think that like, Jeff and Casey, and Brandon I guess I am a little more bullish on that one.

[00:49:22] It may not be in the next year, but certainly with, I think Jeff, you said within the next, maybe one to two years or something like that, but ultimately it's just gonna become yet another sales channel and it's one that everyone's gonna take advantage of and have in their collection of sales channels.

[00:49:36] So I think it has a place. Metaverse I think is just earlier in that adoption curve.

[00:49:40] We're still in the experimentation phase. I think that we'll see more and more brands do it. I think Andrew, I think you're spot on, on your comment about gaming, advertising and product placement. We're gonna see a lot more of that before we see more consumer adoption and relevance in what I'll call the mainstream metaverse that everyone wants to hype up these days.

[00:49:58] So that will come first cuz it's already here. It's happening. That's gonna be the stepping stone for consumers to a broader metaverse through the, through the gaming. 

[00:50:06] Andrew Lipsman: Can I just make one final point here? By the way, I'm, fine swimming against the grain on, both of these behaviors. One of the reasons I'm a little bit more measured or skeptical on them is because they both require immersive engagement. 

[00:50:18] Ricardo Belmar: Mm-hmm okay. 

[00:50:19] Andrew Lipsman: Right. That there there's more effort involved. Now, if you can get over that hurdle on immersive engagement on live streaming, you've got something, cuz somebody's already in, in a commercial instance, we've seen it happen in Asia.

[00:50:30] We just haven't seen it move over here. That's one that I feel like I'm happy to be wrong about that I just, I haven't seen the movement on the consumer here yet. The metaverse though. I will say this all major advertising mediums, the biggest ones, TV, radio, and social media depend on ambient or passive engagement.

[00:50:50] That's where you rack up time spent. Time spent is, is what drives major brand advertising. I can't ever see a point where everybody is going into VR worlds. And spend where you'll have a segment of, of the audience. Like you have gamers today. And, and some people may spend quite a lot of time, but I can't ever see that being more than, you know, a meaningful sliver of the advertising market as opposed to the next dominant platform.

[00:51:12] That that's the biggest reason for my skepticism there. 

[00:51:17] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. Yeah, that's a fair 

[00:51:18] point. That's a fair point about passive versus actively engaged as, a medium. And I, probably do have to agree with you there that that certainly slows adoption for something that's not passive in that sense for, for becoming a large scale medium.

[00:51:31] But it's definitely gonna be interesting to see how this plays out. I think there's room for all of these things. It's, more a question of, what's the mix, what's the balance gonna be? And I think that really just comes down to speed of adoption for each of these different mediums.

[00:51:43] So with that, it's a good time for us to wrap up and close out the room. Andrew, it has been a pleasure having you. This has been a fantastic discussion. Thank you so much for joining us. 

[00:51:52] Andrew Lipsman: This was really fun. Thanks for having me. 

[00:51:54] Ricardo Belmar: I hope you come back and join us again.

[00:51:55] And wanna thank all the other Retail Avengers on stage . Thanks everybody here in the audience, thanks everyone. Have a great evening! 

[00:52:01] Casey Golden: Thanks Andrew! 

[00:52:02] Jeff Roster: See ya! 

[00:52:03] Andrew Lipsman Recap Interview

[00:52:03] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome back Retail Razor Show listeners. We hope you enjoyed another truly amazing Clubhouse discussion on retail media networks.

[00:52:15] Casey Golden: It's a super hot topic right now. And since that discussion happened a few months ago, we brought Andrew Lipsman back to the show to check in, see what's new and learn a little bit more. What's changed and what's yet to come. Welcome back, Andrew.

[00:52:30] Andrew Lipsman: Thanks for having me. 

[00:52:31] Ricardo Belmar: So Andrew, since we last spoke on this, it was about early June. So what has changed? I mean, what's changed in, the wonderful land of retail media, one of my favorite topics. And I guess I'll, I'll get a guess. Judging from recent earnings reports across different retailers, Amazon Walmart seemed to keep doing well with their media networks is, is, do things look as rosy as they did three months ago for this space.

[00:52:54] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. In some ways a little bit better in some ways, maybe slightly worse. I, I haven't really changed my viewpoint on the space at all, because I, I think you have to take a long term view and there's such a huge opportunity still in front. So is it gonna be affected by some of the advertising headwinds?

[00:53:12] Yes. Right. If ad spend dries up, that's gonna pull from everywhere. These are, it seems like the, the most resistant. To those dollars being pulled, be in, in large part because there's clear return on ad spend and that closed loop. And I think dollars just migrate towards performance in more recessionary times.

[00:53:32] But what has also changed is that things looked a lot worse in Q2 than at this current moment. Right. I, I personally am a lot more optimistic about the state of the consumer economy and where it's at headed into the back half of the year. And what that means for eCommerce and as eCommerce goes, so goes retail, media advertising.

[00:53:50] So I think we can be a bit more optimistic for the back half of the year. And really no reason at all to change the long term view of retail media. You mentioned Amazon and Walmart. You know, those growth rates came down from what they had previously reported. And yet at the same time, they were clearly way, way better than everyone else in the digital advertising space.

[00:54:11] So I think that's kind of an appropriate way to look at.

[00:54:13] Ricardo Belmar: Well, so my quick follow up to that, in the clubhouse, one of our topics was how many new retail media networks are being announced from, different retailers. Do you still see that trending or is that slowed down at all?

[00:54:24] Andrew Lipsman: It's starting to slow down. Right. It just, it seemed like for the past 18 months or so it was one after another, after another. And I, I think fairly recently, somebody kind of predicted that Dick's sporting goods had to be the next one, cuz it seemed like the only white space. It was an obvious category leader.

[00:54:39] Ricardo Belmar: right 

[00:54:40] Andrew Lipsman: and oh, low and behold, there's Dick sporting goods, retail media network. So at this point I think a lot of the white space is covered. And we'll start to bleed more into, I guess, what people are putting under the banner of commerce media, which is kind of moving into other verticals, think Marriott media network, as an example, that's, you know, serving travel.

[00:54:58] So we'll start to, we'll see more of those, but I think at this point. This space is starting to get more saturated and frankly, listen, not all of them are gonna really, really succeed. So at some point in the future, I don't know how long it'll take, but some of these will probably kind of die on the vine and, and just not continue to be invested in, but we're probably a couple of years away from that happening.

[00:55:17] Casey Golden: Okay. So in our clubhouse session, we, we spoke of which type types of retailers are best suited for building media networks. At the time, Ulta had just announced theirs, any new, interesting announcements, as far as who is suitable? If it's getting saturated, like who are the players that should be playing or that you think are going to make it through the saturation?

[00:55:41] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. I mean, I think you have to look at it from the brand's standpoint first, right? There's only so many retail media networks, walled garden types that they can operate with at, at one time they're already stretched pretty thin. So they're not necessarily inclined to go deeper and deeper into more channels.

[00:55:57] It has to really have relevance, which is why you see some category leaders carve out viable businesses, or you just have to have that scale, which is, you know, where the big marketplaces, the Amazons and Walmarts and, and others are gonna play. I, I think that's where, where this market sort of nets out.

[00:56:15] And I think where, where you start to see some of the shakeout is if you are a vertical retailer and you're not the clear number one in your space. If you're not dicks or you're not best buy or whomever else, I think those ones might have a tougher time.

[00:56:30] Ricardo Belmar: So on this subject, of which categories are the ones that make sense, for example, you just gave some, some good examples there. And I think in my mind, you know, we've been through all, all the mass merchandisers, right? The Walmarts, the Targets, they're the, the category leaders, right? Like a best buy you know, we, we had beauty was new at the time we did in the clubhouse with Ulta having announced then that seems like another natural one. Are, are we seeing these in categories? And I just can't remember now because it's so easy to lose track of all the announcements, but I'm thinking like pharmacy drug stores, you know, Walgreens, CVS, Rite aid. And, and then from what about would it be odd to think of convenience stores as another possibility?

[00:57:06] And then my favorite one that I still feel like other than Macy's we never see examples of is department stores.

[00:57:11] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. Well, so department stores, you do have Kohl's, Nordstrom, Macy's. So I think they're viable players and, you know, Macy's has gotten off to a pretty good start with, with their network for sure. Drug stores, you know, Walmart and CVS are viable. I think anyone who has scale and serves consumer package goods broadly can play.

[00:57:30] So, so CVS and, and Walgreens, and it's easy to overlook. They have, they don't get as much website traffic, but their mobile traffic is really, really high. So that traffic, I think, will support their businesses. And the last segment you mentioned is convenience. I think that's also really interesting.

[00:57:47] So you've got go puff and then go puff can definitely be a viable player. And I've talked to a lot of CPG brands who are interested in that. Then you kind of get into Uber and DoorDash and then maybe the seven elevens of the world. That's where my question comes in is like seven 11, huge, huge footprint.

[00:58:02] I think that network though, Is viable, but I think it's gonna depend a lot more on store traffic and in store retail media than it will on that that app traffic essentially.

[00:58:15] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, that kinda makes sense for them. Yeah. And then what, what about grocery? Do we have all the major grocery players, have they all started in their retail media network?

[00:58:23] Andrew Lipsman: They're they're all in the game, except you have this one kind of outlier with Costco, which hasn't really built out anything. And yet, like it's, it's, it's very analog and, and yet, because they're so big people still play and it seems to be working. So that one is just kind of a funny outlier to me, but yeah, every major player in grocery is in the game now.

[00:58:43] Casey Golden: So based on your research, I think earlier in the year, you had forecasted around 40 billion this year growing to 60 billion by 2024, are those numbers still tracking for you or are you expecting a little bit more shakeout?

[00:58:58] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. So I don't wanna speak completely on behalf of our forecasting team, but cuz we don't have an updated forecast, but I will say this like the numbers for Q2 tracked a little bit below what our expectations were for that quarter. But I could also see it making up that ground in Q3 and Q4.

[00:59:15] So I think wherever it nets out, it's it's not gonna be much of a difference from, from where we're at currently the fundamentals are are, as they were before.

[00:59:23] Casey Golden: When you guys are looking at these forecasts. Is there anything specific, like one thing that you're looking out for in this space?

[00:59:30] Andrew Lipsman: If there's one thing you have to look at what's happening with Amazon, just because Amazon is still currently three quarters of the market. So it's gonna drive the market. Very deliberately. And so, part, part of the bullishness, I guess, for Q3 and Q4 is Amazon has a prime day in both of those quarters this year.

[00:59:47] So they, the advertising really ratchets up for both of those events so that that's gonna drive. The the whole space maybe even give it some upside. But also, the next tier of players, I'm seeing a lot of evidence that they are really getting their feet underneath them. They're starting to scale the business.

[01:00:04] I'll use Walmart as an example, one of the things that they did recently is they instituted a second price auction. I mean, that was the big impediment that I kept hearing from brands. And once Walmart instituted that, that Auction model, it gave brands a lot more confidence to invest.

[01:00:20] So the interesting thing is in the very short term, CPCs on Walmart went down, right? So that actually hurts. It dings Walmart's ability to monetize in the short term, long term, those budgets are gonna flow a lot more freely. So it's really gonna be a smart, long term move for Walmart. So I, I think their trajectory is gonna be strong.

[01:00:38] Kroger seems to be doing really good things. Just a lot of these other players are, are executing better and better and starting to make up ground and providing all the tools that that advertisers want and need to fully invest. And at the same time, you look around at market conditions, there's all these macro factors affecting the marketing ecosystem that provide a lot of reason for budgets to move in this direction.

[01:01:00] I've said that retail media is digital advertising's third big wave. And I'm now convinced that it's destined to be the biggest of the three waves, eventually surpassing search and social. And the reason that I believe that is because to date, we've mostly monetized through search.

[01:01:16] There's still runway for search to grow, but there's so many other layers. To drive growth in the future, whether that's going up the funnel into connected TV, whether that's making better use of offline sales data or whether that's the rise of in-store media.

[01:01:31] Ricardo Belmar: And, and let me ask you, I don't think we got to touch on this too much in, in the clubhouse session. When I think about this, it seems like the key factors for success here in terms of what the, the retailer's media network is offering to brands. It's how they're taking the first party data they have, how they might be able to combine with other data sets to offer in some way, right. a more. guess I'm gonna choose my words carefully here, a more precise capability, right? To target that customer than the other retail networks that the brands may be considering putting their spend into. And maybe I have to put Amazon kind of to one side, cuz to your point, that's like three fourths of the spend right now.

[01:02:08] But, and I maintain that for other brands, the mission isn't to out Amazon, Amazon on this is just to look at your own media network and what can you do to make that offering special to the brands you support and, and not worry about whether you're stealing any share from, from Amazon or not, because that's not the, the most important piece, but is it really come down to differences in the technology that each retailer bases their media network on?

[01:02:33] Andrew Lipsman: It, I think it comes down to ultimately what data they have. This is fueled by first party data, first party purchase data, shopping and purchase data. And that can be used for better targeting. Right? If the status quo is behavioral targeting through Facebook and, and other behaviorally targeted networks.

[01:02:50] Now it's purchase based targeting. So that's more important. So you got that targeting and then you got the measurement on the back end, cuz you can see if it drives purchase. So that value proposition is really what unlocks budgets historically. Right? When you can see the return on ad spend, that's what brought dollars to Google initially. It's what Facebook then perfected it in its market. And Amazon has already kind of done that. But if you wanna know who's gonna do well in the future, look to where the data is. And Walmart is sitting on this huge piece of data because they've, they have in-store sales data. It hasn't been fully operationalized.

[01:03:25] And what I mean by that is campaigns don't really pull that information to see how an online ad might drive offline sales. Immediately, they do this stuff, but it needs to get faster and faster and more real time because digital ads get optimized in real time as that gap narrows and we get to real time optimization or near realtime optimization, that's where the spend just starts to really flow in.

[01:03:48] So. I'd say the mandate for the big brick and mortar retailers should be, get that data operationalized as fast as you possibly can and watch the budgets flow. But guess what? That's a big advantage for all of them over Amazon, because Amazon is still early in building out their footprint.

[01:04:03] Ricardo Belmar: and, I was gonna say then, in that sense, then the, key becomes how quickly can those brick and mortar retailers combine their in-store generated data, with any, other data sets they have to make that offering more unique. And so that you can actually start tracking conversion to in-store through all of the digital placements they may offer the brand.

[01:04:20] Andrew Lipsman: Absolutely. And, and the thing about in-store, you know, that's the other 85% of sales now linking online to in-store. I'm not gonna say that it's gonna drive the same percentage lift as online to online, right. You would expect online to be a bit more, maybe even significantly more effective at driving an online sale, but even if it's three times less effective, But it represents six times more dollars give or take.

[01:04:47] That's actually saying that offline is two times as important as online, right? I'm just doing some quick math there, but like there's a lot of leverage on that offline piece, even if it's a more subtle effect.

[01:04:56] Ricardo Belmar: Just when you're looking at the volume of sales to begin with.

[01:04:59] Well, Andrew, I wanna really thank you for coming back on the show. This is always enjoyable to talk to you about, one of my favorite topics with retail media, but honestly, it's always a pleasure to talk to you about any of these topics in retail with all the great insights that you bring from all the research that you're involved in.

[01:05:15] So thanks again so much for, for coming back with us.

[01:05:17] Andrew Lipsman: Thanks Ricardo. Thanks Casey.

[01:05:19] Casey Golden: If any of our listeners wanna learn more from you and your research at insider intelligence, how should they reach out? How do they follow?

[01:05:26] Andrew Lipsman: Yeah. So I am minimally on Twitter at alipsman. But the easier way is on LinkedIn. I think that's where a lot of the discussion happens and where I share most of my research. So, so come check me on LinkedIn.

[01:05:37] Casey Golden: Thanks again for joining us.

[01:05:39] Andrew Lipsman: My pleasure. Thanks.

[01:05:41]

[01:05:44] Clubhouse Thank You

[01:05:44] Ricardo Belmar: Before we close. We'd like to thank everyone who joined us on clubhouse to talk retail media networks and ask questions. So a special shout out to

[01:05:52] Casey Golden: Cynthia Holland, always insightful CEO of Mavi.io, retail on the go. 

[01:05:57] Ricardo Belmar: thank you, Cynthia.

[01:05:58] Casey Golden: So Ricardo, I think that's a wrap for our episode two

[01:06:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yes, indeed. It is.

[01:06:03] Show Close

[01:06:03] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. 

[01:06:31] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[01:06:47] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[01:06:49] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. 

]]> <p>It’s Season 2, Episode 2 of The Retail Razor Show and we’re tackling one of the biggest trends you need to understand in retail today – Retail Media Networks!</p><p><br></p><p>Our Retail Avengers team has been eagerly anticipating this topic and recently held the discussion in our Clubhouse room, to uncover the truth about retail media networks and why retailers should (or should not) care about them. Is it about top line revenue? Margin? First-party customer data? Or all of the above? To help cut through the clutter we invited the industry’s leading analyst and expert on the topic – Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail &amp; ecommerce at Insider Intelligence, to give us the scoop!</p><p><br></p><p>Your hosts, Ricardo and Casey, are then joined by Andrew one more time to dig into what’s happened since the Clubhouse recording and consider the reality retailers and brands should think about when evaluating retail media networks. This episode is tailor-made for retailers, brands, marketing and advertising agencies – there’s something for everyone, and you’ll want to take notes during this one!</p><p><br></p><p>News update! We’re sitting at #21 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts</a> list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your loyal help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20 in no time! Leave us a review and we’ll mention you in a future episode! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p><em>Ricardo Belmar</em>, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><em>Casey Golden</em>, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, including E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>S2E2 The Retail Avengers &amp; The Power of Retail Media Networks</strong></p><h3>[00:00:00] Pre-Show Intro</h3><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So Ricardo, there are two kinds of people in this business, those that love and depend on ads and those that can&#39;t stand it and strategize to avoid it. Which one are you?</p><p>[00:00:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I admitted I am of two minds here on the one. The marketer in me loves talking about advertising when it comes to creating messaging and finding the right mediums or reach your audience. But then on the other hand, I&#39;m also a consumer and I can&#39;t help, but consider advertising to be just like what professor Scott Galloway puts it attacks on the poor, who can&#39;t buy their way out of it.</p><p>[00:00:31] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Okay. That&#39;s like cheating. You have to pick one. You can&#39;t be in both camps.</p><p>[00:00:36] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Why not? You know, the world of commerce is very gray. It&#39;s not black and white.</p><p>[00:00:39] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Hm, you have to pick one. I will die on my sword. You have to pick it&#39;s either one or the other. You can&#39;t be on both teams. </p><p>[00:00:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> But what? So now there are teams?</p><p>[00:00:48] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> There&#39;s always teams There are only two kinds of people and you went and created a third person.</p><p>[00:00:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I I&#39;m just expressing thoughts on this topic. I didn&#39;t realize I was choosing which team I&#39;m on or creating an entirely new person. I mean, I don&#39;t know what kind of podcast starts the show by creating new kinds of people and putting everyone into one bucket or another.</p><p>[00:01:08] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Who said anything about buckets?</p><p>[00:01:10] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. Fine. Not, not buckets. How about different brands of vodka?</p><p>[00:01:12] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> different brands of vodka have nothing to do with this. </p><p>[00:01:16] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It&#39;s a metaphor. </p><p>[00:01:17] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> are you sure? I have a feeling you&#39;re just making us run out of time to intro your topic.</p><p>[00:01:22] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, you brought up advertising and then we branched off into buckets.</p><p>[00:01:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> No really buckets of vodka have nothing to do with this week&#39;s show with all this talk of buckets. We&#39;re not going to have time to talk about retail me....</p><p>[00:01:36]</p><h3>[00:01:36] Show Intro</h3><h3>[00:01:56] Introduction</h3><p>[00:01:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello, and welcome to season two, episode two of the Retail Razor Show. I&#39;m your host Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:02:02] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your co-host Casey Golden. Welcome. Retail Razor Show listeners to our unapologetically, authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and tech alike.</p><p>[00:02:14] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So Casey, here we are second episode of the new season coming right off our strong opening with the Metaverse, which by the way is quickly becoming a very popular episode.</p><p>[00:02:23] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It&#39;s an important topic. I&#39;m not so sure it&#39;s popular. I mean, there&#39;s so much hype out there about the metaverse. If there was one topic that needed someone to cut through the clutter. This is it. </p><p>[00:02:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, no doubt about it. Well, if that&#39;s the number one, I have to say this week&#39;s topic is pretty darn close if not tied right up there with the metaverse plus it&#39;s one of my favorites.</p><p>[00:02:42] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That can only mean one thing. This must be the week we&#39;re covering retail media networks. </p><p>[00:02:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You got it! Yes. This week is all about retail media networks. One of our top 10 predictions for 2022 back in season one, episode four. And it&#39;s another hot topic that our Retail Avengers crew had been anxiously waiting to cover for so long. And we go pretty deep on this one.</p><p>[00:03:03] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That&#39;s right. But when we cover a topic, we really, really cover a topic. We bring in the big shots to dive in, bring it home. We had an awesome special guest that joined us on clubhouse for this topic.</p><p>[00:03:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And when you want a big shot to step in and talk, retail media networks, who ya gonna call?</p><p>[00:03:21] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I&#39;m guessing it&#39;s not Ghostbusters, but yeah, I see what you did there. Um, you&#39;re really gonna try to get this back into referencing eighties, pop culture.</p><p>[00:03:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I am all in for that challenge. Indeed but, but no, of course it&#39;s not the Ghostbusters it&#39;s even better. We brought in none other than Andrew Lipsman, principle analyst covering retail, and e-commerce at e-marketer insider intelligence.</p><p>[00:03:44] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Andrew has done so much research and forecasting into retail media networks. This was such a good session on clubhouse. We of course, had to bring Andrew back to talk with us again for an update. So after we listen to clubhouse, which was recorded a few months ago, we&#39;ll come back and chat with Andrew to see what the latest happenings are in the world of retail media</p><p>[00:04:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It&#39;ll definitely be worth the wait. So with that said, since this is a topic that needs no further introduction, let&#39;s dive right in and listen to the Retail Avengers and the Rise of Retail Media Networks. </p><h3>[00:04:23] Clubhouse Session</h3><p>[00:04:23] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And welcome everybody. Welcome back to the retail razor room. We&#39;ve got a great topic today. The room title says the Retail Avengers and the Rise of Retail Media Networks, which is absolutely one of my favorite topics lately.</p><p>[00:04:35] And as anyone who&#39;s following along in our podcast knows it was one of our top 10 predictions for 2022. I&#39;m thrilled to have someone I consider an expert in retail media networks, Andrew Lipsman, and Andrew. I&#39;ll let you introduce yourself in just a moment. For those of you who might be new to our rooms, I&#39;m gonna let each member here of the team introduce themselves quickly. And Casey, why don&#39;t we start with you? </p><p>[00:04:58] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Hi, I&#39;m Casey golden. I&#39;m the founder of Luxlock, a retail experience platform.</p><p>[00:05:04] And I have spent my career on the fashion and supply chain tech side of the business building Franken stacks, and now I&#39;m slay &#39; em </p><p>[00:05:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> fantastic. And Jeff, </p><p>[00:05:14] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> hi Jeff Roster, former Gartner and IHL retail sector analyst. Now serving on several boards, including the Center for Retail Transformation at George Mason University and the host and producer of This Week in Innovation</p><p>[00:05:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right. Great. Thanks, Jeff. And Brandon. </p><p>[00:05:29] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> Good afternoon everyone, Brandon Rael in the New York area. I&#39;ve been in around the retail industry, my whole career, and lately I&#39;ve worked abroad with fortune 100 companies to drive business and innovation transformations and really to adjust their operating models to the current consumer and digital trends and behaviors.</p><p>[00:05:48] Happy to have to be back on this platform. </p><p>[00:05:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thanks Brandon. And Andrew to introduce yourself as well to the audience here. </p><p>[00:05:54] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Thanks Ricardo. So I&#39;m Andrew Lipman, the principal analyst covering retail and e-commerce at e-marketer. So retail and e-commerce is a, is a pretty wide purview, but I&#39;d have to say in the past year or so 70% of my time has gone pretty exclusively to retail media. It&#39;s just become such a hot topic. I do have a background in digital advertising as well. So the fact that commerce and advertising have intersected so nicely in the form of retail media has just become a, a coverage sweet spot. So I have leaned into it.</p><p>[00:06:25] I I&#39;ve been a part of the forecast that we&#39;ve done at e-marketer to help round out the picture of the space. But I, I often say that I, I think, you know, we&#39;re just getting started. I mean, we&#39;re really in the second or third inning of what I think is just one of the biggest trends that we will see in digital advertising and commerce.</p><p>[00:06:41] So I&#39;m excited about where we are and, and also what&#39;s next. </p><p>[00:06:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right. Great. And I, I gotta say, I, I share that enthusiasm for this space. It&#39;s also one of my favorite topics and we&#39;ve been saving this one for the room. So I&#39;m glad to see that we have some loyal fans here that are joining us in the audience.</p><p>[00:06:59] And so really quickly, I&#39;m Ricardo Belmar. For those of you in the audience that don&#39;t know me, I host the retail razor room here and also co-host with Casey golden, the retail razor podcast. So if you&#39;re not to subscribe to that, I encourage everyone to check that out. You&#39;ll hear some of our favorite past clubhouse sessions there, as well as some other interesting interviews and other topics that we&#39;re, we&#39;re bringing to that medium. I&#39;m currently lead partner marketing advisor at Microsoft for retail and consumer goods. And let&#39;s go ahead and jump into this topic and I&#39;m gonna lean over to you, Andrew, cuz as, as you just kind of nicely put, you were spending so much time on, on retail media networks.</p><p>[00:07:37] It was one of your, I think top five trends you, you gave for 2022, right at the end of last year as well. Can you kind of set the stage for us? Tell us a little bit about where retail media networks stand currently in terms of, ad spending, what, what are you forecasting as growth for that?</p><p>[00:07:54] And also give us a definition of what you would call a retail media network. What is it? What is it not. </p><h3>[00:07:59] Defining Retail Media Networks</h3><p>[00:07:59] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Sure. So let&#39;s maybe start with the definition. I mean, I think of a retail media network as any sort of an ad network that exists on a retailer&#39;s owned and operated assets, which historically really has, has kind of met in store.</p><p>[00:08:13] More recently it&#39;s been on e-commerce sites and apps. But I&#39;d also widen the definition a bit to include any media that is powered by retailer first party data. That&#39;s a, a reasonable slice of what we&#39;re seeing in retail media ad spend today. It&#39;s about 10% of the market. But it&#39;s a part of the market that&#39;s only gonna grow as you start seeing that first party data kind of connect into all sorts of inventory, whether that&#39;s display and video online, increasingly connected TV and then other digital media assets.</p><p>[00:08:45] So that&#39;s kind of how I, I define the space our definition of, of digital retail media ad spend for 2022 in the us showed just under 41 billion in spending growing in about 30, over 30% for the year. This year that&#39;s down in terms of growth rate from the previous years were, were upwards of 50% growth.</p><p>[00:09:05] But it&#39;s actually about the same amount of incremental spending coming into this market every year. In fact, if you go from 2020 on it went from about 21 billion to 31 billion to 41 billion, 2023, we&#39;re projecting 51 billion and then 61 billion. So it just sort of lands nicely that way, where it&#39;s about 10 billion in incremental spend every year to date and then also what we&#39;re projecting for the next few years going forward. So that&#39;s a big reason why this is such a, a big emerging opportunity. And, and just to put that, those numbers in context, cuz you know, you hear a big multibillion dollar number. You don&#39;t just have the context for it.</p><p>[00:09:42] By the end of that period, when it&#39;s 61 billion, that will be about one in every five digital advertising dollars, obviously an enormous very profitable market.</p><p>[00:09:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So that was going to be my next question, when you look at that growth, as you said, it was going to be one in five of every ad spend dollar. If you&#39;re a brand, how are you deciding where to put that spend? What&#39;s the appeal to be spending your money with these retail media networks. And maybe even before that question, let me make this a two parter question and then I&#39;ll turn to some of the other speakers up here for their thoughts, but for the retailer themselves, cuz it does seem like every week we hear of yet another retailer who&#39;s launching their new retail media network.</p><p>[00:10:22] I think Ulta beauty was the most recent that that comes to my mind. What&#39;s the appeal for the retailer? Is it really just the incremental revenue and margin from this ad spend that they&#39;re getting from brands? Or is it about getting more data? Is it a combination of both? </p><p>[00:10:36] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> So everything that you mentioned is true, but just to get right to the heart of the matter, it&#39;s the margin. In most cases, the incremental revenue is, is gonna be pretty modest.</p><p>[00:10:45] There&#39;s not that many retailers that have the potential to grow their top line in a huge way from this. But if you&#39;re a retailer who&#39;s treading on, you know, modest to thin margins and you, all of a sudden can introduce a new revenue stream that maybe drives 30 or 40% net margins, it changes the whole profit profile for your company.</p><p>[00:11:06] So that&#39;s what everyone&#39;s chasing. They&#39;ve seen what&#39;s happened to Amazon. Maybe, the last two quarters, not withstanding, if you pay close attention to Amazon&#39;s earnings, you would&#39;ve noticed that amid the pandemic as their ad revenues really grew. And for a few quarters, I think it was growing 60, 70, 80% year over year.</p><p>[00:11:23] All of a sudden Amazon was just blowing its profit expectations out of the water by like multiples by two or three times what, what wall street was expecting. So everyone&#39;s seeing that and they&#39;re paying attention to it and realizing that it can totally transform the bottom line of, of their business.</p><p>[00:11:38] But the big question is whether they can get there. And as you&#39;ve said, everyone&#39;s a media network today. They&#39;ve all flooded into the space. And the question is realistically how much incremental revenue and margin can they drive at the end of the day? </p><p>[00:11:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So I, do have a follow up to that, but before I get to it, I want to ask the other analyst on stage, Jeff, what are your thoughts on, everything Andrew just described about where we&#39;re at with retail media networks. </p><p>[00:12:02] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Well, it&#39;s, it&#39;s </p><p>[00:12:03] really such a fascinating area typically. I mean, it&#39;s not a, an it spend area, so it&#39;s, it&#39;s something I haven&#39;t really studied and we knew about it. We, you know, the Walmart radio network we&#39;ve always talked about.</p><p>[00:12:14] And when I saw Andrew numbers, I I almost had almost fainted. I mean, it&#39;s just, you know, incredibly large and growing. So as somebody that understands how retailers operate, I mean, incremental revenue , is, dang good at revenue. And so I can see them clearly trying to not only just continue to expand this, but I think also add some power into their negotiations with, with their brands, people that wanna market with them.</p><p>[00:12:40] I mean, we&#39;ve always talked about slotting fees. Now we have, media advertising fees. So somebody that&#39;s always championing the innovation. I love seeing it. I love the experimentation. I love the, the growth, the, the exploitation of a new market, new opportunities.</p><p>[00:12:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thanks. And Brandon one are your thoughts.</p><p>[00:12:54] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> Yeah, I think it&#39;s amazing to see the the vertical integration where the retailers and brands can controlled the experience , and the media and the marketing. So it&#39;s they&#39;re controlling, what&#39;s communicated their customers and what&#39;s proprietary to them. So this is another channel, another opportunity, like to where there can be revenue growth and less dependency on third party media companies.</p><p>[00:13:13] So I think it&#39;s a fascinating development </p><p>[00:13:14] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I think that&#39;s a really good, point&#39;s just really about them managing their own proprietary content and, and that distribution I think it&#39;s, it&#39;s gonna be interesting to see how the third party ad networks adjust over the next few years. </p><p>[00:13:28] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So Andrew, could I ask a question to better understand the numbers?</p><p>[00:13:32] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Absolutely. </p><p>[00:13:32] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So really before Ricardo and Casey started talking about this as a major trend. I mean, I, I knew it and I understood sort of what it was. I just always assumed what we were talking about or just the Walmart radio network, just music and ads playing inside their physical stores. Certainly high value for, for them.</p><p>[00:13:50] And then all of a sudden, now we&#39;re talking about selling ads. Could you maybe just unpack what it means, or an example of where these dollars are coming from who&#39;s who&#39;s paying and who&#39;s receiving those dollars. </p><h3>[00:14:00] Advertising Spend vs Retail Media</h3><p>[00:14:00] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Sure. So let me start by just kind of defining the space. So the, the, the vast majority of the numbers I referenced.</p><p>[00:14:07] Almost about 75% of it actually is Amazon like sponsored product ads on Amazon. When you search on e-commerce sites, Walmart, eBay, Instacart, all of those players are driving the bulk of the market. The in-store media that you&#39;re speaking to is, is frankly a pretty modest sliver piece. That said, I think it&#39;s going to be transformative.</p><p>[00:14:32] I think you&#39;re gonna see all sorts of digital media entering the stores. And there&#39;s a lot of innovation that&#39;s gonna happen in both digital you know, display, video and audio. So it&#39;s all of that. Where are the budgets coming from? So it&#39;s, I would say, a big thing that spurred the growth of this market in the last two years was the pandemic and obviously the, the boom and e-commerce, and those ad dollars started to follow commerce dollars.</p><p>[00:14:54] You know, obviously Amazon was a big part of drawing those dollars online. So those dollars largely were incremental budgets. There&#39;s a lot of incremental budget during the pandemic as you know, T and E budgets were held back. So there, a lot of that got poured into advertising. Obviously consumer demand came back, so everybody wanted to spend ads into that.</p><p>[00:15:17] But the big question really is as the market rationalizes, the advertising market rationalize, where do the budgets in the future come from when it&#39;s not gonna be so heavily dependent on incremental dollars? There it&#39;s, there are a few places. I mean, there&#39;s really three. So the first one is other digital ad spend Facebook and Google.</p><p>[00:15:37] And I would say right now Google&#39;s holding up pretty well amid the deprecation of third party, identifiers Facebook, not so much. So you will start to see some budgets shift. Away from Facebook and in the direction of retail media. There&#39;s not a ton of overlap though in the specific types of advertisers and the types of advertising today.</p><p>[00:15:56] So it&#39;s not kind of a, a direct line between one and the other. The next big bucket of ad spend that it will pull from his TV. These TV dollars have just been sitting there for years and years. Viewership continues to decline and those dollars don&#39;t have anywhere better to go. Now that said those TV dollars still wanna chase TV like inventory, they want video.</p><p>[00:16:17] So the, the opportunity for retail media is either in store video, or I mentioned connected TV. Like Amazon is, is powering more and more of that. You&#39;re gonna see a lot of those TV dollars go into those formats. And the last one that if, if you&#39;re coming from, physical retail world is shopper and trade dollars huge, huge budgets starting to shift.</p><p>[00:16:38] We saw a big pronounced shift from between 2020 and 2021 from those budgets specifically. There&#39;s a lot more to come. Now, the interesting aspect of that is that the brands will pull from shopper and trade marketing and put it into retail media. But retailers don&#39;t necessarily want that because it&#39;s just, you know, taking out one of their pockets and putting it in another.</p><p>[00:17:00] So the brands in many, in most cases would much prefer that those dollars come from the other buckets that I mentioned, basically Facebook and TV. </p><p>[00:17:08] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I think it&#39;s really interesting the opportunity here we have to essentially hold those retailers accountable for the distribution of the funds. When I was at Ralph, I would negotiate the margin agreements as well as a bucket of ad spend for our brand.</p><p>[00:17:26] And I would just blindly write a check. I wouldn&#39;t get any KPIs back. I wasn&#39;t deploying it to a specific medium or. A specific location necessarily. We just had to blindly write a check to say here&#39;s a few million dollars for ad spend for you. Great. So I think that it really just empowers a lot of the brands to be able to hold accountability to the retail media networks.</p><p>[00:17:50] If they&#39;re, they&#39;re gonna start doing that. I think it&#39;s a win-win for both sides. A lot of companies have been doing it without any insights in return. </p><p>[00:17:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And Andrew question for you on, on Casey&#39;s point here, I mean, are, are the metrics there? What are you finding brands are, let&#39;s say pleased with the kind of reporting they get on the, the performance of their dollars on these retail media networks, or are they struggling to find the ROI and the return on ad spend.</p><p>[00:18:14] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> No, they&#39;re, they&#39;re really not struggling. I can talk, there is a little bit of friction that I can mention in a moment, but let me talk about the, the bigger picture first here. Casey&#39;s point is right. They were spending these dollars anyway but there wasn&#39;t accountability. My, my thesis before this, this space exploded a few years ago, I actually wrote my first report on retail media networks in 2019, when this was bar barely a blip on people&#39;s radar.</p><p>[00:18:37] And my thesis was essentially that measurement makes markets, especially digital advertising markets. If you think about digital ad dollars that got pulled online in the early days, it was Google because people could see that closed loop on performance. You put, you know, dollars into Google. You could see that you got a, a dollar 25 out.</p><p>[00:18:56] Then the social era happened and Facebook built an amazing apparatus of targeting and measurement. And when you just see, and when brands large and small, see that you put dollars in and you get more dollars out. They keep pushing spend in that direction. So it was it&#39;s kind of obvious or, or, or that we would see this parallel in retail media because it links so directly to e-commerce and that measurement is gonna move those budgets and, and certainly brands like accountability.</p><p>[00:19:25] Now I mentioned a, a couple minutes ago that retailers may not necessarily like the fact that if it&#39;s just pulling from shopper and trade spend, it&#39;s not necessarily a net benefit for them. But in some sense, it is if those dollars are moving from not being accountable to accountable because of how that can unlock incremental dollars.</p><p>[00:19:44] Right. I, I mean that, that is what&#39;s gonna fuel the biggest portion of this growth going forward still. Maybe not quite as much as it did here as, as it&#39;s rationalized, but there&#39;s still a lot of incremental spend. That&#39;s gonna come into digital advertising over the years and it will disproportionately move into retail media for, for exactly those reasons.</p><p>[00:20:03] As far as the, the friction points, what you hear is that the, the ROAS right, the first metric that everyone looks at return on ad spend for Amazon in particular, it&#39;s, it&#39;s coming down as ad prices go up. But it&#39;s still proving really strong. And if you just cross compare it to other digital advertising channels, it still looks better than, than most of them.</p><p>[00:20:22] I think the friction that&#39;s happening is with so many networks and with Amazon as the default buy starting to see that return on ad spend going down. I think there&#39;s a lot more questioning of how do I allocate my budgets within and across different retail media networks. So, so there is some handwringing going on and trying to figure out where is the best place to allocate that next dollar.</p><p>[00:20:43] But broadly speaking, I think brands feel really good about putting their, their dollars into the bucket of retail media. And they&#39;re pretty happy with networks across the board and the metrics that they&#39;re getting.</p><p>[00:20:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> One thing I wonder a lot about this, is there a opportunity for agencies that manage ad spend for brands as they interact with more and more of these retail media networks to help them with that allocation? Is, is that helping on the agency side or is it more, more of an indifferent kind of change. </p><p>[00:21:12] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> You know, agencies are getting really involved and they have to be because th this is in, in our research and other, other third party research has, has shown similar things. Brands can only manage so many platforms, right? They&#39;re already managing a bunch of different digital advertising platforms outside of retail media.</p><p>[00:21:27] And then now they have to go into new walled gardens and try and understand the idiosyncrasies of each one of those. And most of them are basically saying I can put my dollars in two to three retail media networks, and, and then it gets too hard. I&#39;m spread too thin. So that&#39;s where agencies can help them spread it a little bit further into four or five, six different networks. But yeah, I think they need that, that handholding, if they&#39;re gonna be able to allocate it most appropriately.</p><p>[00:21:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So, as we mentioned earlier, that we&#39;ve seen so many additional networks pop up every week. I&#39;m curious if you, are you keeping track of how many of these and I&#39;ll use the word official? Maybe there&#39;s such a thing as an unofficial retail media network, but are you tracking how many there are to date?</p><p>[00:22:09] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Loosely. I, I would say if, if you asked me to, to write down as many as I could, I could knock out a fair amount of them. It&#39;s it&#39;s definitely dozens and dozens. There&#39;s, there&#39;s probably not really room for all of them. So I, I think the space is getting crowded now, in some sense, there&#39;s surprisingly more space than you would imagine because you have kind of the networks that cut across a lot of categories, thinking Amazon, Walmart, target Costco, a few of those ones.</p><p>[00:22:33] But then you have some category specific ones that are just highly, highly relevant to their categories that a best buy or a home Depot. So they have really viable, healthy, strong networks for their advertisers. It&#39;s it&#39;s, once you get out of that kind of category leadership position, you see the second and third players within a category, trying to start a network where you start to question the, the opportunity.</p><p>[00:22:55] I will say for everyone, if they have enough traffic on their sites and apps, there&#39;s kind of the low hanging fruit of just monetizing that search. And you can partner, with some platform partners the Criteo&#39;s and Citrus ads of the world to, to do the basic monetization that would be kind of low lift.</p><p>[00:23:10] I don&#39;t know if it&#39;s gonna add up to a lot, but I, if it&#39;s minimal effort and you can get something out of it, It may be very well be worth it for all these networks. I just don&#39;t think most of them will kind of ultimately emerge as having this more, walled garden status, where people are coming in, hands on keyboard, analyzing the data, doing different types of ad buys beyond just basic sponsored product listings.</p><h3>[00:23:35] One RMN To Rule Them All?</h3><p>[00:23:35] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Well, Andrew, if, there&#39;s 600 tier one retailers, which , by my definition is greater than a billion dollars in revenue. And if we&#39;re assuming e-com is anywhere from, 10 to 20% of those that you know, that revenue there&#39;s a fair amount of traffic in all those websites. Wouldn&#39;t each one of those, players be wouldn&#39;t it be worth them to have some kind of a, network set up? If they have enough traffic, it&#39;s gotta, they obviously have to have traffic, but if they do?</p><p>[00:23:59] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. Like I said, if, if it, if it&#39;s minimal investment and you can get something out of it, I just think most should not expect it to add up to a whole lot. So you mentioned, how would you say 600? </p><p>[00:24:10] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Well, it&#39;s between four to 600 retail, north American retailers that are graded a billion dollars in revenue.</p><p>[00:24:15] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> So I, I shared data that said it&#39;s about a 40 billion dollar market this year, next year, 50 billion. If you have a half, a percentage point of that market, that&#39;s 500 million in I&#39;m sorry, if you have a full percentage point, that&#39;s 500 million in revenue. Not that many are gonna get to a full percentage point of that market. If your name isn&#39;t Amazon. It&#39;s a small handful. So let&#39;s say 0.1% of the market. Now you&#39;re talking about 50 million in revenue. If you&#39;re a billion dollar company is 50 billion in revenue, a big deal. </p><p>[00:24:45] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> It&#39;s not moving though. It depends on if it&#39;s driving value to what you&#39;re trying to accomplish. And I guess that may be where, where we get into the definition of what we&#39;re, what we&#39;re actually doing.</p><p>[00:24:55] If we&#39;re just selling ads, it&#39;s probably not, but if we&#39;re somehow supporting the brand and I don&#39;t know, you know, all the good stuff may, maybe so I don&#39;t know. </p><p>[00:25:03] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Right. I, if you&#39;re, if you&#39;re able to more deeply engage your, brand partners within retail physical retail, I mean, I think this is where it starts to get more interesting is when you start to look at it in an omnichannel basis and think about the in-store impact.</p><p>[00:25:16] Yes. That, that can certainly help there. And then the other thing I would say is, traffic for, online e-commerce is what you need in order to have some sort of a viable business here. Most of these retailers have way, way, way more foot traffic than they do online traffic. And if you start to think about that in-store traffic as the audience the, the calculation can change for a lot of these companies.</p><p>[00:25:42] I mean, if you think, a CVS or a Walgreens, right, they may have 10 or 20 million, 30 million visitors online in a given month. They could have well over a hundred million in stores in a given month. So there are many examples where, where that in-store traffic is multiples higher than than that online traffic.</p><p>[00:25:59] And, and Jeff and Andrew is all great points knowing that the customer journey is so fragmented. And, and so, so that they&#39;re disparate between digital, physical channels. Now it&#39;s, it&#39;s almost saying it&#39;s intuitive people will actually go by default code to Amazon for the search results. So it&#39;s the first thing that comes up when you Google something.</p><p>[00:26:16] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> Amazon certainly has a foothold and it, the dominant leader in this, retail media, you know, what can a mid-level retail expect if they, when they, the foray try to compete with an Amazon or Walmart or, or target hurry as well, established in dominant? What, what can they do to branching themselves?</p><p>[00:26:31] Is it something, some other methods or storytelling or authentic way of reaching customers that these larger brand are doing? </p><p>[00:26:38] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> I don&#39;t think anyone&#39;s gonna be particularly successful. If Amazon is the bar, Amazon&#39;s got 75 plus percent of the market. And as the market grows, they&#39;re gonna maintain mostly that percentage going forward for at least the next several years. They&#39;re innovating faster than anyone else. They&#39;ve got bigger opportunities in front of them. I mentioned connected TV. They&#39;re just getting started there. They&#39;ve got NFL Thursday night football, exclusive rights. They&#39;re building out their footprint of Amazon fresh stores. I mean, that, that is the single biggest thing that nobody&#39;s paying attention to with Amazon&#39;s advertising ambitions, cuz they&#39;re getting all this first party data on what people are buying in stores using that to target ads through any platform.</p><p>[00:27:18] And then they can measure the impact of those ads on on sales. Do people buy more of that once it&#39;s in store? Now Amazon is limited by their footprint in physical retail today, but they&#39;ll build it out to the critical mass needed to power that full closed loop. So I don&#39;t think anybody can really compete with Amazon.</p><p>[00:27:35] The question is can they build a big enough business that it starts to make a real difference to their financial prospects? And I think the answer is a resounding yes, for a few key players. And I think for most of the rest, the mid tail and the long tail, I would say probably barely worth their effort, but still, maybe worth their effort.</p><p>[00:27:53] But I think everybody&#39;s really chasing the dream of what Amazon has, which is reasonable, incremental revenue, which for Amazon is like, I don&#39;t know, five to 7% on their top line. But it, you know, crazy high margins. </p><p>[00:28:04] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> Yeah. I think it&#39;s a losing some game to even think of competing directly with Amazon.</p><p>[00:28:08] Having, you have to find a way or niche that&#39;s not dominated by that, presence. Yeah, that&#39;s a great point. There&#39;s no reason to probably go head to head with these, these goliaths. </p><p>[00:28:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. And at the end of the day, right. They&#39;re not really in competition or are they, but I mean, I suppose if we&#39;re particularly talking about you know, as Brandon mentioned earlier, if you&#39;re like a midsize or maybe even a specialty retailer, your target isn&#39;t really to compete with Amazon&#39;s media network, is it?</p><p>[00:28:31] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> No, I, I think that what you wanna do is, is court more brand dollars. And, and as I mentioned, they&#39;re gonna come from several different places. The question is, how can you do that effectively? You have to have a value proposition that&#39;s really strong. If you&#39;re a category leader like a home Depot or a best buy, right.</p><p>[00:28:48] You know, you&#39;re already a destination for people who are in market for those categories. There&#39;s also, you know, different dynamics category by category where you could do something kind of interesting. The one that I&#39;m looking at right now is so like Ulta was a recent one that you mentioned they got into the market, right?</p><p>[00:29:05] Beauty is, is kind of interesting because there&#39;s the potential to layer in product sampling in that category as part of the ad network buy. So not only can you, have advertising across different touchpoints along the path to purchase, but you could also then introduce that user to a free sample of some product and then see what the purchase patterns are like after that trial.</p><p>[00:29:29] And there&#39;s potentially a lot of value in that. I think product sampling is something you haven&#39;t heard a lot about in the space. Instacart and go puff have talked about it the most to this point in time, Amazon actually had a sampling initiative that they walked back a year or so ago. I think they&#39;ll probably reintroduce it at some point, but in, in consumer package goods and beauty, those are categories where I think product sampling can start to make things really interesting.</p><p>[00:29:51] And we just haven&#39;t seen that come into play in any meaningful way yet. </p><p>[00:29:55] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And as you say that, that really tells me that shouldn&#39;t we see more of this in grocery. So I know Kroger, has a pretty successful media network today. And Instacart obviously in that space, but would we expect then that just about all of the large groceries should be doing this if they&#39;re not already?</p><p>[00:30:11] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Absolutely. Absolutely. They should. Yeah, it&#39;s it, it&#39;s, it&#39;s a no brainer and to me, this is like the next frontier of advertising, right. We always think about how do you formulate that brand impression, but it it&#39;s never coupled with then the product experience on the back end, right.</p><p>[00:30:25] Sampling exists, but it&#39;s completely isolated. And it&#39;s from a promotions budget or it&#39;s off to the side and there&#39;s rarely if ever a link between the person who is receiving the brand messages and also then experiencing the product. I think this could be transformative and anybody who&#39;s into marketing analytics, I think would just salivate it at getting that data back to understand right.</p><p>[00:30:46] How to optimize not just, trial and adoption, but lifetime value around brand purchase. </p><p>[00:30:52] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> and I think what I&#39;m really hearing is, the key here as this goes forward and grows as a medium, is the I&#39;ll use the word bundling of multiple mediums, if you will. It&#39;s not just about if I&#39;m not Amazon, I&#39;m not just trying to sell ad units on my e-commerce marketplace.</p><p>[00:31:07] It&#39;s really more about how am I combining this with physical placements in store or, or anywhere else. It&#39;s really the, the advertising analogy to an omnichannel experience, right. For, for the brand. It&#39;s how do I, as the retailer bring the brand in, in multiple places, bundled and wrapping it around that overall shopping journey using all of these ad units, right?</p><p>[00:31:27] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yep. From the furthest up the funnel, like TV or connected TV,</p><p>[00:31:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right. </p><p>[00:31:32] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Display and video online working its way down the funnel to that search or if you&#39;re in a physical store at, at the shelf. </p><p>[00:31:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, coming back to how, how is a retailer gonna rate this a successful attempt, if you will, at a retail media network, they can&#39;t all be Amazon. They can&#39;t all be Walmart nor nor do they need to necessarily aspire to be that successful with, with their retail media network. What, what&#39;s good enough if you will, to, to kind of declare success.</p><p>[00:32:00] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Good enough. I, for most, I would say is don&#39;t sink a ton of investment and think that you can do it by yourself. partner, you know, pay, pay to partner, structure the deal in a way that makes sense where you&#39;re not paying through the nose just to get something basic off the ground. In most cases, there&#39;s, there&#39;s not gonna be the density of advertiser interest to make it really worthwhile.</p><p>[00:32:23] You&#39;re just competing for too much attention. So as long as you can minimize your investment and take whatever happens from preexisting traffic as gravy. I think that&#39;s gonna be successful because it, you know, we&#39;ll move the needle. As I said, a little bit on revenue, but actually can, can make some meaningful and noticeable improvements on the bottom line.</p><p>[00:32:43] I mentioned Amazon, obviously not everyone&#39;s Amazon, but you know, Walmart has started to see at least in the end of 2021, they were starting to see some margin expansion that they were attributing to advertising as that ad business finally started to scale for them. </p><h3>[00:32:56] The Consumer Perspective</h3><p>[00:32:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So let&#39;s kind of move a little bit and look at this from the consumer&#39;s perspective, because one, one of the things, if there is a complaint or negative that I I&#39;ve seen plenty of folks writing about, and we can use Amazon as the example , at what point is too many ads, just too many ads from the consumer&#39;s point of view, especially if we&#39;re talking about, and this maybe is more applicable of an argument in the digital space when we&#39;re looking at product search results. At what point is too many ads, just, just ruining the experience and hindering the shopping journey versus helping it from the consumer&#39;s perspective.</p><p>[00:33:27] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. I mean, this is a huge issue that is not talked about nearly enough. Advertising in retail environments can create a customer experience, problem, both online and in store. Now what&#39;s interesting is Amazon, the ad loads on Amazon because there&#39;s so much more density of, of a advertisers on there is way higher than everyone else.</p><p>[00:33:48] I think on first page sponsored impressions is about eight to nine for Amazon. And you know, the next biggest players are between two and four at best. So there&#39;s a lot of ads. If, if you&#39;re doing searches for a lot of products in Amazon these days here, you&#39;ll see a lot of ads. What&#39;s interesting is consumers seem to be tolerating them pretty well.</p><p>[00:34:07] We did research. One of the things Amazon, I think has done very well is they have improved their advertising relevance. So as long as you&#39;re putting relevant ads in front of people, it&#39;s not taking them away from what they were searching for in the first place. I think that it&#39;s gonna be well tolerated. That said I&#39;ve personally had experiences searching on Amazon where using specific terms, I&#39;ve gotten bad ad impressions that just did not meet the criteria I was looking for at all. And did take me further from the purchase. So it does happen. I think there&#39;s an opportunity now, as Amazon has gotten very crowded, there&#39;s higher and growing return on ad spend on other networks.</p><p>[00:34:41] So this is now I, I look at this period of time as like the chance for the second wave, the second tier of retail media networks to really flourish. They&#39;ve got competitive differentiation against Amazon to start to court those budgets. So I think we&#39;re in this, this phase where we are gonna start to see a lot more flowers bloom in a meaningful way.</p><p>[00:35:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And are there particular retail segments that you think are there are less tapped today? And one, one in particular that I, I kinda keep coming back to in my head is what about, where are luxury brands fitting into this? Is there a luxury retailer that can leverage this to become more successful that we haven&#39;t seen yet?</p><p>[00:35:21] And then maybe the second part to this is if there&#39;s a category or group of retailers that maybe can use this in a, in a way to produce a better experience, maybe it&#39;s department stores, because they&#39;re kind of like that physical marketplace as it is today, but as a segment, right, let&#39;s face it.</p><p>[00:35:36] They&#39;re, they&#39;re kind of floundering. But my understanding for example, is that Macy&#39;s has been seeing some success with their retail media network. So you know, should we expect that department stores will see a lot of success with this? </p><p>[00:35:46] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> I, I think you hit the nail on the head with department stores as a big opportunity and Macy&#39;s is doing a good job outta the gate.</p><p>[00:35:52] Nordstrom getting into the space. It makes a lot of sense there because you have categories with, healthier margins in general, you&#39;ve got scale. You&#39;ve got enough traffic. So I, I do think that application will work well. The luxury one depends how you define luxury, but I&#39;ll provide kind of an argument for and against the argument for is.</p><p>[00:36:11] Very high margins in luxury. So this is where ads can be really valuable. And you&#39;ve got more margin for error. At the same time, luxury is the category where you least want to be interruptive of the, consumer experience. I don&#39;t know that luxury shoppers are gonna enjoy being barraged with overly promotional, advertising, driven things.</p><p>[00:36:31] They like, brand experience. So if you can use data from retail media to, to power, really high quality brand advertising, those applications may work really well. But beyond that, I just, you know, I can&#39;t think of like luxury and, and marketplace offerings. Like one is more commodity, one is more premium and I just don&#39;t know how well they intersect in this application.</p><p>[00:36:53] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. I mean, I know Farfetch has been. Obviously takes dollars for ad spend from the brands. But they&#39;ve also been reselling their first party, the brand&#39;s first party or second party data back to them. So a brand can buy their customer data from Farfetch, </p><p>[00:37:10] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> which is interesting, cuz that&#39;s one of the things because luxury has always been so analog.</p><p>[00:37:15] Right. I mean they were the last ones to, to have e-commerce sites at all, a </p><p>[00:37:18] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> amount of data on their own customers and they&#39;ve been around the longest . </p><p>[00:37:22] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yep. Yeah. Right. So that, that&#39;s actually an interesting way to kind of make it work is yes. They, they, they&#39;re sitting there with absolutely no first party data and this is a way to get access to it.</p><h3>[00:37:32] Audience Q&amp;A</h3><p>[00:37:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hey, well this is probably a good time for me to let everyone in the audience know if you&#39;ve got any questions for any, any of us up here on the stage. Now&#39;s a good time to raise your hand and we&#39;ll bring you up on stage. Yeah. And Cynthia, welcome to the stage. </p><p>[00:37:44] <strong>Cynthia Hollen:</strong> Hey everybody. </p><p>[00:37:45] Welcome back. </p><p>[00:37:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thank you.</p><p>[00:37:48] <strong>Cynthia Hollen:</strong> Hey, I have a question on retail media network that I I think you guys can best answer, which is that I&#39;m trying to differentiate between the retail media networks that we&#39;ve had for a hundred years where we&#39;ve paid extra to have a different position on a shelf or paid for an end cap or cetera, cetera, et cetera, paid for a, a co-op advertising in the newspaper or something.</p><p>[00:38:15] How are retailers thinking differently about that spend and why is it strategically different?</p><p>[00:38:22] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah, I mean, the rise of retail media, as we talk about it today really is about digital coming from the vantage point of digital. So I think what what&#39;s kind of happened is digital budgets. E-commerce budgets started moving towards its opportunity and it wasn&#39;t necessarily the same decision makers.</p><p>[00:38:40] Then as this opportunity started to mesh more in, omnichannel as, as, as retailers started to become more omnichannel in their thinking. I think that&#39;s why it created all these organizational issues and starting to wrestle over and rationalize budgets. I, I mean, I don&#39;t know that they&#39;re, that they are doing it in any uniform way or that there&#39;s consistency.</p><p>[00:39:03] I think it&#39;s actually been a really messy process from everything I&#39;ve heard inside of companies. And it isn&#39;t just the like migration of preexisting retail media that as you said, has been around for a long time and starting to move that into digital. It, it it&#39;s been a very indirect path.</p><p>[00:39:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I think I, I would come back to what we were talking earlier, right? It&#39;s this ability to bundle in so many different channels and, and mediums right into one, one collective spend that the retailer offers to the brand. I, I kind of see that as being the, I&#39;ll use the word innovation. I don&#39;t know if Jeff May argue with me on using that term in this case, but I&#39;m gonna call it the innovation in, in all of this is that sure.</p><p>[00:39:39] We&#39;ve had different ways to have that advertising relationship between retail and brand before, but I think it&#39;s, it&#39;s just the ability to combine into so many different mediums and offer a more data around the, the consumer at the same time.</p><p>[00:39:50] Do we answer your question, Cynthia? Or are we not getting to it?</p><p>[00:39:52] <strong>Cynthia Hollen:</strong> No. I, I think that you&#39;re, you&#39;re definitely talking about both or organizationally and strategically inside the corporations it&#39;s different. And also that it allows for, that allows for different kinds of combinations or a different way of looking at it. I&#39;m not sure that from the consumer standpoint, when we argue about is when is advertising going to be too much, if the consumer wasn&#39;t already being hit with, with all kinds of subtle and not subtle promotions in store, and if they&#39;re necessarily sensing the difference, except that they had kind of a refuge in digital for 10 years away from the barrage of, of retail media in store.</p><p>[00:40:37] And now it&#39;s coming back to digital. So on the consumer side, I, I wonder if the consumer sees it as differently as we see it. </p><p>[00:40:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I think that&#39;s kind of what we were starting to get at to earlier. And that, at what point is it just too much from the consumer&#39;s point of view? I think you&#39;re right. That on the digital side, consumers probably didn&#39;t notice at first that they were getting more and more ads incrementally in different places.</p><p>[00:41:02] I think, you know, there was an understanding and when I did that Google search, yeah. It was going to get some ad placement at the top of my search results page. And then when I got to an e-commerce site, I think everyone assumed for a long while that the search I was getting was just the results of the search, right.</p><p>[00:41:15] Based on the retailer having indexed the product catalog. But then we started to see more and more ad placement by Amazon, and then other retailers saw that and all kind of snowballed into where we&#39;re at today. But it&#39;s a great question. I, I do ask that a lot is that what&#39;s too much.</p><p>[00:41:29] When does it become too many ads? And maybe the answer is a lot like what we&#39;ve said in this room, in, in past sessions about integration of technology in general, in that shopping experience, that the more seamless and transparent you make it. So it&#39;s not quite in your face, the less noticed it will get that it is blatantly an advertisement, right to that consumer.</p><p>[00:41:49] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. I think consumers are, are generally more tolerant of native ad units, which is what these are. The frog has been slowly boiling here and I, I think people tolerate it and have tolerated and will tolerate it. The question is what&#39;s that point at which they&#39;ll, finally, jump out. I frankly, am surprised with Amazon specifically, given what the ad loads are like today that all the research I&#39;ve seen says that consumers don&#39;t have a problem with it, or minimally have a problem with it.</p><p>[00:42:17] So that suggests it&#39;s, they&#39;re highly tolerant of it. They, they expect it. They&#39;ve gotten used to it. I mean, go do a Google search today. I mean, it&#39;s unbelievable from my standpoint, when you see how many ads you have to scroll through just to get to a basic search result now.</p><p>[00:42:33] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah, absolutely.</p><p>[00:42:34] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> It&#39;s just, this is what&#39;s been happening over the years.</p><p>[00:42:36] So in context that, searching on Amazon probably doesn&#39;t seem any worse. Like I said, though, that the relevance is really what matters. Consumers don&#39;t care if somebody paid to put a product listing in front of you, if it&#39;s the product listing that warrants being in front of you, based on what you&#39;re searching for, if it&#39;s totally off base that&#39;s when consumers really get annoyed.</p><p>[00:42:57] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Andrew. What are your thoughts on, you know, as we&#39;re talking about, when is enough, enough, or too much, too much, a lot of TV shows or stations, you can go ahead and pay for an episode without ads. Do you think that eCommerce will kind of move potentially to have part of that model where you&#39;ll pay for your Google engine or you&#39;ll pay for shopping on a brand like Sans ad?</p><p>[00:43:27] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> There&#39;s always the possibility of something like that being introduced and it will always be a very, very tiny fragment. do that. Right. Like you can do that on Twitter today. I think right. You actually have an ad free experience there now. </p><p>[00:43:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. With Twitter blue, </p><p>[00:43:42] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Twitter blue. Like I,</p><p>[00:43:43] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I pay for Twitter, </p><p>[00:43:44] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> not a whole lot of uptake on, on that offering.</p><p>[00:43:47] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. It&#39;s interesting. </p><p>[00:43:48] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> Great question, Casey. At what point does it come overwhelming? So I&#39;m curious, what&#39;s your sense, Andrew, and where things is going from a social selling perspective like Instagram and TikTok other platforms.</p><p>[00:43:57] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Well, so I I&#39;m, I&#39;m comparing ads on entertainment experiences versus a shopping experience. I will say maybe I&#39;m speaking for myself, but I think this is maybe broadly true be because shopping is often a more utilitarian experience. You&#39;re people don&#39;t have as much of a problem. It&#39;s already a commercial engagement.</p><p>[00:44:15] People probably have less issue with brand impressions. Whereas with media, we&#39;re accustomed to advertising around it, but it&#39;s interrupted to the content experience. So I just don&#39;t think that the, content experience for retail is as interruptible. Which is why ultimately like I said, I, I think consumers are tolerating these ads and maybe there&#39;s a future where it gets to a point where they&#39;ve had enough, but I think it&#39;s pretty far out into the future.</p><p>[00:44:39] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I think it&#39;s probably telling that Netflix is considering adding a lower ad based tier. </p><p>[00:44:44] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah.</p><h3>[00:44:45] RMN vs Livestreaming vs Metaverse</h3><p>[00:44:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> One question I&#39;ve been saving here towards the end that I wanna go around the whole group of speakers. Let&#39;s do this in like a rapid fire response. I wanna know what everyone thinks of intersection between retail media networks and live streaming and the metaverse. Andrew, let&#39;s start with you. I&#39;m curious what you&#39;re thinking. </p><p>[00:45:01] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. So I&#39;m more skeptical on these trends, I think, than most people. Live streaming, I just don&#39;t think the US at least is anywhere close to what China is. So where live streaming is relevant on some sites you&#39;ve seen Amazon live and some other instances yes, it&#39;s natural that advertising may be sprinkled into that.</p><p>[00:45:20] I don&#39;t think it&#39;s gonna be a key driver of, of those retail media engagements. Metaverse. I don&#39;t know. I just feel like this is so far out into the future and I actually don&#39;t think it&#39;s gonna be the next big platform at all. I think mobile is the next big platform. And I say that as a joke, I mean, I think mobile isn&#39;t going anywhere.</p><p>[00:45:37] And if the metaverse gets enough adoption and people spend enough time and becomes an advertising paradigm, then sure. Retail media will, will be a part of that. I don&#39;t expect us to ever get there. I tend to think of the metaverse as really just the extension of gaming. So why aren&#39;t we talking about in-game advertising more?</p><p>[00:45:55] that&#39;s </p><p>[00:45:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> well, that&#39;s a good point. That&#39;s a good point. </p><p>[00:45:57] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Like that&#39;s that engagement&#39;s there today and there&#39;s been some innovation, Ricardo, you&#39;re Microsoft, you know, one of the best places to do it. I&#39;m, I&#39;m bullish on the opportunity for Microsoft in in-game advertising, but to me, right? Like let&#39;s, let&#39;s figure that out and, and see that ramp before we start talking about metaverse advertising. </p><p>[00:46:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I think to, to your point, we&#39;ve, we&#39;ve seen recent announcements of more and more of that in game advertising. It seems like every week I see another major brand announcing that they&#39;re opening up a, storefront in Roblox.</p><p>[00:46:26] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> yeah. And that&#39;s real today. Like that&#39;s where our, </p><p>[00:46:28] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> and that&#39;s happening today. No, that&#39;s a great point. Yeah. Great point, Jeff. What&#39;s your take. </p><p>[00:46:32] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So live streaming is really fascinating. Couldn&#39;t spell it about what a year ago. And since then really, spent a lot of time looking at what&#39;s happened in AsiaPac have done one interview with it and I have another one that&#39;s just gonna be insane.</p><p>[00:46:44] We are starting to see some very legit money being put from the VC community into efforts here in the us and north America. So is that gonna explode, you know, the next 18 months? No, but I, I think in three to five year increments, so I&#39;m very, very bullish on north America and live streaming. As an event, I think that content will, that that is generated in livestream and will also become video assets that will be deployed all across digital signage and stores and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.</p><p>[00:47:10] So we&#39;ll just get into this giant circle. So, I don&#39;t know if that turns into ad revenue, but it is going to be a major, major, major focus probably out in the next two years. The metaverse, I&#39;m a little more bullish. If you&#39;re talking in, the three to five year window. You know, I&#39;m a pilot, I&#39;m multi engine pilot.</p><p>[00:47:24] I&#39;ve used augmented reality for, for, for 20 years. There&#39;s nothing new about that. It&#39;s just, will it become viable? I have certain dietary requirements for my wife and I would love to use augmented reality to, to see what ingredients are appropriate and what aren&#39;t, that&#39;s kind of a metaverse scenario.</p><p>[00:47:40] So used correctly I&#39;m super bullish on that. And I could validate that with a bunch of IT or a bunch of VC spend that direction, but again, that&#39;s a five year window that I&#39;m talking about. </p><p>[00:47:49] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. Okay. Casey, what&#39;s your thought. </p><p>[00:47:51] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Live streaming and the metaverse. I&#39;m obviously pro metaverse just for culture change for brands to be more experiential and learn how to fail.</p><p>[00:48:02] And I think it&#39;s gonna be a great place for product discovery and brand discovery for engagement. That&#39;s a little bit more meaningful than a live stream, which is one to many. I&#39;m a big fan of two way conversations and two way engagement versus one. But I think there&#39;s a heavy level of consumer education or consumer attention span that it takes to stop multitasking, to pay attention to a live stream or join the metaverse.</p><p>[00:48:29] So I think it, the consumer adoption and their bandwidth and attention span will depict a lot of it on how fast or what is adopted. </p><p>[00:48:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s a good point. Brendan, what are your thoughts? </p><p>[00:48:39] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> Yes. So I&#39;m in agreement with, Jeff and, and Casey.</p><p>[00:48:41] I, I think we&#39;re looking at a long term window of opportunity with the VC spending. I also think in terms of the target audience, you know, we&#39;re seeing all the strides that the luxury brands are made, especially Louis Vitton and Gucci, and now Nike and especially space in the metaverse. So there&#39;s a significant growth opportunity in revenue opportunity, but I think the target customers using that, virtual reality world, it already exists. You know, it&#39;s our, it&#39;s the gen Z or gen alpha whatever&#39;s coming next. That&#39;s gonna be that target customer who is already in that environment and already live in, in those worlds. </p><p>[00:49:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. And just to close that thought out, I&#39;m somewhere , in the middle, but as far as live streaming, I do think that like, Jeff and Casey, and Brandon I guess I am a little more bullish on that one.</p><p>[00:49:22] It may not be in the next year, but certainly with, I think Jeff, you said within the next, maybe one to two years or something like that, but ultimately it&#39;s just gonna become yet another sales channel and it&#39;s one that everyone&#39;s gonna take advantage of and have in their collection of sales channels.</p><p>[00:49:36] So I think it has a place. Metaverse I think is just earlier in that adoption curve.</p><p>[00:49:40] We&#39;re still in the experimentation phase. I think that we&#39;ll see more and more brands do it. I think Andrew, I think you&#39;re spot on, on your comment about gaming, advertising and product placement. We&#39;re gonna see a lot more of that before we see more consumer adoption and relevance in what I&#39;ll call the mainstream metaverse that everyone wants to hype up these days.</p><p>[00:49:58] So that will come first cuz it&#39;s already here. It&#39;s happening. That&#39;s gonna be the stepping stone for consumers to a broader metaverse through the, through the gaming. </p><p>[00:50:06] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Can I just make one final point here? By the way, I&#39;m, fine swimming against the grain on, both of these behaviors. One of the reasons I&#39;m a little bit more measured or skeptical on them is because they both require immersive engagement. </p><p>[00:50:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Mm-hmm okay. </p><p>[00:50:19] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Right. That there there&#39;s more effort involved. Now, if you can get over that hurdle on immersive engagement on live streaming, you&#39;ve got something, cuz somebody&#39;s already in, in a commercial instance, we&#39;ve seen it happen in Asia.</p><p>[00:50:30] We just haven&#39;t seen it move over here. That&#39;s one that I feel like I&#39;m happy to be wrong about that I just, I haven&#39;t seen the movement on the consumer here yet. The metaverse though. I will say this all major advertising mediums, the biggest ones, TV, radio, and social media depend on ambient or passive engagement.</p><p>[00:50:50] That&#39;s where you rack up time spent. Time spent is, is what drives major brand advertising. I can&#39;t ever see a point where everybody is going into VR worlds. And spend where you&#39;ll have a segment of, of the audience. Like you have gamers today. And, and some people may spend quite a lot of time, but I can&#39;t ever see that being more than, you know, a meaningful sliver of the advertising market as opposed to the next dominant platform.</p><p>[00:51:12] That that&#39;s the biggest reason for my skepticism there. </p><p>[00:51:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. Yeah, that&#39;s a fair </p><p>[00:51:18] point. That&#39;s a fair point about passive versus actively engaged as, a medium. And I, probably do have to agree with you there that that certainly slows adoption for something that&#39;s not passive in that sense for, for becoming a large scale medium.</p><p>[00:51:31] But it&#39;s definitely gonna be interesting to see how this plays out. I think there&#39;s room for all of these things. It&#39;s, more a question of, what&#39;s the mix, what&#39;s the balance gonna be? And I think that really just comes down to speed of adoption for each of these different mediums.</p><p>[00:51:43] So with that, it&#39;s a good time for us to wrap up and close out the room. Andrew, it has been a pleasure having you. This has been a fantastic discussion. Thank you so much for joining us. </p><p>[00:51:52] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> This was really fun. Thanks for having me. </p><p>[00:51:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I hope you come back and join us again.</p><p>[00:51:55] And wanna thank all the other Retail Avengers on stage . Thanks everybody here in the audience, thanks everyone. Have a great evening! </p><p>[00:52:01] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks Andrew! </p><p>[00:52:02] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> See ya! </p><h3>[00:52:03] Andrew Lipsman Recap Interview</h3><p>[00:52:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Welcome back Retail Razor Show listeners. We hope you enjoyed another truly amazing Clubhouse discussion on retail media networks.</p><p>[00:52:15] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It&#39;s a super hot topic right now. And since that discussion happened a few months ago, we brought Andrew Lipsman back to the show to check in, see what&#39;s new and learn a little bit more. What&#39;s changed and what&#39;s yet to come. Welcome back, Andrew.</p><p>[00:52:30] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Thanks for having me. </p><p>[00:52:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So Andrew, since we last spoke on this, it was about early June. So what has changed? I mean, what&#39;s changed in, the wonderful land of retail media, one of my favorite topics. And I guess I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll get a guess. Judging from recent earnings reports across different retailers, Amazon Walmart seemed to keep doing well with their media networks is, is, do things look as rosy as they did three months ago for this space.</p><p>[00:52:54] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. In some ways a little bit better in some ways, maybe slightly worse. I, I haven&#39;t really changed my viewpoint on the space at all, because I, I think you have to take a long term view and there&#39;s such a huge opportunity still in front. So is it gonna be affected by some of the advertising headwinds?</p><p>[00:53:12] Yes. Right. If ad spend dries up, that&#39;s gonna pull from everywhere. These are, it seems like the, the most resistant. To those dollars being pulled, be in, in large part because there&#39;s clear return on ad spend and that closed loop. And I think dollars just migrate towards performance in more recessionary times.</p><p>[00:53:32] But what has also changed is that things looked a lot worse in Q2 than at this current moment. Right. I, I personally am a lot more optimistic about the state of the consumer economy and where it&#39;s at headed into the back half of the year. And what that means for eCommerce and as eCommerce goes, so goes retail, media advertising.</p><p>[00:53:50] So I think we can be a bit more optimistic for the back half of the year. And really no reason at all to change the long term view of retail media. You mentioned Amazon and Walmart. You know, those growth rates came down from what they had previously reported. And yet at the same time, they were clearly way, way better than everyone else in the digital advertising space.</p><p>[00:54:11] So I think that&#39;s kind of an appropriate way to look at.</p><p>[00:54:13] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, so my quick follow up to that, in the clubhouse, one of our topics was how many new retail media networks are being announced from, different retailers. Do you still see that trending or is that slowed down at all?</p><p>[00:54:24] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> It&#39;s starting to slow down. Right. It just, it seemed like for the past 18 months or so it was one after another, after another. And I, I think fairly recently, somebody kind of predicted that Dick&#39;s sporting goods had to be the next one, cuz it seemed like the only white space. It was an obvious category leader.</p><p>[00:54:39] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right </p><p>[00:54:40] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> and oh, low and behold, there&#39;s Dick sporting goods, retail media network. So at this point I think a lot of the white space is covered. And we&#39;ll start to bleed more into, I guess, what people are putting under the banner of commerce media, which is kind of moving into other verticals, think Marriott media network, as an example, that&#39;s, you know, serving travel.</p><p>[00:54:58] So we&#39;ll start to, we&#39;ll see more of those, but I think at this point. This space is starting to get more saturated and frankly, listen, not all of them are gonna really, really succeed. So at some point in the future, I don&#39;t know how long it&#39;ll take, but some of these will probably kind of die on the vine and, and just not continue to be invested in, but we&#39;re probably a couple of years away from that happening.</p><p>[00:55:17] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Okay. So in our clubhouse session, we, we spoke of which type types of retailers are best suited for building media networks. At the time, Ulta had just announced theirs, any new, interesting announcements, as far as who is suitable? If it&#39;s getting saturated, like who are the players that should be playing or that you think are going to make it through the saturation?</p><p>[00:55:41] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. I mean, I think you have to look at it from the brand&#39;s standpoint first, right? There&#39;s only so many retail media networks, walled garden types that they can operate with at, at one time they&#39;re already stretched pretty thin. So they&#39;re not necessarily inclined to go deeper and deeper into more channels.</p><p>[00:55:57] It has to really have relevance, which is why you see some category leaders carve out viable businesses, or you just have to have that scale, which is, you know, where the big marketplaces, the Amazons and Walmarts and, and others are gonna play. I, I think that&#39;s where, where this market sort of nets out.</p><p>[00:56:15] And I think where, where you start to see some of the shakeout is if you are a vertical retailer and you&#39;re not the clear number one in your space. If you&#39;re not dicks or you&#39;re not best buy or whomever else, I think those ones might have a tougher time.</p><p>[00:56:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> So on this subject, of which categories are the ones that make sense, for example, you just gave some, some good examples there. And I think in my mind, you know, we&#39;ve been through all, all the mass merchandisers, right? The Walmarts, the Targets, they&#39;re the, the category leaders, right? Like a best buy you know, we, we had beauty was new at the time we did in the clubhouse with Ulta having announced then that seems like another natural one. Are, are we seeing these in categories? And I just can&#39;t remember now because it&#39;s so easy to lose track of all the announcements, but I&#39;m thinking like pharmacy drug stores, you know, Walgreens, CVS, Rite aid. And, and then from what about would it be odd to think of convenience stores as another possibility?</p><p>[00:57:06] And then my favorite one that I still feel like other than Macy&#39;s we never see examples of is department stores.</p><p>[00:57:11] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. Well, so department stores, you do have Kohl&#39;s, Nordstrom, Macy&#39;s. So I think they&#39;re viable players and, you know, Macy&#39;s has gotten off to a pretty good start with, with their network for sure. Drug stores, you know, Walmart and CVS are viable. I think anyone who has scale and serves consumer package goods broadly can play.</p><p>[00:57:30] So, so CVS and, and Walgreens, and it&#39;s easy to overlook. They have, they don&#39;t get as much website traffic, but their mobile traffic is really, really high. So that traffic, I think, will support their businesses. And the last segment you mentioned is convenience. I think that&#39;s also really interesting.</p><p>[00:57:47] So you&#39;ve got go puff and then go puff can definitely be a viable player. And I&#39;ve talked to a lot of CPG brands who are interested in that. Then you kind of get into Uber and DoorDash and then maybe the seven elevens of the world. That&#39;s where my question comes in is like seven 11, huge, huge footprint.</p><p>[00:58:02] I think that network though, Is viable, but I think it&#39;s gonna depend a lot more on store traffic and in store retail media than it will on that that app traffic essentially.</p><p>[00:58:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah, that kinda makes sense for them. Yeah. And then what, what about grocery? Do we have all the major grocery players, have they all started in their retail media network?</p><p>[00:58:23] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> They&#39;re they&#39;re all in the game, except you have this one kind of outlier with Costco, which hasn&#39;t really built out anything. And yet, like it&#39;s, it&#39;s, it&#39;s very analog and, and yet, because they&#39;re so big people still play and it seems to be working. So that one is just kind of a funny outlier to me, but yeah, every major player in grocery is in the game now.</p><p>[00:58:43] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So based on your research, I think earlier in the year, you had forecasted around 40 billion this year growing to 60 billion by 2024, are those numbers still tracking for you or are you expecting a little bit more shakeout?</p><p>[00:58:58] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. So I don&#39;t wanna speak completely on behalf of our forecasting team, but cuz we don&#39;t have an updated forecast, but I will say this like the numbers for Q2 tracked a little bit below what our expectations were for that quarter. But I could also see it making up that ground in Q3 and Q4.</p><p>[00:59:15] So I think wherever it nets out, it&#39;s it&#39;s not gonna be much of a difference from, from where we&#39;re at currently the fundamentals are are, as they were before.</p><p>[00:59:23] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> When you guys are looking at these forecasts. Is there anything specific, like one thing that you&#39;re looking out for in this space?</p><p>[00:59:30] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> If there&#39;s one thing you have to look at what&#39;s happening with Amazon, just because Amazon is still currently three quarters of the market. So it&#39;s gonna drive the market. Very deliberately. And so, part, part of the bullishness, I guess, for Q3 and Q4 is Amazon has a prime day in both of those quarters this year.</p><p>[00:59:47] So they, the advertising really ratchets up for both of those events so that that&#39;s gonna drive. The the whole space maybe even give it some upside. But also, the next tier of players, I&#39;m seeing a lot of evidence that they are really getting their feet underneath them. They&#39;re starting to scale the business.</p><p>[01:00:04] I&#39;ll use Walmart as an example, one of the things that they did recently is they instituted a second price auction. I mean, that was the big impediment that I kept hearing from brands. And once Walmart instituted that, that Auction model, it gave brands a lot more confidence to invest.</p><p>[01:00:20] So the interesting thing is in the very short term, CPCs on Walmart went down, right? So that actually hurts. It dings Walmart&#39;s ability to monetize in the short term, long term, those budgets are gonna flow a lot more freely. So it&#39;s really gonna be a smart, long term move for Walmart. So I, I think their trajectory is gonna be strong.</p><p>[01:00:38] Kroger seems to be doing really good things. Just a lot of these other players are, are executing better and better and starting to make up ground and providing all the tools that that advertisers want and need to fully invest. And at the same time, you look around at market conditions, there&#39;s all these macro factors affecting the marketing ecosystem that provide a lot of reason for budgets to move in this direction.</p><p>[01:01:00] I&#39;ve said that retail media is digital advertising&#39;s third big wave. And I&#39;m now convinced that it&#39;s destined to be the biggest of the three waves, eventually surpassing search and social. And the reason that I believe that is because to date, we&#39;ve mostly monetized through search.</p><p>[01:01:16] There&#39;s still runway for search to grow, but there&#39;s so many other layers. To drive growth in the future, whether that&#39;s going up the funnel into connected TV, whether that&#39;s making better use of offline sales data or whether that&#39;s the rise of in-store media.</p><p>[01:01:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And, and let me ask you, I don&#39;t think we got to touch on this too much in, in the clubhouse session. When I think about this, it seems like the key factors for success here in terms of what the, the retailer&#39;s media network is offering to brands. It&#39;s how they&#39;re taking the first party data they have, how they might be able to combine with other data sets to offer in some way, right. a more. guess I&#39;m gonna choose my words carefully here, a more precise capability, right? To target that customer than the other retail networks that the brands may be considering putting their spend into. And maybe I have to put Amazon kind of to one side, cuz to your point, that&#39;s like three fourths of the spend right now.</p><p>[01:02:08] But, and I maintain that for other brands, the mission isn&#39;t to out Amazon, Amazon on this is just to look at your own media network and what can you do to make that offering special to the brands you support and, and not worry about whether you&#39;re stealing any share from, from Amazon or not, because that&#39;s not the, the most important piece, but is it really come down to differences in the technology that each retailer bases their media network on?</p><p>[01:02:33] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> It, I think it comes down to ultimately what data they have. This is fueled by first party data, first party purchase data, shopping and purchase data. And that can be used for better targeting. Right? If the status quo is behavioral targeting through Facebook and, and other behaviorally targeted networks.</p><p>[01:02:50] Now it&#39;s purchase based targeting. So that&#39;s more important. So you got that targeting and then you got the measurement on the back end, cuz you can see if it drives purchase. So that value proposition is really what unlocks budgets historically. Right? When you can see the return on ad spend, that&#39;s what brought dollars to Google initially. It&#39;s what Facebook then perfected it in its market. And Amazon has already kind of done that. But if you wanna know who&#39;s gonna do well in the future, look to where the data is. And Walmart is sitting on this huge piece of data because they&#39;ve, they have in-store sales data. It hasn&#39;t been fully operationalized.</p><p>[01:03:25] And what I mean by that is campaigns don&#39;t really pull that information to see how an online ad might drive offline sales. Immediately, they do this stuff, but it needs to get faster and faster and more real time because digital ads get optimized in real time as that gap narrows and we get to real time optimization or near realtime optimization, that&#39;s where the spend just starts to really flow in.</p><p>[01:03:48] So. I&#39;d say the mandate for the big brick and mortar retailers should be, get that data operationalized as fast as you possibly can and watch the budgets flow. But guess what? That&#39;s a big advantage for all of them over Amazon, because Amazon is still early in building out their footprint.</p><p>[01:04:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> and, I was gonna say then, in that sense, then the, key becomes how quickly can those brick and mortar retailers combine their in-store generated data, with any, other data sets they have to make that offering more unique. And so that you can actually start tracking conversion to in-store through all of the digital placements they may offer the brand.</p><p>[01:04:20] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Absolutely. And, and the thing about in-store, you know, that&#39;s the other 85% of sales now linking online to in-store. I&#39;m not gonna say that it&#39;s gonna drive the same percentage lift as online to online, right. You would expect online to be a bit more, maybe even significantly more effective at driving an online sale, but even if it&#39;s three times less effective, But it represents six times more dollars give or take.</p><p>[01:04:47] That&#39;s actually saying that offline is two times as important as online, right? I&#39;m just doing some quick math there, but like there&#39;s a lot of leverage on that offline piece, even if it&#39;s a more subtle effect.</p><p>[01:04:56] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Just when you&#39;re looking at the volume of sales to begin with.</p><p>[01:04:59] Well, Andrew, I wanna really thank you for coming back on the show. This is always enjoyable to talk to you about, one of my favorite topics with retail media, but honestly, it&#39;s always a pleasure to talk to you about any of these topics in retail with all the great insights that you bring from all the research that you&#39;re involved in.</p><p>[01:05:15] So thanks again so much for, for coming back with us.</p><p>[01:05:17] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Thanks Ricardo. Thanks Casey.</p><p>[01:05:19] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> If any of our listeners wanna learn more from you and your research at insider intelligence, how should they reach out? How do they follow?</p><p>[01:05:26] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> Yeah. So I am minimally on Twitter at alipsman. But the easier way is on LinkedIn. I think that&#39;s where a lot of the discussion happens and where I share most of my research. So, so come check me on LinkedIn.</p><p>[01:05:37] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks again for joining us.</p><p>[01:05:39] <strong>Andrew Lipsman:</strong> My pleasure. Thanks.</p><p>[01:05:41]</p><h3>[01:05:44] Clubhouse Thank You</h3><p>[01:05:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Before we close. We&#39;d like to thank everyone who joined us on clubhouse to talk retail media networks and ask questions. So a special shout out to</p><p>[01:05:52] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Cynthia Holland, always insightful CEO of Mavi.io, retail on the go. </p><p>[01:05:57] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> thank you, Cynthia.</p><p>[01:05:58] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> So Ricardo, I think that&#39;s a wrap for our episode two</p><p>[01:06:01] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yes, indeed. It is.</p><h3>[01:06:03] Show Close</h3><p>[01:06:03] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We hope you enjoyed our show and we can&#39;t ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don&#39;t wanna miss a minute of what&#39;s next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don&#39;t forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I&#39;m your host, Casey Golden. </p><p>[01:06:31] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I&#39;m your host, Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[01:06:47] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[01:06:49] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. </p> dce9ff31-240f-4099-bbe8-40349ae364a4 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 30 Sep 2022 03:00:00 +0000 4029 no full S2E1 The Retail Avengers vs The Metaverse S2E1 The Retail Avengers vs The Metaverse 1 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S2E1 The Retail Avengers vs The Metaverse Welcome back to The Retail Razor Show – It’s Season 2, Episode 1! Back for season two of the show, we saved a BIG topic to open up with – The Metaverse! Yes, our Retail Avengers team has been jumping out of their seats to bring you this discussion, recently held in our Clubhouse room, to answer the biggest, burning questions retailers and brands have about the Metaverse. What exactly IS the Metaverse? What is it not? Why should you be interested and what can you do with the metaverse? How can you use the Metaverse? Is it about building brand loyalty? Commerce? And what about NFTs and web3? All of the above? The Retail Avengers team digs into these questions, and more, to cut through the clutter! Hosts, Ricardo and Casey then come back to recap the discussion and talk about a few key examples of brands that seem to know what they’re doing in the Metaverse right now. Plus, they’ll bring you an easy 5-step roadmap to getting started in the Metaverse. All that in the season 2 opener! Have you heard the news? We’re up to #20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your loyal help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20 in no time! Leave us a review and we’ll mention you in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: I’m Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. And I’m Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. I've spent my career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business. Now I slay franken-stacks! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, including E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT The Retail Avengers vs The Metaverse [00:00:00] Pre-Intro [00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: Hey, Casey, it's season two. Now maybe we should do something different for the show intro. [00:00:04] Casey Golden: Yeah, I've seen some podcasts play different clips from the main interview in the beginning of the show, kind of like a preview. [00:00:11] Ricardo Belmar: I don't know. That kind of seems like it's been done to death doesn't it? [00:00:14] Casey Golden: True. We can always just pick up. In the middle of a conversation and give the audience some FOMO. They wouldn't know whether or not they've missed something or arrived right on time. [00:00:23] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm, not a bad idea though. I don't know. I wonder if we might get some bad reviews for trying to trick our listeners that way. What if we just added some cool sound effects? [00:00:31] Casey Golden: That would be too simple. What would happen afterwards? [00:00:34] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. I guess you got me there. All right. All right. So, we could just start talking about our main topic and give listeners a preview that way of what's to come without really giving away our speaker. [00:00:44] Casey Golden: Sounds like plan. I think that's what we should do, but how much time do we have to do that? A minute. 30 seconds, two minutes, 15. [00:00:54] Ricardo Belmar: well, uh, let's see, how long have we already been talking about it? I don't know. We might not have much time to talk about the m... [00:01:00] Show Intro [00:01:00] [00:01:20] Introduction [00:01:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to the first episode of season two of the retail razor show. I'm your host Ricardo Belmar. [00:01:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your cohost Casey Golden. Welcome retail razor show listeners to our unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike. [00:01:40] Ricardo Belmar: It's great to be back in front of the camera and on the mic. [00:01:43] Casey Golden: Yeah. And for those of you watching us on YouTube, how about that? , you're actually watching us on YouTube now, not just listening. This is a big step for us this season. And personally for me, I'm blow drying my hair again! [00:01:58] Ricardo Belmar: totally, totally. And, for listeners or, or maybe I should say viewers, can expect to see us on video pretty much every episode now, apart from when we're bringing you our clubhouse sessions, because you know, obviously those are audio only. [00:02:11] Casey Golden: Well, Ricardo, this is our first season of the new season. So of course, we've got an amazing topic this week. One that have been asked about and asked for many times, [00:02:24] Ricardo Belmar: And one that our Retail Avengers crew had really been dying to cover for months and months. [00:02:30] Casey Golden: That's right. So with all of this anticipation, I am so bummed that I missed the clubhouse session. [00:02:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Especially since the topic is, wait for it, retail and the metaverse. I mean, this one was just about tailor made for you, Casey. [00:02:44] Casey Golden: Yeah. So I know I'll save my commentary for our recap discussion after the clubhouse session. [00:02:51] Ricardo Belmar: It'll be worth the wait. So with that lead in, since this is a topic that doesn't really need an introduction, let's just dive right in and listen, sorry, youTube viewers, view , well I guess still listen because it's clubhouse, to the Retail Avengers versus the Metaverse. [00:03:11] Clubhouse Session [00:03:11] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Welcome everyone to the retail razor room. We have a really amazing topic for discussion today. I know the entire group here has been just itching to, come back and talk about the metaverse. And so we've got five folks up here on stage. I am sure there'll be some folks from the audience that are gonna join us later. [00:03:30] And I know we have one more of our retail Avengers team. It's gonna join us a little bit later in the hour. So without further ado, we'll do some introductions. Jeff, why don't you go first? [00:03:39] Jeff Roster: Hi, Jeff Roster former Gartner retail analyst now cohost of This Week In Innovation podcast. [00:03:44] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks Jeff, Shish. [00:03:46] Shish Shridhar: Good afternoon. I'm Shish. I'm the global lead for retail with Microsoft for Startups. I've been in retail for over 20 years primarily focused on AI for retail and solutions around it. And currently just building out a portfolio of innovative startups. Thank you. [00:04:02] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you. Brandon [00:04:03] Brandon Rael: Brandon Rael, I've also been in and around the retail consumer industries over 20 years. And since our last discussion, I've joined Capgemini Invent team, they focus on innovation transformations and all the digital stuff we love to talk about here. So looking forward to this great conversation about the metaverse and all the potential. [00:04:19] Ricardo Belmar: And Trevor, [00:04:20] Trevor Sumner: Hey everybody. I'm Trevor Sumner. I'm the CEO at of perch. We do interactive digital displays at retail that use computer vision to detect which products you touch. So. We're basically instrumenting the clicks at retail, opening up new intelligence, data streams, and really cool shopping experiences for customers like Johnson and Johnson, joe Malone, Purina, Unilever, many others. [00:04:44] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Great. And I'm Ricardo Belmar. I started the retail razor club room here in, in clubhouse last year. Also running the retail razor show podcast with my co-host Casey golden. So everybody in the audience who hasn't subscribed yet, do yourself a favor, hit your podcast player and hit the subscribe button there. [00:05:01] You'll find some of our past clubhouse sessions showing up in each new episode of the podcast. I'm currently the lead partner marketing advisor at Microsoft for retail and consumer goods. And we are just gonna jump right into the metaverse here. So probably makes sense to start with a few good definitions. [00:05:18] I think everybody has a definition that it's kinda like that joke about economist s where if you ask 50 different people, what the metaverse is, you get 60 different answers, something like that. But I'll throw this one out, I think this is a Wikipedia definition that defines metaverse as a collective virtual shared space created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality and the internet. And it's also defined as a network of 3d virtual worlds focused on social connection. [00:05:51] So just to kick things off, what does everyone think of that rather complex definition. [00:05:56] Brandon Rael: It's a bit overwhelming. Isn't it? , [00:05:58] Ricardo Belmar: it's a mouthful for sure. [00:05:59] Shish Shridhar: it is! [00:06:03] Jeff Roster: I'm gonna have to go back to my Catholic school days and and diagram that sentence. Cause I think that's about run on over, run on, over run on, but I, I mean, it's, it's, it's fine. I mean, we're gonna have about a hundred different definitions before this thing really gets up and running. I think though, intuitively we kind of understand what it is. [00:06:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that's, that's a, a fair, fair statement. I mean, there's gonna be lots of definitions. I think some of the keywords, maybe I pick out from that, whether it was implied or not, is this notion of seamlessly moving between virtual and physical worlds. [00:06:32] There's the notion of leveraging augmented reality and virtual reality. That's certainly part of it and how you actually go about interacting with that space. There was that last part of the sentence. I, I like where it just throws in' and the internet' into that, because we didn't wanna leave that out. [00:06:48] but you know, you could view the internet as sort of a, a connecting glue perhaps of the, the metaverse. But I think one question I see gets asked by a lot of people at least one of the early questions is, well, are we talking about a single virtual reality world? Are we talking about multiple virtual reality worlds or is it the combination of all of them? [00:07:06] And just this idea that I can do things in this virtual digital space that has an impact in the physical world. [00:07:12] Trevor Sumner: Well, to me, there is not a, the metaverse, there is many metaverses and many different environments, and I'm watching people, contort themselves to define what this thing is. [00:07:26] And I think one of the, the greatest contortions was this notion that we're already in the metaverse right, that, you know 10 years ago we spent an hour on our phones and now we spend six hours on our phones. And we interact, if you look at kind of what our digital consumption, looking at TV and looking at other kind of digital formats that, that has gone up and that we are actually already kind of working in these metaverses now I don't know that that's helpful. [00:07:54] So the question is like, what is the definition that makes it helpful? [00:07:58] Brandon Rael: And I think to Trevor's point it's ever evolving, it's ever pivoting. We can't just say that's a single metaverse, it's multiple metaverse with different customer types and different generations. So it's hard to nail down what, you know, what exactly it is. [00:08:12] And I think what companies like Facebook or meta are doing, or like establishing a metaverse, but there's ones that already exist already that are they're in flight, you know? So it's, it's a very complex undertaken to single it to one, one single metaverse. [00:08:24] Trevor Sumner: Yeah. And, and I don't know that Microsoft is doing one metaverse either, right. [00:08:27] It could be blizzard is one metaverse that they're investing in as, as an environment. And then, another game world has another. And you know, HoloLens potentially, is a whole nother thing. [00:08:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think you could say that you can divide this into different areas, right? [00:08:43] There might be a, a metaverse for a work environment that you encounter there's might be a metaverse for gaming. There might be a metaverse that you go to for shopping. There might be a metaverse. You go to for fitness exercises, right? [00:08:58] Shish Shridhar: Yep. And, and I kind of think [00:09:00] I I've been playing around with a few of these environments, including Microsoft's acquisition from 2018 prior to blizzard something called Altspace VR. [00:09:09] So Altspace VR is an environment where you can set up virtual meetings. You can have a mall in there. You can have shopping experiences, all of those. And I've also played around with decentraland where, companies like Coors and Miller Coors and, and others have been creating environments. [00:09:26] And then there is still other ones, the popular ones being sandbox and, and a few others where some of them mimic the real world, because there's that spatial element to the metaphors where you can buy digital, digital, you can buy land and build your malls and build your spaces. And all of those things pretty much like buying domain names in the internet. [00:09:47] And I think because there's so many of these environments, I think a point will come where you can kind of port between one and the other. I kind of believe there probably will never be a, sort of a, a single place. There will be competing environments always, but I think the tipping point will be where you can create an avatar of yourself and objects that you could kind of port from one environment to the other, make it available in multiple environments as well as in the physical world through AR. And I think that would be the, the convergence that, that we are all looking for, where you don't have to completely rebuild everything in, in all these different environments and brands that are today. [00:10:29] I think fairly confused about which one should be, be on, should we go to the sandbox. It should we go to, to decentral land or, or one or the other platforms. [00:10:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that is maybe the tricky part in these early days of almost competing metaverses . Or competing metaverse worlds maybe is a better way to further refine that statement. [00:10:52] And how do you decide which one to go to? I, one of the things I've noticed that I've kind of scratched from my head at a little bit is when we see some brands deciding that their, their first experiment here in the metaverse is gonna be to just replicate exactly what they have in physical space and assume that that's gonna cause people to just flock to their location. [00:11:09] Shish Shridhar: Yeah. I strongly feel about that. [00:11:11] Sorry, go ahead. [00:11:13] Authenticity, Storytelling, Experiential [00:11:13] Brandon Rael: Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. Shish, I, I think it's, it's all about authenticity and storytelling and, and that's what we're looking for with the emergence of TikTok and Instagram, and you expect something magical and experiential and not, not replicating your day to day life and not replicating a storefront or a grocery store. [00:11:29] We look for something different, unique and authentic, and that's what we're hoping for in terms of inspirational content, out of the metaverse. [00:11:35] Shish Shridhar: Yeah, I kind of think it is, you know, it's an opportunity for brands and retailers really to rethink because in the past, in the 3d environments, you know, retailers have tried to recreate stores in 3d. [00:11:47] So you could go and do the normal shopping that you do in the physical world. You could do it in the 3d world. And that has never really worked. I think it's an opportunity to, to reinvent and to really say, how can we create experiential shopping? How do we make shopable experiences in the metaverse where we create an experience, which enables us to shop for the things that we want to in that experience, rather than recreating an actual store with shelves and exactly the way it looks like in, in the real world. [00:12:20] That is certainly one of the aspects for combining the real world and the digital world. But I think in addition, the opportunity really lies in, in creating that experience because this is all about experiential shopping and going beyond the webpage and, and making it more real. [00:12:37] Trevor Sumner: Yeah. I, I find that I find this conversation so interesting cuz it just it's so parallels the conversations we had 10, 12 years ago with regards to social media, like which sites do you pick and oh, you just can't put your same website on Facebook. [00:12:51] You've gotta do something different and what you do on Twitter or Snapchat or, or TikTok. Right. And additionally, you do need to be thoughtful about what you pick, especially in the early days, because one of the interesting economics here is that the early adopters tend to get the spoils. [00:13:08] Right? So you look at like Ashton Kucher right. He was an early adopter of Twitter. He took on CNN on a race to a million followers. And, those early adopters, get the, get the spoils. And so, you have to lean in and say, what am I doing here that's differentiated, that's actually valuable? Where's the cool factor that people wanna talk about. Cuz otherwise I think most people do like, oh, I'll just port my website. [00:13:37] Ricardo Belmar: And there's also I think an element of how do you retain attention? Right? So it's one thing to say, oh, I'm gonna jump into the metaverse I'm gonna create my virtual storefront. [00:13:45] And you'll probably get a lot of people that will come to see it just for the sheer novelty that first time. But you really need to be thinking about, what's gonna get people to come back the second time and the third and the fourth and the fifth. Another kind of extension to this point that you just brought up. [00:14:00] The early days of social media, I'm gonna go even further back to the early days of eCommerce and who remembers when there were discussions of people saying, you know, someone should build a virtual mall on the internet and get all the retailers to come and build their eCommerce sites in that virtual mall. [00:14:15] And we know how that story went. how that played out. [00:14:17] Trevor Sumner: Yeah. [00:14:17] And, I think I, yeah, I still see the echos of that in VR shopping. Which is analogous to this VR side of the house. And so I think the questions like who's actually doing interesting things versus doing analogous things. [00:14:31] it's interesting Chris Dixon , talks about this as kind of like business skew morphism, it's just like X for Y , and you're just trying to recreate the, the same thing in the new environment, but the really interesting businesses that have exponential growth create something completely new. [00:14:48] Trillion dollar opportunity [00:14:48] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. That that's true. That's true. And I'm, I'm, I'll throw out another interesting data point I saw. So JP Morgan claims that there's a trillion dollar market opportunity in the metaverse and I'm curious what everyone thinks of that data point. I'm sure Jeff has. [00:15:03] Jeff Roster: I'll go last. Yeah. [00:15:05] Brandon Rael: Hear that sign. [00:15:06] Ricardo Belmar: Our analyst has to have an opinion on that. [00:15:09] Jeff Roster: I'll [00:15:09] go last. [00:15:10] Brandon Rael: That's a very bold stand. I don't know what they're substantiating that on, but it it's a bold one and let's see what, what emerges, I mean, First, you have to actually capture the attention, capture the imagination, inspire generations with all this amazing content and, and find a way to retain them. [00:15:26] Like you mentioned to even make this a commercialized opportunity for retailers and brands to want actually spend money and spend time and engage and build communities. So it potentially could be at that level, but it's certainly gonna take a lot of effort, content creation and imagination [00:15:45] Shish Shridhar: I agree with what Brandon's saying and I think potentially yes, but I think there's a lot of things that need to happen before that. And you know, my experiments with the metaverse the, the graphics right now is a little clunky and performance is a little sluggish. [00:15:59] So from a technology perspective, I think we are not fully there. And then the other aspect of it, I think we are still waiting in a way for AR and AR glasses to be ubiquitous cheap enough and performant enough to be used where I think that will be another tipping point we are waiting for. [00:16:17] So there are certain things that need to happen before we go, headlong into, the metaverse. But I think there is a lot of opportunity in creating those digital experiences and marrying it with the physical world where in the physical world you could experience when you're shopping digital media, digital experiences through AR that was created in the metaverse. [00:16:41] So you could experience either in the virtual world or the physical world through AR. Then there's so many other experiences like clothing, trying on clothing and, and that next evolution of, of streaming commerce in a way where today the streaming commerce is I would say the beginning, but in the metaverse, it kind of goes into a completely new level where you're experiencing things you're trying on things, and you are engaging with store associates in the metaverse. I've been working with companies that are also experimenting with AI assistance companies like Soul Machines and Deep Brain that are creating these avatars, which are deep fakes of people, but powered by AI engines that are very personal and relevant. [00:17:26] So when you engage with someone, it could be a real human you're engaging with, or an AI assistant that you're engaging with that is been trained with your data and is becoming very personal as a result. And so those are the kind of experiences I think are gonna evolve . And also, the evolution of streaming commerce is gonna be the other aspect of it. And the ability to actually create all the digital objects like furniture and all those things. Being able to create a digital twin of your home in the metaverse, furnish that home with digital goods that you buy, and then recreate that in the real world through commerce engines. [00:18:04] And I think the headless commerce engines will play a big part in, in the metaverse where you can buy things, things that you see. So it not necessarily in a store environment, but really making that experience shoppable through, through the commerce engines. [00:18:20] Trevor Sumner: So I'm gonna go and say yes to trillion dollars just, you know, without any qualifications, although obviously it depends on how you define this phase. [00:18:29] Jeff Roster: Well, neither did the writer of the article, so no one needs qualifications, apparently. [00:18:33] Trevor Sumner: Totally. And, and, and, oh, actually that's a little bit of my point, which, which is where I'm going with this, which is, you know, look, you, you could back into it and say, the real estate market for the metaverse is at 500 million and supposed to double this year. [00:18:46] So just the real estate market of the metaverse is a billion dollar market. And that's core metaverse, that's not like messing around and, deciding to like, I'm not picking on Shish here, but like social shopping. I, I don't count that as metaverse, but when it gets to that next stage, as Shish was talking about of being in the metaverse and, and going to the next level, it is, but without playing lines, like they're billion dollar markets and it's so early with like, who's been in decentral land? [00:19:11] Who's been in the sandbox, very few of us, right? Now at the same time. The question is, if you look at usage, it's younger people it's gen Z and like specifically, like take a look at the data in South Korea, it's astounding, they're spending more money on virtual goods for their avatars than actual physical apparel for themselves. [00:19:30] That is crazy. Right. I think, yeah. If, if you look at that trillion dollars? Sure. Trillion dollars I'm in, [00:19:38] Brandon Rael: I think to that point, the, the luxury sector we're seeing all these major companies are now investing in the metaverse space. They're betting big on it. So Gucci and other major global corporations are an investment in space because it, their brand has such value in it. [00:19:52] And they're exclusively extends to the metaverse. So if you can capture that audience and capture that imagination to, to where we had the right clothing to have the right accessories for your avatar, then it could be a, a winning proposition. I mean, it could be limitless, to be honest. [00:20:05] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I mean, if you just look at virtual goods and games, I think that's a hundred billion dollar market right there. [00:20:11] So if we're gonna include that then to Trevor's point, you can make this work, right. You can add your way up to a trillion dollars if you keep including these different things. And if you roll in you know, brand to your point with luxury brands, any NFTs that they're starting to release, and I'm, I'm jumping again a little bit to, to that part of the discussion, but you know, you roll that component into your, into the math here. [00:20:30] You can see yourself getting to a trillion dollars. If you just keep adding more and more components to it. [00:20:34] Trevor Sumner: And then the last, last point I wanted to make that that, that we hit to at earlier is I also don't believe anything that these guys say, right? Like it's JP Morgan chase. He like he's writing. [00:20:43] Jeff Roster: There you go. [00:20:44] Ricardo Belmar: I think you just told Jeff's comment. [00:20:46] Jeff Roster: Yeah. Thank you. You just stepped on my line [00:20:48] Trevor Sumner: as analysts you wanna predict things just so that you get clicks. I remember in 2001, [00:20:53] Jeff Roster: no, you don't. Analysts analysts want to make intelligent points. Hack writers wanna do that. So real analysts don't wanna do that. [00:21:02] Trevor Sumner: I like, I, I don't know. I think analysts wanna get attention too, cuz they wanna sell the research. I remember in 2001 Forrester predict, well, they're not, especially when you predicted out six to 10 years and there's no consequence, right? In 2001, I was at a wireless center company and Forrester was predicting mobile internet traffic would outpace, internet traffic in five years. [00:21:24] It took, [00:21:24] Ricardo Belmar: I remember that [00:21:25] Trevor Sumner: 15 and it's just like, it just wasn't even in five years it was nothing. It was less, it was less than 5%. [00:21:31] Brandon Rael: Well, they had the form factor, the iPhone wasn't invented in time for that [00:21:35] Trevor Sumner: well, the analyst should have known that. So my, my point is JP Morgan chase missed the boat on cryptocurrency. So they wanna throw out a big number and they did. [00:21:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. Jeff, you wanna add anything to that? [00:21:45] Jeff Roster: Yeah, I mean, just, I just hate these articles because one I think Trevor's really a hundred percent correct. It's it's just, you're throwing out to put out a, interesting number it's click bait to a certain degree. [00:21:55] I'd have to look at the methodology. Are we talking about IT spend to build the metaverse? Are we talking about revenue moving through the metaverse? Just, I, I don't see them. I don't see these articles being helpful as somebody that tries to understand how to forecast things. It just. It's silly. [00:22:07] I think it's a big number. I haven't actually put the numbers together. I, I don't see a reason to do that, but it they're big and they're huge and they're gonna grow. Yeah. And that's that that's all I need to do is, is somebody that comments on the space, but is it 1,000,000,000,002, Ricardo, what was the largest number we saw? [00:22:22] Cause we were kibitzing about that a while ago. I [00:22:24] mean, it was, I don't know how many was there? [00:22:26] Ricardo Belmar: Was there someone else that said it was more than a trillion? I, I can't remember now. [00:22:29] Jeff Roster: Oh yeah. [00:22:29] Ricardo Belmar: This is the one that stood out to me most recently. [00:22:31] Jeff Roster: Cause there's, there's an art and science to the game of forecasting. [00:22:34] There should be a methodology you should be publishing that you should be talking about what you're talking about. You should talk about definitions and none of that work has really been done that I've seen evidence by the, the conversation we had to start with, you know, sort, sort of wrestling around with what a definition is. [00:22:48] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:22:48] Jeff Roster: So to, you know, do these clickbait articles just it's just frustrating. [00:22:52] Brandon Rael: It's a coupling with the per Jeff's point. If you're adding in live events and advertising and keep expanding a definition of, of metaverse, it could be 800 billion to a trillion, but it's just a loose definition of it. You know, I understand gaming Roblox, et cetera. [00:23:06] And those, those , newer, authentic spaces that we're talking about. But if you're adding all those availments in there, it will get expanded. [00:23:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. That's a fair point. I see we've got some raised hands and Ananda, I just invited you up onto the stage. If you have a comment or a question for us. [00:23:20] No, Really, What IS the Metaverse? [00:23:20] Ananda Chakravarty: How's it going? [00:23:21] Ricardo Belmar: Hey, Ananda, how are you? [00:23:22] Ananda Chakravarty: I'm thanks for inviting me, Ricardo. I do have a couple of questions. I honestly, I'm, I'm kind of new at this whole metaverse concept. I'm you know, you guys have given me some explanations, but I think your first comment when you brought in that very ambiguous definition of metaverse really still gave me a lot of pause as to what we're really counting when we're talking about all these dollars, trillions of dollars that are potentially coming in from many different sources into a either a channel, a, a throughway, whatever you wanna call it. [00:23:52] Aren't these just dollars that are going into variations of the internet, or maybe even variations of social commerce. I'm just wondering what really defines the metaverse right now. And what, what is the real, I guess conceptually, what is it supposed to really be? Is it like that second life? [00:24:09] The only places I've seen the metaverse in real you know, from a realistic point of view has been in the gaming universe. You go to a Minecraft Mojang location. You can find tons of people playing, engaging, and effectively having their avatars in the universe. Right. But I've not seen that from a retail perspective. [00:24:26] I've not seen that from almost any other kind of context. Maybe Shish you have some, you had some thoughts of some examples that you shared, but I'd like to get a better definition of what it really means to be a metaverse and what that is from an overall perspective. [00:24:40] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I'll jump in on, on a couple thoughts there and then maybe Shish, I think you might have some things to add. I mean, for me, there has to be an element of this, you know, virtual world that is representing something in the digital space that you're interacting with. So whether we call that, a virtual world, you access through VR glasses or something like that, it, I think is sort of a secondary point. [00:25:00] I think you're right, that in the gaming space is probably where it's leading in this area. If my kids are an indication, then things like Roblox, is sort of an early version of, of what can happen in the metaverse. Although I'll, as a side note, make a point that I just read an article today about how Roblox, since they IPOed, I think their about their stock has dropped about 50%. So I don't know if that's sending a message or not, but I think gaming is definitely an area that maybe leads the way here. [00:25:23] I have seen some good examples of what I alluded to early on in the session about the metaverse at work, where companies would use a virtual space, for example, to facilitate onboarding new employees. So in a remote work era when you don't necessarily bring all of your new hires into a common physical location, you could bring them into that virtual space and have them interact with other employees and go through training exercises and such there. [00:25:48] I think there's definitely a use case there. And then I've seen in the manufacturing side and, and production environments. If you're building a product and you need to either do maintenance on something, or you're trying to figure out how things are connected in a assembly line. You know, there there's some value in using an augmented reality experience there, which I would, again, still label as part of a metaverse that allows you to virtually manipulate some of the physical items that you're working with in a way that might help you understand how you need to manipulate them in the physical space. [00:26:19] So it's the idea that Shish mentioned earlier about digital twins. I think that's an early use case that makes a lot of sense for metaverse applications. I think what we're all kind of getting to, and I'm curious, everybody else here will think about this comment, that when we start looking at the commerce application of it, which is really what, what retailers care about, what consumers might care about, where are those use cases coming from? And I'm gonna let everybody comment, but I think the next thing we should probably get to, because I think it's related, you know, we often hear the term metaverse not too many sentences removed from terms like web 3.0 and NFTs. And I think there's a reason for that association when it comes to evaluating the commerce implications, but I'm gonna leave that comment there for us to come back to and see what everybody else here has to has to say in response to Ananda's comment. [00:27:06] Jeff Roster: Well, so I love that. And you can tell Ananda was a analyst. Cause if you draw the circle big enough, you mean you could, you could drag everything into it. But I think what I would say is in that's just now, since I've spent so long talking to some of the folks that are building these pieces of metaverses. There's technology that that's at play right now. [00:27:23] If you look at some of the interviews I did Obsess is doing 3d objects and that will clearly be a key capability in a metaverse world. And that's available on websites today. AR I think, you know, certainly not here, but far more interesting to me than, than VR is because I can, you know, being a pilot I'm used to having a lot of data feeds come in and I want to be able to walk through a store and look for nutritional information the way I do when I'm flying. So there's big chunks that were in the very, very early stages of a buildout, which is why I hate those articles that say it's a two or 3 trillion or $1 trillion market, because we're the early stages of this build out. [00:27:56] I think Roblox is, is their market cap is phenomenal and that's a component of it. So there's, there's pieces that are there and there's, speculation and everyone wants to get their, you know, get their clicks in. But there's a lot of real true value that I'm seeing already in pieces. [00:28:11] Trevor Sumner: So can we shift the conversation about who's doing really cool stuff in, in the metaverse and like start defining the problem space less by abstract lines that and define a little bit more about like real world stuff that people can do in the metaverse things that are interesting or even successful at this point. [00:28:28] Ananda Chakravarty: Would love to hear that Trevor. I mean, just, you know, when I think of metaverse, I'm thinking second life I'm thinking we had islands and all sorts of cool, neat stuff there with big huge I guess advertising, if you will a huge banner for IBM in, in a, you know, a corner of this quote world. [00:28:45] But what did it really translate into in terms of dollars in terms of value in terms of productivity for the, the world? I mean, that's the question at the end of the day. [00:28:54] Where physical and virtual converge [00:28:54] Shish Shridhar: And I kind of think the, the second world and the virtual worlds that's been done in the past is sort of just leading up to where we are now, the metaverse, which is the convergence of physical worlds and virtual worlds and, and really having a multidimensional interface to, to that environment. So people can join into a metaverse right from the physical world, could be shopping in an area or in a physical space and become and interact with people in the virtual space and the other way around. And I think that convergence of real world and virtual world is one of the, I would say the bigger differentiators in addition to you also mentioned, you know, the ability to, to monetize engagements, to be able to create things in the metaverse and experience those things by those things in the physical world, as well as the, the virtual world. [00:29:44] And I think that's the other aspect, which second life didn't really have. It didn't really have that convergence of real world and, and physical world and the, the ability to experience it, you know, no matter what, where you are. And I think that's really the, one of the differentiators anyway. [00:30:00] Trevor Sumner: Yeah, I, I would agree with that. [00:30:01] And so let's talk about what, what some of that looks like. Right? So stock X, for example launch an NFT where you'd get a, a physical product as well as your virtual product. And so, you'd get your Nike air Jordan's and you get a virtual version as well. Now, that's kind of a cool way to think about, collectibles, the challenge came several weeks later when Nike sued them and said, whoa, you're violating our trademarks by selling a virtual Nike item. And right, so like this, some stuff that needs to be worked out there are other people who are treating this physical purchase as also this digital representation patron, you could buy a bottle patron, they get like a special, you know, commemorative patron, icebox, I think they called it. And you get also a physical bottle that's, a limited addition, et cetera. [00:30:47] So I, I think of it almost as like a lot of this as a membership club and NFTs as like a deed to something. And in this case, like either a loyalty club or a membership club that gives you access to the physical world. [00:30:58] I think when you, you start, if you think about loyalty as like points, if, if the points in your metaverse as a game. Start giving you access to the real world. If your interaction in the metaverse with Chanel gets you to the new Chanel fashion show or the, the new, line that comes out and you get to, to go to the store or some V I P this starts becoming really, really compelling. [00:31:24] And it's a way for brands to create engagement with their brands across all different properties and convert to real world commerce and, and virtual commerce too. And, and I think that's exciting. [00:31:35] Brandon Rael: Yeah. And, and add to all that we talked about luxury being the, the ultimate sandbox for, for the metaverse it's, it's already happening. [00:31:42] Gucci's has sold a digital the honest purse, but thousands more than it's worth in real life. So versus a physical product. Dulce Gabbana, sold a a 5.7 million nine piece NFT collection. Saying that their gems can't be found in real life, on earth and in the digital world, metaverse, world's more, more exclusive and more prestigious. [00:32:01] And then Nike lands on the Roblox platform. And they also acquired the virtual sneaker and collectables company or a star company called RT FK T studios. So Nike has been one of the leaders and luxury space has been on fire. [00:32:13] Trevor Sumner: Let let's talk about Nike land for a second. [00:32:15] I think that's a great example. Right? So how are retailers using it? So Nike land, you can buy shoes that don't exist in the real world. Well, okay. Who cares? Well, they can look at the popularity and say, oh, people really like this shoe. We're gonna use it as kind of data demand data to determine which products that they are going to create. [00:32:37] So they may launch a hundred virtual shoes. Just take their top 10% performers and actually create real versions of those shoes. If you think about that as part of your marketing funnel, as your brand engagement funnel that's pretty exciting. And then you can start thinking about, well, if you bought that shoe and we end up making it, you get 20% off or you get it engraved or you get, the special version of it with, you know, who knows, you know, like, [00:33:03] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, there there's like a loyalty implication that goes along with that, right. [00:33:06] Loyalty, a hundred that makes it much more appealing in, in both spaces, right? Digital [00:33:11] Trevor Sumner: Totally. And if, because of all of these benefits, you spend time in Nike land and you spend hours and hours interacting with Nikes, Nikes, Nikes, Nikes, Nikes. What are you gonna do in the real world? [00:33:22] Ricardo Belmar: You need buy more Nike. [00:33:23] Trevor Sumner: Right. You're gonna buy more. Nike, you're gonna talk about Nike. You're gonna wear more Nike. You're gonna talk about how the Nikes you're wearing matches your avatar in Fortnite and allows you to jump 20% higher. [00:33:35] Ricardo Belmar: You're gonna post pictures on Instagram. [00:33:36] Ananda Chakravarty: Trevor, have a strange feeling. [00:33:38] You actually own a pair of Nikes, just a guess [00:33:42] Brandon Rael: strong feel. [00:33:42] Trevor Sumner: Okay. All right. So just virtual ones, one, I, I do own Nikes. I'm sure. Somewhere in my collection, but they're, they're, they're not my basketball show choice. And I'm not actually all that loyal to Nike as a brand. It turns out, but I think what they're doing here is really. [00:33:56] Ananda Chakravarty: Yeah, I kind of like that example, but because that's the closest I've gotten from what I've seen out there and Jeff kind of hit on the, a couple of points on this as well, by the way. And that is when we start thinking about these different pieces that are, that are coming together, are they really big enough to be mainstream, right? [00:34:13] I mean, that's what metaverse, and this whole thing that meta itself and Facebook is trying to push is that this is really a mainstream function. That's, that's gonna be, you know kind of a, a, a combination of what's gonna happen in movies, like ready player one and and The other one, right? [00:34:28] I mean, that's, what's eventually going to be the world, as we know it, if you will, the physical and the blurring of, of this digital avatar state, I just don't know how much reality there is to that. If these are very, you know, focused on these very specialized cases, it has to be something that is really very popular before it becomes anything close to mainstream. [00:34:48] And I don't think we're close to that at this time. [00:34:50] Ricardo Belmar: it's definitely early. [00:34:51] Trevor Sumner: So the, yes, but you know, you're talking about concerts in the metaverse being attended by tens of millions of people. Like that's pretty size. I mean, like, I don't know what you talk about scale, but like that's, that's the biggest concert in the world. [00:35:05] Ricardo Belmar: It depends on the category. Right. And you know, we started out this, with the Nike example, talking about an apparel example, and, I could argue, for example, apparel overall, I think is actually in some ways could be defined as a shrinking market, right? Because what the same amount of money that used to take for you to buy apparel 20 years ago, you can buy a lot more now, putting the side, whether it's a luxury brand or an off price brand, you can get more for your money in apparel, which means that individual apparel brands, they've gotta find other ways to diversify a bit and find new sources to get revenue from what potentially is a shrinking share. So one area where they can do that of course, is in this metaverse digital space. You know, another example of thrown an addition to Nike, Ralph Lauren, right? Ralph Lauren created a space in Roblox and they've, they're selling digital Ralph Lauren collection to Roblox gamers. [00:35:51] So is, is that a significant revenue source for them? I'm not sure that it is now, but I think, from an experimenting point of view, it's a great idea to try it. I think that's where we'll see lots of interest from retailers is just trying different things. This is one of those areas where there's gonna have to be a lot of experimentation now, long term, is that a significant amount of revenue? [00:36:11] And I think it could be cuz Trevor to your point, if millions of people start getting interested, that's a potentially, much larger audience than you get from a physical space. [00:36:20] Trevor Sumner: Right. And, and also, do we measure this as marketing dollars? Right. Right. I got 10 million people to look at this thing. [00:36:27] Like they didn't buy the thing, but did that translate to some [00:36:30] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. What did it do to our brand awareness [00:36:32] Trevor Sumner: brand awareness and eventual sales, right, [00:36:34] Ricardo Belmar: exactly. Yes. It's one more touch point to track in that customer journey. [00:36:38] Trevor Sumner: Right. And, and so, there's a company called pretty little things that created a digital only model that they're now using in their advertising, right? Like what if we start thinking about, the ability to leverage metaverse in all other types of digital content channels and then to the point of, Hey, let's not do the analogous thing. Like, oh, I wonder what a werewolf would look like in Gucci. [00:37:01] Like how do you start doing stuff that's more creative and interesting and, and goes across all of that. And what's the value of that from a marketing return on investment. [00:37:09] Shish Shridhar: I think the, idea that Trevor kind of pointed out about new idea validation is a very powerful one for brands. So really testing out the digital products, the popularity of the digital products before going into production in the real world, and this could apply to apparel shoes, it could apply to furniture, furnishing the digital twin of your home with, with furniture and then getting, a sense of, is this a good design enough before actually going into the real world and potentially maybe car designs, all of those kind of things. [00:37:38] I think it's got a huge potential. [00:37:40] Ananda Chakravarty: I know Michael. Hasn't had a chance to talk, but he's on the stage. So maybe [00:37:43] Ricardo Belmar: welcome, michael . [00:37:45] Michael Zakkour: Hey guys, [00:37:46] Brandon Rael: rockstar. Michael, [00:37:47] Ricardo Belmar: how are you? [00:37:48] Michael Zakkour: So many loved and familiar faces. [00:37:51] The foundation is only a beginning for retail [00:37:51] Michael Zakkour: Okay. Just a couple things I think that need to be cleared up. There's a lot of confusion, nevermind with the average person and consumer within our industry, whether it's retail technology, development, whatever between the metaverse, web three, NFT, and blockchain. [00:38:08] And we've been talking clearly about the metaverse, but there's some underlying foundational with web three NFT, blockchain, and how it relates to retail. The first thing I wanna say is they're not the same thing. The thing that we see most often, or I see most often out in the marketplace is people confusing web three and metaverse meaning sort of the same thing. [00:38:32] They're not. The second thing I'd wanna say is there is no metaverse yet. It doesn't exist. Okay. And if you run into a company Zuckerberg who tells you they're building the metaverse runaway quickly, if you run into anybody who has a complete answer that says, I know what the metaverse is and will be run away. [00:38:57] right. It's just not possible at this point. We are with metaverse web three NFT and blockchain integration, basically where internet technologies and eCommerce were in 1997. Right. We're at the very, very early stages of it. What I can tell you is you do need to think about where the metaverse web three NFT and blockchain exist as separate entities and how they integrate to eventually come to occlusion on something that is something we can call a metaverse or a multiple of a metaverse. [00:39:35] Okay. As it relates to retail one of the most surprising and, and happiest things I've seen is that, you know, six years ago, I was still arguing with all of my luxury clients about whether they should even recognize that something called the internet exists. And a lot of these luxury companies have gone all in and are the leading edge on developing metaverse based web three NFT, blockchain offering. So interesting there. [00:40:05] And so this is really guys on the retail front. I can't emphasize this enough. Retail is the leading edge of what will become the metaverse. I can't define for you what it is right now, but we are building it. So I think, I don't know if it was Ananda, [00:40:22] it might have been Ananda who asked, are there some real life examples of where this is going? We can look at the Gucci platform. We can look at what LVMH is doing with digital avatars, but all of this is it's something beyond an add-on to the internet. As we know it, it's a complete redefinition of how we experience, right. [00:40:44] And you guys have heard me talk about ecosystems and the new retail model being the complete integration of online, offline technology, supply chain, entertainment, and media. This is the next step above it. How do you bring that to life in 3d? Whether it's use of devices or not. It doesn't matter, guys. We don't know what the metaverse is yet. [00:41:08] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's an interesting point. Certainly in the early phases of any new technological area, right though, that early phase, there's the novelty of it being new. That gets attention. [00:41:17] You can spend through any number of, of marketing outlets to drive traffic the first time. The real question is how do you keep them coming back. And I think there's a, a component there, you know, we've only touched or I realize we're coming up on the hour, so I'm gonna bring us to a closing point here. [00:41:31] With one last comment I'll throw out and you guys did a good job bringing this up and differentiating between web three NFTs and, and the metaverse. But it's the combination of these things, right? It's the combination of how brands are going to drive the usage of these elements to make that experience worth repeating and worth experiencing over and over and over again for those consumers. [00:41:52] And I think that's, what's going to be the, the key experiment area. We see happening at least over the next year. And in these, I'm gonna keep calling it the early phases. It may be here, but I think Michael, the way you put it was very nice that, you know, whatever it is, it's not well defined yet. And that's probably why we all struggled at the beginning of this hour to come up with a good definition that wasn't as clunky as the one that I read off from Wikipedia. [00:42:16] And that's because it really is still something that has to be figured out by everyone who's going to not just dip their toes in, but dive in and build something. [00:42:25] Especially when you have, what I would describe as the convergence of a number of different technologies that are making this possible at the same time that I guess opens the door for a lot of less interesting ,let's say, solutions and capabilities, but, we're essentially bringing together, I'm just gonna list out all the things that we've mentioned, there's blockchain, low code, VR, AR of course the internet, which was just thrown in, I love how that was thrown in that Wikipedia definition at the very end of the run on sentence. [00:42:50] And that's just to start right. There are a number of other technical capabilities and technologies, and all of these had to converge to get us to the point where we can start to build this out. So I think it's exciting to see where it's gonna go. It's exciting to see what retailers and brands are going to come up with. [00:43:03] And that's why we like to keep this discussion forum going. Cuz it gives us a way to, to speak to different things with our collection of speakers, everybody's got a different viewpoint, a different focus area that they've read about and we've all consumed different types of content and different pieces of articles and such. [00:43:20] So when we all get together and cover one topic, we can all bring a different angle to it. [00:43:24] And I think with that note, we're gonna wrap things up in the room today. The the fact is , this topic is so rich and so involved that we, we could have had just a short bullet point list of 10 other things to talk about and probably fill another 10 hours of this. [00:43:38] So I'm sure we will be scheduling more metaverse discussions in the future . And with that, I'm gonna thank everyone for joining us in the audience and thank our folks who came up here for some questions and all the other speakers, and we will close out the room from there. Thanks everybody. [00:43:54] Metaverse Recap [00:43:54] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome back retail, razor show listeners and viewers. We hope you enjoyed that Retail Avenger's clubhouse session on the metaverse. [00:44:07] Casey Golden: It was a great session. I love the focus on what the metaverse is and what it's not. And honestly, you guys just killed me with the debate on this trillion dollar opportunity. This is gonna, you know, grab your popcorn. Like this is gonna be fun. [00:44:21] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that really got everybody jumping on that one. A good, good discussion on a few retail examples too, like Nike for one, I mean, what, what do you think about what Nike's doing, Casey? [00:44:30] Casey Golden: It was really smart for them to just acquire artifact. really early. And throw legal to round up and protect their brand. They're filing new trademarks and sending out cease and desist to companies trying to make money off their swoosh. And I think that this is something that a lot of brands are doing right now is getting ready, getting prepared and protecting their brand. [00:44:53] And they're gonna have to do that. Nike land, their Roblox micro metaverse has already attracted like over 7 million people in 224 countries. Like this is not a bad start. This, this space has such low expectations on the design side. [00:45:12] just play [00:45:13] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah. [00:45:14] Casey Golden: it. Doesn't have to be perfect. [00:45:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I have to agree. Have to agree with that one that that's so true and, and pretty impressive, that they've got so many people attracted to it at these early stages. So, one of the topics I do think we covered a bit, but honestly we could do another entire show on it. Is this idea of digital twins. [00:45:33] Shish brought it up first. I think we touched on it with Nike specifically, and then Trevor highlighted it a bit more for me, the idea of brands using these digital twins to test new products, see what's popular, then use that knowledge and insight and to decide what products and features they wanna drive to scale maybe for a big product launch. [00:45:53] And I think that's a massive use case. It certainly shortens the time to market. In that whole process. So I, I have to believe we're gonna see more and more of that. And I suppose it's kind of right up your alley. Isn't it. Casey. [00:46:03] Casey Golden: Yes, but I mean, the conversations I'm having is, defining a digital twin it's it's, it's turning into an omnichannel debate of like, what is a digital twin? And I've seen brands using digital twining as an opportunity to pre-sell the physical item include an avatar wearable file. So that they are digital twin to their avatar providing a gift with purchase for like a flex on the item, by sharing that an NFT with an, an artistic version or a very photo realistic version of the item kind of with that proof of purchase and authenticity. [00:46:45] And then just to test a new product into the crypto community, right. This web three and crypto community is a different consumer group. They may have had this consumer group already serviced in their stores or online, but they didn't know that trait necessarily. They didn't know that the, that consumer is also part of a different community, then what they might be familiar with or the way that they would've seen their communities in general. [00:47:13] So there's a lot of different digital twins that are out in the market. And I think we really need to understand what is a use case for these digital twins and what do they do because it's consumer facing. And so just like omnichannel, this is gonna get very confusing. [00:47:31] If we can't decide what a digital twin is, and maybe there's a wearable twin or a meta twin, or I don't know, we need to start coming together and using words that mean something [00:47:45] Ricardo Belmar: Be before we have another Omni channel. [00:47:47] Casey Golden: before we have another Omni channel [00:47:51] Ricardo Belmar: You have to agree with that. And you bring up a, a good point too there about the, community building aspect of all of this, especially when you start to tie in web three and NFTs and in the metaverse, which admittedly, we, we didn't have a lot of time to get into that in the clubhouse session. I'm sure there'll be some future sessions for that kind of discussion. [00:48:10] But I, with, with all these kinds of examples, would you say apparel and luxury brands are kind of taking over the early metaverse right now? Are they really the early adopters? I mean, who would you say is missing out right now? That should be jumping in. [00:48:22] Casey Golden: Luxury is leading technology. Like I just said that luxury is leading [00:48:27] Ricardo Belmar: out there now. [00:48:28] Casey Golden: Is out there and I am so, like, I just got goosebumps. Like I am so proud of the luxury industry adopting tech. And being on board this innovation train, it makes so much sense for the luxury space because the crypto and web three, the crypto space is literally the NFT space was built off of rarity, exclusivity, and these are all the values that are shared, you know, VIP's, this is something that luxury space can really get behind because they have the same core values, unlike a self serve model or a Facebook advertising model. It's very hard for them to get on board because the core values at the end of the day are so separate. [00:49:12] So that's why I believe there is a future over here. Luxury's going to figure it out. I don't know what that means at gap, but, Balenciaga is doing a really great job. Gucci's killing it and they're building it into their business. And I think that it's wonderful. They are early adopters. And at the end of the day, we're in the business of selling products, selling physical products. [00:49:37] I haven't spoken to a single brand that has been excited about selling a digital good. they're like, so if I make this 3d asset or this digital good, or this NFT, like how much product can I move? [00:49:50] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah. How does that help me sell the physical products I'm sell. [00:49:55] Casey Golden: They want to sell physical goods. Even though like, it could be a lot cheaper to sell digital goods. We are going to be figuring out what these digital twins are and how they're going to facilitate these real life purchases. And that's essentially how it's going to be defined, but the brands see I'm finding, they just wanna sell more product. [00:50:15] Ricardo Belmar: right. [00:50:15] I mean, at the end of the day, the digital goods they might sell, it's like in the, all the video game, virtual worlds where you see all of these digital assets sold, it's, it's real money. It's, meaningful money, but compared to what these luxury brands are selling and, and generating in sales, in physical goods, it's an incremental revenue at most. It's not gonna replace the physical goods revenue, but it helps motivate more physical sales. [00:50:40] Casey Golden: oh my goodness. I just have to share this there is narrative out here right now. That that there are companies that are creating digital clothing saying that this is the most sustainable way to shop, and this is how we're going to save the world. I'm like, I'm sorry, but what are we wearing me buying a digital t-shirt. [00:51:02] How is that [00:51:03] Ricardo Belmar: help you in the real [00:51:04] Casey Golden: shopping? [00:51:07] Ricardo Belmar: How are you, how are you, wearing that digital t-shirt Casey [00:51:10] Casey Golden: Right. Like, I'm sorry, but that's not going to work. I still need to go buy physical clothes, but just the narrative twist on this, that this is the most sustainable way to shop, and [00:51:20] Ricardo Belmar: That's one way to look at [00:51:21] Casey Golden: these resources. [00:51:22] Ricardo Belmar: That's one way to look at it. [00:51:24] Casey Golden: I just couldn't, I just couldn't. [00:51:26] I had to, just leave for a moment and I'm like, yeah, I don't even know how to have a conversation with this person right now, because , they do not believe that anybody should be physically manufacturing clothes. I'm like, this is kinda impossible here. [00:51:41] Ricardo Belmar: That's gonna go far in the, in the industry for sure. [00:51:43] Casey Golden: Yeah. I just like, okay, I'm confused, but okay. Continue. [00:51:49] So one thing that, that came up in the clubhouse discussion that is worth more attention is this idea of multiple metaverses. What'd you get, let's just keep confusing the consumer, but you have some thoughts on this and I'd love to hear them. [00:52:05] Ricardo Belmar: Oh [00:52:05] Casey Golden: like, let's dive. [00:52:06] Ricardo Belmar: I let let's dive into this one. We didn't go too deep, deep into it, but yeah, I, I think there's at least, fundamentally three kinds of metaverses and yeah, it'll probably confuse consumers, but hopefully we'll we'll get through that. [00:52:17] Cuz I think much like omnichannel, consumers don't care about the terms or the words they just care about what are they doing with it? So, I think of these three groups, first being industrial and a big part of that is this whole discussion we just had on digital twins. [00:52:31] There's factory modeling and automation. There are a lot of consumer goods brands taking advantage of this, where they're modeling their entire production lines. It's helping them get better visibility into their operations. They can use historical sensor data. You see a lot of this being coupled with iOT technology. So that as that manufacturer, they learn over time. They look at the data over the history of their manufacturing process and they figure out how to make it better, how to operationalize new changes without having to physically do them at the factory so they can see what the impact is. [00:53:04] And that leads to a more efficient, lower cost production, so this one's all about simulating and then automating in the real world based on what you learned in that metaverse model. And you can think about things beyond retail, right? And you and I have talked about medical applications, there's telehealth, where this makes sense training for healthcare providers. [00:53:23] You can see how pharma companies might use this in their research work for designing new life saving drugs. And, you know, and then plus, we're already seeing healthcare converging with retail. So this is an area we could see some interesting things that none of us have thought of yet start to come up. [00:53:37] So that's industrial metaverse then, then I think of the workplace metaverse and this one's kind of interesting. So with all the work from home that everyone's been experiencing in the last few years, Accenture is an example that comes to my mind. They actually built a version of their headquarters, in a metaverse and they started doing their new hire onboarding in that metaverse space. [00:53:57] So rather than, giving you a whole bunch of PDF follows or emailing you a ton of material as a new employee, you actually join the office workplace. Metaverse. Meet other avatars of other new hires and other employees. And you can actually move around this place. You can manipulate, 3d models of what the office looks like. [00:54:16] You might have a 3d whiteboard space in there so that what you would've done in a conference room with a 2d whiteboard you're doing in this workplace metaverse and then after you've been onboarded , you start holding meetings in this virtual space and it starts to look like the sci-fi movies we see when people are waving their hands in the air, manipulating things on a holographic screen, and you can do that in the metaverse right with the right technology and the right tools that you can't do that on a 2d whiteboard. [00:54:41] This is where there's some interesting Microsoft technologies that are at play to make this interesting. I work with some partners who are doing this this kind of space. [00:54:48] So lots of possibilities there. And then the third metaverse I think of is probably the one that most consumers think of, which I'll, I'll call it the entertainment metaverse, but it's basically, where all the virtual reality games come into light, so , that's a pretty straightforward one to understand. [00:55:02] I would argue though, the real significance of all these is that any of these metaverses can be looked at as delivering a commerce capability. It's not just the entertainment metaverse that we expect to see commerce happening. It could be any of these. There's nothing that says I have to have a hard and fast rule about what that metaverse model is. [00:55:21] The whole point in this metaverse space is I'm not constrained by physical reality limitations. I can do things any way we want. So why couldn't there be commerce applications across all of them? [00:55:31] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, I'm not working with goggles on, so staring at a computer screen for 18 20 hours a day is bad enough with our eyes and mental health. There's lots of people who get migraines. This is very much a conductor for it. And the people who are building the meta for work or these metaverses for work, they don't even work in the metaverse that they're building. [00:55:58] So I just don't know how we're expected to participate. If the builders can't find the value in building the metaverse for work in it. [00:56:10] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:56:11] Casey Golden: I just it's. If they can't find the value to do it on a day to day and be building there, then I don't see how anybody else is expected to go in there and do it if they already don't wanna do it. [00:56:23] And don't find it as productive. [00:56:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, we didn't get into that in the, the clubhouse session, but I, I can't remember. It might have been Shish that brought it up, that everybody gets excited talking about the capabilities with these metaverse technologies, but at the end of the day, the fact that no one's gonna sit around in the workplace metaverses for eight hours a day wearing all this equipment. Everybody's already stressed enough being on teams calls and zoom calls for hours on end during the day. So who's gonna add more layers to that. So, and I think again, shish brought up the point that while the technology's really good. [00:56:53] It's made a huge amount of progress. It's still not quite where we need it to be for these things to be a hundred percent mainstream. And to be totally comfortable. For short periods, sure. I mean, I can see the onboarding piece, right? You're the new hire. There's an onboarding session that might be an hour here, a half hour there, but it's not a straight 10 hour, day kind of thing, because nobody wants that. [00:57:15] Casey Golden: oh yeah. Most people work like eight, 10 hour days. [00:57:18] Ricardo Belmar: oh, yeah, yeah. Except maybe, you know, startup life, but that's another show [00:57:24] Casey Golden: so no, I think the retail training and the company onboarding in the metaverse is valid, I mean, I think we've all started a job at some point where our first day, we just, we get handed a four inch, six inch binder and told to read it, memorize it. This is your first day. So I think that, that definitely could change. [00:57:45] And even just being able to have that mentorship, even if it's like an AI in this type of situation where you can go through multi-step training multi-month multi-year. I think the retail training is a huge opportunity because it would allow for easier role play between a customer and the retail associate, even because, I mean, I don't know about you if somebody says, okay, go role play. [00:58:15] I'm like already on the floor, like laughing uncontrollably. Cause I can't do it. [00:58:20] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah. Yeah. [00:58:21] Casey Golden: like [00:58:21] Ricardo Belmar: true. Yeah. That that's not an easy thing. Yeah. Yeah. [00:58:24] Casey Golden: not an actor for a reason. So I think that there's it does take a little bit of that personal personality or whatever away from us, so we can just kind of be and like play a video game. And it's a lot easier to absorb over time than it is reading this four inch book, especially in things where you need to be customer facing. [00:58:44] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think you make a good point there. And with all of these caveats and, conditions and constraints that we're highlighting, I suppose we would be totally remiss if we didn't offer some thoughts on, okay, where do you go next with the metaverse? We've kind of told you what cool things there are happening, what it is. [00:59:03] We've talked about things to watch out for. So what do you do about it? And of course, this was one of our 2022 predictions from back in season one, episode four, back then , we said metaverse was an important trend for this year. Obviously we're still talking about it. So I think we kind of nailed that one. [00:59:17] But while we didn't go so far as to say it was gonna be a new money generating sales channel for retailers and brands, we did say that you should be experimenting with the metaverse and with NFTs and, and web three, start feeling out where your customers are, what appetite they have for all of this. [00:59:32] And I think we even mentioned digital twins back then, too, which we've highlighted a lot in this episode, and it's still my favorite use case right now. So Casey, what would be your top recommendations for brands? [00:59:43] Casey Golden: Yeah, I think number one, you've got to start building a community. An email address is not a relationship. Open up a discord account and start moving your email marketing list into discord members has two way conversation. Step two, I would pretty much say like get on Twitter, reactivate the brand's Twitter account. [01:00:05] Everybody in this space is not on Instagram, so, they need to go ahead and get onto Twitter. Third step I'd essentially say, like start collecting your customers' crypto wallet addresses. So you can start understanding, do you have an address? Do I need to provide education? And can you go ahead and make sure you know how many customers you have access to, to essentially airdrop think of it as like web three's email address? [01:00:30] That needs to essentially just happen now. I really suggest brands launching an NFT and not necessarily, this whole collection. It doesn't have to be a big deal. It doesn't even have to be in the press. It just needs to be hyper segmented to a small group to learn and build these initiatives with the brand for those NFT holders. [01:00:51] And until you have a compelling utility, this could be a V I P NFT, and you just invite 600 people or 200 people. And just really try to figure out how do you engage with these NFT holders? How do you talk to them? What do you do for them? What's the benefit? Does it get you a blowout at a salon in New York? [01:01:15] Because like they're friends, does it get you private shopping on e-com? Does it get you New York fashion week tickets, you know, really thinking about , what's the value of these customers having this NFT and just spend time until you can figure out something that makes sense. And then go ahead and move into those initiatives. [01:01:34] Also, I mean, it's been a constraint for me recently is just not having digital assets. They're not ready to move. So, I mean, going forward, I would love to see all the brands just create all of the 3d and wearable assets when they create the collection and decide like, as soon as you write the production order, please go send out the, the designers to go ahead and create all of those 3d digital assets so that if anything happens from the date of production, a lot of us do that, like six to nine months in advance all the way through the selling season. [01:02:12] If something interesting happens, you have the assets you can act, right. I've got 3d designers that are pulling stuff off in a matter of five days for New York fashion week right now from like multiple brands. I'm just like, okay, moving forward. Can you just go ahead and have this whole next collection that you have in production? [01:02:33] done. I don't know what we're using them for. You don't know what we're using them for, but if you just have them, it would be quite helpful. So I mean, to me, these are the most important things to get started. It's not flashy. It's not cool. It's not in the middle of times square , but we have to start at the very beginning. [01:02:57] Who are your customers? Where are they at right now? And that's kind of like what we need to know. And so I think just building the community, being a part of it, that's like step one. [01:03:09] Ricardo Belmar: Excellent. Excellent points. I think we could probably call that the the retail razor shows five step program or five step roadmap to the metaverse. [01:03:16] Casey Golden: yeah, so basic [01:03:19] Ricardo Belmar: it covers all the basics. Exactly. Exactly. So Casey, kinda like I said to the, the Retail Avengers in the clubhouse session, and we could just talk for hours and hours on this topic. So I'm sure we're gonna be coming back to this in the future. [01:03:32] Casey Golden: a hundred percent. I mean, the metaverse isn't going anywhere. You and I aren't going anywhere. So I'm really glad that we're going to revisit this in future episodes. but all good things must come to an end. So I think it's time we thank all of our clubhouse audience and wrap up this episode. [01:03:51] Ricardo Belmar: it is that time. [01:03:52] Clubhouse Thank You [01:03:52] Casey Golden: Before we close. We'd like to thank everyone who joined us on stage for this clubhouse session to talk metaverse and ask questions. So a special shout out [01:04:05] Ricardo Belmar: to frequent visitor to our clubhouse rooms, Ananda Chakravarty, currently the vice president of research at IDC in the retail group for his great question about real world examples of retailers in the metaverse looking for success. [01:04:18] Casey Golden: And a super friend of the show, Michael Zakkour, founder of five new digital for setting the foundation for what the metaverse really is today versus what it will become tomorrow. And what that means for retailers. [01:04:32] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you Ananda and thank you, Michael. [01:04:34] Casey Golden: so Ricardo, I think that's a wrap for our first episode of season two. [01:04:39] Ricardo Belmar: Indeed it is! [01:04:41] Show Close [01:04:41] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and consider giving us a five star rating and review on apple podcasts. Don't forget to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute! [01:04:54] Wanna know more about today's show? Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets. [01:05:00] I'm your co-host Casey golden. [01:05:02] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about us, follow us on Twitter at caseycgolden and Ricardo_Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and on Twitter at RetailRazor, plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and the occasional bonus content. [01:05:18] I'm your host Ricardo Belmar. [01:05:19] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [01:05:21] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter. [01:05:28] Until next time, THIS is The Retail Razor Show! Welcome back to The Retail Razor Show – It’s Season 2, Episode 1!


Back for season two of the show, we saved a BIG topic to open up with – The Metaverse!


Yes, our Retail Avengers team has been jumping out of their seats to bring you this discussion, recently held in our Clubhouse room, to answer the biggest, burning questions retailers and brands have about the Metaverse. What exactly IS the Metaverse? What is it not? Why should you be interested and what can you do with the metaverse? How can you use the Metaverse? Is it about building brand loyalty? Commerce? And what about NFTs and web3? All of the above? The Retail Avengers team digs into these questions, and more, to cut through the clutter!


Hosts, Ricardo and Casey then come back to recap the discussion and talk about a few key examples of brands that seem to know what they're doing in the Metaverse right now. Plus, they’ll bring you an easy 5-step roadmap to getting started in the Metaverse. All that in the season 2 opener!


Have you heard the news? We’re up to #20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your loyal help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20 in no time! Leave us a review and we’ll mention you in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

I’m Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. And I’m Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. I've spent my career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business. Now I slay franken-stacks!


Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, including E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey



TRANSCRIPT

S2E1 The Retail Avengers vs The Metaverse

[00:00:00] Pre-Intro

[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: Hey, Casey, it's season two. Now maybe we should do something different for the show intro.

[00:00:04] Casey Golden: Yeah, I've seen some podcasts play different clips from the main interview in the beginning of the show, kind of like a preview.

[00:00:11] Ricardo Belmar: I don't know. That kind of seems like it's been done to death doesn't it? 

[00:00:14] Casey Golden: True. We can always just pick up. In the middle of a conversation and give the audience some FOMO. They wouldn't know whether or not they've missed something or arrived right on time.

[00:00:23] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm, not a bad idea though. I don't know. I wonder if we might get some bad reviews for trying to trick our listeners that way. What if we just added some cool sound effects?

[00:00:31] Casey Golden: That would be too simple. What would happen afterwards?

[00:00:34] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. I guess you got me there. All right. All right. So, we could just start talking about our main topic and give listeners a preview that way of what's to come without really giving away our speaker.

[00:00:44] Casey Golden: Sounds like plan. I think that's what we should do, but how much time do we have to do that? A minute. 30 seconds, two minutes, 15.

[00:00:54] Ricardo Belmar: well, uh, let's see, how long have we already been talking about it? I don't know. We might not have much time to talk about the m... 

[00:01:00] Show Intro

[00:01:00]

[00:01:20] Introduction

[00:01:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to the first episode of season two of the retail razor show. I'm your host Ricardo Belmar.

[00:01:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your cohost Casey Golden. Welcome retail razor show listeners to our unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike.

[00:01:40] Ricardo Belmar: It's great to be back in front of the camera and on the mic.

[00:01:43] Casey Golden: Yeah. And for those of you watching us on YouTube, how about that? , you're actually watching us on YouTube now, not just listening. This is a big step for us this season. And personally for me, I'm blow drying my hair again!

[00:01:58] Ricardo Belmar: totally, totally. And, for listeners or, or maybe I should say viewers, can expect to see us on video pretty much every episode now, apart from when we're bringing you our clubhouse sessions, because you know, obviously those are audio only.

[00:02:11] Casey Golden: Well, Ricardo, this is our first season of the new season. So of course, we've got an amazing topic this week. One that have been asked about and asked for many times,

[00:02:24] Ricardo Belmar: And one that our Retail Avengers crew had really been dying to cover for months and months.

[00:02:30] Casey Golden: That's right. So with all of this anticipation, I am so bummed that I missed the clubhouse session.

[00:02:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Especially since the topic is, wait for it, retail and the metaverse. I mean, this one was just about tailor made for you, Casey.

[00:02:44] Casey Golden: Yeah. So I know I'll save my commentary for our recap discussion after the clubhouse session.

[00:02:51] Ricardo Belmar: It'll be worth the wait. So with that lead in, since this is a topic that doesn't really need an introduction, let's just dive right in and listen, sorry, youTube viewers, view , well I guess still listen because it's clubhouse, to the Retail Avengers versus the Metaverse. 

[00:03:11] Clubhouse Session

[00:03:11] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Welcome everyone to the retail razor room. We have a really amazing topic for discussion today. I know the entire group here has been just itching to, come back and talk about the metaverse. And so we've got five folks up here on stage. I am sure there'll be some folks from the audience that are gonna join us later.

[00:03:30] And I know we have one more of our retail Avengers team. It's gonna join us a little bit later in the hour. So without further ado, we'll do some introductions. Jeff, why don't you go first? 

[00:03:39] Jeff Roster: Hi, Jeff Roster former Gartner retail analyst now cohost of This Week In Innovation podcast.

[00:03:44] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks Jeff, Shish. 

[00:03:46] Shish Shridhar: Good afternoon. I'm Shish. I'm the global lead for retail with Microsoft for Startups. I've been in retail for over 20 years primarily focused on AI for retail and solutions around it. And currently just building out a portfolio of innovative startups. Thank you. 

[00:04:02] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you. Brandon 

[00:04:03] Brandon Rael: Brandon Rael, I've also been in and around the retail consumer industries over 20 years. And since our last discussion, I've joined Capgemini Invent team, they focus on innovation transformations and all the digital stuff we love to talk about here. So looking forward to this great conversation about the metaverse and all the potential.

[00:04:19] Ricardo Belmar: And Trevor, 

[00:04:20] Trevor Sumner: Hey everybody. I'm Trevor Sumner. I'm the CEO at of perch. We do interactive digital displays at retail that use computer vision to detect which products you touch. So. We're basically instrumenting the clicks at retail, opening up new intelligence, data streams, and really cool shopping experiences for customers like Johnson and Johnson, joe Malone, Purina, Unilever, many others. 

[00:04:44] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Great. And I'm Ricardo Belmar. I started the retail razor club room here in, in clubhouse last year. Also running the retail razor show podcast with my co-host Casey golden. So everybody in the audience who hasn't subscribed yet, do yourself a favor, hit your podcast player and hit the subscribe button there.

[00:05:01] You'll find some of our past clubhouse sessions showing up in each new episode of the podcast. I'm currently the lead partner marketing advisor at Microsoft for retail and consumer goods. And we are just gonna jump right into the metaverse here. So probably makes sense to start with a few good definitions.

[00:05:18] I think everybody has a definition that it's kinda like that joke about economist s where if you ask 50 different people, what the metaverse is, you get 60 different answers, something like that. But I'll throw this one out, I think this is a Wikipedia definition that defines metaverse as a collective virtual shared space created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality and the internet. And it's also defined as a network of 3d virtual worlds focused on social connection.

[00:05:51] So just to kick things off, what does everyone think of that rather complex definition.

[00:05:56] Brandon Rael: It's a bit overwhelming. Isn't it? , 

[00:05:58] Ricardo Belmar: it's a mouthful for sure.

[00:05:59] Shish Shridhar: it is! 

[00:06:03] Jeff Roster: I'm gonna have to go back to my Catholic school days and and diagram that sentence. Cause I think that's about run on over, run on, over run on, but I, I mean, it's, it's, it's fine. I mean, we're gonna have about a hundred different definitions before this thing really gets up and running. I think though, intuitively we kind of understand what it is.

[00:06:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that's, that's a, a fair, fair statement. I mean, there's gonna be lots of definitions. I think some of the keywords, maybe I pick out from that, whether it was implied or not, is this notion of seamlessly moving between virtual and physical worlds.

[00:06:32] There's the notion of leveraging augmented reality and virtual reality. That's certainly part of it and how you actually go about interacting with that space. There was that last part of the sentence. I, I like where it just throws in' and the internet' into that, because we didn't wanna leave that out.

[00:06:48] but you know, you could view the internet as sort of a, a connecting glue perhaps of the, the metaverse. But I think one question I see gets asked by a lot of people at least one of the early questions is, well, are we talking about a single virtual reality world? Are we talking about multiple virtual reality worlds or is it the combination of all of them?

[00:07:06] And just this idea that I can do things in this virtual digital space that has an impact in the physical world. 

[00:07:12] Trevor Sumner: Well, to me, there is not a, the metaverse, there is many metaverses and many different environments, and I'm watching people, contort themselves to define what this thing is.

[00:07:26] And I think one of the, the greatest contortions was this notion that we're already in the metaverse right, that, you know 10 years ago we spent an hour on our phones and now we spend six hours on our phones. And we interact, if you look at kind of what our digital consumption, looking at TV and looking at other kind of digital formats that, that has gone up and that we are actually already kind of working in these metaverses now I don't know that that's helpful.

[00:07:54] So the question is like, what is the definition that makes it helpful? 

[00:07:58] Brandon Rael: And I think to Trevor's point it's ever evolving, it's ever pivoting. We can't just say that's a single metaverse, it's multiple metaverse with different customer types and different generations. So it's hard to nail down what, you know, what exactly it is.

[00:08:12] And I think what companies like Facebook or meta are doing, or like establishing a metaverse, but there's ones that already exist already that are they're in flight, you know? So it's, it's a very complex undertaken to single it to one, one single metaverse. 

[00:08:24] Trevor Sumner: Yeah. And, and I don't know that Microsoft is doing one metaverse either, right.

[00:08:27] It could be blizzard is one metaverse that they're investing in as, as an environment. And then, another game world has another. And you know, HoloLens potentially, is a whole nother thing. 

[00:08:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think you could say that you can divide this into different areas, right?

[00:08:43] There might be a, a metaverse for a work environment that you encounter there's might be a metaverse for gaming. There might be a metaverse that you go to for shopping. There might be a metaverse. You go to for fitness exercises, right? 

[00:08:58] Shish Shridhar: Yep. And, and I kind of think 

[00:09:00] I I've been playing around with a few of these environments, including Microsoft's acquisition from 2018 prior to blizzard something called Altspace VR.

[00:09:09] So Altspace VR is an environment where you can set up virtual meetings. You can have a mall in there. You can have shopping experiences, all of those. And I've also played around with decentraland where, companies like Coors and Miller Coors and, and others have been creating environments.

[00:09:26] And then there is still other ones, the popular ones being sandbox and, and a few others where some of them mimic the real world, because there's that spatial element to the metaphors where you can buy digital, digital, you can buy land and build your malls and build your spaces. And all of those things pretty much like buying domain names in the internet.

[00:09:47] And I think because there's so many of these environments, I think a point will come where you can kind of port between one and the other. I kind of believe there probably will never be a, sort of a, a single place. There will be competing environments always, but I think the tipping point will be where you can create an avatar of yourself and objects that you could kind of port from one environment to the other, make it available in multiple environments as well as in the physical world through AR. And I think that would be the, the convergence that, that we are all looking for, where you don't have to completely rebuild everything in, in all these different environments and brands that are today.

[00:10:29] I think fairly confused about which one should be, be on, should we go to the sandbox. It should we go to, to decentral land or, or one or the other platforms. 

[00:10:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that is maybe the tricky part in these early days of almost competing metaverses . Or competing metaverse worlds maybe is a better way to further refine that statement.

[00:10:52] And how do you decide which one to go to? I, one of the things I've noticed that I've kind of scratched from my head at a little bit is when we see some brands deciding that their, their first experiment here in the metaverse is gonna be to just replicate exactly what they have in physical space and assume that that's gonna cause people to just flock to their location.

[00:11:09] Shish Shridhar: Yeah. I strongly feel about that. 

[00:11:11] Sorry, go ahead. 

[00:11:13] Authenticity, Storytelling, Experiential

[00:11:13] Brandon Rael: Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. Shish, I, I think it's, it's all about authenticity and storytelling and, and that's what we're looking for with the emergence of TikTok and Instagram, and you expect something magical and experiential and not, not replicating your day to day life and not replicating a storefront or a grocery store.

[00:11:29] We look for something different, unique and authentic, and that's what we're hoping for in terms of inspirational content, out of the metaverse. 

[00:11:35] Shish Shridhar: Yeah, I kind of think it is, you know, it's an opportunity for brands and retailers really to rethink because in the past, in the 3d environments, you know, retailers have tried to recreate stores in 3d.

[00:11:47] So you could go and do the normal shopping that you do in the physical world. You could do it in the 3d world. And that has never really worked. I think it's an opportunity to, to reinvent and to really say, how can we create experiential shopping? How do we make shopable experiences in the metaverse where we create an experience, which enables us to shop for the things that we want to in that experience, rather than recreating an actual store with shelves and exactly the way it looks like in, in the real world.

[00:12:20] That is certainly one of the aspects for combining the real world and the digital world. But I think in addition, the opportunity really lies in, in creating that experience because this is all about experiential shopping and going beyond the webpage and, and making it more real. 

[00:12:37] Trevor Sumner: Yeah. I, I find that I find this conversation so interesting cuz it just it's so parallels the conversations we had 10, 12 years ago with regards to social media, like which sites do you pick and oh, you just can't put your same website on Facebook.

[00:12:51] You've gotta do something different and what you do on Twitter or Snapchat or, or TikTok. Right. And additionally, you do need to be thoughtful about what you pick, especially in the early days, because one of the interesting economics here is that the early adopters tend to get the spoils.

[00:13:08] Right? So you look at like Ashton Kucher right. He was an early adopter of Twitter. He took on CNN on a race to a million followers. And, those early adopters, get the, get the spoils. And so, you have to lean in and say, what am I doing here that's differentiated, that's actually valuable? Where's the cool factor that people wanna talk about. Cuz otherwise I think most people do like, oh, I'll just port my website. 

[00:13:37] Ricardo Belmar: And there's also I think an element of how do you retain attention? Right? So it's one thing to say, oh, I'm gonna jump into the metaverse I'm gonna create my virtual storefront.

[00:13:45] And you'll probably get a lot of people that will come to see it just for the sheer novelty that first time. But you really need to be thinking about, what's gonna get people to come back the second time and the third and the fourth and the fifth. Another kind of extension to this point that you just brought up.

[00:14:00] The early days of social media, I'm gonna go even further back to the early days of eCommerce and who remembers when there were discussions of people saying, you know, someone should build a virtual mall on the internet and get all the retailers to come and build their eCommerce sites in that virtual mall.

[00:14:15] And we know how that story went. how that played out. 

[00:14:17] Trevor Sumner: Yeah. 

[00:14:17] And, I think I, yeah, I still see the echos of that in VR shopping. Which is analogous to this VR side of the house. And so I think the questions like who's actually doing interesting things versus doing analogous things.

[00:14:31] it's interesting Chris Dixon , talks about this as kind of like business skew morphism, it's just like X for Y , and you're just trying to recreate the, the same thing in the new environment, but the really interesting businesses that have exponential growth create something completely new.

[00:14:48] Trillion dollar opportunity

[00:14:48] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. That that's true. That's true. And I'm, I'm, I'll throw out another interesting data point I saw. So JP Morgan claims that there's a trillion dollar market opportunity in the metaverse and I'm curious what everyone thinks of that data point. I'm sure Jeff has. 

[00:15:03] Jeff Roster: I'll go last. Yeah. 

[00:15:05] Brandon Rael: Hear that sign. 

[00:15:06] Ricardo Belmar: Our analyst has to have an opinion on that.

[00:15:09] Jeff Roster: I'll 

[00:15:09] go last. 

[00:15:10] Brandon Rael: That's a very bold stand. I don't know what they're substantiating that on, but it it's a bold one and let's see what, what emerges, I mean, First, you have to actually capture the attention, capture the imagination, inspire generations with all this amazing content and, and find a way to retain them.

[00:15:26] Like you mentioned to even make this a commercialized opportunity for retailers and brands to want actually spend money and spend time and engage and build communities. So it potentially could be at that level, but it's certainly gonna take a lot of effort, content creation and imagination 

[00:15:45] Shish Shridhar: I agree with what Brandon's saying and I think potentially yes, but I think there's a lot of things that need to happen before that. And you know, my experiments with the metaverse the, the graphics right now is a little clunky and performance is a little sluggish.

[00:15:59] So from a technology perspective, I think we are not fully there. And then the other aspect of it, I think we are still waiting in a way for AR and AR glasses to be ubiquitous cheap enough and performant enough to be used where I think that will be another tipping point we are waiting for.

[00:16:17] So there are certain things that need to happen before we go, headlong into, the metaverse. But I think there is a lot of opportunity in creating those digital experiences and marrying it with the physical world where in the physical world you could experience when you're shopping digital media, digital experiences through AR that was created in the metaverse.

[00:16:41] So you could experience either in the virtual world or the physical world through AR. Then there's so many other experiences like clothing, trying on clothing and, and that next evolution of, of streaming commerce in a way where today the streaming commerce is I would say the beginning, but in the metaverse, it kind of goes into a completely new level where you're experiencing things you're trying on things, and you are engaging with store associates in the metaverse. I've been working with companies that are also experimenting with AI assistance companies like Soul Machines and Deep Brain that are creating these avatars, which are deep fakes of people, but powered by AI engines that are very personal and relevant.

[00:17:26] So when you engage with someone, it could be a real human you're engaging with, or an AI assistant that you're engaging with that is been trained with your data and is becoming very personal as a result. And so those are the kind of experiences I think are gonna evolve . And also, the evolution of streaming commerce is gonna be the other aspect of it. And the ability to actually create all the digital objects like furniture and all those things. Being able to create a digital twin of your home in the metaverse, furnish that home with digital goods that you buy, and then recreate that in the real world through commerce engines.

[00:18:04] And I think the headless commerce engines will play a big part in, in the metaverse where you can buy things, things that you see. So it not necessarily in a store environment, but really making that experience shoppable through, through the commerce engines. 

[00:18:20] Trevor Sumner: So I'm gonna go and say yes to trillion dollars just, you know, without any qualifications, although obviously it depends on how you define this phase.

[00:18:29] Jeff Roster: Well, neither did the writer of the article, so no one needs qualifications, apparently. 

[00:18:33] Trevor Sumner: Totally. And, and, and, oh, actually that's a little bit of my point, which, which is where I'm going with this, which is, you know, look, you, you could back into it and say, the real estate market for the metaverse is at 500 million and supposed to double this year.

[00:18:46] So just the real estate market of the metaverse is a billion dollar market. And that's core metaverse, that's not like messing around and, deciding to like, I'm not picking on Shish here, but like social shopping. I, I don't count that as metaverse, but when it gets to that next stage, as Shish was talking about of being in the metaverse and, and going to the next level, it is, but without playing lines, like they're billion dollar markets and it's so early with like, who's been in decentral land?

[00:19:11] Who's been in the sandbox, very few of us, right? Now at the same time. The question is, if you look at usage, it's younger people it's gen Z and like specifically, like take a look at the data in South Korea, it's astounding, they're spending more money on virtual goods for their avatars than actual physical apparel for themselves.

[00:19:30] That is crazy. Right. I think, yeah. If, if you look at that trillion dollars? Sure. Trillion dollars I'm in, 

[00:19:38] Brandon Rael: I think to that point, the, the luxury sector we're seeing all these major companies are now investing in the metaverse space. They're betting big on it. So Gucci and other major global corporations are an investment in space because it, their brand has such value in it.

[00:19:52] And they're exclusively extends to the metaverse. So if you can capture that audience and capture that imagination to, to where we had the right clothing to have the right accessories for your avatar, then it could be a, a winning proposition. I mean, it could be limitless, to be honest. 

[00:20:05] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I mean, if you just look at virtual goods and games, I think that's a hundred billion dollar market right there.

[00:20:11] So if we're gonna include that then to Trevor's point, you can make this work, right. You can add your way up to a trillion dollars if you keep including these different things. And if you roll in you know, brand to your point with luxury brands, any NFTs that they're starting to release, and I'm, I'm jumping again a little bit to, to that part of the discussion, but you know, you roll that component into your, into the math here.

[00:20:30] You can see yourself getting to a trillion dollars. If you just keep adding more and more components to it. 

[00:20:34] Trevor Sumner: And then the last, last point I wanted to make that that, that we hit to at earlier is I also don't believe anything that these guys say, right? Like it's JP Morgan chase. He like he's writing.

[00:20:43] Jeff Roster: There you go. 

[00:20:44] Ricardo Belmar: I think you just told Jeff's comment. 

[00:20:46] Jeff Roster: Yeah. Thank you. You just stepped on my line 

[00:20:48] Trevor Sumner: as analysts you wanna predict things just so that you get clicks. I remember in 2001,

[00:20:53] Jeff Roster: no, you don't. Analysts analysts want to make intelligent points. Hack writers wanna do that. So real analysts don't wanna do that.

[00:21:02] Trevor Sumner: I like, I, I don't know. I think analysts wanna get attention too, cuz they wanna sell the research. I remember in 2001 Forrester predict, well, they're not, especially when you predicted out six to 10 years and there's no consequence, right? In 2001, I was at a wireless center company and Forrester was predicting mobile internet traffic would outpace, internet traffic in five years.

[00:21:24] It took,

[00:21:24] Ricardo Belmar: I remember that 

[00:21:25] Trevor Sumner: 15 and it's just like, it just wasn't even in five years it was nothing. It was less, it was less than 5%. 

[00:21:31] Brandon Rael: Well, they had the form factor, the iPhone wasn't invented in time for that 

[00:21:35] Trevor Sumner: well, the analyst should have known that. So my, my point is JP Morgan chase missed the boat on cryptocurrency. So they wanna throw out a big number and they did. 

[00:21:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. Jeff, you wanna add anything to that? 

[00:21:45] Jeff Roster: Yeah, I mean, just, I just hate these articles because one I think Trevor's really a hundred percent correct. It's it's just, you're throwing out to put out a, interesting number it's click bait to a certain degree.

[00:21:55] I'd have to look at the methodology. Are we talking about IT spend to build the metaverse? Are we talking about revenue moving through the metaverse? Just, I, I don't see them. I don't see these articles being helpful as somebody that tries to understand how to forecast things. It just. It's silly.

[00:22:07] I think it's a big number. I haven't actually put the numbers together. I, I don't see a reason to do that, but it they're big and they're huge and they're gonna grow. Yeah. And that's that that's all I need to do is, is somebody that comments on the space, but is it 1,000,000,000,002, Ricardo, what was the largest number we saw?

[00:22:22] Cause we were kibitzing about that a while ago. I 

[00:22:24] mean, it was, I don't know how many was there? 

[00:22:26] Ricardo Belmar: Was there someone else that said it was more than a trillion? I, I can't remember now. 

[00:22:29] Jeff Roster: Oh yeah. 

[00:22:29] Ricardo Belmar: This is the one that stood out to me most recently. 

[00:22:31] Jeff Roster: Cause there's, there's an art and science to the game of forecasting.

[00:22:34] There should be a methodology you should be publishing that you should be talking about what you're talking about. You should talk about definitions and none of that work has really been done that I've seen evidence by the, the conversation we had to start with, you know, sort, sort of wrestling around with what a definition is.

[00:22:48] Ricardo Belmar: Right. 

[00:22:48] Jeff Roster: So to, you know, do these clickbait articles just it's just frustrating. 

[00:22:52] Brandon Rael: It's a coupling with the per Jeff's point. If you're adding in live events and advertising and keep expanding a definition of, of metaverse, it could be 800 billion to a trillion, but it's just a loose definition of it. You know, I understand gaming Roblox, et cetera.

[00:23:06] And those, those , newer, authentic spaces that we're talking about. But if you're adding all those availments in there, it will get expanded.

[00:23:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. That's a fair point. I see we've got some raised hands and Ananda, I just invited you up onto the stage. If you have a comment or a question for us.

[00:23:20] No, Really, What IS the Metaverse?

[00:23:20] Ananda Chakravarty: How's it going? 

[00:23:21] Ricardo Belmar: Hey, Ananda, how are you? 

[00:23:22] Ananda Chakravarty: I'm thanks for inviting me, Ricardo. I do have a couple of questions. I honestly, I'm, I'm kind of new at this whole metaverse concept. I'm you know, you guys have given me some explanations, but I think your first comment when you brought in that very ambiguous definition of metaverse really still gave me a lot of pause as to what we're really counting when we're talking about all these dollars, trillions of dollars that are potentially coming in from many different sources into a either a channel, a, a throughway, whatever you wanna call it.

[00:23:52] Aren't these just dollars that are going into variations of the internet, or maybe even variations of social commerce. I'm just wondering what really defines the metaverse right now. And what, what is the real, I guess conceptually, what is it supposed to really be? Is it like that second life?

[00:24:09] The only places I've seen the metaverse in real you know, from a realistic point of view has been in the gaming universe. You go to a Minecraft Mojang location. You can find tons of people playing, engaging, and effectively having their avatars in the universe. Right. But I've not seen that from a retail perspective.

[00:24:26] I've not seen that from almost any other kind of context. Maybe Shish you have some, you had some thoughts of some examples that you shared, but I'd like to get a better definition of what it really means to be a metaverse and what that is from an overall perspective. 

[00:24:40] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I'll jump in on, on a couple thoughts there and then maybe Shish, I think you might have some things to add. I mean, for me, there has to be an element of this, you know, virtual world that is representing something in the digital space that you're interacting with. So whether we call that, a virtual world, you access through VR glasses or something like that, it, I think is sort of a secondary point.

[00:25:00] I think you're right, that in the gaming space is probably where it's leading in this area. If my kids are an indication, then things like Roblox, is sort of an early version of, of what can happen in the metaverse. Although I'll, as a side note, make a point that I just read an article today about how Roblox, since they IPOed, I think their about their stock has dropped about 50%. So I don't know if that's sending a message or not, but I think gaming is definitely an area that maybe leads the way here.

[00:25:23] I have seen some good examples of what I alluded to early on in the session about the metaverse at work, where companies would use a virtual space, for example, to facilitate onboarding new employees. So in a remote work era when you don't necessarily bring all of your new hires into a common physical location, you could bring them into that virtual space and have them interact with other employees and go through training exercises and such there.

[00:25:48] I think there's definitely a use case there. And then I've seen in the manufacturing side and, and production environments. If you're building a product and you need to either do maintenance on something, or you're trying to figure out how things are connected in a assembly line. You know, there there's some value in using an augmented reality experience there, which I would, again, still label as part of a metaverse that allows you to virtually manipulate some of the physical items that you're working with in a way that might help you understand how you need to manipulate them in the physical space.

[00:26:19] So it's the idea that Shish mentioned earlier about digital twins. I think that's an early use case that makes a lot of sense for metaverse applications. I think what we're all kind of getting to, and I'm curious, everybody else here will think about this comment, that when we start looking at the commerce application of it, which is really what, what retailers care about, what consumers might care about, where are those use cases coming from? And I'm gonna let everybody comment, but I think the next thing we should probably get to, because I think it's related, you know, we often hear the term metaverse not too many sentences removed from terms like web 3.0 and NFTs. And I think there's a reason for that association when it comes to evaluating the commerce implications, but I'm gonna leave that comment there for us to come back to and see what everybody else here has to has to say in response to Ananda's comment.

[00:27:06] Jeff Roster: Well, so I love that. And you can tell Ananda was a analyst. Cause if you draw the circle big enough, you mean you could, you could drag everything into it. But I think what I would say is in that's just now, since I've spent so long talking to some of the folks that are building these pieces of metaverses. There's technology that that's at play right now.

[00:27:23] If you look at some of the interviews I did Obsess is doing 3d objects and that will clearly be a key capability in a metaverse world. And that's available on websites today. AR I think, you know, certainly not here, but far more interesting to me than, than VR is because I can, you know, being a pilot I'm used to having a lot of data feeds come in and I want to be able to walk through a store and look for nutritional information the way I do when I'm flying. So there's big chunks that were in the very, very early stages of a buildout, which is why I hate those articles that say it's a two or 3 trillion or $1 trillion market, because we're the early stages of this build out.

[00:27:56] I think Roblox is, is their market cap is phenomenal and that's a component of it. So there's, there's pieces that are there and there's, speculation and everyone wants to get their, you know, get their clicks in. But there's a lot of real true value that I'm seeing already in pieces.

[00:28:11] Trevor Sumner: So can we shift the conversation about who's doing really cool stuff in, in the metaverse and like start defining the problem space less by abstract lines that and define a little bit more about like real world stuff that people can do in the metaverse things that are interesting or even successful at this point.

[00:28:28] Ananda Chakravarty: Would love to hear that Trevor. I mean, just, you know, when I think of metaverse, I'm thinking second life I'm thinking we had islands and all sorts of cool, neat stuff there with big huge I guess advertising, if you will a huge banner for IBM in, in a, you know, a corner of this quote world.

[00:28:45] But what did it really translate into in terms of dollars in terms of value in terms of productivity for the, the world? I mean, that's the question at the end of the day. 

[00:28:54] Where physical and virtual converge

[00:28:54] Shish Shridhar: And I kind of think the, the second world and the virtual worlds that's been done in the past is sort of just leading up to where we are now, the metaverse, which is the convergence of physical worlds and virtual worlds and, and really having a multidimensional interface to, to that environment. So people can join into a metaverse right from the physical world, could be shopping in an area or in a physical space and become and interact with people in the virtual space and the other way around. And I think that convergence of real world and virtual world is one of the, I would say the bigger differentiators in addition to you also mentioned, you know, the ability to, to monetize engagements, to be able to create things in the metaverse and experience those things by those things in the physical world, as well as the, the virtual world.

[00:29:44] And I think that's the other aspect, which second life didn't really have. It didn't really have that convergence of real world and, and physical world and the, the ability to experience it, you know, no matter what, where you are. And I think that's really the, one of the differentiators anyway. 

[00:30:00] Trevor Sumner: Yeah, I, I would agree with that.

[00:30:01] And so let's talk about what, what some of that looks like. Right? So stock X, for example launch an NFT where you'd get a, a physical product as well as your virtual product. And so, you'd get your Nike air Jordan's and you get a virtual version as well. Now, that's kind of a cool way to think about, collectibles, the challenge came several weeks later when Nike sued them and said, whoa, you're violating our trademarks by selling a virtual Nike item. And right, so like this, some stuff that needs to be worked out there are other people who are treating this physical purchase as also this digital representation patron, you could buy a bottle patron, they get like a special, you know, commemorative patron, icebox, I think they called it. And you get also a physical bottle that's, a limited addition, et cetera. 

[00:30:47] So I, I think of it almost as like a lot of this as a membership club and NFTs as like a deed to something. And in this case, like either a loyalty club or a membership club that gives you access to the physical world.

[00:30:58] I think when you, you start, if you think about loyalty as like points, if, if the points in your metaverse as a game. Start giving you access to the real world. If your interaction in the metaverse with Chanel gets you to the new Chanel fashion show or the, the new, line that comes out and you get to, to go to the store or some V I P this starts becoming really, really compelling.

[00:31:24] And it's a way for brands to create engagement with their brands across all different properties and convert to real world commerce and, and virtual commerce too. And, and I think that's exciting. 

[00:31:35] Brandon Rael: Yeah. And, and add to all that we talked about luxury being the, the ultimate sandbox for, for the metaverse it's, it's already happening.

[00:31:42] Gucci's has sold a digital the honest purse, but thousands more than it's worth in real life. So versus a physical product. Dulce Gabbana, sold a a 5.7 million nine piece NFT collection. Saying that their gems can't be found in real life, on earth and in the digital world, metaverse, world's more, more exclusive and more prestigious.

[00:32:01] And then Nike lands on the Roblox platform. And they also acquired the virtual sneaker and collectables company or a star company called RT FK T studios. So Nike has been one of the leaders and luxury space has been on fire. 

[00:32:13] Trevor Sumner: Let let's talk about Nike land for a second.

[00:32:15] I think that's a great example. Right? So how are retailers using it? So Nike land, you can buy shoes that don't exist in the real world. Well, okay. Who cares? Well, they can look at the popularity and say, oh, people really like this shoe. We're gonna use it as kind of data demand data to determine which products that they are going to create.

[00:32:37] So they may launch a hundred virtual shoes. Just take their top 10% performers and actually create real versions of those shoes. If you think about that as part of your marketing funnel, as your brand engagement funnel that's pretty exciting. And then you can start thinking about, well, if you bought that shoe and we end up making it, you get 20% off or you get it engraved or you get, the special version of it with, you know, who knows, you know, like, 

[00:33:03] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, there there's like a loyalty implication that goes along with that, right.

[00:33:06] Loyalty, a hundred that makes it much more appealing in, in both spaces, right? Digital 

[00:33:11] Trevor Sumner: Totally. And if, because of all of these benefits, you spend time in Nike land and you spend hours and hours interacting with Nikes, Nikes, Nikes, Nikes, Nikes. What are you gonna do in the real world?

[00:33:22] Ricardo Belmar: You need buy more Nike. 

[00:33:23] Trevor Sumner: Right. You're gonna buy more. Nike, you're gonna talk about Nike. You're gonna wear more Nike. You're gonna talk about how the Nikes you're wearing matches your avatar in Fortnite and allows you to jump 20% higher. 

[00:33:35] Ricardo Belmar: You're gonna post pictures on Instagram. 

[00:33:36] Ananda Chakravarty: Trevor, have a strange feeling.

[00:33:38] You actually own a pair of Nikes, just a guess 

[00:33:42] Brandon Rael: strong feel. 

[00:33:42] Trevor Sumner: Okay. All right. So just virtual ones, one, I, I do own Nikes. I'm sure. Somewhere in my collection, but they're, they're, they're not my basketball show choice. And I'm not actually all that loyal to Nike as a brand. It turns out, but I think what they're doing here is really.

[00:33:56] Ananda Chakravarty: Yeah, I kind of like that example, but because that's the closest I've gotten from what I've seen out there and Jeff kind of hit on the, a couple of points on this as well, by the way. And that is when we start thinking about these different pieces that are, that are coming together, are they really big enough to be mainstream, right?

[00:34:13] I mean, that's what metaverse, and this whole thing that meta itself and Facebook is trying to push is that this is really a mainstream function. That's, that's gonna be, you know kind of a, a, a combination of what's gonna happen in movies, like ready player one and and The other one, right?

[00:34:28] I mean, that's, what's eventually going to be the world, as we know it, if you will, the physical and the blurring of, of this digital avatar state, I just don't know how much reality there is to that. If these are very, you know, focused on these very specialized cases, it has to be something that is really very popular before it becomes anything close to mainstream.

[00:34:48] And I don't think we're close to that at this time. 

[00:34:50] Ricardo Belmar: it's definitely early. 

[00:34:51] Trevor Sumner: So the, yes, but you know, you're talking about concerts in the metaverse being attended by tens of millions of people. Like that's pretty size. I mean, like, I don't know what you talk about scale, but like that's, that's the biggest concert in the world.

[00:35:05] Ricardo Belmar: It depends on the category. Right. And you know, we started out this, with the Nike example, talking about an apparel example, and, I could argue, for example, apparel overall, I think is actually in some ways could be defined as a shrinking market, right? Because what the same amount of money that used to take for you to buy apparel 20 years ago, you can buy a lot more now, putting the side, whether it's a luxury brand or an off price brand, you can get more for your money in apparel, which means that individual apparel brands, they've gotta find other ways to diversify a bit and find new sources to get revenue from what potentially is a shrinking share. So one area where they can do that of course, is in this metaverse digital space. You know, another example of thrown an addition to Nike, Ralph Lauren, right? Ralph Lauren created a space in Roblox and they've, they're selling digital Ralph Lauren collection to Roblox gamers.

[00:35:51] So is, is that a significant revenue source for them? I'm not sure that it is now, but I think, from an experimenting point of view, it's a great idea to try it. I think that's where we'll see lots of interest from retailers is just trying different things. This is one of those areas where there's gonna have to be a lot of experimentation now, long term, is that a significant amount of revenue?

[00:36:11] And I think it could be cuz Trevor to your point, if millions of people start getting interested, that's a potentially, much larger audience than you get from a physical space. 

[00:36:20] Trevor Sumner: Right. And, and also, do we measure this as marketing dollars? Right. Right. I got 10 million people to look at this thing.

[00:36:27] Like they didn't buy the thing, but did that translate to some 

[00:36:30] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. What did it do to our brand awareness 

[00:36:32] Trevor Sumner: brand awareness and eventual sales, right, 

[00:36:34] Ricardo Belmar: exactly. Yes. It's one more touch point to track in that customer journey. 

[00:36:38] Trevor Sumner: Right. And, and so, there's a company called pretty little things that created a digital only model that they're now using in their advertising, right? Like what if we start thinking about, the ability to leverage metaverse in all other types of digital content channels and then to the point of, Hey, let's not do the analogous thing. Like, oh, I wonder what a werewolf would look like in Gucci.

[00:37:01] Like how do you start doing stuff that's more creative and interesting and, and goes across all of that. And what's the value of that from a marketing return on investment. 

[00:37:09] Shish Shridhar: I think the, idea that Trevor kind of pointed out about new idea validation is a very powerful one for brands. So really testing out the digital products, the popularity of the digital products before going into production in the real world, and this could apply to apparel shoes, it could apply to furniture, furnishing the digital twin of your home with, with furniture and then getting, a sense of, is this a good design enough before actually going into the real world and potentially maybe car designs, all of those kind of things.

[00:37:38] I think it's got a huge potential. 

[00:37:40] Ananda Chakravarty: I know Michael. Hasn't had a chance to talk, but he's on the stage. So maybe 

[00:37:43] Ricardo Belmar: welcome, michael . 

[00:37:45] Michael Zakkour: Hey guys, 

[00:37:46] Brandon Rael: rockstar. Michael, 

[00:37:47] Ricardo Belmar: how are you? 

[00:37:48] Michael Zakkour: So many loved and familiar faces. 

[00:37:51] The foundation is only a beginning for retail

[00:37:51] Michael Zakkour: Okay. Just a couple things I think that need to be cleared up. There's a lot of confusion, nevermind with the average person and consumer within our industry, whether it's retail technology, development, whatever between the metaverse, web three, NFT, and blockchain.

[00:38:08] And we've been talking clearly about the metaverse, but there's some underlying foundational with web three NFT, blockchain, and how it relates to retail. The first thing I wanna say is they're not the same thing. The thing that we see most often, or I see most often out in the marketplace is people confusing web three and metaverse meaning sort of the same thing.

[00:38:32] They're not. The second thing I'd wanna say is there is no metaverse yet. It doesn't exist. Okay. And if you run into a company Zuckerberg who tells you they're building the metaverse runaway quickly, if you run into anybody who has a complete answer that says, I know what the metaverse is and will be run away.

[00:38:57] right. It's just not possible at this point. We are with metaverse web three NFT and blockchain integration, basically where internet technologies and eCommerce were in 1997. Right. We're at the very, very early stages of it. What I can tell you is you do need to think about where the metaverse web three NFT and blockchain exist as separate entities and how they integrate to eventually come to occlusion on something that is something we can call a metaverse or a multiple of a metaverse.

[00:39:35] Okay. As it relates to retail one of the most surprising and, and happiest things I've seen is that, you know, six years ago, I was still arguing with all of my luxury clients about whether they should even recognize that something called the internet exists. And a lot of these luxury companies have gone all in and are the leading edge on developing metaverse based web three NFT, blockchain offering. So interesting there.

[00:40:05] And so this is really guys on the retail front. I can't emphasize this enough. Retail is the leading edge of what will become the metaverse. I can't define for you what it is right now, but we are building it. So I think, I don't know if it was Ananda,

[00:40:22] it might have been Ananda who asked, are there some real life examples of where this is going? We can look at the Gucci platform. We can look at what LVMH is doing with digital avatars, but all of this is it's something beyond an add-on to the internet. As we know it, it's a complete redefinition of how we experience, right.

[00:40:44] And you guys have heard me talk about ecosystems and the new retail model being the complete integration of online, offline technology, supply chain, entertainment, and media. This is the next step above it. How do you bring that to life in 3d? Whether it's use of devices or not. It doesn't matter, guys. We don't know what the metaverse is yet.

[00:41:08] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's an interesting point. Certainly in the early phases of any new technological area, right though, that early phase, there's the novelty of it being new. That gets attention.

[00:41:17] You can spend through any number of, of marketing outlets to drive traffic the first time. The real question is how do you keep them coming back. And I think there's a, a component there, you know, we've only touched or I realize we're coming up on the hour, so I'm gonna bring us to a closing point here.

[00:41:31] With one last comment I'll throw out and you guys did a good job bringing this up and differentiating between web three NFTs and, and the metaverse. But it's the combination of these things, right? It's the combination of how brands are going to drive the usage of these elements to make that experience worth repeating and worth experiencing over and over and over again for those consumers.

[00:41:52] And I think that's, what's going to be the, the key experiment area. We see happening at least over the next year. And in these, I'm gonna keep calling it the early phases. It may be here, but I think Michael, the way you put it was very nice that, you know, whatever it is, it's not well defined yet. And that's probably why we all struggled at the beginning of this hour to come up with a good definition that wasn't as clunky as the one that I read off from Wikipedia.

[00:42:16] And that's because it really is still something that has to be figured out by everyone who's going to not just dip their toes in, but dive in and build something.

[00:42:25] Especially when you have, what I would describe as the convergence of a number of different technologies that are making this possible at the same time that I guess opens the door for a lot of less interesting ,let's say, solutions and capabilities, but, we're essentially bringing together, I'm just gonna list out all the things that we've mentioned, there's blockchain, low code, VR, AR of course the internet, which was just thrown in, I love how that was thrown in that Wikipedia definition at the very end of the run on sentence.

[00:42:50] And that's just to start right. There are a number of other technical capabilities and technologies, and all of these had to converge to get us to the point where we can start to build this out. So I think it's exciting to see where it's gonna go. It's exciting to see what retailers and brands are going to come up with.

[00:43:03] And that's why we like to keep this discussion forum going. Cuz it gives us a way to, to speak to different things with our collection of speakers, everybody's got a different viewpoint, a different focus area that they've read about and we've all consumed different types of content and different pieces of articles and such.

[00:43:20] So when we all get together and cover one topic, we can all bring a different angle to it. 

[00:43:24] And I think with that note, we're gonna wrap things up in the room today. The the fact is , this topic is so rich and so involved that we, we could have had just a short bullet point list of 10 other things to talk about and probably fill another 10 hours of this.

[00:43:38] So I'm sure we will be scheduling more metaverse discussions in the future . And with that, I'm gonna thank everyone for joining us in the audience and thank our folks who came up here for some questions and all the other speakers, and we will close out the room from there. Thanks everybody. 

[00:43:54] Metaverse Recap

[00:43:54] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome back retail, razor show listeners and viewers. We hope you enjoyed that Retail Avenger's clubhouse session on the metaverse.

[00:44:07] Casey Golden: It was a great session. I love the focus on what the metaverse is and what it's not. And honestly, you guys just killed me with the debate on this trillion dollar opportunity. This is gonna, you know, grab your popcorn. Like this is gonna be fun.

[00:44:21] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that really got everybody jumping on that one. A good, good discussion on a few retail examples too, like Nike for one, I mean, what, what do you think about what Nike's doing, Casey?

[00:44:30] Casey Golden: It was really smart for them to just acquire artifact. really early. And throw legal to round up and protect their brand. They're filing new trademarks and sending out cease and desist to companies trying to make money off their swoosh. And I think that this is something that a lot of brands are doing right now is getting ready, getting prepared and protecting their brand.

[00:44:53] And they're gonna have to do that. Nike land, their Roblox micro metaverse has already attracted like over 7 million people in 224 countries. Like this is not a bad start. This, this space has such low expectations on the design side.

[00:45:12] just play

[00:45:13] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah.

[00:45:14] Casey Golden: it. Doesn't have to be perfect.

[00:45:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I have to agree. Have to agree with that one that that's so true and, and pretty impressive, that they've got so many people attracted to it at these early stages. So, one of the topics I do think we covered a bit, but honestly we could do another entire show on it. Is this idea of digital twins.

[00:45:33] Shish brought it up first. I think we touched on it with Nike specifically, and then Trevor highlighted it a bit more for me, the idea of brands using these digital twins to test new products, see what's popular, then use that knowledge and insight and to decide what products and features they wanna drive to scale maybe for a big product launch.

[00:45:53] And I think that's a massive use case. It certainly shortens the time to market. In that whole process. So I, I have to believe we're gonna see more and more of that. And I suppose it's kind of right up your alley. Isn't it. Casey.

[00:46:03] Casey Golden: Yes, but I mean, the conversations I'm having is, defining a digital twin it's it's, it's turning into an omnichannel debate of like, what is a digital twin? And I've seen brands using digital twining as an opportunity to pre-sell the physical item include an avatar wearable file. So that they are digital twin to their avatar providing a gift with purchase for like a flex on the item, by sharing that an NFT with an, an artistic version or a very photo realistic version of the item kind of with that proof of purchase and authenticity.

[00:46:45] And then just to test a new product into the crypto community, right. This web three and crypto community is a different consumer group. They may have had this consumer group already serviced in their stores or online, but they didn't know that trait necessarily. They didn't know that the, that consumer is also part of a different community, then what they might be familiar with or the way that they would've seen their communities in general.

[00:47:13] So there's a lot of different digital twins that are out in the market. And I think we really need to understand what is a use case for these digital twins and what do they do because it's consumer facing. And so just like omnichannel, this is gonna get very confusing.

[00:47:31] If we can't decide what a digital twin is, and maybe there's a wearable twin or a meta twin, or I don't know, we need to start coming together and using words that mean something

[00:47:45] Ricardo Belmar: Be before we have another Omni channel.

[00:47:47] Casey Golden: before we have another Omni channel

[00:47:51] Ricardo Belmar: You have to agree with that. And you bring up a, a good point too there about the, community building aspect of all of this, especially when you start to tie in web three and NFTs and in the metaverse, which admittedly, we, we didn't have a lot of time to get into that in the clubhouse session. I'm sure there'll be some future sessions for that kind of discussion.

[00:48:10] But I, with, with all these kinds of examples, would you say apparel and luxury brands are kind of taking over the early metaverse right now? Are they really the early adopters? I mean, who would you say is missing out right now? That should be jumping in.

[00:48:22] Casey Golden: Luxury is leading technology. Like I just said that luxury is leading 

[00:48:27] Ricardo Belmar: out there now. 

[00:48:28] Casey Golden: Is out there and I am so, like, I just got goosebumps. Like I am so proud of the luxury industry adopting tech. And being on board this innovation train, it makes so much sense for the luxury space because the crypto and web three, the crypto space is literally the NFT space was built off of rarity, exclusivity, and these are all the values that are shared, you know, VIP's, this is something that luxury space can really get behind because they have the same core values, unlike a self serve model or a Facebook advertising model. It's very hard for them to get on board because the core values at the end of the day are so separate.

[00:49:12] So that's why I believe there is a future over here. Luxury's going to figure it out. I don't know what that means at gap, but, Balenciaga is doing a really great job. Gucci's killing it and they're building it into their business. And I think that it's wonderful. They are early adopters. And at the end of the day, we're in the business of selling products, selling physical products.

[00:49:37] I haven't spoken to a single brand that has been excited about selling a digital good. they're like, so if I make this 3d asset or this digital good, or this NFT, like how much product can I move?

[00:49:50] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah. How does that help me sell the physical products I'm sell.

[00:49:55] Casey Golden: They want to sell physical goods. Even though like, it could be a lot cheaper to sell digital goods. We are going to be figuring out what these digital twins are and how they're going to facilitate these real life purchases. And that's essentially how it's going to be defined, but the brands see I'm finding, they just wanna sell more product.

[00:50:15] Ricardo Belmar: right. 

[00:50:15] I mean, at the end of the day, the digital goods they might sell, it's like in the, all the video game, virtual worlds where you see all of these digital assets sold, it's, it's real money. It's, meaningful money, but compared to what these luxury brands are selling and, and generating in sales, in physical goods, it's an incremental revenue at most. It's not gonna replace the physical goods revenue, but it helps motivate more physical sales.

[00:50:40] Casey Golden: oh my goodness. I just have to share this there is narrative out here right now. That that there are companies that are creating digital clothing saying that this is the most sustainable way to shop, and this is how we're going to save the world. I'm like, I'm sorry, but what are we wearing me buying a digital t-shirt.

[00:51:02] How is that

[00:51:03] Ricardo Belmar: help you in the real

[00:51:04] Casey Golden: shopping? 

[00:51:07] Ricardo Belmar: How are you, how are you, wearing that digital t-shirt Casey

[00:51:10] Casey Golden: Right. Like, I'm sorry, but that's not going to work. I still need to go buy physical clothes, but just the narrative twist on this, that this is the most sustainable way to shop, and 

[00:51:20] Ricardo Belmar: That's one way to look at

[00:51:21] Casey Golden: these resources.

[00:51:22] Ricardo Belmar: That's one way to look at it.

[00:51:24] Casey Golden: I just couldn't, I just couldn't.

[00:51:26] I had to, just leave for a moment and I'm like, yeah, I don't even know how to have a conversation with this person right now, because , they do not believe that anybody should be physically manufacturing clothes. I'm like, this is kinda impossible here.

[00:51:41] Ricardo Belmar: That's gonna go far in the, in the industry for sure.

[00:51:43] Casey Golden: Yeah. I just like, okay, I'm confused, but okay. Continue.

[00:51:49] So one thing that, that came up in the clubhouse discussion that is worth more attention is this idea of multiple metaverses. What'd you get, let's just keep confusing the consumer, but you have some thoughts on this and I'd love to hear them.

[00:52:05] Ricardo Belmar: Oh

[00:52:05] Casey Golden: like, let's dive.

[00:52:06] Ricardo Belmar: I let let's dive into this one. We didn't go too deep, deep into it, but yeah, I, I think there's at least, fundamentally three kinds of metaverses and yeah, it'll probably confuse consumers, but hopefully we'll we'll get through that.

[00:52:17] Cuz I think much like omnichannel, consumers don't care about the terms or the words they just care about what are they doing with it? So, I think of these three groups, first being industrial and a big part of that is this whole discussion we just had on digital twins.

[00:52:31] There's factory modeling and automation. There are a lot of consumer goods brands taking advantage of this, where they're modeling their entire production lines. It's helping them get better visibility into their operations. They can use historical sensor data. You see a lot of this being coupled with iOT technology. So that as that manufacturer, they learn over time. They look at the data over the history of their manufacturing process and they figure out how to make it better, how to operationalize new changes without having to physically do them at the factory so they can see what the impact is.

[00:53:04] And that leads to a more efficient, lower cost production, so this one's all about simulating and then automating in the real world based on what you learned in that metaverse model. And you can think about things beyond retail, right? And you and I have talked about medical applications, there's telehealth, where this makes sense training for healthcare providers.

[00:53:23] You can see how pharma companies might use this in their research work for designing new life saving drugs. And, you know, and then plus, we're already seeing healthcare converging with retail. So this is an area we could see some interesting things that none of us have thought of yet start to come up.

[00:53:37] So that's industrial metaverse then, then I think of the workplace metaverse and this one's kind of interesting. So with all the work from home that everyone's been experiencing in the last few years, Accenture is an example that comes to my mind. They actually built a version of their headquarters, in a metaverse and they started doing their new hire onboarding in that metaverse space.

[00:53:57] So rather than, giving you a whole bunch of PDF follows or emailing you a ton of material as a new employee, you actually join the office workplace. Metaverse. Meet other avatars of other new hires and other employees. And you can actually move around this place. You can manipulate, 3d models of what the office looks like.

[00:54:16] You might have a 3d whiteboard space in there so that what you would've done in a conference room with a 2d whiteboard you're doing in this workplace metaverse and then after you've been onboarded , you start holding meetings in this virtual space and it starts to look like the sci-fi movies we see when people are waving their hands in the air, manipulating things on a holographic screen, and you can do that in the metaverse right with the right technology and the right tools that you can't do that on a 2d whiteboard.

[00:54:41] This is where there's some interesting Microsoft technologies that are at play to make this interesting. I work with some partners who are doing this this kind of space.

[00:54:48] So lots of possibilities there. And then the third metaverse I think of is probably the one that most consumers think of, which I'll, I'll call it the entertainment metaverse, but it's basically, where all the virtual reality games come into light, so , that's a pretty straightforward one to understand.

[00:55:02] I would argue though, the real significance of all these is that any of these metaverses can be looked at as delivering a commerce capability. It's not just the entertainment metaverse that we expect to see commerce happening. It could be any of these. There's nothing that says I have to have a hard and fast rule about what that metaverse model is.

[00:55:21] The whole point in this metaverse space is I'm not constrained by physical reality limitations. I can do things any way we want. So why couldn't there be commerce applications across all of them?

[00:55:31] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, I'm not working with goggles on, so staring at a computer screen for 18 20 hours a day is bad enough with our eyes and mental health. There's lots of people who get migraines. This is very much a conductor for it. And the people who are building the meta for work or these metaverses for work, they don't even work in the metaverse that they're building.

[00:55:58] So I just don't know how we're expected to participate. If the builders can't find the value in building the metaverse for work in it.

[00:56:10] Ricardo Belmar: Right.

[00:56:11] Casey Golden: I just it's. If they can't find the value to do it on a day to day and be building there, then I don't see how anybody else is expected to go in there and do it if they already don't wanna do it.

[00:56:23] And don't find it as productive. 

[00:56:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, we didn't get into that in the, the clubhouse session, but I, I can't remember. It might have been Shish that brought it up, that everybody gets excited talking about the capabilities with these metaverse technologies, but at the end of the day, the fact that no one's gonna sit around in the workplace metaverses for eight hours a day wearing all this equipment. Everybody's already stressed enough being on teams calls and zoom calls for hours on end during the day. So who's gonna add more layers to that. So, and I think again, shish brought up the point that while the technology's really good.

[00:56:53] It's made a huge amount of progress. It's still not quite where we need it to be for these things to be a hundred percent mainstream. And to be totally comfortable. For short periods, sure. I mean, I can see the onboarding piece, right? You're the new hire. There's an onboarding session that might be an hour here, a half hour there, but it's not a straight 10 hour, day kind of thing, because nobody wants that.

[00:57:15] Casey Golden: oh yeah. Most people work like eight, 10 hour days.

[00:57:18] Ricardo Belmar: oh, yeah, yeah. Except maybe, you know, startup life, but that's another show

[00:57:24] Casey Golden: so no, I think the retail training and the company onboarding in the metaverse is valid, I mean, I think we've all started a job at some point where our first day, we just, we get handed a four inch, six inch binder and told to read it, memorize it. This is your first day. So I think that, that definitely could change.

[00:57:45] And even just being able to have that mentorship, even if it's like an AI in this type of situation where you can go through multi-step training multi-month multi-year. I think the retail training is a huge opportunity because it would allow for easier role play between a customer and the retail associate, even because, I mean, I don't know about you if somebody says, okay, go role play.

[00:58:15] I'm like already on the floor, like laughing uncontrollably. Cause I can't do it.

[00:58:20] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:58:21] Casey Golden: like 

[00:58:21] Ricardo Belmar: true. Yeah. That that's not an easy thing. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:58:24] Casey Golden: not an actor for a reason. So I think that there's it does take a little bit of that personal personality or whatever away from us, so we can just kind of be and like play a video game. And it's a lot easier to absorb over time than it is reading this four inch book, especially in things where you need to be customer facing.

[00:58:44] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think you make a good point there. And with all of these caveats and, conditions and constraints that we're highlighting, I suppose we would be totally remiss if we didn't offer some thoughts on, okay, where do you go next with the metaverse? We've kind of told you what cool things there are happening, what it is.

[00:59:03] We've talked about things to watch out for. So what do you do about it? And of course, this was one of our 2022 predictions from back in season one, episode four, back then , we said metaverse was an important trend for this year. Obviously we're still talking about it. So I think we kind of nailed that one.

[00:59:17] But while we didn't go so far as to say it was gonna be a new money generating sales channel for retailers and brands, we did say that you should be experimenting with the metaverse and with NFTs and, and web three, start feeling out where your customers are, what appetite they have for all of this.

[00:59:32] And I think we even mentioned digital twins back then, too, which we've highlighted a lot in this episode, and it's still my favorite use case right now. So Casey, what would be your top recommendations for brands?

[00:59:43] Casey Golden: Yeah, I think number one, you've got to start building a community. An email address is not a relationship. Open up a discord account and start moving your email marketing list into discord members has two way conversation. Step two, I would pretty much say like get on Twitter, reactivate the brand's Twitter account.

[01:00:05] Everybody in this space is not on Instagram, so, they need to go ahead and get onto Twitter. Third step I'd essentially say, like start collecting your customers' crypto wallet addresses. So you can start understanding, do you have an address? Do I need to provide education? And can you go ahead and make sure you know how many customers you have access to, to essentially airdrop think of it as like web three's email address?

[01:00:30] That needs to essentially just happen now. I really suggest brands launching an NFT and not necessarily, this whole collection. It doesn't have to be a big deal. It doesn't even have to be in the press. It just needs to be hyper segmented to a small group to learn and build these initiatives with the brand for those NFT holders.

[01:00:51] And until you have a compelling utility, this could be a V I P NFT, and you just invite 600 people or 200 people. And just really try to figure out how do you engage with these NFT holders? How do you talk to them? What do you do for them? What's the benefit? Does it get you a blowout at a salon in New York?

[01:01:15] Because like they're friends, does it get you private shopping on e-com? Does it get you New York fashion week tickets, you know, really thinking about , what's the value of these customers having this NFT and just spend time until you can figure out something that makes sense. And then go ahead and move into those initiatives.

[01:01:34] Also, I mean, it's been a constraint for me recently is just not having digital assets. They're not ready to move. So, I mean, going forward, I would love to see all the brands just create all of the 3d and wearable assets when they create the collection and decide like, as soon as you write the production order, please go send out the, the designers to go ahead and create all of those 3d digital assets so that if anything happens from the date of production, a lot of us do that, like six to nine months in advance all the way through the selling season.

[01:02:12] If something interesting happens, you have the assets you can act, right. I've got 3d designers that are pulling stuff off in a matter of five days for New York fashion week right now from like multiple brands. I'm just like, okay, moving forward. Can you just go ahead and have this whole next collection that you have in production?

[01:02:33] done. I don't know what we're using them for. You don't know what we're using them for, but if you just have them, it would be quite helpful. So I mean, to me, these are the most important things to get started. It's not flashy. It's not cool. It's not in the middle of times square , but we have to start at the very beginning.

[01:02:57] Who are your customers? Where are they at right now? And that's kind of like what we need to know. And so I think just building the community, being a part of it, that's like step one.

[01:03:09] Ricardo Belmar: Excellent. Excellent points. I think we could probably call that the the retail razor shows five step program or five step roadmap to the metaverse.

[01:03:16] Casey Golden: yeah, so basic

[01:03:19] Ricardo Belmar: it covers all the basics. Exactly. Exactly. So Casey, kinda like I said to the, the Retail Avengers in the clubhouse session, and we could just talk for hours and hours on this topic. So I'm sure we're gonna be coming back to this in the future.

[01:03:32] Casey Golden: a hundred percent. I mean, the metaverse isn't going anywhere. You and I aren't going anywhere. So I'm really glad that we're going to revisit this in future episodes. but all good things must come to an end. So I think it's time we thank all of our clubhouse audience and wrap up this episode.

[01:03:51] Ricardo Belmar: it is that time.

[01:03:52] Clubhouse Thank You

[01:03:52] Casey Golden: Before we close. We'd like to thank everyone who joined us on stage for this clubhouse session to talk metaverse and ask questions. So a special shout out

[01:04:05] Ricardo Belmar: to frequent visitor to our clubhouse rooms, Ananda Chakravarty, currently the vice president of research at IDC in the retail group for his great question about real world examples of retailers in the metaverse looking for success.

[01:04:18] Casey Golden: And a super friend of the show, Michael Zakkour, founder of five new digital for setting the foundation for what the metaverse really is today versus what it will become tomorrow. And what that means for retailers.

[01:04:32] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you Ananda and thank you, Michael.

[01:04:34] Casey Golden: so Ricardo, I think that's a wrap for our first episode of season two.

[01:04:39] Ricardo Belmar: Indeed it is! 

[01:04:41] Show Close

[01:04:41] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and consider giving us a five star rating and review on apple podcasts. Don't forget to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute! 

[01:04:54] Wanna know more about today's show? Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets.

[01:05:00] I'm your co-host Casey golden.

[01:05:02] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about us, follow us on Twitter at caseycgolden and Ricardo_Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and on Twitter at RetailRazor, plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and the occasional bonus content. 

[01:05:18] I'm your host Ricardo Belmar.

[01:05:19] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[01:05:21] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter.

[01:05:28] Until next time, THIS is The Retail Razor Show!

]]> <p>Welcome back to The Retail Razor Show – It’s Season 2, Episode 1!</p><p><br></p><p>Back for season two of the show, we saved a BIG topic to open up with – The Metaverse!</p><p><br></p><p>Yes, our Retail Avengers team has been jumping out of their seats to bring you this discussion, recently held in our Clubhouse room, to answer the biggest, burning questions retailers and brands have about the Metaverse. What exactly IS the Metaverse? What is it not? Why should you be interested and what can you do with the metaverse? How can you use the Metaverse? Is it about building brand loyalty? Commerce? And what about NFTs and web3? All of the above? The Retail Avengers team digs into these questions, and more, to cut through the clutter!</p><p><br></p><p>Hosts, Ricardo and Casey then come back to recap the discussion and talk about a few key examples of brands that seem to know what they&#39;re doing in the Metaverse right now. Plus, they’ll bring you an easy 5-step roadmap to getting started in the Metaverse. All that in the season 2 opener!</p><p><br></p><p>Have you heard the news? We’re up to #20 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Retail podcasts</a> list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your loyal help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20 in no time! Leave us a review and we’ll mention you in a future episode! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail &amp; retail tech:</p><p>I’m Ricardo Belmar, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and director partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft. And I’m Casey Golden, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. I&#39;ve spent my career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business. Now I slay franken-stacks!</p><p><br></p><p>Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, including E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><h2>TRANSCRIPT</h2><p><strong>S2E1 The Retail Avengers vs The Metaverse</strong></p><h3>[00:00:00] Pre-Intro</h3><p>[00:00:00] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hey, Casey, it&#39;s season two. Now maybe we should do something different for the show intro.</p><p>[00:00:04] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I&#39;ve seen some podcasts play different clips from the main interview in the beginning of the show, kind of like a preview.</p><p>[00:00:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I don&#39;t know. That kind of seems like it&#39;s been done to death doesn&#39;t it? </p><p>[00:00:14] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> True. We can always just pick up. In the middle of a conversation and give the audience some FOMO. They wouldn&#39;t know whether or not they&#39;ve missed something or arrived right on time.</p><p>[00:00:23] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hmm, not a bad idea though. I don&#39;t know. I wonder if we might get some bad reviews for trying to trick our listeners that way. What if we just added some cool sound effects?</p><p>[00:00:31] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That would be too simple. What would happen afterwards?</p><p>[00:00:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Okay. I guess you got me there. All right. All right. So, we could just start talking about our main topic and give listeners a preview that way of what&#39;s to come without really giving away our speaker.</p><p>[00:00:44] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Sounds like plan. I think that&#39;s what we should do, but how much time do we have to do that? A minute. 30 seconds, two minutes, 15.</p><p>[00:00:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> well, uh, let&#39;s see, how long have we already been talking about it? I don&#39;t know. We might not have much time to talk about the m... </p><h3>[00:01:00] Show Intro</h3><p>[00:01:00]</p><h3>[00:01:20] Introduction</h3><p>[00:01:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hello, and welcome to the first episode of season two of the retail razor show. I&#39;m your host Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[00:01:26] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And I&#39;m your cohost Casey Golden. Welcome retail razor show listeners to our unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike.</p><p>[00:01:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It&#39;s great to be back in front of the camera and on the mic.</p><p>[00:01:43] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. And for those of you watching us on YouTube, how about that? , you&#39;re actually watching us on YouTube now, not just listening. This is a big step for us this season. And personally for me, I&#39;m blow drying my hair again!</p><p>[00:01:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> totally, totally. And, for listeners or, or maybe I should say viewers, can expect to see us on video pretty much every episode now, apart from when we&#39;re bringing you our clubhouse sessions, because you know, obviously those are audio only.</p><p>[00:02:11] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Well, Ricardo, this is our first season of the new season. So of course, we&#39;ve got an amazing topic this week. One that have been asked about and asked for many times,</p><p>[00:02:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And one that our Retail Avengers crew had really been dying to cover for months and months.</p><p>[00:02:30] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> That&#39;s right. So with all of this anticipation, I am so bummed that I missed the clubhouse session.</p><p>[00:02:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. Especially since the topic is, wait for it, retail and the metaverse. I mean, this one was just about tailor made for you, Casey.</p><p>[00:02:44] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. So I know I&#39;ll save my commentary for our recap discussion after the clubhouse session.</p><p>[00:02:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It&#39;ll be worth the wait. So with that lead in, since this is a topic that doesn&#39;t really need an introduction, let&#39;s just dive right in and listen, sorry, youTube viewers, view , well I guess still listen because it&#39;s clubhouse, to the Retail Avengers versus the Metaverse. </p><h3>[00:03:11] Clubhouse Session</h3><p>[00:03:11] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right. Welcome everyone to the retail razor room. We have a really amazing topic for discussion today. I know the entire group here has been just itching to, come back and talk about the metaverse. And so we&#39;ve got five folks up here on stage. I am sure there&#39;ll be some folks from the audience that are gonna join us later.</p><p>[00:03:30] And I know we have one more of our retail Avengers team. It&#39;s gonna join us a little bit later in the hour. So without further ado, we&#39;ll do some introductions. Jeff, why don&#39;t you go first? </p><p>[00:03:39] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Hi, Jeff Roster former Gartner retail analyst now cohost of This Week In Innovation podcast.</p><p>[00:03:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thanks Jeff, Shish. </p><p>[00:03:46] <strong>Shish Shridhar:</strong> Good afternoon. I&#39;m Shish. I&#39;m the global lead for retail with Microsoft for Startups. I&#39;ve been in retail for over 20 years primarily focused on AI for retail and solutions around it. And currently just building out a portfolio of innovative startups. Thank you. </p><p>[00:04:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thank you. Brandon </p><p>[00:04:03] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> Brandon Rael, I&#39;ve also been in and around the retail consumer industries over 20 years. And since our last discussion, I&#39;ve joined Capgemini Invent team, they focus on innovation transformations and all the digital stuff we love to talk about here. So looking forward to this great conversation about the metaverse and all the potential.</p><p>[00:04:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And Trevor, </p><p>[00:04:20] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> Hey everybody. I&#39;m Trevor Sumner. I&#39;m the CEO at of perch. We do interactive digital displays at retail that use computer vision to detect which products you touch. So. We&#39;re basically instrumenting the clicks at retail, opening up new intelligence, data streams, and really cool shopping experiences for customers like Johnson and Johnson, joe Malone, Purina, Unilever, many others. </p><p>[00:04:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> All right. Great. And I&#39;m Ricardo Belmar. I started the retail razor club room here in, in clubhouse last year. Also running the retail razor show podcast with my co-host Casey golden. So everybody in the audience who hasn&#39;t subscribed yet, do yourself a favor, hit your podcast player and hit the subscribe button there.</p><p>[00:05:01] You&#39;ll find some of our past clubhouse sessions showing up in each new episode of the podcast. I&#39;m currently the lead partner marketing advisor at Microsoft for retail and consumer goods. And we are just gonna jump right into the metaverse here. So probably makes sense to start with a few good definitions.</p><p>[00:05:18] I think everybody has a definition that it&#39;s kinda like that joke about economist s where if you ask 50 different people, what the metaverse is, you get 60 different answers, something like that. But I&#39;ll throw this one out, I think this is a Wikipedia definition that defines metaverse as a collective virtual shared space created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality and the internet. And it&#39;s also defined as a network of 3d virtual worlds focused on social connection.</p><p>[00:05:51] So just to kick things off, what does everyone think of that rather complex definition.</p><p>[00:05:56] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> It&#39;s a bit overwhelming. Isn&#39;t it? , </p><p>[00:05:58] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it&#39;s a mouthful for sure.</p><p>[00:05:59] <strong>Shish Shridhar:</strong> it is! </p><p>[00:06:03] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I&#39;m gonna have to go back to my Catholic school days and and diagram that sentence. Cause I think that&#39;s about run on over, run on, over run on, but I, I mean, it&#39;s, it&#39;s, it&#39;s fine. I mean, we&#39;re gonna have about a hundred different definitions before this thing really gets up and running. I think though, intuitively we kind of understand what it is.</p><p>[00:06:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I think that&#39;s, that&#39;s a, a fair, fair statement. I mean, there&#39;s gonna be lots of definitions. I think some of the keywords, maybe I pick out from that, whether it was implied or not, is this notion of seamlessly moving between virtual and physical worlds.</p><p>[00:06:32] There&#39;s the notion of leveraging augmented reality and virtual reality. That&#39;s certainly part of it and how you actually go about interacting with that space. There was that last part of the sentence. I, I like where it just throws in&#39; and the internet&#39; into that, because we didn&#39;t wanna leave that out.</p><p>[00:06:48] but you know, you could view the internet as sort of a, a connecting glue perhaps of the, the metaverse. But I think one question I see gets asked by a lot of people at least one of the early questions is, well, are we talking about a single virtual reality world? Are we talking about multiple virtual reality worlds or is it the combination of all of them?</p><p>[00:07:06] And just this idea that I can do things in this virtual digital space that has an impact in the physical world. </p><p>[00:07:12] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> Well, to me, there is not a, the metaverse, there is many metaverses and many different environments, and I&#39;m watching people, contort themselves to define what this thing is.</p><p>[00:07:26] And I think one of the, the greatest contortions was this notion that we&#39;re already in the metaverse right, that, you know 10 years ago we spent an hour on our phones and now we spend six hours on our phones. And we interact, if you look at kind of what our digital consumption, looking at TV and looking at other kind of digital formats that, that has gone up and that we are actually already kind of working in these metaverses now I don&#39;t know that that&#39;s helpful.</p><p>[00:07:54] So the question is like, what is the definition that makes it helpful? </p><p>[00:07:58] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> And I think to Trevor&#39;s point it&#39;s ever evolving, it&#39;s ever pivoting. We can&#39;t just say that&#39;s a single metaverse, it&#39;s multiple metaverse with different customer types and different generations. So it&#39;s hard to nail down what, you know, what exactly it is.</p><p>[00:08:12] And I think what companies like Facebook or meta are doing, or like establishing a metaverse, but there&#39;s ones that already exist already that are they&#39;re in flight, you know? So it&#39;s, it&#39;s a very complex undertaken to single it to one, one single metaverse. </p><p>[00:08:24] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> Yeah. And, and I don&#39;t know that Microsoft is doing one metaverse either, right.</p><p>[00:08:27] It could be blizzard is one metaverse that they&#39;re investing in as, as an environment. And then, another game world has another. And you know, HoloLens potentially, is a whole nother thing. </p><p>[00:08:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I think you could say that you can divide this into different areas, right?</p><p>[00:08:43] There might be a, a metaverse for a work environment that you encounter there&#39;s might be a metaverse for gaming. There might be a metaverse that you go to for shopping. There might be a metaverse. You go to for fitness exercises, right? </p><p>[00:08:58] <strong>Shish Shridhar:</strong> Yep. And, and I kind of think </p><p>[00:09:00] I I&#39;ve been playing around with a few of these environments, including Microsoft&#39;s acquisition from 2018 prior to blizzard something called Altspace VR.</p><p>[00:09:09] So Altspace VR is an environment where you can set up virtual meetings. You can have a mall in there. You can have shopping experiences, all of those. And I&#39;ve also played around with decentraland where, companies like Coors and Miller Coors and, and others have been creating environments.</p><p>[00:09:26] And then there is still other ones, the popular ones being sandbox and, and a few others where some of them mimic the real world, because there&#39;s that spatial element to the metaphors where you can buy digital, digital, you can buy land and build your malls and build your spaces. And all of those things pretty much like buying domain names in the internet.</p><p>[00:09:47] And I think because there&#39;s so many of these environments, I think a point will come where you can kind of port between one and the other. I kind of believe there probably will never be a, sort of a, a single place. There will be competing environments always, but I think the tipping point will be where you can create an avatar of yourself and objects that you could kind of port from one environment to the other, make it available in multiple environments as well as in the physical world through AR. And I think that would be the, the convergence that, that we are all looking for, where you don&#39;t have to completely rebuild everything in, in all these different environments and brands that are today.</p><p>[00:10:29] I think fairly confused about which one should be, be on, should we go to the sandbox. It should we go to, to decentral land or, or one or the other platforms. </p><p>[00:10:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I think that is maybe the tricky part in these early days of almost competing metaverses . Or competing metaverse worlds maybe is a better way to further refine that statement.</p><p>[00:10:52] And how do you decide which one to go to? I, one of the things I&#39;ve noticed that I&#39;ve kind of scratched from my head at a little bit is when we see some brands deciding that their, their first experiment here in the metaverse is gonna be to just replicate exactly what they have in physical space and assume that that&#39;s gonna cause people to just flock to their location.</p><p>[00:11:09] <strong>Shish Shridhar:</strong> Yeah. I strongly feel about that. </p><p>[00:11:11] Sorry, go ahead. </p><h3>[00:11:13] Authenticity, Storytelling, Experiential</h3><p>[00:11:13] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> Oh, I&#39;m sorry. Sorry. Shish, I, I think it&#39;s, it&#39;s all about authenticity and storytelling and, and that&#39;s what we&#39;re looking for with the emergence of TikTok and Instagram, and you expect something magical and experiential and not, not replicating your day to day life and not replicating a storefront or a grocery store.</p><p>[00:11:29] We look for something different, unique and authentic, and that&#39;s what we&#39;re hoping for in terms of inspirational content, out of the metaverse. </p><p>[00:11:35] <strong>Shish Shridhar:</strong> Yeah, I kind of think it is, you know, it&#39;s an opportunity for brands and retailers really to rethink because in the past, in the 3d environments, you know, retailers have tried to recreate stores in 3d.</p><p>[00:11:47] So you could go and do the normal shopping that you do in the physical world. You could do it in the 3d world. And that has never really worked. I think it&#39;s an opportunity to, to reinvent and to really say, how can we create experiential shopping? How do we make shopable experiences in the metaverse where we create an experience, which enables us to shop for the things that we want to in that experience, rather than recreating an actual store with shelves and exactly the way it looks like in, in the real world.</p><p>[00:12:20] That is certainly one of the aspects for combining the real world and the digital world. But I think in addition, the opportunity really lies in, in creating that experience because this is all about experiential shopping and going beyond the webpage and, and making it more real. </p><p>[00:12:37] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> Yeah. I, I find that I find this conversation so interesting cuz it just it&#39;s so parallels the conversations we had 10, 12 years ago with regards to social media, like which sites do you pick and oh, you just can&#39;t put your same website on Facebook.</p><p>[00:12:51] You&#39;ve gotta do something different and what you do on Twitter or Snapchat or, or TikTok. Right. And additionally, you do need to be thoughtful about what you pick, especially in the early days, because one of the interesting economics here is that the early adopters tend to get the spoils.</p><p>[00:13:08] Right? So you look at like Ashton Kucher right. He was an early adopter of Twitter. He took on CNN on a race to a million followers. And, those early adopters, get the, get the spoils. And so, you have to lean in and say, what am I doing here that&#39;s differentiated, that&#39;s actually valuable? Where&#39;s the cool factor that people wanna talk about. Cuz otherwise I think most people do like, oh, I&#39;ll just port my website. </p><p>[00:13:37] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And there&#39;s also I think an element of how do you retain attention? Right? So it&#39;s one thing to say, oh, I&#39;m gonna jump into the metaverse I&#39;m gonna create my virtual storefront.</p><p>[00:13:45] And you&#39;ll probably get a lot of people that will come to see it just for the sheer novelty that first time. But you really need to be thinking about, what&#39;s gonna get people to come back the second time and the third and the fourth and the fifth. Another kind of extension to this point that you just brought up.</p><p>[00:14:00] The early days of social media, I&#39;m gonna go even further back to the early days of eCommerce and who remembers when there were discussions of people saying, you know, someone should build a virtual mall on the internet and get all the retailers to come and build their eCommerce sites in that virtual mall.</p><p>[00:14:15] And we know how that story went. how that played out. </p><p>[00:14:17] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> Yeah. </p><p>[00:14:17] And, I think I, yeah, I still see the echos of that in VR shopping. Which is analogous to this VR side of the house. And so I think the questions like who&#39;s actually doing interesting things versus doing analogous things.</p><p>[00:14:31] it&#39;s interesting Chris Dixon , talks about this as kind of like business skew morphism, it&#39;s just like X for Y , and you&#39;re just trying to recreate the, the same thing in the new environment, but the really interesting businesses that have exponential growth create something completely new.</p><h3>[00:14:48] Trillion dollar opportunity</h3><p>[00:14:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah. That that&#39;s true. That&#39;s true. And I&#39;m, I&#39;m, I&#39;ll throw out another interesting data point I saw. So JP Morgan claims that there&#39;s a trillion dollar market opportunity in the metaverse and I&#39;m curious what everyone thinks of that data point. I&#39;m sure Jeff has. </p><p>[00:15:03] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I&#39;ll go last. Yeah. </p><p>[00:15:05] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> Hear that sign. </p><p>[00:15:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Our analyst has to have an opinion on that.</p><p>[00:15:09] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> I&#39;ll </p><p>[00:15:09] go last. </p><p>[00:15:10] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> That&#39;s a very bold stand. I don&#39;t know what they&#39;re substantiating that on, but it it&#39;s a bold one and let&#39;s see what, what emerges, I mean, First, you have to actually capture the attention, capture the imagination, inspire generations with all this amazing content and, and find a way to retain them.</p><p>[00:15:26] Like you mentioned to even make this a commercialized opportunity for retailers and brands to want actually spend money and spend time and engage and build communities. So it potentially could be at that level, but it&#39;s certainly gonna take a lot of effort, content creation and imagination </p><p>[00:15:45] <strong>Shish Shridhar:</strong> I agree with what Brandon&#39;s saying and I think potentially yes, but I think there&#39;s a lot of things that need to happen before that. And you know, my experiments with the metaverse the, the graphics right now is a little clunky and performance is a little sluggish.</p><p>[00:15:59] So from a technology perspective, I think we are not fully there. And then the other aspect of it, I think we are still waiting in a way for AR and AR glasses to be ubiquitous cheap enough and performant enough to be used where I think that will be another tipping point we are waiting for.</p><p>[00:16:17] So there are certain things that need to happen before we go, headlong into, the metaverse. But I think there is a lot of opportunity in creating those digital experiences and marrying it with the physical world where in the physical world you could experience when you&#39;re shopping digital media, digital experiences through AR that was created in the metaverse.</p><p>[00:16:41] So you could experience either in the virtual world or the physical world through AR. Then there&#39;s so many other experiences like clothing, trying on clothing and, and that next evolution of, of streaming commerce in a way where today the streaming commerce is I would say the beginning, but in the metaverse, it kind of goes into a completely new level where you&#39;re experiencing things you&#39;re trying on things, and you are engaging with store associates in the metaverse. I&#39;ve been working with companies that are also experimenting with AI assistance companies like Soul Machines and Deep Brain that are creating these avatars, which are deep fakes of people, but powered by AI engines that are very personal and relevant.</p><p>[00:17:26] So when you engage with someone, it could be a real human you&#39;re engaging with, or an AI assistant that you&#39;re engaging with that is been trained with your data and is becoming very personal as a result. And so those are the kind of experiences I think are gonna evolve . And also, the evolution of streaming commerce is gonna be the other aspect of it. And the ability to actually create all the digital objects like furniture and all those things. Being able to create a digital twin of your home in the metaverse, furnish that home with digital goods that you buy, and then recreate that in the real world through commerce engines.</p><p>[00:18:04] And I think the headless commerce engines will play a big part in, in the metaverse where you can buy things, things that you see. So it not necessarily in a store environment, but really making that experience shoppable through, through the commerce engines. </p><p>[00:18:20] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> So I&#39;m gonna go and say yes to trillion dollars just, you know, without any qualifications, although obviously it depends on how you define this phase.</p><p>[00:18:29] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Well, neither did the writer of the article, so no one needs qualifications, apparently. </p><p>[00:18:33] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> Totally. And, and, and, oh, actually that&#39;s a little bit of my point, which, which is where I&#39;m going with this, which is, you know, look, you, you could back into it and say, the real estate market for the metaverse is at 500 million and supposed to double this year.</p><p>[00:18:46] So just the real estate market of the metaverse is a billion dollar market. And that&#39;s core metaverse, that&#39;s not like messing around and, deciding to like, I&#39;m not picking on Shish here, but like social shopping. I, I don&#39;t count that as metaverse, but when it gets to that next stage, as Shish was talking about of being in the metaverse and, and going to the next level, it is, but without playing lines, like they&#39;re billion dollar markets and it&#39;s so early with like, who&#39;s been in decentral land?</p><p>[00:19:11] Who&#39;s been in the sandbox, very few of us, right? Now at the same time. The question is, if you look at usage, it&#39;s younger people it&#39;s gen Z and like specifically, like take a look at the data in South Korea, it&#39;s astounding, they&#39;re spending more money on virtual goods for their avatars than actual physical apparel for themselves.</p><p>[00:19:30] That is crazy. Right. I think, yeah. If, if you look at that trillion dollars? Sure. Trillion dollars I&#39;m in, </p><p>[00:19:38] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> I think to that point, the, the luxury sector we&#39;re seeing all these major companies are now investing in the metaverse space. They&#39;re betting big on it. So Gucci and other major global corporations are an investment in space because it, their brand has such value in it.</p><p>[00:19:52] And they&#39;re exclusively extends to the metaverse. So if you can capture that audience and capture that imagination to, to where we had the right clothing to have the right accessories for your avatar, then it could be a, a winning proposition. I mean, it could be limitless, to be honest. </p><p>[00:20:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. I mean, if you just look at virtual goods and games, I think that&#39;s a hundred billion dollar market right there.</p><p>[00:20:11] So if we&#39;re gonna include that then to Trevor&#39;s point, you can make this work, right. You can add your way up to a trillion dollars if you keep including these different things. And if you roll in you know, brand to your point with luxury brands, any NFTs that they&#39;re starting to release, and I&#39;m, I&#39;m jumping again a little bit to, to that part of the discussion, but you know, you roll that component into your, into the math here.</p><p>[00:20:30] You can see yourself getting to a trillion dollars. If you just keep adding more and more components to it. </p><p>[00:20:34] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> And then the last, last point I wanted to make that that, that we hit to at earlier is I also don&#39;t believe anything that these guys say, right? Like it&#39;s JP Morgan chase. He like he&#39;s writing.</p><p>[00:20:43] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> There you go. </p><p>[00:20:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I think you just told Jeff&#39;s comment. </p><p>[00:20:46] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah. Thank you. You just stepped on my line </p><p>[00:20:48] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> as analysts you wanna predict things just so that you get clicks. I remember in 2001,</p><p>[00:20:53] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> no, you don&#39;t. Analysts analysts want to make intelligent points. Hack writers wanna do that. So real analysts don&#39;t wanna do that.</p><p>[00:21:02] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> I like, I, I don&#39;t know. I think analysts wanna get attention too, cuz they wanna sell the research. I remember in 2001 Forrester predict, well, they&#39;re not, especially when you predicted out six to 10 years and there&#39;s no consequence, right? In 2001, I was at a wireless center company and Forrester was predicting mobile internet traffic would outpace, internet traffic in five years.</p><p>[00:21:24] It took,</p><p>[00:21:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I remember that </p><p>[00:21:25] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> 15 and it&#39;s just like, it just wasn&#39;t even in five years it was nothing. It was less, it was less than 5%. </p><p>[00:21:31] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> Well, they had the form factor, the iPhone wasn&#39;t invented in time for that </p><p>[00:21:35] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> well, the analyst should have known that. So my, my point is JP Morgan chase missed the boat on cryptocurrency. So they wanna throw out a big number and they did. </p><p>[00:21:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. Jeff, you wanna add anything to that? </p><p>[00:21:45] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Yeah, I mean, just, I just hate these articles because one I think Trevor&#39;s really a hundred percent correct. It&#39;s it&#39;s just, you&#39;re throwing out to put out a, interesting number it&#39;s click bait to a certain degree.</p><p>[00:21:55] I&#39;d have to look at the methodology. Are we talking about IT spend to build the metaverse? Are we talking about revenue moving through the metaverse? Just, I, I don&#39;t see them. I don&#39;t see these articles being helpful as somebody that tries to understand how to forecast things. It just. It&#39;s silly.</p><p>[00:22:07] I think it&#39;s a big number. I haven&#39;t actually put the numbers together. I, I don&#39;t see a reason to do that, but it they&#39;re big and they&#39;re huge and they&#39;re gonna grow. Yeah. And that&#39;s that that&#39;s all I need to do is, is somebody that comments on the space, but is it 1,000,000,000,002, Ricardo, what was the largest number we saw?</p><p>[00:22:22] Cause we were kibitzing about that a while ago. I </p><p>[00:22:24] mean, it was, I don&#39;t know how many was there? </p><p>[00:22:26] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Was there someone else that said it was more than a trillion? I, I can&#39;t remember now. </p><p>[00:22:29] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Oh yeah. </p><p>[00:22:29] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> This is the one that stood out to me most recently. </p><p>[00:22:31] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Cause there&#39;s, there&#39;s an art and science to the game of forecasting.</p><p>[00:22:34] There should be a methodology you should be publishing that you should be talking about what you&#39;re talking about. You should talk about definitions and none of that work has really been done that I&#39;ve seen evidence by the, the conversation we had to start with, you know, sort, sort of wrestling around with what a definition is.</p><p>[00:22:48] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. </p><p>[00:22:48] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> So to, you know, do these clickbait articles just it&#39;s just frustrating. </p><p>[00:22:52] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> It&#39;s a coupling with the per Jeff&#39;s point. If you&#39;re adding in live events and advertising and keep expanding a definition of, of metaverse, it could be 800 billion to a trillion, but it&#39;s just a loose definition of it. You know, I understand gaming Roblox, et cetera.</p><p>[00:23:06] And those, those , newer, authentic spaces that we&#39;re talking about. But if you&#39;re adding all those availments in there, it will get expanded.</p><p>[00:23:12] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yep. That&#39;s a fair point. I see we&#39;ve got some raised hands and Ananda, I just invited you up onto the stage. If you have a comment or a question for us.</p><h3>[00:23:20] No, Really, What IS the Metaverse?</h3><p>[00:23:20] <strong>Ananda Chakravarty:</strong> How&#39;s it going? </p><p>[00:23:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Hey, Ananda, how are you? </p><p>[00:23:22] <strong>Ananda Chakravarty:</strong> I&#39;m thanks for inviting me, Ricardo. I do have a couple of questions. I honestly, I&#39;m, I&#39;m kind of new at this whole metaverse concept. I&#39;m you know, you guys have given me some explanations, but I think your first comment when you brought in that very ambiguous definition of metaverse really still gave me a lot of pause as to what we&#39;re really counting when we&#39;re talking about all these dollars, trillions of dollars that are potentially coming in from many different sources into a either a channel, a, a throughway, whatever you wanna call it.</p><p>[00:23:52] Aren&#39;t these just dollars that are going into variations of the internet, or maybe even variations of social commerce. I&#39;m just wondering what really defines the metaverse right now. And what, what is the real, I guess conceptually, what is it supposed to really be? Is it like that second life?</p><p>[00:24:09] The only places I&#39;ve seen the metaverse in real you know, from a realistic point of view has been in the gaming universe. You go to a Minecraft Mojang location. You can find tons of people playing, engaging, and effectively having their avatars in the universe. Right. But I&#39;ve not seen that from a retail perspective.</p><p>[00:24:26] I&#39;ve not seen that from almost any other kind of context. Maybe Shish you have some, you had some thoughts of some examples that you shared, but I&#39;d like to get a better definition of what it really means to be a metaverse and what that is from an overall perspective. </p><p>[00:24:40] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Well, I&#39;ll jump in on, on a couple thoughts there and then maybe Shish, I think you might have some things to add. I mean, for me, there has to be an element of this, you know, virtual world that is representing something in the digital space that you&#39;re interacting with. So whether we call that, a virtual world, you access through VR glasses or something like that, it, I think is sort of a secondary point.</p><p>[00:25:00] I think you&#39;re right, that in the gaming space is probably where it&#39;s leading in this area. If my kids are an indication, then things like Roblox, is sort of an early version of, of what can happen in the metaverse. Although I&#39;ll, as a side note, make a point that I just read an article today about how Roblox, since they IPOed, I think their about their stock has dropped about 50%. So I don&#39;t know if that&#39;s sending a message or not, but I think gaming is definitely an area that maybe leads the way here.</p><p>[00:25:23] I have seen some good examples of what I alluded to early on in the session about the metaverse at work, where companies would use a virtual space, for example, to facilitate onboarding new employees. So in a remote work era when you don&#39;t necessarily bring all of your new hires into a common physical location, you could bring them into that virtual space and have them interact with other employees and go through training exercises and such there.</p><p>[00:25:48] I think there&#39;s definitely a use case there. And then I&#39;ve seen in the manufacturing side and, and production environments. If you&#39;re building a product and you need to either do maintenance on something, or you&#39;re trying to figure out how things are connected in a assembly line. You know, there there&#39;s some value in using an augmented reality experience there, which I would, again, still label as part of a metaverse that allows you to virtually manipulate some of the physical items that you&#39;re working with in a way that might help you understand how you need to manipulate them in the physical space.</p><p>[00:26:19] So it&#39;s the idea that Shish mentioned earlier about digital twins. I think that&#39;s an early use case that makes a lot of sense for metaverse applications. I think what we&#39;re all kind of getting to, and I&#39;m curious, everybody else here will think about this comment, that when we start looking at the commerce application of it, which is really what, what retailers care about, what consumers might care about, where are those use cases coming from? And I&#39;m gonna let everybody comment, but I think the next thing we should probably get to, because I think it&#39;s related, you know, we often hear the term metaverse not too many sentences removed from terms like web 3.0 and NFTs. And I think there&#39;s a reason for that association when it comes to evaluating the commerce implications, but I&#39;m gonna leave that comment there for us to come back to and see what everybody else here has to has to say in response to Ananda&#39;s comment.</p><p>[00:27:06] <strong>Jeff Roster:</strong> Well, so I love that. And you can tell Ananda was a analyst. Cause if you draw the circle big enough, you mean you could, you could drag everything into it. But I think what I would say is in that&#39;s just now, since I&#39;ve spent so long talking to some of the folks that are building these pieces of metaverses. There&#39;s technology that that&#39;s at play right now.</p><p>[00:27:23] If you look at some of the interviews I did Obsess is doing 3d objects and that will clearly be a key capability in a metaverse world. And that&#39;s available on websites today. AR I think, you know, certainly not here, but far more interesting to me than, than VR is because I can, you know, being a pilot I&#39;m used to having a lot of data feeds come in and I want to be able to walk through a store and look for nutritional information the way I do when I&#39;m flying. So there&#39;s big chunks that were in the very, very early stages of a buildout, which is why I hate those articles that say it&#39;s a two or 3 trillion or $1 trillion market, because we&#39;re the early stages of this build out.</p><p>[00:27:56] I think Roblox is, is their market cap is phenomenal and that&#39;s a component of it. So there&#39;s, there&#39;s pieces that are there and there&#39;s, speculation and everyone wants to get their, you know, get their clicks in. But there&#39;s a lot of real true value that I&#39;m seeing already in pieces.</p><p>[00:28:11] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> So can we shift the conversation about who&#39;s doing really cool stuff in, in the metaverse and like start defining the problem space less by abstract lines that and define a little bit more about like real world stuff that people can do in the metaverse things that are interesting or even successful at this point.</p><p>[00:28:28] <strong>Ananda Chakravarty:</strong> Would love to hear that Trevor. I mean, just, you know, when I think of metaverse, I&#39;m thinking second life I&#39;m thinking we had islands and all sorts of cool, neat stuff there with big huge I guess advertising, if you will a huge banner for IBM in, in a, you know, a corner of this quote world.</p><p>[00:28:45] But what did it really translate into in terms of dollars in terms of value in terms of productivity for the, the world? I mean, that&#39;s the question at the end of the day. </p><h3>[00:28:54] Where physical and virtual converge</h3><p>[00:28:54] <strong>Shish Shridhar:</strong> And I kind of think the, the second world and the virtual worlds that&#39;s been done in the past is sort of just leading up to where we are now, the metaverse, which is the convergence of physical worlds and virtual worlds and, and really having a multidimensional interface to, to that environment. So people can join into a metaverse right from the physical world, could be shopping in an area or in a physical space and become and interact with people in the virtual space and the other way around. And I think that convergence of real world and virtual world is one of the, I would say the bigger differentiators in addition to you also mentioned, you know, the ability to, to monetize engagements, to be able to create things in the metaverse and experience those things by those things in the physical world, as well as the, the virtual world.</p><p>[00:29:44] And I think that&#39;s the other aspect, which second life didn&#39;t really have. It didn&#39;t really have that convergence of real world and, and physical world and the, the ability to experience it, you know, no matter what, where you are. And I think that&#39;s really the, one of the differentiators anyway. </p><p>[00:30:00] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> Yeah, I, I would agree with that.</p><p>[00:30:01] And so let&#39;s talk about what, what some of that looks like. Right? So stock X, for example launch an NFT where you&#39;d get a, a physical product as well as your virtual product. And so, you&#39;d get your Nike air Jordan&#39;s and you get a virtual version as well. Now, that&#39;s kind of a cool way to think about, collectibles, the challenge came several weeks later when Nike sued them and said, whoa, you&#39;re violating our trademarks by selling a virtual Nike item. And right, so like this, some stuff that needs to be worked out there are other people who are treating this physical purchase as also this digital representation patron, you could buy a bottle patron, they get like a special, you know, commemorative patron, icebox, I think they called it. And you get also a physical bottle that&#39;s, a limited addition, et cetera. </p><p>[00:30:47] So I, I think of it almost as like a lot of this as a membership club and NFTs as like a deed to something. And in this case, like either a loyalty club or a membership club that gives you access to the physical world.</p><p>[00:30:58] I think when you, you start, if you think about loyalty as like points, if, if the points in your metaverse as a game. Start giving you access to the real world. If your interaction in the metaverse with Chanel gets you to the new Chanel fashion show or the, the new, line that comes out and you get to, to go to the store or some V I P this starts becoming really, really compelling.</p><p>[00:31:24] And it&#39;s a way for brands to create engagement with their brands across all different properties and convert to real world commerce and, and virtual commerce too. And, and I think that&#39;s exciting. </p><p>[00:31:35] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> Yeah. And, and add to all that we talked about luxury being the, the ultimate sandbox for, for the metaverse it&#39;s, it&#39;s already happening.</p><p>[00:31:42] Gucci&#39;s has sold a digital the honest purse, but thousands more than it&#39;s worth in real life. So versus a physical product. Dulce Gabbana, sold a a 5.7 million nine piece NFT collection. Saying that their gems can&#39;t be found in real life, on earth and in the digital world, metaverse, world&#39;s more, more exclusive and more prestigious.</p><p>[00:32:01] And then Nike lands on the Roblox platform. And they also acquired the virtual sneaker and collectables company or a star company called RT FK T studios. So Nike has been one of the leaders and luxury space has been on fire. </p><p>[00:32:13] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> Let let&#39;s talk about Nike land for a second.</p><p>[00:32:15] I think that&#39;s a great example. Right? So how are retailers using it? So Nike land, you can buy shoes that don&#39;t exist in the real world. Well, okay. Who cares? Well, they can look at the popularity and say, oh, people really like this shoe. We&#39;re gonna use it as kind of data demand data to determine which products that they are going to create.</p><p>[00:32:37] So they may launch a hundred virtual shoes. Just take their top 10% performers and actually create real versions of those shoes. If you think about that as part of your marketing funnel, as your brand engagement funnel that&#39;s pretty exciting. And then you can start thinking about, well, if you bought that shoe and we end up making it, you get 20% off or you get it engraved or you get, the special version of it with, you know, who knows, you know, like, </p><p>[00:33:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah, there there&#39;s like a loyalty implication that goes along with that, right.</p><p>[00:33:06] Loyalty, a hundred that makes it much more appealing in, in both spaces, right? Digital </p><p>[00:33:11] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> Totally. And if, because of all of these benefits, you spend time in Nike land and you spend hours and hours interacting with Nikes, Nikes, Nikes, Nikes, Nikes. What are you gonna do in the real world?</p><p>[00:33:22] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You need buy more Nike. </p><p>[00:33:23] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> Right. You&#39;re gonna buy more. Nike, you&#39;re gonna talk about Nike. You&#39;re gonna wear more Nike. You&#39;re gonna talk about how the Nikes you&#39;re wearing matches your avatar in Fortnite and allows you to jump 20% higher. </p><p>[00:33:35] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You&#39;re gonna post pictures on Instagram. </p><p>[00:33:36] <strong>Ananda Chakravarty:</strong> Trevor, have a strange feeling.</p><p>[00:33:38] You actually own a pair of Nikes, just a guess </p><p>[00:33:42] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> strong feel. </p><p>[00:33:42] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> Okay. All right. So just virtual ones, one, I, I do own Nikes. I&#39;m sure. Somewhere in my collection, but they&#39;re, they&#39;re, they&#39;re not my basketball show choice. And I&#39;m not actually all that loyal to Nike as a brand. It turns out, but I think what they&#39;re doing here is really.</p><p>[00:33:56] <strong>Ananda Chakravarty:</strong> Yeah, I kind of like that example, but because that&#39;s the closest I&#39;ve gotten from what I&#39;ve seen out there and Jeff kind of hit on the, a couple of points on this as well, by the way. And that is when we start thinking about these different pieces that are, that are coming together, are they really big enough to be mainstream, right?</p><p>[00:34:13] I mean, that&#39;s what metaverse, and this whole thing that meta itself and Facebook is trying to push is that this is really a mainstream function. That&#39;s, that&#39;s gonna be, you know kind of a, a, a combination of what&#39;s gonna happen in movies, like ready player one and and The other one, right?</p><p>[00:34:28] I mean, that&#39;s, what&#39;s eventually going to be the world, as we know it, if you will, the physical and the blurring of, of this digital avatar state, I just don&#39;t know how much reality there is to that. If these are very, you know, focused on these very specialized cases, it has to be something that is really very popular before it becomes anything close to mainstream.</p><p>[00:34:48] And I don&#39;t think we&#39;re close to that at this time. </p><p>[00:34:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it&#39;s definitely early. </p><p>[00:34:51] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> So the, yes, but you know, you&#39;re talking about concerts in the metaverse being attended by tens of millions of people. Like that&#39;s pretty size. I mean, like, I don&#39;t know what you talk about scale, but like that&#39;s, that&#39;s the biggest concert in the world.</p><p>[00:35:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> It depends on the category. Right. And you know, we started out this, with the Nike example, talking about an apparel example, and, I could argue, for example, apparel overall, I think is actually in some ways could be defined as a shrinking market, right? Because what the same amount of money that used to take for you to buy apparel 20 years ago, you can buy a lot more now, putting the side, whether it&#39;s a luxury brand or an off price brand, you can get more for your money in apparel, which means that individual apparel brands, they&#39;ve gotta find other ways to diversify a bit and find new sources to get revenue from what potentially is a shrinking share. So one area where they can do that of course, is in this metaverse digital space. You know, another example of thrown an addition to Nike, Ralph Lauren, right? Ralph Lauren created a space in Roblox and they&#39;ve, they&#39;re selling digital Ralph Lauren collection to Roblox gamers.</p><p>[00:35:51] So is, is that a significant revenue source for them? I&#39;m not sure that it is now, but I think, from an experimenting point of view, it&#39;s a great idea to try it. I think that&#39;s where we&#39;ll see lots of interest from retailers is just trying different things. This is one of those areas where there&#39;s gonna have to be a lot of experimentation now, long term, is that a significant amount of revenue?</p><p>[00:36:11] And I think it could be cuz Trevor to your point, if millions of people start getting interested, that&#39;s a potentially, much larger audience than you get from a physical space. </p><p>[00:36:20] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> Right. And, and also, do we measure this as marketing dollars? Right. Right. I got 10 million people to look at this thing.</p><p>[00:36:27] Like they didn&#39;t buy the thing, but did that translate to some </p><p>[00:36:30] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> yeah. What did it do to our brand awareness </p><p>[00:36:32] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> brand awareness and eventual sales, right, </p><p>[00:36:34] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> exactly. Yes. It&#39;s one more touch point to track in that customer journey. </p><p>[00:36:38] <strong>Trevor Sumner:</strong> Right. And, and so, there&#39;s a company called pretty little things that created a digital only model that they&#39;re now using in their advertising, right? Like what if we start thinking about, the ability to leverage metaverse in all other types of digital content channels and then to the point of, Hey, let&#39;s not do the analogous thing. Like, oh, I wonder what a werewolf would look like in Gucci.</p><p>[00:37:01] Like how do you start doing stuff that&#39;s more creative and interesting and, and goes across all of that. And what&#39;s the value of that from a marketing return on investment. </p><p>[00:37:09] <strong>Shish Shridhar:</strong> I think the, idea that Trevor kind of pointed out about new idea validation is a very powerful one for brands. So really testing out the digital products, the popularity of the digital products before going into production in the real world, and this could apply to apparel shoes, it could apply to furniture, furnishing the digital twin of your home with, with furniture and then getting, a sense of, is this a good design enough before actually going into the real world and potentially maybe car designs, all of those kind of things.</p><p>[00:37:38] I think it&#39;s got a huge potential. </p><p>[00:37:40] <strong>Ananda Chakravarty:</strong> I know Michael. Hasn&#39;t had a chance to talk, but he&#39;s on the stage. So maybe </p><p>[00:37:43] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> welcome, michael . </p><p>[00:37:45] <strong>Michael Zakkour:</strong> Hey guys, </p><p>[00:37:46] <strong>Brandon Rael:</strong> rockstar. Michael, </p><p>[00:37:47] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> how are you? </p><p>[00:37:48] <strong>Michael Zakkour:</strong> So many loved and familiar faces. </p><h3>[00:37:51] The foundation is only a beginning for retail</h3><p>[00:37:51] <strong>Michael Zakkour:</strong> Okay. Just a couple things I think that need to be cleared up. There&#39;s a lot of confusion, nevermind with the average person and consumer within our industry, whether it&#39;s retail technology, development, whatever between the metaverse, web three, NFT, and blockchain.</p><p>[00:38:08] And we&#39;ve been talking clearly about the metaverse, but there&#39;s some underlying foundational with web three NFT, blockchain, and how it relates to retail. The first thing I wanna say is they&#39;re not the same thing. The thing that we see most often, or I see most often out in the marketplace is people confusing web three and metaverse meaning sort of the same thing.</p><p>[00:38:32] They&#39;re not. The second thing I&#39;d wanna say is there is no metaverse yet. It doesn&#39;t exist. Okay. And if you run into a company Zuckerberg who tells you they&#39;re building the metaverse runaway quickly, if you run into anybody who has a complete answer that says, I know what the metaverse is and will be run away.</p><p>[00:38:57] right. It&#39;s just not possible at this point. We are with metaverse web three NFT and blockchain integration, basically where internet technologies and eCommerce were in 1997. Right. We&#39;re at the very, very early stages of it. What I can tell you is you do need to think about where the metaverse web three NFT and blockchain exist as separate entities and how they integrate to eventually come to occlusion on something that is something we can call a metaverse or a multiple of a metaverse.</p><p>[00:39:35] Okay. As it relates to retail one of the most surprising and, and happiest things I&#39;ve seen is that, you know, six years ago, I was still arguing with all of my luxury clients about whether they should even recognize that something called the internet exists. And a lot of these luxury companies have gone all in and are the leading edge on developing metaverse based web three NFT, blockchain offering. So interesting there.</p><p>[00:40:05] And so this is really guys on the retail front. I can&#39;t emphasize this enough. Retail is the leading edge of what will become the metaverse. I can&#39;t define for you what it is right now, but we are building it. So I think, I don&#39;t know if it was Ananda,</p><p>[00:40:22] it might have been Ananda who asked, are there some real life examples of where this is going? We can look at the Gucci platform. We can look at what LVMH is doing with digital avatars, but all of this is it&#39;s something beyond an add-on to the internet. As we know it, it&#39;s a complete redefinition of how we experience, right.</p><p>[00:40:44] And you guys have heard me talk about ecosystems and the new retail model being the complete integration of online, offline technology, supply chain, entertainment, and media. This is the next step above it. How do you bring that to life in 3d? Whether it&#39;s use of devices or not. It doesn&#39;t matter, guys. We don&#39;t know what the metaverse is yet.</p><p>[00:41:08] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah. That&#39;s an interesting point. Certainly in the early phases of any new technological area, right though, that early phase, there&#39;s the novelty of it being new. That gets attention.</p><p>[00:41:17] You can spend through any number of, of marketing outlets to drive traffic the first time. The real question is how do you keep them coming back. And I think there&#39;s a, a component there, you know, we&#39;ve only touched or I realize we&#39;re coming up on the hour, so I&#39;m gonna bring us to a closing point here.</p><p>[00:41:31] With one last comment I&#39;ll throw out and you guys did a good job bringing this up and differentiating between web three NFTs and, and the metaverse. But it&#39;s the combination of these things, right? It&#39;s the combination of how brands are going to drive the usage of these elements to make that experience worth repeating and worth experiencing over and over and over again for those consumers.</p><p>[00:41:52] And I think that&#39;s, what&#39;s going to be the, the key experiment area. We see happening at least over the next year. And in these, I&#39;m gonna keep calling it the early phases. It may be here, but I think Michael, the way you put it was very nice that, you know, whatever it is, it&#39;s not well defined yet. And that&#39;s probably why we all struggled at the beginning of this hour to come up with a good definition that wasn&#39;t as clunky as the one that I read off from Wikipedia.</p><p>[00:42:16] And that&#39;s because it really is still something that has to be figured out by everyone who&#39;s going to not just dip their toes in, but dive in and build something.</p><p>[00:42:25] Especially when you have, what I would describe as the convergence of a number of different technologies that are making this possible at the same time that I guess opens the door for a lot of less interesting ,let&#39;s say, solutions and capabilities, but, we&#39;re essentially bringing together, I&#39;m just gonna list out all the things that we&#39;ve mentioned, there&#39;s blockchain, low code, VR, AR of course the internet, which was just thrown in, I love how that was thrown in that Wikipedia definition at the very end of the run on sentence.</p><p>[00:42:50] And that&#39;s just to start right. There are a number of other technical capabilities and technologies, and all of these had to converge to get us to the point where we can start to build this out. So I think it&#39;s exciting to see where it&#39;s gonna go. It&#39;s exciting to see what retailers and brands are going to come up with.</p><p>[00:43:03] And that&#39;s why we like to keep this discussion forum going. Cuz it gives us a way to, to speak to different things with our collection of speakers, everybody&#39;s got a different viewpoint, a different focus area that they&#39;ve read about and we&#39;ve all consumed different types of content and different pieces of articles and such.</p><p>[00:43:20] So when we all get together and cover one topic, we can all bring a different angle to it. </p><p>[00:43:24] And I think with that note, we&#39;re gonna wrap things up in the room today. The the fact is , this topic is so rich and so involved that we, we could have had just a short bullet point list of 10 other things to talk about and probably fill another 10 hours of this.</p><p>[00:43:38] So I&#39;m sure we will be scheduling more metaverse discussions in the future . And with that, I&#39;m gonna thank everyone for joining us in the audience and thank our folks who came up here for some questions and all the other speakers, and we will close out the room from there. Thanks everybody. </p><h3>[00:43:54] Metaverse Recap</h3><p>[00:43:54] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Welcome back retail, razor show listeners and viewers. We hope you enjoyed that Retail Avenger&#39;s clubhouse session on the metaverse.</p><p>[00:44:07] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It was a great session. I love the focus on what the metaverse is and what it&#39;s not. And honestly, you guys just killed me with the debate on this trillion dollar opportunity. This is gonna, you know, grab your popcorn. Like this is gonna be fun.</p><p>[00:44:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, that really got everybody jumping on that one. A good, good discussion on a few retail examples too, like Nike for one, I mean, what, what do you think about what Nike&#39;s doing, Casey?</p><p>[00:44:30] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> It was really smart for them to just acquire artifact. really early. And throw legal to round up and protect their brand. They&#39;re filing new trademarks and sending out cease and desist to companies trying to make money off their swoosh. And I think that this is something that a lot of brands are doing right now is getting ready, getting prepared and protecting their brand.</p><p>[00:44:53] And they&#39;re gonna have to do that. Nike land, their Roblox micro metaverse has already attracted like over 7 million people in 224 countries. Like this is not a bad start. This, this space has such low expectations on the design side.</p><p>[00:45:12] just play</p><p>[00:45:13] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. Yeah.</p><p>[00:45:14] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> it. Doesn&#39;t have to be perfect.</p><p>[00:45:17] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I have to agree. Have to agree with that one that that&#39;s so true and, and pretty impressive, that they&#39;ve got so many people attracted to it at these early stages. So, one of the topics I do think we covered a bit, but honestly we could do another entire show on it. Is this idea of digital twins.</p><p>[00:45:33] Shish brought it up first. I think we touched on it with Nike specifically, and then Trevor highlighted it a bit more for me, the idea of brands using these digital twins to test new products, see what&#39;s popular, then use that knowledge and insight and to decide what products and features they wanna drive to scale maybe for a big product launch.</p><p>[00:45:53] And I think that&#39;s a massive use case. It certainly shortens the time to market. In that whole process. So I, I have to believe we&#39;re gonna see more and more of that. And I suppose it&#39;s kind of right up your alley. Isn&#39;t it. Casey.</p><p>[00:46:03] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yes, but I mean, the conversations I&#39;m having is, defining a digital twin it&#39;s it&#39;s, it&#39;s turning into an omnichannel debate of like, what is a digital twin? And I&#39;ve seen brands using digital twining as an opportunity to pre-sell the physical item include an avatar wearable file. So that they are digital twin to their avatar providing a gift with purchase for like a flex on the item, by sharing that an NFT with an, an artistic version or a very photo realistic version of the item kind of with that proof of purchase and authenticity.</p><p>[00:46:45] And then just to test a new product into the crypto community, right. This web three and crypto community is a different consumer group. They may have had this consumer group already serviced in their stores or online, but they didn&#39;t know that trait necessarily. They didn&#39;t know that the, that consumer is also part of a different community, then what they might be familiar with or the way that they would&#39;ve seen their communities in general.</p><p>[00:47:13] So there&#39;s a lot of different digital twins that are out in the market. And I think we really need to understand what is a use case for these digital twins and what do they do because it&#39;s consumer facing. And so just like omnichannel, this is gonna get very confusing.</p><p>[00:47:31] If we can&#39;t decide what a digital twin is, and maybe there&#39;s a wearable twin or a meta twin, or I don&#39;t know, we need to start coming together and using words that mean something</p><p>[00:47:45] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Be before we have another Omni channel.</p><p>[00:47:47] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> before we have another Omni channel</p><p>[00:47:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> You have to agree with that. And you bring up a, a good point too there about the, community building aspect of all of this, especially when you start to tie in web three and NFTs and in the metaverse, which admittedly, we, we didn&#39;t have a lot of time to get into that in the clubhouse session. I&#39;m sure there&#39;ll be some future sessions for that kind of discussion.</p><p>[00:48:10] But I, with, with all these kinds of examples, would you say apparel and luxury brands are kind of taking over the early metaverse right now? Are they really the early adopters? I mean, who would you say is missing out right now? That should be jumping in.</p><p>[00:48:22] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Luxury is leading technology. Like I just said that luxury is leading </p><p>[00:48:27] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> out there now. </p><p>[00:48:28] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Is out there and I am so, like, I just got goosebumps. Like I am so proud of the luxury industry adopting tech. And being on board this innovation train, it makes so much sense for the luxury space because the crypto and web three, the crypto space is literally the NFT space was built off of rarity, exclusivity, and these are all the values that are shared, you know, VIP&#39;s, this is something that luxury space can really get behind because they have the same core values, unlike a self serve model or a Facebook advertising model. It&#39;s very hard for them to get on board because the core values at the end of the day are so separate.</p><p>[00:49:12] So that&#39;s why I believe there is a future over here. Luxury&#39;s going to figure it out. I don&#39;t know what that means at gap, but, Balenciaga is doing a really great job. Gucci&#39;s killing it and they&#39;re building it into their business. And I think that it&#39;s wonderful. They are early adopters. And at the end of the day, we&#39;re in the business of selling products, selling physical products.</p><p>[00:49:37] I haven&#39;t spoken to a single brand that has been excited about selling a digital good. they&#39;re like, so if I make this 3d asset or this digital good, or this NFT, like how much product can I move?</p><p>[00:49:50] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. Yeah. How does that help me sell the physical products I&#39;m sell.</p><p>[00:49:55] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> They want to sell physical goods. Even though like, it could be a lot cheaper to sell digital goods. We are going to be figuring out what these digital twins are and how they&#39;re going to facilitate these real life purchases. And that&#39;s essentially how it&#39;s going to be defined, but the brands see I&#39;m finding, they just wanna sell more product.</p><p>[00:50:15] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> right. </p><p>[00:50:15] I mean, at the end of the day, the digital goods they might sell, it&#39;s like in the, all the video game, virtual worlds where you see all of these digital assets sold, it&#39;s, it&#39;s real money. It&#39;s, meaningful money, but compared to what these luxury brands are selling and, and generating in sales, in physical goods, it&#39;s an incremental revenue at most. It&#39;s not gonna replace the physical goods revenue, but it helps motivate more physical sales.</p><p>[00:50:40] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> oh my goodness. I just have to share this there is narrative out here right now. That that there are companies that are creating digital clothing saying that this is the most sustainable way to shop, and this is how we&#39;re going to save the world. I&#39;m like, I&#39;m sorry, but what are we wearing me buying a digital t-shirt.</p><p>[00:51:02] How is that</p><p>[00:51:03] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> help you in the real</p><p>[00:51:04] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> shopping? </p><p>[00:51:07] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> How are you, how are you, wearing that digital t-shirt Casey</p><p>[00:51:10] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Right. Like, I&#39;m sorry, but that&#39;s not going to work. I still need to go buy physical clothes, but just the narrative twist on this, that this is the most sustainable way to shop, and </p><p>[00:51:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s one way to look at</p><p>[00:51:21] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> these resources.</p><p>[00:51:22] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s one way to look at it.</p><p>[00:51:24] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I just couldn&#39;t, I just couldn&#39;t.</p><p>[00:51:26] I had to, just leave for a moment and I&#39;m like, yeah, I don&#39;t even know how to have a conversation with this person right now, because , they do not believe that anybody should be physically manufacturing clothes. I&#39;m like, this is kinda impossible here.</p><p>[00:51:41] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> That&#39;s gonna go far in the, in the industry for sure.</p><p>[00:51:43] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. I just like, okay, I&#39;m confused, but okay. Continue.</p><p>[00:51:49] So one thing that, that came up in the clubhouse discussion that is worth more attention is this idea of multiple metaverses. What&#39;d you get, let&#39;s just keep confusing the consumer, but you have some thoughts on this and I&#39;d love to hear them.</p><p>[00:52:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Oh</p><p>[00:52:05] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> like, let&#39;s dive.</p><p>[00:52:06] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> I let let&#39;s dive into this one. We didn&#39;t go too deep, deep into it, but yeah, I, I think there&#39;s at least, fundamentally three kinds of metaverses and yeah, it&#39;ll probably confuse consumers, but hopefully we&#39;ll we&#39;ll get through that.</p><p>[00:52:17] Cuz I think much like omnichannel, consumers don&#39;t care about the terms or the words they just care about what are they doing with it? So, I think of these three groups, first being industrial and a big part of that is this whole discussion we just had on digital twins.</p><p>[00:52:31] There&#39;s factory modeling and automation. There are a lot of consumer goods brands taking advantage of this, where they&#39;re modeling their entire production lines. It&#39;s helping them get better visibility into their operations. They can use historical sensor data. You see a lot of this being coupled with iOT technology. So that as that manufacturer, they learn over time. They look at the data over the history of their manufacturing process and they figure out how to make it better, how to operationalize new changes without having to physically do them at the factory so they can see what the impact is.</p><p>[00:53:04] And that leads to a more efficient, lower cost production, so this one&#39;s all about simulating and then automating in the real world based on what you learned in that metaverse model. And you can think about things beyond retail, right? And you and I have talked about medical applications, there&#39;s telehealth, where this makes sense training for healthcare providers.</p><p>[00:53:23] You can see how pharma companies might use this in their research work for designing new life saving drugs. And, you know, and then plus, we&#39;re already seeing healthcare converging with retail. So this is an area we could see some interesting things that none of us have thought of yet start to come up.</p><p>[00:53:37] So that&#39;s industrial metaverse then, then I think of the workplace metaverse and this one&#39;s kind of interesting. So with all the work from home that everyone&#39;s been experiencing in the last few years, Accenture is an example that comes to my mind. They actually built a version of their headquarters, in a metaverse and they started doing their new hire onboarding in that metaverse space.</p><p>[00:53:57] So rather than, giving you a whole bunch of PDF follows or emailing you a ton of material as a new employee, you actually join the office workplace. Metaverse. Meet other avatars of other new hires and other employees. And you can actually move around this place. You can manipulate, 3d models of what the office looks like.</p><p>[00:54:16] You might have a 3d whiteboard space in there so that what you would&#39;ve done in a conference room with a 2d whiteboard you&#39;re doing in this workplace metaverse and then after you&#39;ve been onboarded , you start holding meetings in this virtual space and it starts to look like the sci-fi movies we see when people are waving their hands in the air, manipulating things on a holographic screen, and you can do that in the metaverse right with the right technology and the right tools that you can&#39;t do that on a 2d whiteboard.</p><p>[00:54:41] This is where there&#39;s some interesting Microsoft technologies that are at play to make this interesting. I work with some partners who are doing this this kind of space.</p><p>[00:54:48] So lots of possibilities there. And then the third metaverse I think of is probably the one that most consumers think of, which I&#39;ll, I&#39;ll call it the entertainment metaverse, but it&#39;s basically, where all the virtual reality games come into light, so , that&#39;s a pretty straightforward one to understand.</p><p>[00:55:02] I would argue though, the real significance of all these is that any of these metaverses can be looked at as delivering a commerce capability. It&#39;s not just the entertainment metaverse that we expect to see commerce happening. It could be any of these. There&#39;s nothing that says I have to have a hard and fast rule about what that metaverse model is.</p><p>[00:55:21] The whole point in this metaverse space is I&#39;m not constrained by physical reality limitations. I can do things any way we want. So why couldn&#39;t there be commerce applications across all of them?</p><p>[00:55:31] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah. I mean, I&#39;m not working with goggles on, so staring at a computer screen for 18 20 hours a day is bad enough with our eyes and mental health. There&#39;s lots of people who get migraines. This is very much a conductor for it. And the people who are building the meta for work or these metaverses for work, they don&#39;t even work in the metaverse that they&#39;re building.</p><p>[00:55:58] So I just don&#39;t know how we&#39;re expected to participate. If the builders can&#39;t find the value in building the metaverse for work in it.</p><p>[00:56:10] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right.</p><p>[00:56:11] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> I just it&#39;s. If they can&#39;t find the value to do it on a day to day and be building there, then I don&#39;t see how anybody else is expected to go in there and do it if they already don&#39;t wanna do it.</p><p>[00:56:23] And don&#39;t find it as productive. </p><p>[00:56:24] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, we didn&#39;t get into that in the, the clubhouse session, but I, I can&#39;t remember. It might have been Shish that brought it up, that everybody gets excited talking about the capabilities with these metaverse technologies, but at the end of the day, the fact that no one&#39;s gonna sit around in the workplace metaverses for eight hours a day wearing all this equipment. Everybody&#39;s already stressed enough being on teams calls and zoom calls for hours on end during the day. So who&#39;s gonna add more layers to that. So, and I think again, shish brought up the point that while the technology&#39;s really good.</p><p>[00:56:53] It&#39;s made a huge amount of progress. It&#39;s still not quite where we need it to be for these things to be a hundred percent mainstream. And to be totally comfortable. For short periods, sure. I mean, I can see the onboarding piece, right? You&#39;re the new hire. There&#39;s an onboarding session that might be an hour here, a half hour there, but it&#39;s not a straight 10 hour, day kind of thing, because nobody wants that.</p><p>[00:57:15] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> oh yeah. Most people work like eight, 10 hour days.</p><p>[00:57:18] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> oh, yeah, yeah. Except maybe, you know, startup life, but that&#39;s another show</p><p>[00:57:24] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> so no, I think the retail training and the company onboarding in the metaverse is valid, I mean, I think we&#39;ve all started a job at some point where our first day, we just, we get handed a four inch, six inch binder and told to read it, memorize it. This is your first day. So I think that, that definitely could change.</p><p>[00:57:45] And even just being able to have that mentorship, even if it&#39;s like an AI in this type of situation where you can go through multi-step training multi-month multi-year. I think the retail training is a huge opportunity because it would allow for easier role play between a customer and the retail associate, even because, I mean, I don&#39;t know about you if somebody says, okay, go role play.</p><p>[00:58:15] I&#39;m like already on the floor, like laughing uncontrollably. Cause I can&#39;t do it.</p><p>[00:58:20] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Right. Yeah. Yeah.</p><p>[00:58:21] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> like </p><p>[00:58:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> true. Yeah. That that&#39;s not an easy thing. Yeah. Yeah.</p><p>[00:58:24] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> not an actor for a reason. So I think that there&#39;s it does take a little bit of that personal personality or whatever away from us, so we can just kind of be and like play a video game. And it&#39;s a lot easier to absorb over time than it is reading this four inch book, especially in things where you need to be customer facing.</p><p>[00:58:44] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Yeah, I think you make a good point there. And with all of these caveats and, conditions and constraints that we&#39;re highlighting, I suppose we would be totally remiss if we didn&#39;t offer some thoughts on, okay, where do you go next with the metaverse? We&#39;ve kind of told you what cool things there are happening, what it is.</p><p>[00:59:03] We&#39;ve talked about things to watch out for. So what do you do about it? And of course, this was one of our 2022 predictions from back in season one, episode four, back then , we said metaverse was an important trend for this year. Obviously we&#39;re still talking about it. So I think we kind of nailed that one.</p><p>[00:59:17] But while we didn&#39;t go so far as to say it was gonna be a new money generating sales channel for retailers and brands, we did say that you should be experimenting with the metaverse and with NFTs and, and web three, start feeling out where your customers are, what appetite they have for all of this.</p><p>[00:59:32] And I think we even mentioned digital twins back then, too, which we&#39;ve highlighted a lot in this episode, and it&#39;s still my favorite use case right now. So Casey, what would be your top recommendations for brands?</p><p>[00:59:43] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Yeah, I think number one, you&#39;ve got to start building a community. An email address is not a relationship. Open up a discord account and start moving your email marketing list into discord members has two way conversation. Step two, I would pretty much say like get on Twitter, reactivate the brand&#39;s Twitter account.</p><p>[01:00:05] Everybody in this space is not on Instagram, so, they need to go ahead and get onto Twitter. Third step I&#39;d essentially say, like start collecting your customers&#39; crypto wallet addresses. So you can start understanding, do you have an address? Do I need to provide education? And can you go ahead and make sure you know how many customers you have access to, to essentially airdrop think of it as like web three&#39;s email address?</p><p>[01:00:30] That needs to essentially just happen now. I really suggest brands launching an NFT and not necessarily, this whole collection. It doesn&#39;t have to be a big deal. It doesn&#39;t even have to be in the press. It just needs to be hyper segmented to a small group to learn and build these initiatives with the brand for those NFT holders.</p><p>[01:00:51] And until you have a compelling utility, this could be a V I P NFT, and you just invite 600 people or 200 people. And just really try to figure out how do you engage with these NFT holders? How do you talk to them? What do you do for them? What&#39;s the benefit? Does it get you a blowout at a salon in New York?</p><p>[01:01:15] Because like they&#39;re friends, does it get you private shopping on e-com? Does it get you New York fashion week tickets, you know, really thinking about , what&#39;s the value of these customers having this NFT and just spend time until you can figure out something that makes sense. And then go ahead and move into those initiatives.</p><p>[01:01:34] Also, I mean, it&#39;s been a constraint for me recently is just not having digital assets. They&#39;re not ready to move. So, I mean, going forward, I would love to see all the brands just create all of the 3d and wearable assets when they create the collection and decide like, as soon as you write the production order, please go send out the, the designers to go ahead and create all of those 3d digital assets so that if anything happens from the date of production, a lot of us do that, like six to nine months in advance all the way through the selling season.</p><p>[01:02:12] If something interesting happens, you have the assets you can act, right. I&#39;ve got 3d designers that are pulling stuff off in a matter of five days for New York fashion week right now from like multiple brands. I&#39;m just like, okay, moving forward. Can you just go ahead and have this whole next collection that you have in production?</p><p>[01:02:33] done. I don&#39;t know what we&#39;re using them for. You don&#39;t know what we&#39;re using them for, but if you just have them, it would be quite helpful. So I mean, to me, these are the most important things to get started. It&#39;s not flashy. It&#39;s not cool. It&#39;s not in the middle of times square , but we have to start at the very beginning.</p><p>[01:02:57] Who are your customers? Where are they at right now? And that&#39;s kind of like what we need to know. And so I think just building the community, being a part of it, that&#39;s like step one.</p><p>[01:03:09] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Excellent. Excellent points. I think we could probably call that the the retail razor shows five step program or five step roadmap to the metaverse.</p><p>[01:03:16] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> yeah, so basic</p><p>[01:03:19] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it covers all the basics. Exactly. Exactly. So Casey, kinda like I said to the, the Retail Avengers in the clubhouse session, and we could just talk for hours and hours on this topic. So I&#39;m sure we&#39;re gonna be coming back to this in the future.</p><p>[01:03:32] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> a hundred percent. I mean, the metaverse isn&#39;t going anywhere. You and I aren&#39;t going anywhere. So I&#39;m really glad that we&#39;re going to revisit this in future episodes. but all good things must come to an end. So I think it&#39;s time we thank all of our clubhouse audience and wrap up this episode.</p><p>[01:03:51] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> it is that time.</p><h3>[01:03:52] Clubhouse Thank You</h3><p>[01:03:52] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Before we close. We&#39;d like to thank everyone who joined us on stage for this clubhouse session to talk metaverse and ask questions. So a special shout out</p><p>[01:04:05] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> to frequent visitor to our clubhouse rooms, Ananda Chakravarty, currently the vice president of research at IDC in the retail group for his great question about real world examples of retailers in the metaverse looking for success.</p><p>[01:04:18] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> And a super friend of the show, Michael Zakkour, founder of five new digital for setting the foundation for what the metaverse really is today versus what it will become tomorrow. And what that means for retailers.</p><p>[01:04:32] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Thank you Ananda and thank you, Michael.</p><p>[01:04:34] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> so Ricardo, I think that&#39;s a wrap for our first episode of season two.</p><p>[01:04:39] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> Indeed it is! </p><h3>[01:04:41] Show Close</h3><p>[01:04:41] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> We hope you enjoyed our show and consider giving us a five star rating and review on apple podcasts. Don&#39;t forget to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don&#39;t miss a minute! </p><p>[01:04:54] Wanna know more about today&#39;s show? Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets.</p><p>[01:05:00] I&#39;m your co-host Casey golden.</p><p>[01:05:02] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And if you&#39;d like to learn more about us, follow us on Twitter at caseycgolden and Ricardo_Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and on Twitter at RetailRazor, plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and the occasional bonus content. </p><p>[01:05:18] I&#39;m your host Ricardo Belmar.</p><p>[01:05:19] <strong>Casey Golden:</strong> Thanks for joining us.</p><p>[01:05:21] <strong>Ricardo Belmar:</strong> And remember, there&#39;s never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter.</p><p>[01:05:28] Until next time, THIS is The Retail Razor Show!</p> 99183dd1-2743-4ad0-bb49-50c32869bf99 https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Fri, 09 Sep 2022 21:53:44 +0000 3941 no trailer The Retail Razor Show - Season 2 Trailer The Retail Razor Show - Season 2 Trailer 2 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert The Retail Razor Show - Season 2 Trailer Season 2 of The Retail Razor Show is almost here! Hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden are back to bring you another amazing show season! Retail isn't getting any easier, is it? From omnichannel experiences and supply chain headaches to labor shortages, we're all catching feels for the metaverse and building web three strategies. Discover the right retail tech to power your customer experiences, store ops, and the real work across the supply chain. What's a retailer to do in a post-pandemic world? That's where we come in. The retail razor show, an unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike.! Remember, this is the best time to be in retail - IF you can cut through the clutter! Until next time, THIS is the Retail Razor Show! Have you heard the news? We’re up to #20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your loyal help, we’ll be moving our way up the Top 20 in no time! Leave us a review and we’ll mention you in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail and retail tech: I’m Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. And I’m Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. I've spent my career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business. Now I slay franken-stacks! Music provided by imunobeats.com, including E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Join our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClub Listen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallin Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey Season 2 of The Retail Razor Show is almost here!


Hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden are back to bring you another amazing show season!


Retail isn't getting any easier, is it? From omnichannel experiences and supply chain headaches to labor shortages, we're all catching feels for the metaverse and building web three strategies. Discover the right retail tech to power your customer experiences, store ops, and the real work across the supply chain. What's a retailer to do in a post-pandemic world?


That's where we come in. The retail razor show, an unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike.!


Remember, this is the best time to be in retail - IF you can cut through the clutter! 

Until next time, THIS is the Retail Razor Show!


Have you heard the news? We’re up to #20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your loyal help, we’ll be moving our way up the Top 20 in no time! Leave us a review and we’ll mention you in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/


Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail and retail tech:

I’m Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.


And I’m Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. I've spent my career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business. Now I slay franken-stacks!


Music provided by imunobeats.com, including E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.


The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Join our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClub

Listen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallin

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod


Host → Ricardo Belmar,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar


Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey

]]> <p><strong>Season 2 of The Retail Razor Show is almost here!</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden are back to bring you another amazing show season!</p><p><br></p><p>Retail isn&#39;t getting any easier, is it? From omnichannel experiences and supply chain headaches to labor shortages, we&#39;re all catching feels for the metaverse and building web three strategies. Discover the right retail tech to power your customer experiences, store ops, and the real work across the supply chain. What&#39;s a retailer to do in a post-pandemic world?</p><p><br></p><p>That&#39;s where we come in. The retail razor show, an unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike.!</p><p><br></p><p>Remember, this is the best time to be in retail - IF you can cut through the clutter! </p><p>Until next time, THIS is the Retail Razor Show!</p><p><br></p><p>Have you heard the news? We’re up to #20 on the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">Feedspot Top 60 Retail podcasts</a> list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your loyal help, we’ll be moving our way up the Top 20 in no time! Leave us a review and we’ll mention you in a future episode! <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail and retail tech:</p><p>I’m Ricardo Belmar, a <a href="https://www.rethink.industries/top-retail-influencers-2022/" rel="nofollow">RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer</a> for 2022 &amp; 2021, <a href="https://risnews.com/influentials-top-movers-and-shakers-retail-2021" rel="nofollow">RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021</a>, a <a href="https://www.namogoo.com/blog/12-ecommerce-influencers-you-must-follow-in-2022-and-beyond/" rel="nofollow">Top 12 ecommerce influencer</a>, advisory council member at <a href="https://business.gmu.edu/retail/" rel="nofollow">George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation</a>, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail &amp; consumer goods at Microsoft.</p><p><br></p><p>And I’m Casey Golden, CEO of <a href="https://www.luxlock.com/" rel="nofollow">Luxlock</a>. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. I&#39;ve spent my career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business. Now I slay franken-stacks!</p><p><br></p><p>Music provided by imunobeats.com, including <em>E-Motive</em>, and <em>Overclocked</em>, from the album <em>Beat Hype</em>, written by Hestron Mimms, published by <a href="https://imuno.sourceaudio.com/tracks" rel="nofollow">Imuno</a>.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>The Retail Razor Show</strong></p><p><strong>Follow us on Twitter</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/TwRRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/TwRRazor</a></p><p><strong>Connect with us on LinkedIn</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor</a></p><p><strong>Join our club on Clubhouse</strong>: <a href="http://bit.ly/RRazorClub" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/RRazorClub</a></p><p><strong>Listen to us on Callin</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRCallin" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRCallin</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on YouTube:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube</a></p><p><strong>Subscribe on Apple Podcasts</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow</a></p><p><strong>Retail Razor Show Episode Page</strong>: <a href="https://bit.ly/RRShowPod" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RRShowPod</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Host → Ricardo Belmar,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twRBelmar</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-host → Casey Golden,</strong></p><p>Follow on Twitter - <a href="https://bit.ly/twCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/twCasey</a></p><p>Connect on LinkedIn - <a href="https://bit.ly/LICasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/LICasey</a></p><p>Read my comments on RetailWire - <a href="https://bit.ly/RWCasey" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/RWCasey</a></p> 87055d0f-dcab-4d52-85fa-a8e1a677a98d https://retailrazor.com/podcast/the-retail-razor-show Mon, 29 Aug 2022 14:30:00 +0000 227 no full S1E13 Razor's Edge: The Season 1 Finale S1E13 Razor's Edge: The Season 1 Finale 13 1 Ricardo Belmar | Top Retail Expert S1E13 Razor's Edge: The Season 1 Finale S1E13 – Razor’s Edge: The Season 1 Finale! Welcome to Season 1, Episode 13 of The Retail Razor Show – the season one finale! It’s been an amazing opening season for the show, but now we have reached the Razor’s Edge – the end of our first season! Ready to finish with a bang? We’ve got a special guest host – yes, that’s right, guest host – Liza Amlani, principal and founder of Retail Strategy Group and The Merchant Life newsletter! Liza turns the tables on our regular hosts, Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden, to hold a mid-year check-in on their Top 10 Predictions for 2022 from Episode 4. Then, Liza walks our guests through highlights from throughout the season, remembering great moments with Andy Laudato, COO of The Vitamin Shoppe, Ron Thurston, author of Retail Pride and host of the Retail in America tour and podcast, and Gautham Vadakkepatt, director of the Center for Retail Transformation at George Mason University. Listen in to see if your favorite moments from Season 1 made it to the Razor’s Edge! Have you heard the news! We’re up to #20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your loyal help, we’ll be moving our way up the Top 20 in no time! Leave us a review and we’ll mention you in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts turned guests, helping you cut through the clutter in retail and retail tech: I’m Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. And I’m Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. I've spent my career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business. Now I slay franken-stacks! The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Join our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClub Listen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallin Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPT S1E13 Razor’s Edge: The Season 1 Finale! [00:00:00] Introduction [00:00:00] Liza Amlani: Hello, retail, razor listeners. Welcome to the season one grand finale episode. As you can tell, I'm not one of your usual hosts. I'm Liza Amlani principal and co-founder of retail strategy group and the merchant life newsletter. And I am your guest host today where I'll be turning the tables on your usual host and interviewing them. [00:00:41] So let's bring them in Ricardo Belmar and Casey golden, Casey and Ricardo. Thank you so much for having me guest host today. [00:00:48] Ricardo Belmar: Hey, Liza, it's awesome to have you here. [00:00:50] Casey Golden: So amazing to have you off of Twitter for a moment, on the podcast. [00:00:55] Liza Amlani: Of course we're, we're changing. We're changing it [00:00:57] Ricardo Belmar: Of [00:00:57] Liza Amlani: little bit. so how does it feel being on the other side of the mic today? [00:01:02] Casey Golden: It's a little different, somehow it doesn't feel like being a guest on somebody else's podcast. So it's a little bit strange, [00:01:07] but, [00:01:08] this was one of our most popular topics. So [00:01:10] Ricardo Belmar: That's true. Yeah, that's true. I mean, I, I would kinda say the same thing. It's a little, a little weird, not being the one, asking the questions like we usually do on, on the show. But this will be fun. This will be something different. And you're totally right. It doesn't feel the same as being a guest on somebody else's podcast. [00:01:24] So this will be an interesting one this time around. [00:01:26] Liza Amlani: Well, I'm excited to get you guys in the hot seat. So let's dive in. First I'm gonna run through the top 10 predictions you guys made in episode four. And we'll consider this a mid-year check-in. And just because I wanna keep you guys on your toes cuz you know, that's how I roll. I'm gonna keep score on whose predictions are performing better. [00:01:44] Nothing like a little competition to mix things up. [00:01:47] Ricardo Belmar: Well, this could get ugly, then Casey's so super competitive. it's a good thing. We're all remote. And there's no risks of things being thrown around the room. [00:01:55] Casey Golden: Yeah. Well, I mean, maybe not your room I think it's pretty obvious who's gonna have the, have the better record, but there's a reason you know, Ricardo and I are on here. I mean, I think we had a few times where we're like, no, you have to change it. Cuz we can't have everything the same. so. [00:02:12] Liza Amlani: well, this is definitely gonna be better than I expected. I love it. Okay, so let's not get ahead of ourselves. And the second part, I'm also gonna ask you both what your favorite parts of the season were, and a few other surprise questions about the season. So let's get started with the season one finale. [00:02:31] Revisiting the Top 10 Predictions for 2022 [00:02:31] Liza Amlani: Okay. The first prediction was about retail media networks. Ricardo, let's start with you. [00:02:36] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I think this one's definitely a winner because let's see, since we did episode four, there must be at least, I don't know, like another 50 retail media networks that have been announced by retailers this year. I don't know ranging from what. Like ulta beauty hadn't been announced when we recorded that. [00:02:49] That's the one that everybody wanted to talk about. I mean, just about, everybody that's either a a big box retailer. I mean, a bunch of specialty ones, that maybe we wouldn't have expected. I think this one's just continuing to grow, so I'm thinking I'm good on that one. [00:03:02] Liza Amlani: Okay, Casey, let's talk about brick, expansions. I love this one, cuz you know, I'm a big fan of physical retail. [00:03:08] Casey Golden: yeah, and I kind of focus on digital these days. So it's kind of nice to pop into bricks every once in a while. It's where we all started, right? [00:03:16] there was barely an internet. [00:03:18] not saying that anybody's old here, but you know, there wasn't very many commerce stories in the beginning, so the passion started on the floor. It's been interesting with Amazon's new, they're still kind of expanding on these, these in stores, reimagining the shopping and buying experience. I've actually seen a lot more traction in that, you know, with all of these tech enabled spaces and a lot more experimenting. [00:03:45] So, I mean, I think we kind of nailed that this is really going to be a tech enabled opportunity for a lot of bricks and changing the traditional big box. For more entertaining showrooms kind of tagged Glossier as the winner. There's been a lot of changes over there too. So there's a lot of opportunity here for somebody, for a whole group of people to really win on bricks. [00:04:07] Liza Amlani: Definitely. I also just placed a Glossier order yesterday. [00:04:11] Social commerce and live streaming, Ricardo., [00:04:14] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, this is S definitely one of my favorite topics. Still may, maybe second, only the retail media networks. I think it's still growing, right? I guess one of the big things in the prediction I talked about was this idea that retailers would start relying more on their store associates as the live streamers, as the way of really promoting the whole idea of, of live shopping that way. And I think overall, this one's still building momentum and, and gaining steam. all the social media networks are certainly still putting out more features what Twitter added a new shopping capabilities, which maybe we wouldn't have expected Twitter to do. [00:04:46] In episode 12, we even talked about Pinterest and, and their new capabilities. So I think there's a lot happening there. And if anything, maybe hasn't come true yet, but I'm gonna still hold out hope here for later in the year is when we start seeing more frontline store associates doing the live streams, and maybe that's picking up steam, I think in more of a, a one to one kind of shopping experience versus a one to many. But I still think that we're gonna see that. I just think it's a natural extension and we might see it first coming from smaller retailers. I, I think because it's easier for them to be more nimble with that and get somebody recording and going live whereas big retailers are just naturally have this motion where they're gonna want to go big and, have big production values and bring in lots of equipment. [00:05:25] And that's gonna slow them down a bit. But I think we'll still see it happen. [00:05:28] Liza Amlani: Yeah, I think [00:05:29] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, I. But I put a lot of emphasis on TikTok commerce, because I've been watching that [00:05:35] beta program since [00:05:36] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. [00:05:37] Casey Golden: Asia and then pulling out of the us and Europe last week, that announcement I think it's, gonna probably be better for smaller brands than the big ones, because TikTok would've been that commerce channel. [00:05:50] So who's to know. [00:05:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think there's still plenty of startups coming up too, that I, I see focusing on, on live streaming. So if I was gonna add something, it would be how things turn out between the big social media platforms versus these dedicated livestream platforms that are mostly driven by startups and how retailers are gonna adopt one versus the other. [00:06:09] And, and maybe we'll seem do both because it just kind of makes sense to have one off your own website and not totally rely on, you know, a Facebook channel. [00:06:16] Liza Amlani: Oh, for sure. When we were at the retail innovation show, there were, I think core site had partnered with a live streaming platform, which was super interesting, but I feel like they weren't retailers. So it'd be interesting to see when retailers actually merge with live streamers and partner together to, to have the best CU customer experience [00:06:35] Casey personal shopping. I love this one. [00:06:38] Casey Golden: I'm obviously I'm biased. [00:06:40] So, brownie points here, customer expectations. I mean, I thought that they were high during the pandemic. [00:06:47] They're almost unachievable at the moment. Shoppers are no longer content with that simple transactional purchase outside of like commodity goods. And we, we saw a lot of innovation with the associate led shopping and it went big. [00:07:03] but I think that there's like a lot of rebuilds when it comes down to the tech on actually operationalizing. And really bringing that in-store experience online and working with customers remotely. We've seen a lot of team, a lot of brands building out specific dedicated frontline staff teams, but putting them online and building virtual teams to really have, you know Trusted product expert or that sales associate being able to, to help them shop and, and build that relationship. [00:07:33] I'm gonna still betting in that we're gonna see a lot more of it. [00:07:36] Liza Amlani: I think [00:07:36] so, too. [00:07:37] Casey Golden: with like, yeah, I mean, we, have to alleviate all of the mundane tasks that these sales associates have to deal with in order to manage these customers. And make sure that they don't lose their jobs. The sheer volume of online traffic and then trying to provide a personal shopping experience. I think everybody said that it was, this personal shopping shop with the stylist's going into client telling, and that's gonna be new platforms. It's working so. I think it's, it's really exciting to see the brands put this talent at the forefront of the narrative and start giving them software. [00:08:15] Liza Amlani: I love that you brought up client telling because I started on the shop floor and I definitely had a book that I used to, you know, bring to, to Harrods. That's where I worked in one of my, one of my store roles. And that book went everywhere with me. And that was my client telling software was manual pen and paper and technology would've definitely changed the game. [00:08:37] Ricardo, let's talk about the shopper experience. [00:08:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think, you know, it technology and in-store experience. I mean, they're continuing down that March to converge. . And bring in more and more things into the store. We've got this year more examples of computer, vision and AI. You know, just look at Amazon's new style store and what they're doing there. [00:08:55] Some people like it, some not so much, but I think the, the point is we're seeing more and more experiments and more and more attempts to try things out. I think I mentioned when we first talked about this, we talked a little more about where we're AR and VR platform is gonna play in store. [00:09:09] I don't think we've seen as much with that. Although, I mean, I think there's more AR things happening. I'm I'm. More and more things happening around trying to improve fit in apparel. . It's always a challenge there. But to me, this is all about finding more and more technology in the store, but not in the way of the shopping experience, which makes it so much of a better experience and that we have people wanting to do more shopping in store. [00:09:32] Right now we've gotten past this idea that online was just gonna totally shut down physical experiences. And, and we're seeing that we're back to back to the norm there. For the most part, I think we'll just see more and more cashierless checkout, more shelf scanning types of. Technologies, whether it's robots or IOT sensors, we're gonna see more and more scan and go. [00:09:51] So I think this one's moving along, maybe not as fast as I, I would've expected at the beginning of the year when we talked about it. But that to me has more to do with retail is wanting to be cautious about some of these investments versus desire to do them at all. So I think it's all still happening. [00:10:05] Liza Amlani: Casey by now pay later. [00:10:07] Casey Golden: Oh, it gets hotter, then the bubble bursts. I'm a big believer and don't spend more than you have, but you know, Regulators are there they're coming. I read all my regulators. All I hear is Warren G [00:10:20] Liza Amlani: I love it. Now I have Warren G in my head. Good song. [00:10:24] Casey Golden: I know, right. We should all [00:10:25] have [00:10:26] Liza Amlani: I know [00:10:27] Casey Golden: God, good times. Good times. I think one day we'll look back at, buy now, pay later and say good times. It's, it's been a, they've been getting a lot of traction making, purchases, lack consumer protections and and they can really make hassle free returns 30% APR with just crazy, crazy APR rates. [00:10:50] There's easier ways to, block out these payments and they've been productive for all the brands. I mean, I don't know if you can even find a website that doesn't offer by now pay later. But I also think it's a very American thing. We are like, we invented the credit card, right? So whether or not it's consumer. So whether or not it's good for the consumer, it's been really good for businesses. But I think that there's gonna be a little bit more regulation and consumer protections on it to really make sure that, when you make a purchase for, $300, it's not gonna cost you three grand. cuz there's been some. Some, some more predatory behavior in this space, but Klarna has really stepped up their game and providing really interesting product discovery in their app rewards programs. And, you know, they recently just bought hero which was a personal shopping app. So they're offering, you know, just looking at the customer journey from start to finish and, you know, trying to set the. [00:11:50] Up to be more than just a payment system or at least feel like it. Right. So I think the competition's gonna get tougher and they're gonna have to be more interesting to branch out from the regulation, I think, [00:12:04] Ricardo Belmar: acquired or merge or combining something's gonna happen. [00:12:07] I don't think it's gonna keep on this growth path. [00:12:10] Casey Golden: ricardo, I'm really interested on your, thoughts on that too. [00:12:13] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, I mean you on, on buy now pay later. You pretty much had me at regulators. [00:12:19] Casey Golden: and I've used it once as an experiment. It's just like, well, [00:12:22] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. yeah. I, I, I mean, I, I think the very first thing we said back in, in that episode, on that one, right? The, the, it gets hotter and then the bubble burst, I think we're, we're just about, at that point, in my opinion, and there was more and more folks looking. Just what you said, right? The predatory terms, the insane APRs, and it's on a path to have an impact, right. [00:12:46] To put people into more and more depth when they don't need to be. So I, I don't know. I, I just, I think it's interesting that we see. The BPL companies trying to add more services to their offering that's not part of the core idea right. Of buy now pay later so that their business isn't totally dependent on it. [00:13:03] And I dunno, in some ways, this is one of these things where it was a huge bubble, but at the end of the day, I mean, How hard is it to replicate by now pay later functionality for a payments company. So where's the differentiator for all these guys to stay in business? I think , the bubble , has to burst. [00:13:17] Liza Amlani: And when we think about Ricardo, this is one for you, the analytics. AI and machine learning and sustainability and traceability and merchandising returns and predictive analytics, all this stuff that I love to talk about from a merchant perspective. Let's talk about your prediction around this. [00:13:33] Ricardo Belmar: . So in, in that one I saw that we're just gonna, so, so much more automation. A lot of this technology being used to remove all the mundane and tedious tasks that store employees have to deal with. And, and there are so many new tools coming out with that. I I've been working with a number of different companies now who have new technologies, just for that to make the life easier for those frontline teams. [00:13:55] And then just looking at returns, returns is becoming an even bigger problem, I think now than it was at the beginning of the year. And I see more technology being thrown at how to solve returns, not in terms of what do you do when somebody wants to return something, but what can you do preventively to make it so that people don't need to buy three versions of the same thing to see which one's gonna be the right one and return the other two. Now there's ways that AI machine learning can help with that analysis. And I think we're seeing solutions that do that. I've seen more retailers implement those and they're seeing tangible changes, where we're seeing reductions of returns in double digit percentages, which is, is obviously going to be meaningful to their sales numbers. You know, think sustainability has just continued down a march , I think more and more news coming out where people start to question some brands as to, are they really engaging in those sustainability practices they've been talking about? Or is there, are they doing one thing in with their right hand, but the left hand's doing something else. [00:14:50] It kind of works against that sustainability. So to me that says that people are paying more attention to sustainability is starting to matter more which I see as a positive and, and again, I think this is one where , without technology, none of the brands are gonna be able to solve this in a, in a meaningful enough way that's gonna accomplish, the dual purpose goal, which is to demonstrate to their customers that they are engaging in sustainable practices, but at the same time, not do it in a manner that's gonna make their cost skyrocket and make them unprofitable. [00:15:17] So I think that that's still happening. So I think that's on a good, good March. Predictive analytics. I mean, I, I'm always still surprised when you see retailers show you that, oh, they're still doing their forecasting on a spreadsheet in Excel versus using something more, you know, more appropriately let's say size for, for their business that allows them to, to leverage AI in a better way. [00:15:36] And I mean, yes, during the pandemic, all these systems tended to, to create more problems and solutions because nobody let's face it, could have the right model that was gonna predict what was gonna be a shortage and, and factor in the supply chain challenges and all that. But now, now those models are starting to get worked in and now [00:15:53] some of the companies I've been working with are finding that the real reason those solutions led them down the wrong path is because the people that were reading the results were taking different actions than they probably should have been. So it was less the technology as it was the human intervention, that didn't wanna accept what the technology was saying. [00:16:08] Because they felt that, you know, that was gonna be a different result. So I, I think that's all working itself out. In some ways I think this is one of the , most exciting technology areas in retail because it has the potential to have so much change, even if it's more behind the scenes and most consumers don't see this, it's not obvious to you if you walk into a retailer store. [00:16:26] But there's so much of this behind the scenes, it has to happen to make the business work. I, just think it's nowhere to go, but up. [00:16:32] Casey Golden: Yeah, I'm gonna just add a point on there just to kind of leave our listeners with something to think about. We've been measuring the wholesale business for like a hundred years. This is really the very beginning of taking direct to consumer analytics. As we grow these business models out on selling direct to the consumer, there is so much data, so more data than we've ever had. [00:16:58] And so we're gonna be able to get so an amount of knowledge from this over the next, like three years. That we've never seen or understood about our brand or sales. And I think it's, I, I agree, Ricardo, it's super exciting. I mean, you can just geek out on this [00:17:16] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, oh yeah. There's we're gonna, we're already keeping those data scientists employed for a long time. [00:17:23] Liza Amlani: I, I definitely geek out. Yes. I definitely geek out on all that. You know, coming from that merchants and product creation space, the challenge I find is that, we have all this data and we always have so had so much data from loyalty programs and even client telling, but are we really using it to drive? You know, product decisions, assortment decisions. So it will be very interesting to see, you know, in the next three years, I think we should come back to this one in three years and let's see where we are. Let's talk [00:17:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think, I [00:17:52] Casey Golden: We got a [00:17:53] Ricardo Belmar: safely put this one on every top 10 list. [00:17:55] Liza Amlani: Oh yeah. [00:17:57] Casey Golden: Yeah, no, we've [00:17:59] Liza Amlani: exactly. Well, let's, let's talk about rapid [00:18:02] delivery. [00:18:03] Casey Golden: Yeah, rapid delivery. [00:18:05] Goodness gracious. Does access delivery from any company you're Canada. So [00:18:14] Liza Amlani: I know I do. I know. Come on. No, no, no, no, no. Getting here. Maybe not two hours, but definitely we're getting [00:18:26] Casey Golden: I feel yeah, I mean, Rapid delivery gets a rapid shakeout. I mean, too many popped up during the pandemic. It was an incredible opportunity to force, like for force adoption, for consumers to shop buying things online that they, they never even thought was possible. The amount of grocery online. I mean, without the pandemic, would you ever think like rural areas are getting. [00:18:51] We're getting, you know, two to same day delivery. But we asked in the beginning of the year, is this really sustainable? And I think the, the market has decided that it's not cost effective. And we'll continue to see a lot of acquisitions and consolidation M and a potential here with like micro fulfillment and last mile delivery. [00:19:10] Very hot space. A major's gonna win. , but there's been a lot of adjustments here, especially this year with even Uber eats. They're not, incredible how long it takes. Amazon canceled their two hour delivery and metropolitan areas. And a lot of them grocery delivery services have ceased to exist in a lot of you know, non-chain grocery stores that was, that were leveraging it. [00:19:32] I think, we're gonna have to figure out how you can afford to have [00:19:35] last mile. I'm very curious on how consumers feel about having this amazing service and then it going away and how that affects brand loyalty. So I think there's still a lot to watch here. There's a big opportunity. But it's gonna take a lot of money. [00:19:48] Liza Amlani: Yeah. And it's almost like we haven't really seen who pays for this. Who's P and L is this really impacting [00:19:56] right. [00:19:56] Ricardo Belmar: I don't know that anybody has the model down yet, to make money off of it because it's kind of this thing where, you know, the. The faster you want to deliver it automatically means the closer you have to stage it to the customer to have a chance, of getting it there. I mean like two hours, we had like the quick commerce brands in 15 minute delivery in cities. [00:20:14] I mean, if you're gonna do that, then you have to have so many different staging locations and fulfillment centers and you've gotta have the best predictive analytics to know exactly what are the items everybody's likely to order that they want in 15 minutes. And, and then you end up. All the, the providers say, well, we hope to make this work with larger basket sizes, but okay. [00:20:33] You don't really want a big order because then if you're trying to deliver it in 15 minutes, it takes you too many minutes to pick and pack the order to get what I wanted to get it to someone. . If it's more than a handful of items. So that means, okay, if you can't get your volume based on basket size, you've gotta have it on number of orders. [00:20:48] Okay. But then you mean more labor, right? Or, or more automation. And either one of those has a cost imp