We point out some bright spots in the wake of COVID-19 and offer up our help to businesses needing to obtain grants from the SBA at this time. Future Commerce is offering assistance to SMB eCommerce businesses who need help applying for Small Business Administration Disaster Recovery loans. Drop us a line at [email protected] and we'll do our best to get you the right resources. Links: 1909 West Palm Beach: weare1909.org SBA Disaster Recovery Loan Process: Resource portal here Future Commerce Insiders #031 Summersalt launches emotional support hotline

Phillip and Brian sit down with Kiri Masters to talk about how the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is affecting the world of DTC. Main Takeaways: Kiri Masters, the Founder of Bobsled Marketing and author of Amazon for CMOs, joins Briand and Phillp in this week's episode. How is eCommerce being affected by Amazon restrictions on nonessential products? The world has entered an unprecedented period of social distancing, and brands are dealing with this in different ways. Brands are stepping up in comforting and creative ways to protect their customers and boost morale during these trying times. Growth Amongst the Chaos: The Steadfast Power of Amazon: Phillip has some fascinating insights by watching booming categories amongst the brands that he manages through Something Digital. Seemingly every day, there are new records for brands in the Health & Wellness space. Kiri sees significant performance in Health & Personal Care, CPG and Grocery, Beauty, and specific areas of apparel. Aside from a decrease in non-critical purchases, Amazon is not going anywhere anytime soon, even amidst a pandemic. Guaranteeing the Essentials: Dealing with Emergency Prioritization: There's an interesting dichotomy between the increase in online shopping and a wariness to spend money due to wavering job security. There is a restriction on items in nonessential categories that is stopping companies centered in these categories from shipping their goods into Amazon. Essential categories include Pet, Baby, Food, Industrial & Scientific, and Health & Personal care. Some brands cannot get their product shipments out to carriers and are being blocked by the Amazon restrictions. To keep up with demand, Amazon is reportedly adding 100,000 jobs to deal with a surge in online shopping. The Illusion of Choice: What's Actually There?: Brian has noticed that there has never been a period with fewer options on Amazon than right now. Amazon pain points traditionally felt by larger brands are proving themselves to be precisely what keeps the system working and full of inventory in times like this. Would an Amazon version of Uber surge-pricing have prevented some of the hoarding that has happened around the world? As the supply chain has been massively impacted as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, brands have had to choose between maintaining prices and selling out of product or raising prices to ensure supply over the next three months, The Truth of Price Gouging: Not All is Black or White: When it's in the consumer's favor, everyone is on board with price discounts to move excess product, but should the opposite also be true? We need to hold brands and Amazon accountable if there is legitimate price gouging happening; still, we can't forget that businesses need to make adjustments to stay in business and keep employing their staff. In the not so distant future when price elasticity becomes widely available due to technology advances in brick and mortar locations, we will be able to meet the demand for products in times of emergency. While price elasticity is present in some things (like gas), we are not used to seeing the influx of price when it comes to basic needs. The Next Few Days: Predictions for the Very Near Future: Kiri predicts that if you are in a category that Amazon has deemed nonessential, then every minute of the Amazon restriction counts towards the longevity of your business. "If you are in an essential category, this is the time to evaluate each channel, think about where the demand is coming from, and analyze the supply chains that get your product into each of those channels." You also need to decide what course of action to take to keep the lights on for your business, and this choice might be a difficult one. What are some steps you can take right now to protect the longevity of your business? A Call for Unity: The Rose Garden: Recently, President Trump invited the CEOs of major retailers to showcase a plan on how the government was partnering with the private sector to combat the virus. Essentially, large retailers are guaranteeing not only essentials will be stocked within brick and mortar locations across the nation, but that these locations would also be locations for other virus-related services. Jeff Bezos was interestingly absent from this panel. There is a tremendous amount of power in brick and mortar in moments like this, and even Amazon cannot provide essentials at scale when compared to brick and mortar in times of crisis. Looking Locally: The Effects on Communities: Local establishments such as bars, salons, and restaurants, are shut down across the globe, not all of these businesses may survive this period of quarantine. How will our communities be affected by the virus once the initial panic and quarantine have passed? Brands need to consider how they will support their local communities post-pandemic Will new work-from-home policies and adjusted methods of social interactions prove to be beneficial for our society? Brian published an article for Insiders this week that talks about the opportunity for DTC brands in small towns, and why it's important to support local businesses now more than ever. We are at peak distraction levels currently regarding the abrupt changes to our lives, but things will calm down, and we will get into the grooves of this new way of life. Keeping It Positives: Brands That Are Doing Things Right: Phillip asks Kiri if she has had any recent experiences with brands that have not been tapping into the zeitgeist of the virus and are doing notable things. Kiri is currently in Colombia in South America and recently received an email from the CEO of Rappi (a grocery delivery service) that detailed the logistical changes that have occurred since the virus began its spread. This explanation of what the company is doing to ensure safety from the CEO of the company was comforting for Kiri. Something brands should consider, is reaching out to their active customer base to show what you are doing to protect them and to manage expectations within the virus climate. To help people escape the self-quarantine madness: Sexual Wellness company Unbound Babes created an epic collaborative and self-regulating Google Sheet of references, activities, and content for people to reference during these times of social distancing. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Amazon Uber Rappi Unbound Babes As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some actions you can take right now to protect your brand during these uncertain times? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!

Main Takeaways: Phillip and Brian are joined today by research guru, Rachel Swanson, founder of Method + Mode which gives bespoke insights for brand growth. First, Brain and Phillip give a COVID-19 update. The trio review Rachel’s work on Future Commerce’s Vision 2020 Report and reflect on the process of the research and give their own insights to the findings. Rachel makes data come alive and creates a story from the data she gathers. The three discuss the cyclical nature of retail and how DTC brands are evolving and how they think brands will continue to evolve in the future. And they throw in a few hot takes, just for the fun of it. COVID-19 Update from Future Commerce We were off message with our episode last week when we published our episode talking about Ingrid speaking at Shoptalk 2020 which then got canceled. Brian lives in the Seattle area. There are no gatherings of more than 250 people allowed, even with religious gatherings. Businesses in the Seattle areas are struggling with the lack of interaction. An interesting statistic, a lot of DTC toilet paper companies are having a very high amount of traffic on their sites. Who Gives a Crap, Bippy, and No. 2 are all out of stock. There’s an interesting development in how technology can aid in this environment. We’ve seen a big step up in corporate responsibility in response to the virus. We’re no longer a manufacturing-driven economy, we’re a services-driven economy and the service industry’s suffering will impact the entire global economy. Storefronts selling services JUST overtook storefronts selling goods, which makes the impact of COVID-19 even more unfortunate. What is Method + Mode? Rachel is a market researcher & brand strategist, focusing on leveraging custom research to inform business executives and decisions. Rachel has a heavy background in media, fashion, and beauty. Method + Mode creates a custom research plan to help their clients get the research they need. Bespoke insights for brand growth. Making the Data Come Alive Originally, Future Commerce worked with Method + Mode to do some audience research Most recently, Rachel worked with Future Commerce on our Vision 2020 Report. Rachel doesn’t do academic research. She works with existing hypotheses, business objectives, and consumer reality. The key is to triangulate the three into succinct research that services the objectives of the business. Rachel’s approach is to lay a foundation towards the hypotheses and then to validate or disprove those hypotheses. Asking non-binary questions in a way that requires a response is a great way to get a sense of broader themes. More people have a better understanding of why they won’t do something, rather than why the will do something, so Rachel often asks why people won’t do something in creating her surveys. Writing a good survey is a skill that requires a lot of practice. Gaining Insights from your Data In your surveys, you always want to throw in some issues that will help disprove some of your biases. Rachel includes multiple ways of exploring important objectives to create consistency in answers. When understanding benchmarks, the Vision 2020 report wanted to go as broad as possible. Hot Takes on Amazon Amazon is not a retailer anymore, it’s a utility. We’ve crossed into a threshold where the consumer isn’t fully cognizant of where they’re receiving their content from. Phillip calls this “Primenesia” This Amazon utility is enabling a lifestyle that is impossible to match by other retailers and content providers at the same level. Apple is attempting to step into the content space now. Rachel compares Amazon’s structure and function to almost being like a Verizon now. Brian’s gut instinct was to check a knife set he found at Macy’s on Amazon. He bought the set from Amazon, even though it was the same price. Why? He knew what to expect, and could easily purchase it from Amazon. Back to content, Amazon makes it so simple to stream content through the prime video app. At this point, they’re controlling the content. On the Vision 2020 report, the number 3 cited reason for having Amazon Prime was for video content. In 20 months, Prime added 35% to Prime Membership by going global with Prime. Sustainability is coming to the forefront of consumer consciousness, and there might be a growing distaste for how Amazon operates. Brian thinks that although Amazon is the Verizon of the world, there’s going to be a T-Mobile. Brian would rather pick Amazon than Target, but someday, he might pick say, a Walmart. Enough About Amazon… The Broader eCommerce Landscape Retail is cyclical. We’re starting to see a swing back to brick & mortar shops. Rachel thinks DTC as a mechanism is great branding, but there’s always been DTC. Example, the Sears catalog. Social media has helped DTC brands tremendously. Globalization has helped the ability for DTC, fueled by social to grow Showfields is basically a department store. Could Barney’s have saved themselves if they had been more futuristic and partnered with emerging brands on social? DTC is giving female founders a good opportunity. If you equate DTC with a local shop, a lot of them are actually owned by women. For example, florists, beauty shops, gift shops, boutiques, etc. Women do the majority of purchasing, therefore have more of the purchasing power. There’s a connection and tactile component of retail that people said would go away but it never has, it’s just morphed. Is DTC a misnomer? DTC is a way of starting but it’s doubtful the successful brands will stay purely digital forever. How Accurate Was Our Survey? Phillip asks Rachel if we were off the mark compared to Retail Dive’s research that says 40% of consumers have shopped DTC, whereas ours only said 30%. Rachel responds that she was encouraged by their reportings. She doesn’t know their methodology, but their methods and definitions and sampling could be different than ours. Ultimately, we were on target with another national poll that Rachel compared our insights to. Phillip reiterates that we’re #MoreThanAPodcast. We want to be more open and transparent about how we make predictions and give insights. Hot Takes Lightning Round Rachel: Sustainability is such a “catch-all” phrase. It sounds great in theory but there’s too many forms of sustainability. We need a clarification of what that actually means for the brand. There’s still a big chasm between those who are thrifting for need and those who are thrifting for presentation. Brian: Sustainability is not convenient. Nordstrom is creating credibility by creating a resale market, called See You Tomorrow. Find Rachel at Methodandmode.co Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Who Gives a Crap Bippy No. 2 Amazon Apple Verizon Macy’s T-Mobile Target Walmart Sears Showfields Barney’s Wraby Parker Sephora Ulta Glossier Rodan + Fields Retail Dive 2PM Nordstrom As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are your thoughts on the shift towards profitability for direct to consumer brands? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!

Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are joined in today's episode by guest host extraordinaire, Ingrid Cordy, the Vice President of Global E-Commerce and Consumer Experience at e.l.f. Cosmetics. The direct to consumer industry is taking a shift towards profitability, and significant changes are happening to accompany it. Why are smaller companies expected to innovate and scale entire categories? Larger and more established brands are no longer the most relevant in the spaces that they helped define. Future Commerce at Shoptalk: What Are the Details?: *Disclaimer: **Shoptalk was rescheduled for September 14-17 due to concerns regarding the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. * Ingrid will be speaking at Shoptalk regarding technologies within omnichannel, and she will also be doing a Future Commerce recording. There is a whole crew of amazing women that will be presenting at Shoptalk on behalf of Future Commerce. What are some topics that you hope will be covered at Shoptalk? The Profitability Shift: The End of an Era?: Recently, it was announced that founder Ty Haney is stepping down from her role as CEO at Outdoor Voices. Despite getting their name out there and establishing themselves as a leader in the athleisure space, the company was losing two million dollars a month. With as much innovation and inspiration that has been shown by direct to consumer brands, we are going to start seeing people expecting profits. You can do a lot of things right (like Outdoor Voices) and still have trouble reaching profitability. Do customers only want to live their lives with products in their periphery, and have the recent trends of content channels and customer experience just been fads? A Shift In Perspective: Ego Shifts Over Time: Is it egocentric to think that your brand is changing the world and bringing people together? The concept of luxury and the aspirational point of view that comes with it has changed from living the lifestyle of your dreams to thinking that we are saving the world and acting differently. There is a bit of delusion in both of these viewpoints, but that delusion is necessary because we need to aspire to something. There is a lot of pressure on a brand when you are venture-backed to grow at an exponential rate that might not be best for the brand as a whole. Real-Life Comparisons: Comparing and Contrasting: Every single thing that is driving the economy stems from our current unchecked spending culture. For comparison, what is it that lululemon is doing that Outdoor Voices is not when it comes to being profitable? In the case of Amazon, they invested in infrastructure in their growth stages that allowed their business to run better as opposed to high spending in regards to its content production. Private Equity knows to build businesses that have profitability while still considering growth and scale. Has the era of retail owning fashion and apparel companies come to an end? Brandless is ceasing operations after less than three years in business. Looking Back to Look Ahead: Predicting Trends from the Future Commerce Report: Smart growth is the most significant trend for 2020, as predicted by the Future Commerce Vision Report. You need a sustainable story not just in terms of the environment, but sustainable in terms of your business metrics and goals. Why do we have expectations of smaller companies to innovate and scale categories so quickly? Do consumers not care about brand anymore because we have gotten too good at copycatting? Sifting Through the Gloom: It's Not All Bad: There are still brands out there that are growing smart and profitable direct to consumer businesses like Frank & Eileen. Phillip harkens back to the optimism a year ago around direct to consumer businesses that wasn't just about consumerism. The new creative and innovative brands are going to have a 2-3 year reign in a cycle that will eventually be replaced by larger players that can copy the best practices of those innovative smaller brands. Building good brands takes time, and you can't always expect to take over the world with your business ventures. Major Changes Across the Board: The Balance of Power is Shifting: The environment and the fashion style that Gap created is now the trend, and they are no longer the biggest player in their style. Pier 1 just filed for bankruptcy in a time when they could be making a big splash and make their brand even more prevalent in the current climate. The free-wheeling nature of getting funding is going to be disrupted because investors are going to be taking more time and putting more effort into what they are investing in. There is a lot of money out there to be invested, and there is almost a desperation to spend these funds that results in riskier investments. Outside Opposition: Government Interference: The FTC sued to block the acquisition of Harry's by Schick, but they approved the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint. What were the reasons behind this blocking? There was finally a success story of a hugely successful direct to consumer brand being acquired and yet the deal was blocked by the government. Why does the FTC approve some mergers that seem to be more egregious from an antitrust perspective? Going Out on a Positive Note: Ridiculous Collabs: Supreme did a collaboration with Oreo that seems like it is right out of an SNL skit. To round out the odd collaborations, Disney collaborated with Gucci, and even weirder, KFC did a collab with Crocs... What are your thoughts on these interesting collaborations? McDonald's also now has a swag store. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Outdoor Voices lululemon Amazon Brandless Frank & Eileen Gap Harry's Supreme Disney Gucci KFC Crocs Mcdonald's As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are your thoughts on the shift towards profitability for direct to consumer brands? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!

Main Takeaways: In the final episode of this season of Step by Step, Brian and Phillip are joined by Dan Nephew, the Director of System Operations at Lovepop. Lovepop offers robust customization options for its products and needs a rich tech stack to manage the fulfillment of such unique orders. How can you best use data to inform your business decisions and what technology can aid in your decision making? There is no single, silver-bullet application that will handle all your tech requirements, so invest in applications that are flexible and can grow along with your business. What is Lovepop?: A Quick Introduction: Lovepop started about five years ago with a mission of creating one billion magical moments. These magical moments are achieved through a laser-cut version of kirigami, an art form that was discovered by Artpop founders Wombi Rose and John Wise on a Harvard Business School trip to Vietnam. Every month, Lovepop comes out with new designs and new products. Dan started at Lovepop as a consultant, and he fell in love with the company and joined full time about a year ago. Before Lovepop, Dan was an industrial engineer for big companies, and his expertise was helping a business scale without scaling the size of the business. The Current Lovepop Sales Strategy: A Glimpse Behind the Curtain: Lovepop started with a small retail venture, quickly turned to online sales, and now online is by far the most significant segment of what Lovepop sells. There are very few players in the industry that can do what Lovepop can do when it comes to personalized creations that are designed online. There is a growing retail footprint that started in the North East, and Lovepop even has a licensing deal with Disney. Lovepop is now starting to figure out how to spread magical moments amongst other providers through strategic partnerships that will carry their same message. Creating Magical Moments: The Lovepop Tech Stack: On the frontend, Lovepop uses Shopify as its eCommerce platform, but it does not provide all of the customizations that Lovepop needs. Once the customer places the order, the data is sent to Brightpearl, Lovepop's inventory and order management system. Lovepop has several different fulfillment options depending on the order, and Lovepop can turn an order around in less than a day. All of the product that is sourced by Lovepop is sourced from an owned subsidiary in Vietnam. Lovepop's design team is located in the United States, and they use a mix of non-software and software solutions from Adobe. A Modern Balancing Act: Combining Art and Engineering: There is not a single silver bullet piece of software that solves all of a business's operational and logistics needs, so a wide array of solutions are required to be successful in today's eCommerce climate. Lovepop has several analytics tools (some they built themselves) that they use for forecasting, EDI (electronic data interchange) solutions that bridge disparate systems, and several financial systems, to name a few. For their homegrown systems, Lovepop has designed forecasting and planning systems, routing logic, order placement, and various scheduling automations. What systems can you brand design in-house that would fit your business than out of the box solutions? Addressing Variation: Tackling Seasonality: Due to the seasonal nature of Lovepop's busy periods, systems put in place before a business spike are huge assets when it comes to handling larger amounts of orders. What types of systems can you use to address seasonality and prepare for unexpected order spikes? There is a difference between systems that Lovepop buys and those that they build. Lovepop is more apt to build systems in-house because they customization options that they offer to their customers require some heavy lifting on the back end. Diving Into Data: Harnessing the Power of Analytics: Analytics are traditionally siloed into whatever platform they are based on, so finding ways to merge these data sets is a challenge. There are two types of data: decision-making data and problem-solving data, and core systems usually deal with problem-solving data. Decision-making data is handled by data scientists and data engineers and put into an engine that fuels the directions and decisions of the company. There is software that facilitates decision modeling that aids data scientists in their analyses, and it is the operations side that handles how to get this data to their data science team. Data integrations have to be timely and be able to facilitate large amounts of robust data to be efficient. What software can aid in data modeling and helping your business make informed decisions? Current Technology Challenges: What's Troubling Lovepop? The biggest technology challenge that Lovepop faces right now is finding a way to integrate its retail operations and its eCommerce operations from an omnichannel experience. How can you make the eCommerce experience better for the customer? Lovepop is also trying to find technology that will allow their site to show real-time store inventory for customers to know where to find products in-store. These troubles are the same for any size company, and the process of choosing technology is very similar. Making the Decision: Factors for Selecting Your Technology: Resource availability and capital are usually the two most influential factors to consider when choosing software for your tech stack. Deciphering whether or not you have the resources to do something can determine whether you buy the technology outright or come up with your solution. Sometimes there are outside business factors that can accelerate the decision-making process. As a team, helping each other weigh each other's priorities is a very effective way to make the most informed decision about tech stack purchases. Being nimble lets you make better decisions. Looking to the Future: What's On the Horizon?: Over the past five years, there has been dramatic change across all business technologies, but how do you know what technologies can make a sound investment five years down the road? The ease and openness of an application in terms of its ability to integrate with others is an excellent indicator of future growth. Applications that are closed off to outside integration will not be able to advance as fast as its competitors. Be ready to invest in software that allows you to have the flexibility and the freedom to grow with your business. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Lovepop Shopify Adobe As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some ways you can leverage the data you already have in new ways? How can you connect your disparate data systems to inform your business decisions? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Main Takeaways: Grant Van Kirk, the Head of Finance at ROKA, joins Brian and Phillip in this episode of Step by Step. A single, all-encompassing tech solution is not always the best choice for your business and diversifying your tech stack can minimize integration demands. How do you decide when it is time to add a piece of software to your tech stack? Fulfillment expectations are higher than ever, but streamlining your operations can meet these demands and boost customer lifetime value. The ROKA Story: A Quick Overview: ROKA started in 2013 when two former Stanford swimmers entered a triathlon to get back into shape but were disappointed with the options of gear available to them. They invented a wetsuit that didn't feel or perform like a traditional wetsuit and quickly became a staple in the triathlon community. The brand has expanded beyond just being triathlon gear and is now available for a large spectrum of sports. Triathalon gear is typically expensive so the average customer tends to be older and more affluent than other fitness consumers. Some Background on Grant: The Journey So Far: Grant started out as a tax CPA and after a while decided that he wanted more from his career. He then went into the real estate industry in Dallas but had no company growth potential at his company, so he wanted to find somewhere that would allow him to grow and present him with more professional challenges. His search eventually led him to find ROKA where he was attracted to the infinite professional runway that came with the young, growing brand. Going beyond the responsibilities of a typical Head of Finance, Grant is additionally very involved with the operations side of ROKA. An Evolving Position: Changing With the Times: How are senior finance roles evolving in the realm of retail? It is important to not only be an expert in what your position is but also to be knowledgeable about other positions within your company. You won't be able to fully understand if your financials are correct unless you understand all of the systems that are supporting them. From day one, Grant had to make sure that he was heavily involved in operations and logistics to make sure that the finances where correct and to be able to identify areas in which the company wasn't spending enough or could increase its expenditures. Decoding the Attribution Model: From a Financial Perspective: Different platforms will highlight different numbers to present brands with the most positive spin on attribution costs. How do you translate different attribution data across disparate platforms? Aggregating your data across platforms for comparison will allow you to correctly assess if a marketing tool is effective. Once you have attracted customers to your site, the next steps are equally important to convert those visitors into customers. Looking Under the Hood: Breaking Down ROKA's Tech Stack: For its eCommerce platform, ROKA is currently running on Shopify Plus and pretty much everything that the consumer sees is also run through the platform. To accommodate more features, ROKA is also using several custom modules such as a module that allows customers to design their own sunglasses. After the purchase, all data is fed through ROKA's ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Brightpearl and from there is sent to one of three 3PLs (third party logistics) that ROKA divides its orders between. For international orders, ROKA uses Shopify to provide local currency sales, but this can be a big headache because of how much manual effort is required to keep things updated. Scaling With Growth: Selecting the Right ERP for Your Business: ROKA started with Quickbooks for its initial ERP, quickly jumped to NetSuite, and finally settled on Brightpearl because it is a retail-specific ERP. Brightpearl is the source of truth when it comes to data collection for ROKA. ROKA has adopted the stance of not trying to have one package that does everything but rather relies on individual software options that are the best in their category for various operations. Spending the time customizing an all-in-one solution can be better spent on other aspects of your business when separate software already performs at optimum levels with less customization. Potential Challenges of a Diversified Tech Stack: Trials and Solutions: One of the potential challenges of using several software solutions when building a tech stack is the inevitable task of integration. ROKA has two rules when it comes to integration: 1. Don't integrate if you do not have to. 2. Your ERP has to be your source of truth. After a customer makes a purchase, the information goes straight to the ERP for processing and that customer is also enrolled in the follow-up process. ROKA uses about 10-15 pieces of software in its tech stack. What are some best practices for automating your operations post-purchase? Digging Deeper: Other Parts of the Tech Stack: How do you know when to add a piece of software to your tech stack? Due to customers being shocked about duty charges, ROKA had to implement a way to get cash upfront on purchases to not take a total loss when the package was not returned. One of Shopify's pain points is managing exchanges and returns, so granting your customers the ease of returning products is a powerful way to boost customer lifetime value, which ROKA manages to do using Loop Returns. Tools can not only serve the purpose they're built for but can also boost your customer acquisition by giving your consumers a positive experience. Looking Ahead: Identifying Opportunites: Grant highlights that there is an area for improvement in the software that ROKA's customer experience team has to use. The nature of returns and customer experience are two parts of the same coin, so in contrast to the rest of their tech stack, the customer experience software could be consolidated. Customer experience is a difficult job that presents unique challenges separate from the rest of the tech stack. What are some ways that you could improve your tech stack to benefit your customer experience team? Raised fulfillment expectations set by Amazon are making it more difficult to meet the demands of consumers. Spreading Thing: So Many Channels, So Little Time: There are different channels that consumers visit first when it comes to discovery, purchase, or entertainment, so how do you diversify your marketing strategies for such different platforms? Most people go to Amazon first when it's time to shop so if you are not at the top of Amazon's search, it is going to be hard to get there. You need to have a social presence and there is a lot of pressure to not just be on social, but have many more touchpoints for your brand. Amazon intentionally makes it difficult to track customers, so it's hard to see what is actually your customer that is just purchasing through Amazon. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: ROKA Shopify Plus Brightpearl Quickbooks NetSuite Amazon As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some ways that you can improve your tech stack by diversifying the tools that you are currently using? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are joined in this episode of Step by Step by Alida Sholl, the Director of Operations at Rep Fitness. Rep has tackled the unique challenges of setting up a warehouse for larger than average products and has perfected processes to handle these items. What are some tools that your brand can leverage to better your customers' post-purchase experience? Arming your customers with knowledge and guiding them through the purchase process not only builds their trust of your brand but encourages them to be repeat customers. A Little Bit About Rep Fitness: And A Little Bit About Alida: Rep Fitness is a complete fitness supplier that sells anything from pull-up bands to high-end power racks and all the weights that come along with that. Alida started with Rep Fitness about two and a half years ago when she found out about the local equipment company when she moved to Denver; she reached out to see if they needed any help, and Rep Fitness just happened to have a position that was a fit. Without a background in eCommerce, Alida started her career in manufacturing with a focus on process engineering. Rep Fitness was preparing to move into a new warehouse, a task for which Alida was uniquely qualified. Larger Than the Average Product: Warehouse Setup Challenges: With products that are larger than average, what are some of the specific challenges when it comes to setting up a warehouse? With items that require a lot of space, Rep Fitness relies on palette racking and a large floor stack area to meet its warehouse space requirements. Rep Fitness sorts and labels everything in the dock area, so they also need a dock area that is larger than average to accommodate those needs. When boxes can weigh up to 100 pounds, it is best to avoid any extra touches and make the shipping process as simple as possible. Diving Deeper: Who Is the Rep Fitness Customer?: The idea of a home gym does not have to be a big garage, so ideally, anyone can be a rep fitness customer. The majority of Rep's customers are somewhere between the ages of 25 and 44, typically married, own a home, and a lot of them are parents. Giving people the option to regain their freedom and live active and healthy lives without being tied to an external gym is one of Rep's goals. It is becoming much more common to be fit and lead a healthy life, which Rep is allowing parents to demonstrate for their children and lead by example. Putting the Gears in Motion: What Happens Post-Purchase? Rep has a fantastic customer service and sales team that all personally know the equipment to give customers the best experience possible when purchasing. Having a real human touch and a sales and service team that go above and beyond to make genuine connections with customers makes those customers feel welcomed to the Rep family. Rep Fitness will soon be launching chat on its website that will enable customers to get their questions answered on the spot and eliminate the need to leave the site. Already using Help Scout for all of their email requirements, it was a natural choice for Rep Fitness to choose to implement Help Scout's chat capabilities. Bringing Them Back: Capturing Trends: Most home gym owners will say that their home gym is never done, so they are always looking for new equipment to add. Consistently creating new products that are items that everyone needs to have is a great way to ensure repeat business. Customers like trendy things even in a space where there are tried and true methods along with more traditional clear paths to success. When you are in a community-centric space, if members are using a particular product, then others in the community are more willing to want that product. How To Earn Return Customers: Trials and Challenges: Digitally marketing can play a significant role in capturing repeat business. Remarketing email campaigns can be sent to customers that have not engaged with your content or made a purchase for a while. There is a vast online community in the home gym space, and amongst that community are bloggers that are regularly reviewing products and boosting product awareness. Rep keeps their product line broad so that customers can return and complete their home gym and supplement their fitness journeys with other Rep products. Leveraging Social Proof: Harnessing Customer Created Content: Rep has used Yotpo for all of the reviews on its site for a long time and has just recently started using Yotpo's digital marketing suite. Yotpo's digital marketing suite allows Rep to pull in content from social media and display it on the homepage and product pages. Customers want to see not only the studio images of products but also what that product looks likes in the homes of consumers like themselves. Rep likes highlighting their customers, and the best influencers are customers that posting things about your brand, unprompted, that others can believe and trust. Designing the Customer Journey: Deciding Where Your Customers Go: Rep's site does not follow a cookie-cutter eCommerce model and takes its customers on a tailored purchase journey when buying products. How do you decide what the best path to purchase will be for your customers? There are two very different types of shoppers that Rep caters to along the path to purchase: those who like premade packages of products, and those who want to customize what they are buying. Guided selling that empowers customers to find the options that they need gives them precisely what they want and makes your customers happy. Post-purchase is often determined by upfront education and guidance. What's Next for Rep Fitness: A Look at the Roadmap: Rep is starting to dig into data and to find ways to track and leverage the data they collect in more effective ways. Using Brightpearl, along with other analytics tools, will inform rep and guide them to make better decisions when it comes to reaching their customers. Rep is retroactively going through all of their processes to make sure they are capturing actionable data. Another goal is to get a full handle on return rates by finding better ways to track return information and finding ways to minimize returns. Rep will also be migrating their website to a new platform, which will allow them to dig into how the site functions. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Rep Fitness Help Scout Yotpo Brightpearl As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some ways that you can improve the path to purchase for your customers, and what information can you give them to educate them around your products? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are joined in today's episode by Andy Zuro, the President at ZLINE Kitchen and Bath. ZLINE has grown over the years to be a brand focused on innovation and providing customers with unique products that they cannot get anywhere else. With so many channels available today in which to acquire and convert customers, how do you know where to focus your efforts to get the most substantial returns? How do you decide what tools to add to your technology stack? What is ZLINE?: A 15-Year History: About 15 years ago, Andy started ZLINE in Columbus, Ohio, around the time when he was building his own home. During the process of selecting appliances, Andy was shocked by how expensive some of the appliances were and knew that there had to be a better way. On a trip overseas, Andy scoped out some factories and started manufacturing a basic ventilation line. Over the years, Andy saw where peoples' were when it came to kitchen remodeling and expanded to cover the entire line of items necessary when completing your kitchen. Who Shops at ZLINE?: A Customer Breakdown: The customer path has evolved over the years but started at identifying with customers who had price-driven shopping and saving money in mind. As ZLINE found there was a demand for specific aesthetic options of products, they expanded their options and innovated for people who were looking for more customized options. ZLINE started as a direct-to-consumer brand, and its low prices in comparison to large brands in the space are what grew their customer base. As the ZLINE brand has grown, the direct-to-consumer portion of the business is still there, and they don't distinguish between their sales or sales made through a partner. Shifting Strategies: From Value to Innovation: Andy has always wanted to be innovative and do things that no other brand has done before. With the push for innovation and allowing customers to customize their purchases, the SKU count starts to get very high. Variety brings brand value back to the ZLINE name and shows its customers that the brand is trying to do something unique and not just be a cookie-cutter company. Acquiring and obtaining customers is attributed to ZLINE's product innovations and by differentiated itself from competitors in the space. Differentiating from Competitors: Marketing Necessities: Galen Bradford, the CMO at ZLine, joins in to give some more details on the marketing effort. Having a great and unique product is critical from a marketing perspective because it makes your job of promoting your product much more straightforward. ZLINE has noticed a unique avenue of storytelling that they have discovered through Pinterest marketing. What is the feeling the customer feels when they interact with your brand? Once ZLINE established an online presence, they were then able to put their product in big box stores like Home Depot, Lowe's, and Best Buy. If you have the best product and the best content, then you are going to have the best brand. Growing From Zero: Challenges Along the Way: As you become more segmented in your channel strategy, how does that change you as a business? ZLINE doesn't differentiate between its channels when it comes to gauging for success, but there are different operational requirements per channel. Fundamentally, a brand should be asking what value add they are bringing to the table when it comes to delivering your product to a customer or a retailer. A lot of big-box retailers are always looking to expand their offerings, so finding your unique value add can help you get your foot in the door. A Channel Breakdown: Where is ZLINE Selling Its Products?: On the direct-to-consumer side, ZLINE is using Google Shopping, PPC, and social media advertising to reach its customers directly. The direct-to-consumer strategy is a mix of old school paper advertisements and then more modern targeted digital advertising. PPC has become exponentially more expensive in recent years, and when a channel no longer proves to be cost-effective, then people begin to search elsewhere for channels that are a better value. Consumers change their shopping habits, so you have to be prepared to change your channel strategies to go where customers are. The eCommerce Marketing Toolkit: How To Exceed In Today's Saturated Market: From a PPC standpoint, SEMrush allows you detailed online visibility of how your customers are interacting with your site. ZLINE is pushing YouTube and Pinterest when it comes to getting their content in front of the right consumers to reach their ideal prospective customers. Director of Content Development Drew Pearson joins in to point out the value of data and how it allows you to identify new customer segments. What can you do to make your content more relevant? Understanding the Google Ads environment is an essential first step to knowing your best PPC strategies. How to Convert Customers: Going Past the Traffic: There is a whole separate set of tools available to you to get a customer you have brought to your site to convert and make a purchase. Adding reviews has been one of the things that has generated the most conversions for ZLINE, and some companies that do this are Trustpilot and Bazaarvoice. Creating legitimacy for your brand is imperative, and any tools that you can find that do this can prove its value when it comes to boosting conversions. What are some ways you can boost your brand's legitimacy? Choosing Your Toolkit: Supporting New Technologies: There is no use in having an excellent toolkit unless you have a brand that resonates with the customer. Your brand needs to be able to support any channel that you add, and if it can't, then you shouldn't purchase a piece of software that implements that channel. Technology additions can be a powerful boon to your brand, but there are questions you need to answer before making the leap and purchasing them. It's not just about what a tool can do but more about how it affects your organization and growth. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: ZLINE Pinterest Home Depot Lowe's Best Buy SEMrush YouTube Trustpilot Bazaarvoice As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What is a channel that you currently do not use to acquire or convert customers, and what are some tools you could employ to make use of that channel? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

In the first episode of Season 2 of Step by Step, Scott Hill, SVP of Product at Brightpearl is on the show to talk about Brightpearl, the technology ecosystem, and how this season of Step by Step is going to teach our audience how to build an eCommerce Tech Stack! Main Takeaways: Scott Hill, the SVP of Product at Brightpearl, joins Phillip and Brian in this episode of Step by Step. What are some of the topics that will be covered in this season of Step By Step? Brightpearl empowers retailers by automating all of their back-office operations and allowing them to focus on growth rather than problem-solving? Where do you start when it comes to building your technology stack? What is Brightpearl?: A Brief Rundown: Brightpearl is a retail operations platform that helps retail brands, retailers, and wholesalers automate all of their back-office operations. Essentially, Brightpearl takes over everything after the consumer presses the buy button. Once the order has been made, Brightpearl takes care of order management, inventory management, integrated financials, and workflow automation. Brightpearl creates excellent efficiencies for its customers do they can focus on growth and not worry about the logistics of operations. Scott's Story: The Journey So Far: Scott has been with Brightpearl for about seven years and is in charge of all product management within the company. Some of his responsibilities are taking the product to market, working with customers and partners, and figuring out how to build and what to build. His first position at Brightpearl was a very brief stint in technical support, but he moved very quickly to pre-sales (but he was always going after product). Before starting at Brightpearl, Scott was academically looking into computer game design and found that product design was mostly game design (but with fewer aliens). The Reason Behind It All: Why Is Brightpearl Behind this Step By Step Season?: Brightpearl is focused on the technology ecosystem and wants to work with and highlight the other technologies that its customers might want to use for all of the activities that Brightpearl doesn't cover. Brightpearl has found a common theme in the fact that technology is essential to the success of a business. Still, even the most technologically savvy merchants don't know how to navigate the complex world of the technology market. There is so much innovation happening, so how do mid-market merchants navigate through the market? It's challenging to run a business today because of just how many technological factors and channels need to be considered when setting up your technology stack. Goals for the Series: What Can You Expect to Take Away?: The hope is that this series will equip people with the knowledge of how to navigate their way through the market. This is not a vendor recommendation series but rather an agnostic overview of the experience that likeminded retailers go through when trying to grow their business. The series will also be a great starting point for retailers and brands to be able to go off and do their research to find what works for them. This series is the first part of Brightpearl's project, which will then lead to the launch of a new study of mid-market merchants in the United States. High-Level Topics: A Sneak Peek at What's To Come: Selecting what to sell and product sourcing can be considered where the story starts as it is choosing the right product and finding ways to grow efficiently. Different seller profiles have different motivations, and finding a way to differentiate amongst your competitors is another topic that will be covered. Collaborations are a new way to introduce new products in a low-risk way by partnering with other brands to diversify their product portfolio. When is the return not worth the risk when expanding your product offerings? Winning the Content Game: Diversifying Your Portfolio for Niche Audiences: Content adds to the value of your product and differentiating it, which then benefits your assortment. There are a lot of things happening right now that are focused on creating an audience first and then selling products to that established audience. Bloggers are turning into billion-dollar retail powerhouses, and we are now at a point where anyone who can amass an audience around a niche topic can create a brand. If you have the right tools, you can stay lean in your operations and be very successful. The Ins and Outs of Order Fulfillment: The Brightpearl Process: The two main reasons why this portion of your business is so essential are efficiency and increasing customer lifetime value. The more efficient someone is at managing and shipping their orders then the less money they will have to spend on inefficiencies. With the cost of acquisition going up, there has been more focus on increasing customer lifetime value. Merchants need to make sure they deliver on their promises, and you need to be equipped on the backend to live up to your word. Diving Deeper: More On Customer Acquisition: The main challenge regarding acquisition is its cost, which is only going to keep rising in the future. Once traffic hits an eCommerce site, then your customer acquisition strategy needs to be spot on to most efficiently acquire your customers. Everything should be built to increase the order value and basket size through branding and messaging with zero friction. This is the main topic in the series where there is the most saturation, so how do you figure out what is going to deliver a return? The Power of Data: A Crucial Part to Any Business: Everyone wants to know how well they're doing, so they need support to prove that their decisions are lucrative. Data allows brands to understand what they need to ask themselves and what questions they are answering with the data they collect. Knowing what you should not be doing is just as important as knowing what is working. A significant problem that merchants see is the overall completeness of the data they have. The Post-Purchase Process: Increasing Customer Lifetime Value: It costs about five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to earn repeat business from an existing customer. Most brands focus on customer acquisition, but the focus should primarily be shifted to customer retention. Technology is saturated on the front end when it comes to acquiring but tends to be less saturated when it comes to winning the repeat purchase. How do you execute such a positive experience for a customer that you then get them to purchase four more times? Support has become the new sales when it comes to customer retention. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Brightpearl As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What is a step you can take today to improve the knowledge regarding your technology stack? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!

Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are joined in today's episode by Sandra Capponi, the co-founder of Good On You. Good On You is a brand rating system that evaluates brands in the fashion industry based on their impact against material, social, and environmental issues. How does Good On You quantify a brand's impact against various sustainability and social criteria? Every choice we make as consumers can have a positive effect on the future, so arm yourself with the knowledge of what brands are fostering positive change. What is Good On You?: The Purpose Behind the Movement: Good On You is all about empowering people to know the impact of brands and to buy better. Good On You has been around since 2015 when they launched an app in Australia that helped people make educated and ethical shopping decisions. Users can use Good On You to research how their favorite fashion brands are impacting on the issues they care about. Information, guides, and tips are also available for users to drive change toward a more sustainable future. Good Under the Hood: What Happens Behind the Scenes at Good on You: At its core, Good On You is a brand rating system with technology that aggregates publicly available brand data that assesses a brand's impact against material, social, and environmental issues in fashion. An increasing number of shoppers are becoming aware of the issues in the world and want to use their influence positive change. It's hard to know which third-party certifications are real, and Good On You provides a credible source of information that solves just that. Making informed decisions usually takes a ton of work from consumers, but Good On You takes the effort out of making meaningful and impactful choices. The Criteria for Change: Quantifying Social Good: How are the criteria for Good on You defined, and what are some things that make a brand score well in the Good On You rankings? There are hundreds of certifications in fashion alone, and Good On You navigates all of this to pull out the most relevant rankings. Public data holds brands accountable, and consumers have the right to know how brands are impacting the issues that people care about. There are over 60 sustainability indicators that are fueled by hundreds of data points that measure impact. The three significant factors are a brand's impact on the environment, a brand's impact on people, and finally, a brand's impact on animals. A Force of Constant Change: Ever-Evolving Criteria: As new information on a brand's human impact comes to light, does the criteria evolve? Good On You balances new information with internal expertise that continually scours what is happening in the industry and has a deep understanding of best practices. There is also a formal consultation process where Good On You actively engages with leading experts on specific issues. The Good On You ranking is an accurate representation of what experts in the industry say are best practices. Sandra's Story: Some More Personal Background: Hailing from Melbourne, Sandra has been concerned about the future for a long time, and she has always remained hopeful that there is a role that we can all play in bettering the future. She worked for many years in supply chain management, where she became particularly interested in sustainability issues and eventually corporate responsibility. Sandra noticed that there was a significant opportunity to use business as a force for good and, in particular, leverage and shift the flow of capital toward creating positive change. She met her co-founder Gordon Renouf who had done interesting research on consumer change. They saw a merger between their goals and Good On You was founded on their like-minded approach to change. Some Brands For Reference: Who's Doing Well?: There is no silver bullet to supply chain transparency and sustainability, so no brand has done things perfectly yet. Some brands have built themselves from the ground up with these issues front and center like People Tree, Veja, Reformation, and Armed Angels to name a few. There's also an exciting trend around recycling that is present among high fashion brands. Improving the relationship people have to their clothes and to their favorite brands also comes along with backing positive change. Establishing Consumer Trust: Celebrity Support Boons: Last year, Emma Watson publicly spoke out in favor of Good On You and praised its efforts to promote positive change. There has always been a group of people that are highly engaged in ethics that have tried to push social change. Campaigns like Fashion Revolution have sparked a yearly movement for consumers to question brands on where their clothes come from. Celebrities, along with organizations like Good On You are empowering people to use their influence to push for social and environmental change. Striving For Betterment: Helping Brands Seeking Positive Change: How can a brand set out to meet customers' expectations of social and environmental change? Good On You gets approached by brands all the time that want to get on the platform to connect with a sustainability-focused audience. At the other end of the spectrum, Good On You is approached by mainstream brands that are realizing the power of the Good On You Community and want to change to address new consumer values. How does Good On You educate brands and foster a strong community that is steering significant changes in the fashion industry? Growing Good On You: Plans for Spreading the Word: Content marketing has always been and will continue to be a focus for Good On You. They have been able to leverage that content and naturally grow by attracting people that are searching for ratings and information that Good On You's content provides. Social media (especially Instagram) is where the community is conversing and is a great place to nurture those relationships. Partnerships with brands that share a similar mission will always be crucial in expanding. How Can You Get Involved?: Taking Things Further: There are people around the world that are concerned about the future and services like Good On You are perfect tools for us to arm ourselves with knowledge on how to make positive change. Start by checking out the Good On You App, where you can find thousands of brand ratings and make more informed choices. There are also tips and guides plus tons more information on the Good On You website. Join the conversation and stop and recognize that our individual choices matter, and every step we take has an impact over time and creates change. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Good On You People Tree Veja Reformation Armed Angels Fashion Revolution As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some changes you could make today that will better align your brand with a more sustainable model? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Main takeaways:Brian and Phillip are joined in today’s episode by Nilla Ali, the SVP of Commerce at BuzzFeed.The role of publishers has shifted in recent years when it comes to commerce, but is the attribution model in need of an update?The latest updates to consumer privacy protection are changing the way publishers are acquiring consumers.How are brands reaching and connecting with younger generations like Gen Z?What is BuzzFeed Today?: Evolution Through the Years:Nilla has been at BuzzFeed for three years and describes BuzzFeed today as a cultural soundboard that has made huge strides with its news organization.Commerce has become a big part of BuzzFeed’s business and has seen success in helping people with shopping and making shopping decisions.BuzzFeed recently had a viral article about Millennial burnout and are covering topics that people want to hear about with a very fresh perspective.BuzzFeed’s investigative journalism is solidifying them in history as opposed to just a fleeting cultural relevance.BuzzFeed has used its cultural relevance to contribute to real journalism and to promote social welfare for us to be better as people.Nilla’s Story: A Meteoric Rise:Nilla has had a meteoric rise to where she is in her career at a very young age by comparison to others in her position.She started her career at Ann Taylor as a merchandizer but very quickly found out she was interested in the other side of commerce and how people make their buying decisions.She started a position at Time Inc., where she focused on affiliate business and how content can drive commerce.Towards the end of her time at Time Inc., Nilla got the opportunity to work under Ben Kaufman, and from there, her career has taken off.The Scoop on Affiliate Commerce: A Modern Model?:Affiliate is a more so a tool that powers commerce and lead generation as opposed to its commerce channel.From a consumer’s perspective, it has become much more common to see publishers creating comment that drives you to take action from that content.The acquisition of The Wirecutter by the New York Times was a significant shift in the industry that showed publishers that affiliate commerce could be a serious business.Affiliate commerce has evolved, but the model and structure has stayed the same and is how most publishers are currently powering their commerce business.The Role of Content: Shifts in the Path to Purchase:Given that most businesses have mostly shifted to digital, there is an increasing need to curate the best of the best products.Content is increasingly driving discovery or helping validate a purchase ushering in a new era in which content plays a more significant role in development.Frequently there are instances in which BuzzFeed has to work directly with partners to get appropriate attribution due to the outdated last-clicked model.Measuring the impact of content has proven to be an ongoing challenge, and the attribution process does not reflect how customers shop.Technical Hurdles: Protecting Consumer Privacy:Cookie changes, and the idea of putting the power of privacy back in the hands of the consumer can directly affect the attribution for attribution models.Nilla states that the changes that are happening in regards to user privacy are to the benefit of publishers like BuzzFeed, whose visitors are interested in content that is beyond targeted personalization.The big question is whether or not publishers will be able to track attribution in a cookieless world.How do you get visitors to return to your site without personalization?The Power of the Publisher: Empowering Retailers:How can consumers make direct purchases through BuzzFeed without needing to leave the content that drew them to the site in the first place?Nilla finds that there is a lot of power in publishers empowering retailers due to the retailer’s expertise in upselling, cross-selling, and guiding the customer through the path to purchase.The consumer trusts retailers, and it can sometimes be problematic if the publisher tries to step into the role of the retailer.It is exceedingly important that the process of discovery is smooth on a publisher site to best lead consumers through the path to purchase.A New Approach: What Does Commerce Mean to BuzzFeed?:To Nilla, commerce is understanding what your consumers are in-market looking for both from an entertainment standpoint and a shopping/action standpoint.It’s essential to think about curation as BuzzFeed plays a large part in curating what people are watching on popular streaming services.Helping consumers navigate through decisions in a saturated world is a goal of BuzzFeed’s when it comes to their commerce decisions.Shoppable recipes are an example of getting people to take action and convert when researching recipes online.New Expectations: Weaving the Customer Journey Through Disparate Properties:BuzzFeed is weaving the customer path through many different properties to make the path to purchase easier than ever before when it comes to integrating content and commerce.With modern technology like the Tasty App, you can schedule a grocery delivery curated directly from the ingredient list of a recipe video you are watching online via various grocery retailers.What are the further implications of linking separate properties with a single path to purchase?Content brands like Bon Appétit could have limitless commerce potential with integrations like this.The Content Game: Is Doing It Yourself the Best Choice?How can retail brands partner with a content provider like BuzzFeed to better improve their content strategy?Establishing yourself as a thought leader in your space is extremely important, and content can help you achieve this.Consumers can sometimes be skeptical when content comes from the brand itself and is intended to drive conversion.BuzzFeed has found a lot of partners that boost publisher content on social because content has become a reliable acquisition channel.Capturing Gen Z: Untapped Potential:BuzzFeed is very focused on Gen Z since it has already succeeded in capturing that Millennial audience.As a publisher, you always run the risk of trying to do too many things too well.The best way to capture a young audience is to have people from that generation be a part of your team and advocate for what they want to see.What are some ways in which you can reach younger generations?Brands Mentioned in this Episode:BuzzFeedBuzzFeed NewsAnn TaylorTime Inc.Bon AppétitAs always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some ways that you can leverage content to promote your brand and maximize your commerce potential?Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin.Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!

Phillip & Brian are joined by Aubrey Bergauer to talk about marketing in the arts. Aubrey discusses that orchestras need to better serve the general population by making orchestral music more approachable by the general population. Not a change in product, rather a change in presentation. Show Notes: Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are joined in today's episode by Aubrey Bergauer, Vice President of Strategic Communications & Executive Director of the Center for Innovative Leadership at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Chief Executive Officer of Changing the Narrative. Aubrey is changing the narrative of orchestra direction and bringing arts management into the digital world. When the product is not the problem, how do you pinpoint and address issues in customer retention and sales? Reaching new audiences should take priority over catering to your most loyal customers when it comes to designing your marketing. Aubrey Bergauer: A History: Phillip met Aubrey at the 2019 Magento Imagine Conference. Aubrey is a self-proclaimed classical music nerd and has wanted to run a classical music program since high school (which no one ever says). When she was in high school, her orchestra went through a management change, and that is when the lightbulb went off that that was what she wanted to do. She has been combining her degrees in performance and business for fifteen years in a career in arts management. Digging Deeper: Some More Detail on a Passion of Music: Believe it or not, Aubrey played the tuba, which is such a large instrument that she had to sit on phone books to play when she was younger. Aubrey liked the feeling of breaking the mold when it came to playing the tuba, a trend which continues into her current life. The tuba wasn't developed until much later in comparison to other instruments in the orchestra, so Aubrey's favorite music correlates with the time of its development. Sergey Prokofiev is one of her favorite composers, and his 5th Symphony is one of her favorite pieces. Instigating for Change: Redefining the Orchestra Playbook: The playbook for orchestras has existed for decades, and the art form as a whole has been around for hundreds of years. Orchestras were founded at a time when arts and culture were synonymous with entertainment, and about half of the revenue comes from ticket sales, and the other half would come from donations. As the 20th century progressed, loyalty became more fleeting, so the subscription model dwindled in comparison to patrons buying single tickets. Aubrey points out that the subscription model isn't dead, but how do you achieve loyalty amongst your customer base? Music is What We Do Best: Perpetuating Through Advancement: Classical music has survived as an art form for hundreds of years because the music is so good. There is an oversupply of musicians, which means that everyone in an orchestra is at the top of their field. The enduring level of talent in musicians highlights that the problem regarding audience attendance doesn't lie in the music itself, but rather in the customer base. How do you program towards audience behavior that contrasts with more traditional orchestra models? Attracting New Audiences: Shifting from the Paradigm of the Past: Aubrey states that the website for the San Francisco Conservatory of music is the most public-facing ambassador in their organization. More people visit their website than will ever visit the orchestra in person. When thinking about the digital experience, many first-timers did not return because their digital experience was awful. Website visitors would give feedback stating that they did not understand the terminology used on the site, which provides Aubrey and her team with actionable changes. Reaching Beyond the Insiders: Widening Your Acquisition Nets: In general, orchestras have traditionally designed their websites, assuming their visitors will have a baseline level of knowledge that doesn't exist. The people who do have this level of knowledge are already your subscribers, so stop designing for them and focus on the vast majority of people that don't fit into this category. How do you facilitate change in a world that is based upon tradition and established values? Jargony words and technical language is a gatekeeper that deters an audience that you have not reached. Going Further: The Product Is Not the Problem: When you have a good product, and people enjoy, you need to take a step back and analyze what is causing your brand not to be successful. Amazon Prime is changing expectations with product discovery by providing a new experience when it comes to the process of finding new products. Who is the tastemaker in an orchestra? There has been a movement that has evolved the typical curated experience in which orchestra attendees prefer to have more choice in what they experience with their orchestra. The Long Haul Model: Solving Traditional Problems: How do you pay homage to a traditionally elevated experience yet still update that experience and make it fun by modern standards? Aubrey explains the Long Haul Model, which is a new paradigm that solves the problems of audience attrition, churn, and aging. No matter who you are in relation to an organization, the model says that there is just one next step for you to take as an attendee. Instead of separate departments, Aubrey created one patron loyalty department that executes the Long Haul model. Non-Profit Boards: An Outdated Model?: Non-profits have boards with people who have roles at for-profit businesses who then govern an institution that is not a for-profit business. For-profit employees typically haven't been trained to manage non-profit businesses and represent 1% of dedicated orchestra-goers. As leaders in the arts, data should be used much more in regards to making business decisions because your audience is an essential part of your organization. How do you leverage data when it comes to appeasing a board? The Future Commerce Sendoff: Challenges in the Next Five Years: The changing demographics of this country are a big challenge to overcome when it comes to classical music organizations that are typically "super white and play a lot of music by dead white guys." Orchestras are over-indexing on white audiences and trying to design for them when that is a shrinking percentage of the population. How do orchestras become more inclusive, more welcoming, more inviting, and less elitist? The arts have to make a case for support when there are so many more social justice causes that are also asking for help. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: San Francisco Conservatory of Music Changing the Narrative Amazon Prime As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some actionable steps you can take today to increase your customer retention based on the insight provided by Aubrey in today's episode? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

This week, Phillip talks with Ian Leslie, CMO at Industry West on topics that every CMO needs to know. Show Notes: Main Takeaways: Ian Leslie, the Chief Marketing Officer at Industry West, joins in on today's episode. The modern CMO goes beyond just driving awareness for your brand and relies on your knowledge of the tech stack and how to leverage that tech stack to reach customers that you need. Ian gives some insider perspectives on what is working and not working when it comes to marketing for a successful ecommerce brand. How can you best arm yourself to be a successful marketer in a world that is oversaturated with content and noise? What's the Story?: Some Background on Industry West: Industry West is an eCommerce furniture company that has been around for about ten years and was founded by Jordan England and Anne England. Jordan and Anne were looking for chairs for their house and went straight to the manufacturer, where they had the idea to sell those products to consumers. Ten years later, Industry West has furnished many spaces owned by name brands, and you have probably sat on Industry West furniture without knowing it. Ian has been with Industry West for about five years now. The Nuts and Bolts: What's Inside Industry West's, Tech Stack?: Industry West is running Magento 2.3, which is tied into Netsuite that pulls order in real-time into Magento. Salesforce is being added to the sales team very soon. On the eCommerce side, Industry West uses Nosto for personalization, onsite search functionality with Klaviyo, dotdigital for journey building and consumer-side email, ShipperHQ, and TaxJar. Now that they are breaking into brick and mortar, Industry West is using ebizmarts for its POS (which is just a skin for a Magento store). The Modern CMO: How Times Have Changed: Ten years ago, CMOS did not have an in-depth knowledge of their tech stacks that is required to be successful in our current climate. For someone who was raised as a digital native, technology has become engrained in the language of an omnichannel marketer. Being on the ground with technology and genuinely understanding the functionality behind it is critical in knowing how to implement that technology best. How can you get to know your tech stack better? The Trade Market: Acquiring Brands as Customers: The trade market uses a lot of the same digital platforms that are on the B2C side of the business. Primarily, trade customers shop as if they are a regular consumer and have a lot of the same questions regarding the products. Once the trade customer is acquired, the focus shifts to the retention of that client and getting the buyer to purchase for additional clients or locations. The trade market is still an old-school industry when it comes to the tech stack, and there are emerging companies that are serving this vertical. New Ventures: InFavorOf.com: Industry West just launched a new venture called Favor. Two holiday seasons ago, Industry West noticed a massive uptick in the interest of homewares, so they created Favor to serve this interest. Favor is a different aesthetic than Industry West and focuses on an altruistic effort of working with real people who work with textiles. When you are very broad in category, you begin to lose the nice that initially made you stand out, so branching off into a sister company could alleviate that dilution. What Works and What Doesn't: An Insider's Perspective: Industry West has seen significant wins with personalization regarding what is being recommended to customers to changing the homepage depending on the buyer. One to one chat has also proved exceptionally fruitful, and people that chat with a rep online are much more likely to place an order. There have been some large one-off buys with larger publications that have not proven to be an effective use of funds. What are some efforts that have proved lucrative to your brand, and why do you think they worked? The Industry West Outlook on 2020: Projected Wins and Potential Battles: Industry West is growing quickly but is still entrepreneurial and has a consistent forward push across all employees of the company regardless of position. The ability of the founder to source products and getting designers to want to work with Industry West is another great strength of the company. A weakness (but more so an opportunity) is that Industry West is entirely bootstrapped, so everything goes back into the company, which is a fantastic opportunity to not answer to any investors granting a nimble and agile ability to adapt to change. Industry West is profitable, and a lot of the unicorns that have received tons of venture capital will prove not to be profitable. A Potential Economic Slowdown: Are You Prepared?: Is Industry West prepared for a potential economic slowdown within the next 18 months? Industry West as begun accounting for tariffs by swallowing the costs on some of the pricing. There is always a swing in the economy during an election year, and Industry West keeps tabs on loan rates and interest rates. They are so fluid in how they operate at Industry West, but that doesn't mean that they aren't worried about the potential repercussions on an economic shift. The Next Five Years: What Does the Future Hold for Industry West?: Strategic growth for both brick and mortar and online business are consistently on the horizon and part of the strategy for Industry West. For the first time, they are beginning to understand the levers and seeing particular outcomes for actions taken. Brick and mortar expansion is a goal, and they are looking at presence in Los Angeles within the next few years. Everything that comes in for business is primarily inbound, and Industry West is going to start exploring trade shows as a potential method of acquisition. The Future Commerce Wrap Up: From Chipotle Child Slaves to Exciting Newsletters: Chipotle was fined $1.4 million in a recent child labor case for having dozens of 16 and 17-year-old employees work for longer than 9 hours a day and more than 48 hours per week. Brian and Phillip think that there will be much more third party validation so that consumers can see what is going on at chains like this in regards to their labor force. Phillip is consistently impressed by a weekly newsletter from Sari Azout called Check Your Pulse, a tech and startups newsletter designed to make you feel human. If you're not subscribed yet to the Future Commerce Insiders Newsletter, then you should do that right now! Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Industry West Netsuite Magento Nosto Klaviyo dotdigital ShipperHQ TaxJar ebizmarts Favor As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! As a marketer, how can you arm yourself with knowledge of your tech stack to take your business to the next level? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Is Omnichannel really dead? How are niche brands reaching an entirely new (or not so new) generation of customers? And does Coty know what to do with Kylie Cosmetics? Find out during our LIVE NRF 2020 episode where Phillip and Brian are joined by Ingrid Cordy! Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are joined by Ingrid Cordy live from NRF 2020! The Future Commerce Vision 2020 Retail Report is out and contains tons of predictions for where commerce is heading in 2020. The Filter Bubble restricts people from ever seeing content from outside their social circle, but how do we expand our social awareness? What brands are going to be making exits in 2020 and why? Is Monoculture Dead?: What is Monoculture?:  There will never be another Michael Jackson in regards to his pop iconography, as many more content creators create content and media.  As the world is becoming more fragmented and more niche, you begin to find your niche community that provides its unique perception of reality.  Forty years ago, everyone shared the same media experiences (such as the moon landing), which became cultural moments of the world.  The visuals we have from mainstream media of pivotal moments in history would never occur today because we now view events through Snapchat and Instagram stories. The Filter Bubble: The Power of Influence: Download the Future Commerce Vision 2020 Retail Report to get more insight on the Filter Bubble and other predictions the team has made. Almost 2.5 billion people participate in the properties that Facebook owns, and with those numbers, Facebook has the power to influence an election.   Television was the first disruptor in politics, and the debate between Kennedy and Nixon swayed the vote in Kennedy's favor and served as a turning point between media and politics. Facebook will not fact check ads going into the political season, which is an example of a stance that social media platforms can take when it comes to delivering content to their users. Positive Shifts: Sorting Through the Noise:  How do aspirational brands reach no customers if the world views of potential clients are so limited due to the filter bubble? Getting people to explore outside of their bubble is a big challenge.  Your social circle and the people around you affect the way that you see the world, so smaller niche brands enjoy an audience that is outside of the mainstream culture.  Aspirational brands can be effective, but Phillip predicts this will be based on word of mouth and the trust you have from your social circle.  Ingrid predicts an increase in the need for social proof and refinement in the next generation of influencers. Looking Ahead: Shifting from Growth to Staying Power: We are coming out of a period of brands going through explosive growth, but Brian predicts we are entering a period where brands want to become something that sticks with people for a much more extended period of time.  Everything today seems to be ephemeral, and what happens today doesn't matter tomorrow.  Consumers are starting to get tired of brands always focusing on the "new" and are tired of continually discovering what has changed.  Staying power is proving to be more and more desirable from the consumer base, so brands are shifting their approach to be more dependable. The Power of Niche: Finding Your Tribe: The things that matter to you and that you put a value on will become more niche and more local to your tribe. The social community value of niche brands can be more valuable than broadly recognized brands that everyone has heard about. If we trend towards how communities interact and care about each other, we will automatically create places for sharing things beyond your internet bubble.  Each city has its own Chamber of Commerce, which is a great place for brands to share their experiences and advice with other brands. The New Local: Virtualizing the Physical World:  Local isn't just a physical location; it is wherever you happen to be.  There's an emerging trend of very young kids in school who will log onto Fortnite, not to play the game, but to be with their friends for hours at a time in a digital locale.  Taking local online to digital locations virtualizes and redefines everything we know about local.  Most of our shared experiences are very short experiences, and meme culture is rapid and happens in an environment of fleeting recognition. Coty Buys Kylie: An Enormous Acquisition: Back in November, Coty Inc. valued Kylie Cosmetics at $1.2 billion and paid $600 million for a majority stake in the company. Ingrid has doubts that a big legacy brand like Coty knows what to do with a trendy brand like Kylie Cosmetics. How can Coty leverage their expertise to make the most out of Kylie Cosmetics, and what can they learn from Kylie's ability to capture the attention of a sought after consumer base? Just because a brand sells the same type of product does not mean that it does the same thing as other brands in the same space. Commerce Current Events: Rapid Fire Hot Takes: Casper just filed to go public, and Coty just bought Kylie Cosmetics, but what other large brands could be making an exit this year?  Ingrid predicts that Everlane could be exiting because they have been around for a long time and are doubling their brick and mortar presence this year. Brian predicts that Cuyana will be purchased or make an exit this year. Phillip thinks that Glossier has a tremendous amount of brand awareness and thinks that expanding their reach will be easy with their VC money. A Virtuous Filter Bubble: Changing the Future Through Choice: Over the next ten years, Phillip predicts that we have the opportunity for technology to enable the consumer to tell the brand how they want to be talked to.  Allowing customers to experience things how they want to experience them is a filter bubble that is virtuous. If you don't want to see anything that uses animal products while shopping, there should be a filter that applies across all of your online shopping that removes that content.  A more venerated way of the customer telling brands how they want to be interacted with is a future we can strive towards. Observations and Wishes: NRF 2020:  Omnichannel has shifted to be consumer-focused, and that is the new (and better) way to describe what omnichannel was.  Amazon has not exhibited in as large of a way as they did at this year's conference ever before and are petitioning themselves as a technology stack for retailers to take advantage of.  Ingrid wants to see an interaction with a regular consumer in which they comment on what is happening at the show to get an outside perspective.  Phillip wishes there was a section of the show that was dedicated to sustainable solutions. And finally, Brian wants to see a metric that shows what solutions or brands are gaining traction at the show. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Snapchat Instagram Facebook Fortnite Coty Kylie Cosmetics Casper Everlane  Cuyana  Amazon As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! Do you agree with the predictions made by Brian, Phillip, and Ingrid? What do you think the next year holds for the world of commerce? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Download the Vision 2020 Report Right now The next phase of the growth of your business will be based on your ability to plan for the changes coming over the next 10 years. Things like outsized customer expectations, online behemoths and marketplaces like Walmart and Amazon, Generation Z coming of age, aging of the Millennial population, and a whole lot more there are things to consider in the 2020s that will either put you ahead of the pack in your DTC or retail business or at the back of the pack. In this podcast, we break down what you need to succeed in the next 10 years, from our perspective as analysts. Show Notes: Main Takeaways: It's our annual predictions episode, and 2020 is going to be quite a fascinating year for retail Relationships between company and customer are crucial to consistent retention Phillip and Brian cannot go a week without making predictions GenZ is all about building relevant and exciting skills, even if they can't afford life yet. Consumers are going to start having expectations that the products they purchase are going to improve their health, and brands are going to have to meet that demand. Future Commerce partnered with the customer-service platform Gladly to create a report on the future of retail, and it's crazy good. Vision 2020: Future Commerce partnered with Gladly to create a comprehensive report on what 2020 retail will look like, and it's available for download. The report is a buffet of Future Commerce predictions all in one place Want this report? Of course, you do, click here → Brian and Phillip cannot go more than a week without making predictions This is the year where profits are king Brands Are Going To Have To Better Your Life To Retain Your Business: Something we've seen at Future Commerce is that the relationships that retailers build with their customers can indicate if they can retain those customers long-term. And brand trust is super important because it allows brands to take risks and loyal customers to follow that journey. It's a new world: Zebras > Unicorns The evolution of health and wellness is going to evolve beyond what we can currently understand. How can the products that you purchase help make your life better? Sustainable Skill Learning: Why You Need to Tune In To CARLY: GenZ is a totally different generation, and GenZers are interested in a very different world than Millenials. We covered this in our Future Commerce Insiders #18, where we talked about CARLY (Can't Afford Real Life Yet), as the new generation of shopper. And while CARLY might value a new experience, they're also natural creators, seeking out new marketable skills. And as Brian said: "CARLYs are learning skills because one, they care about sustainably doing things. They care about the environment. And so they're patching their clothes, and they're making their art, and they're doing things for themselves. We live in a Minecraft world where people want to build out things for themselves and build experiences for themselves and use those experiences." The Future of Retail: Sustainability is Everything: As we learned in 2019, sustainability is a lot more than just a buzzword; it's the path forward for retail. Second-hand commerce is more sustainable, it allows for less waste, and resellers can capitalize on this. The story for sustainability has to continue in the 2020s Brands that are leading the way are public-benefit corporations or B Corporations, which is always a significant focus on our show. Want to hear the rest of the key trends for 2020? Check out our report on the Vision of 2020 with Gladly, it has all of the info that you need to be able to indeed stay on top of the future of retail. Download the Vision 2020 Report Right Here! Show notes

It's time to look back on our 2019 predictions to see how accurate we were. Death of Apple? Nope. The departure of Walmart from DTC? Yep. Acceleration of customer expectations? YES. Lots to unpack in our first episode of the year. Listen now! Show Notes: Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are journeying back to our 2019 predictions episode, episode 92, to analyze which predictions came true. As of 2019, Apple is still alive and somehow thriving Second-hand commerce is growing and will continue to grow, probably forever. Has social mobility eliminated the middle class? Epcot is its shadow self, and Phillip is sad about it Predictions Check: Back To February For 2019 Predictions: Phillip's first prediction of 2019 was to declare that 2019 was going to be peak Apple, but it looks like the tech company/over-priced lifestyle brand is not slowing down. Exact prediction: "We're going to start to see the beginning of the end of Apple as a dominant force and a player in both culture and technology. Some of the best Apple's best moves in 2019: The new MacBook Pro, and the AirPod Pros with noise cancellation. Phillip has decided to go as far as maybe to go full Apple and switch to an iPhone Boring Retail is Over: Is The World Better Off? One of Brian's first predictions of the year was that 2019 would be the end-all-be-all of boring retail Brian says that it was more of a co-prediction, and was made because of the "retail apocalypse," which is not a real thing. What the whole fear-mongering around the retail apocalypse was, was an indicator of the end of boring retail (or the boring middle), which is a mixed bag. What the retail apocalypse is beyond all the talk, is a transformation in the types of retail that will continue to exist But here's a question to think about: What does boring retail even mean? Walmart Changed Its Game: Added Fun Brands: Walmart made significant moves this year, trying to shed it's low-cost, low-quality reputation, and it might have started making waves in that direction. And maybe to some extent, they did succeed, they've escaped the boring middle, but are they on par with other grocers like Trader Joe's? Walmart's best quality also tends to hurt them, like endless selection, which produces long lines and cluttered shelves. Walmart did add some newer brands to its portfolio this year: Eloquii, Bonobos, and Modcloth. Though all of those brands do seem to be losing Walmart lots of money. Second Hand Commerce is Rising: And People Are Giving Back: One of the biggest trends in 2019, was the rise of two things: second-hand commerce and charitable commerce. These two trends point to a few things: one that more people are comfortable buying second-hand versions of the brands that they love, and that some brands are even willing to encourage that kind of brand engagement. This is especially prevalent in luxury retail, where the second-hand market allows consumers who may not have otherwise been able to afford luxury brands to get to participate in the brand's conversation. This prediction came from things like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff making a massive investment into StockX We also saw the rise of online resellers like Poshmark and ThredUP, which represents a massive shift in the conversation around re-sellers. Transportation Repurposing: Building Communities In Travel Hubs: One of Phillip's prediction's for 2020 was that travel hub would build community-based retail spaces around their locations. So, was the Virgin USA's move to build a community around their trains indicative of a more significant trend in commerce? Maybe. Airports have seen massive growth in retail spaces, and have become a hub for shopping, and it's only going to grow as travel becomes more accessible. And as Phillip points out: it does not just travel hubs, malls are seeing a lot of repurposed space. Malls are repurposing retail space for movie theaters or waterparks and or a megachurch. As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What were your favorite predictions from our 2019 prediction episode? Do you have any predictions of your own for 2020? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!

After the birth of her daughter, the creator of cult brand Frank and Eileen saw the world a little differently. Women are superheroes and Audrey McLoghlin wanted to create a shirt just for them. Grayson is the result of her 5 year consideration on building a new brand from the ground up. In this episode, we talk about how to create a sustainable business with a B2B component in the new DTC era, how to play the long game, and how to join the “hundred club” — owning 100% of the business. Listen now! Show Notes Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are joined by Audrey McLoghlin, Founder & CEO of both Frank & Eileen and Grayson.  Audrey has created a new business model entitled the Sustainably Hybrid Vertical Brand. How do you navigate today's fast-paced direct-to-consumer marketplace with a wholesale brand? As a wholesale brand, your partnerships are critical to your success and can turn your distribution channels into customer acquisition channels. Who Is Audrey McLoghlin?: A Serial Founder in the World of Consumer Brands:  An engineer by training, Audrey admits that she has now become a serial entrepreneur.  Frank & Eileen was founded ten years ago when Audrey fell in love with Italian menswear fabrics and wanted the same fabric available for women.  Over the years, Audrey learned that in business, it is almost more important regarding what you say no to than what you say yes to.  Frank & Eileen has been very diligent in focusing on a single product and has become famous for making an amazing button-up shirt.  A New Venture: The Grayson Story:  Over the past five years, the entire retail landscape has changed, and Audrey wanted a brand that captures what is going on today and speaks to the customer that they wanted to talk to. Grayson is named after Audrey's four-year-old daughter, Grayson.  Audrey hopes that the quality and reputation of Frank & Eileen's product will assist in reaching a customer base that fits Grayson.  She was inspired by all of the powerful women working around her that thought it ways that are totally different from previous generations.  How Times Have Changed: A Shift in the Retail Landscape:  Ten years ago, social media and eCommerce didn't exist as they do today, so brands launched wholesale as opposed to direct to consumer.   Everything was about having the best product and getting that product to be sold in the right places.  Today, you still need incredible products, but you also have to consider why you are making the product.  In starting Grayson, Audrey spent a lot of time looking at the business landscape and noticed that the path to profitability has become elusive due to the significant costs of being successful in the DVNB space.  The Sustainably Hybrid Vertical Brand: A Whole New Model: In creating Grayson, Audrey hopes to create a whole new type of go-to-market strategy called the Sustainably Hybrid Vertical Brand. This model has all of the good qualities of a direct-to-consumer brand but also balances the direct-to-consumer component with the wholesale component of a brand.  In the new retail landscape, you can have strategic wholesale partnerships that can become your customer acquisition strategy. This is the first example of your customer acquisition strategy, also being a lucrative money center.  Shifting Channels: From Wholesale to Direct:  A healthy ecosystem in which a brand supports its wholesale partner but also supports its customers with an experience that only the brand can bring is key to being successful in this new model.  A brand can also give its customers the freedom to purchase either from its wholesale partners of direct from the brand itself. Pricing and margin are critical to the health of the brand but also to the partners of the brand.  How do you identify partners that would be strategically valuable to your brand? The Hunt for Explosive Growth: An Untapped Price Point: Frank & Eileen discovered a particular niche in the women's button upmarket that was not being covered by any other brand.  It was vital for them to serve this price point while still delivering the quality and experience that the brand was known for.  Finding the right supply chain was imperative for accomplishing this goal.  You have to be very strategic and be patient, see what initiatives work before moving on to the next strategy. Fundamentally Sustainable: The Power of Wholesale: Due to the nature of wholesale and receiving funds and purchase orders for your product, you have access to actual capital that can be spent in ways that aren't a risk for your brand.  DTC is just a distribution channel in your strategy, and you have to look at this and other channels in strategic ways to decide when to pursue them.  If you invite wholesale partners who become interested in your product, it serves as instant validation of a need for your product in the market today.  In theory, you don't need much capital to get through your first year through this model.  The Pitfalls of Quick Launches: Costs, Costs, and More Costs: It has never been easier to launch a brand quickly thanks to today's ecommerce channels and technology, but the costs of this are higher than ever. Venture Capitalists are looking for unnatural growth, and that, in conjunction with an inexperienced founder, is a particular combination.  Is it sustainable if every new brand needs to raise tens of millions of dollars before they reach profitability?  You see the glory, but you don't know the story as there is a great story behind every entrepreneur, even if they don't achieve large scale success. Common Misconceptions: The Wholesale Truth: Wholesale is more complicated than direct-to-consumer brands think it is.  Wholesale and direct-to-consumer businesses are fundamentally different but can be incredibly complementary and powerful together.  If you set it up correctly, have intentional partnerships, and manage those partnerships well, you are guaranteed to be profitable in wholesale.  How does your role change as a leader in an organization that goes through the growing process of a wholesale brand? The Pressure of Growth: An Unfair Outcome?: Away CEO Steph Corey recently stepped down as CEO after an investigative article revealed a toxic work environment.  Corey took Away from $0 to $150 million in just three years, which puts her in the same category as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk when adjusted for inflation.  While her behavior is not condoned, the unbelievable pace at which Away has grown is a breeding ground for aggressive behavior, but her male peers were not asked to step down.  Do you think this outcome was merited, and if not, what do you think would have been a better solution? Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Frank & Eileen Grayson Away As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! How can you make the most out of your strategic partnerships to take your wholesale business to the next level? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Measure, Reduce, Offset. That's the simple formula for Climate Neutral, a new label that certifies the commitment of a brand to track, and lower, their carbon emissions. Austin Whitman and Caitlin Drown join us to talk about the future of brand trust, consumer expectation, and even a little bit of speculation on how offsetting today can change the world tomorrow. Listen now! Show Notes Main Takeaways: Phillip is joined in today's episode by Austin Whitman and Caitlin Drown from Climate Neutral. Climate Neutral is a movement intended to help brands quantify and then reduce their carbon footprints. Consumers are driving the economic engine, so it's imperative to make your voice heard to encourage positive changes in your favorite brands. How can you offset your carbon footprint enough to be carbon neutral? Reducing and Offsetting Carbon Footprints: The Climate Neutral Initiative: Future Commerce joined the Climate Neutral movement back in October of this year. Climate Neutral is a young, non-profit organization that exists with the sole purpose of helping businesses understand what their carbon footprints are, take meaningful actions to reduce those carbon footprints, and then offset the entirety of that impact on the environment. People simply don't understand where carbon emissions come from and what to do about them. Climate Neutral is creating a label that will be placed on products to let consumers know that brands have gone through the Climate Neutral process. Why Start at Retail?: Making the Biggest Impact: Climate Neutral started with retail because consumers are what drive the economic engine by buying products and services. The two brands that funded Climate Neutral were BioLite and Peak Design who both realized that there are limits to how much they can reduce their carbon footprints, but that's not the limit to what you can do. There needs to be a strong signal to companies that doing something to reduce your carbon footprint is an economical investment. Climate Neutral is working with brands that many consumers would already know such as Kickstarter and Allbirds. Spreading the Message: Making an Impact on Social: Caitlin has noticed that a lot of large influencers on Instagram that aren't associated with one of Climate Neutral's brands have been promoting Climate Neutral of their own accord. Sharing the story is encouraging influencers and brands to get involved and taking action in a transparent way. Transparency is a major factor in gaining the trust of consumers. The brands that sign with Climate Neutral are validating Climate Neutral as much as the initiative gains credibility from the brands' involvement. What is the Goal?: Strategic Brand Partnerships: Goal #1 is to understand and capture a large amount of carbon within the brands that Climate Neutral is representing. The label will only be provided to companies that have measured their carbon footprint, taken measured action towards things that will reduce that carbon footprint, and finally offsetting the entirety of their measured footprint. In addition to making a big carbon impact, another goal is to mobilize a new wave of brands to build carbon reduction into their strategies. When people go through the process, they are going to have a carbon imprint, so a measurable amount of carbon indicates how much that brand should put back into the erasure of their footprint. Transparency and Education: Armed With Knowledge: If someone wants to look into the particular actions that a company is taking, that information will be available online. This data will give brands insight into what other brands are doing to reduce their footprint. Climate Neutral is going to make it easier for companies to estimate what their carbon footprint is. Most companies have no idea what their carbon footprint is, and will be able to use a tool via Climate Neutral to get a better understanding. Real Life Feedback: What are Brands Saying?: Tapping into the network if reputable and respected brands are helping give Climate Neutral the stamp of approval. Climate Neutral did their first official launch in June where they had Alex Honnold serving as a moderator for a panel, and he initially didn't believe in carbon offsetting. Because of Kickstarter and various PR efforts, Climate Neutral has been able to enter the discussion at a higher level and volume that Austin has ever seen. Even if there are those who are more skeptical about carbon offsetting, the validation from so many sources has led to articles being written on both sides of the debate. Expanding Reach: Influencing Consumers and Companies: Consumers need to get excited about the carbon offset label and brands have to get excited about the process and wearing the label. The main reasons why companies aren't doing carbon offsetting are that it is not in the budget or there is a stigma around offsetting in general. Smaller companies tend to have fewer levels of approval to approve the initiative, so the goal is to eventually get approved by large, billion-dollar corporations. We need to do far for than what we are currently doing when it comes to addressing climate change. Looking in the Past to Move Forward: Learning from the Past: We are so far from bending the carbon curve to neutrality that we have to start somewhere. It's possible that neutrality will eventually lead to positivity. If brands define their footprint far enough, it extends to other brands, and if these overlapping footprints become neutral, then that equates to positivity. Reduce the barriers for companies trying to get on this path and increase the expectation for what neutrality is. The Digital Commerce Shift: A Positive Impact?: One-day shipping is a great convenience, but chances are that that shipment came on an airplane that comes with a much larger carbon footprint. There is a ton of data to measure against whether there is a larger carbon footprint for traditional retail experiences or online shopping. We should not assume that just because stores are not physically there that there will be a smaller carbon footprint to accommodate the online shopping experience. Do retailers that are digitally native have a smaller carbon footprint? Next Steps: How to Get Involved with Climate Neutral: First and foremost, if you want to get involved with Climate Neutral, you should back the Kickstarter Campaign. Contributing at certain levels will actually offset someone else's carbon footprint for the year. Reach out for any questions you may have to . As a consumer, call out your favorite brands and ask them to look into the certification and offset their carbon footprint. Brands Mentioned In This Episode: Climate Neutral BioLite Peak Design Kickstarter Allbirds As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some steps you can take today to get a better understanding of your carbon footprint? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels, we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Welcome to Step by Step, a 5-part series from Future Commerce to help walk you through how to launch and grow a successful business. This season, we're talking about funding. Today is episode 5. Phillip & Brian are joined by Michelle Cordeiro Grant, Founder of Lively to chat about her experience working with Venture Capital from a founder's perspective. Listen Now! SHOW NOTES Main Takeaways: Michelle Cordeiro Grant from Lively is back again to walk us through successfully selling your business. A strong operation foundation and consistent production costs can help identify where to apply raise capital. What are the factors that indicate that your brand is ready for an exit? Breaking through the noise of digital may require physical presence, so how can you achieve this with your brand? Lively and Michelle: Some Quick Backstory: Lively is a brand and a community whose sole purpose is to inspire women to live passionately, purposefully, and confidently. Michelle grew up in a rural area of Pennsylvania and wanted to see what she could do with her life instead of more typically expected career choices. She eventually found her way into fashion and fell in love with the idea of concept-to-customer and the power of brand. Eventually, she wound up at Victoria's Secret that led her to decide that there was something missing in the lingerie community which ended up with the creation of Lively. Pursuing Capital: A Founder's Perspective: With a story backward to most, Michelle left Victoria's secret with the idea that she could start a brand by having a community to build the brand instead of a company building it. She knew that she needed to have her supply chain completely under control so her strategy was to partner with an investor that was a manufacturer prior to launching her company. This allowed her to scale with what her customers wanted as opposed to what was written on a spreadsheet. Michelle did a $1.5 million convertible note with her manufacturer Gelmart and having the support and experience of a manufacturer in her industry set Lively up for success. The Next Step: The Need for More Capital: Lively launched organically without paid media and after 45 days saw that they were able to ship to every state in the United States. Two months after launch, Lively had captured results that they had planned to do within the first year, which indicated that it was time to fundraise. Michelle's initial strategy was not to go after Venture Capital money, but rather to pool angel investors, but eventually started getting contact from Venture Capitalist firms. She wanted to wait for her Series A, but one email in particular from Robin Lee from GGV Capital (who worked for a VC but was also a Lively customer) changed her mind on VC and within a week of conversations, Michelle knew they had found their match. The Struggles and The Victories: Accepting Venture Capital: Michelle was very worried about the expectations of her brand before she accepted the term sheet with Robin. In retail, a brand's growth charts like a roller coaster in regards to its trajectory and Michelle didn't want to be pressured for unrealistic growth. While her VC was always pushing her forward, Michelle was happy to discover that she had a voice and she could adjust her strategy to favor long-term growth. How can you preserve your visions of growth when an investor is now sitting with you at the head of your brand? A Stable Foundation: Knowing Where to Spend Capital: Lively raised $4 million in its first round when they only set out to raise $2 million so the extra capital fueled the excitement for the brand's growth. Due to the fact that most monetary aspects of the business were so steady (such as a single price point for products and consistent production costs), Lively was able to clearly decide what to do next. A clear perspective of what was coming from an operations and a cashflow perspective allowed Lively to easily put the money towards marketing and inventory. How can you solidify your operations to help pinpoint where to spend your raised capital? Vertical Integration: The Power of Structure: Quality was a goal from the outset and Gelmart helped Lively to create a custom manufacturing solution that allowed them to deliver consistently high-quality products. Because their manufacturer was both their investor and supplier, Lively also had the benefit of getting net terms and was a huge boon when it comes to handling your cash. Vertical Integration also allows you to be innovative by allowing you to directly address customer needs as opposed to serving just a bottom line. Lively grew by 300% from year 1 to year 2, so they were able to continually prove that they had the roadmap to success. The Sale: Building Up to the Exit: The intent was not to sell Lively in 2019, but the continual success of the brand and the sturdy foundation from the get-go led to Lively's acquisition by Wacoal. One of the factors that made Lively such a desirable acquisition was its clean board of three investors that raised enough capital without becoming too diluted. Lively's clean KPIs and financials were a huge benefit to getting through the diligence of the acquisition. What were the factors that led to Lively's brick and mortar strategy? Seven Year Cycles: The Digital Deluge: Are customer acquisition costs for digital marketing forcing brands to adopt local strategies in order to grow their brand? Digital marketing channels are so saturated that brands need physical presence to break through the noise of digital advertising. Pure digital brands like Everlane are increasing their physical presence because it is becoming more and more clear that you cannot only do digital in order to succeed. Generation Z has been raised on screens and is looking for in-person experiences to really connect with brands. Beyond the Dollar: Further Benefits of Capital: GGV introduced Michelle to a lot of other founders that were 2-3 years ahead of her in their brand development which gave her a strong group to help answer questions and give advice. What went wrong is just as important as what went right when it comes to growing your brand. Conferences like Shoptalk allowed Wacoal to get to know who Michelle and Lively were even before there was any interest in the acquisition. Michelle would not have been comfortable taking the risks she did without the experience-based knowledge from GGV. Adversity Along the Way: Not All that Glimmers is Gold: There was only one person doing customer service with over 2000 customers, so macros had to be designed to alleviate the most common questions being asked by customers. There was so much time spent on each component of the bras that some of the luxury components led to unforeseen complications. In October of 2017, Lively rebuilt their site and realized after launch that Google was doing a recrawl that required a rebuild of their organic traffic. What are some of the obstacles that inevitably led to positive changes for your brand? Brands Mentioned In This Episode: Lively Victoria's Secret Gelmart GGV Capital Wacoal Everlane Shoptalk As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! Are you ready to raise capital to grow your brand? Does Venture Capital or Private Equity sound like a better fit for your brand? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels, we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Welcome to Step by Step, a 5-part series from Future Commerce to help walk you through how to launch and grow a successful business. This season, we're talking about funding. Today is episode 4. Today, Phillip & Brian are joined by Jeremy Muras of Lion Capital Group to discuss Private Equity. Listen Now! Show Notes Main Takeaways: In today's episode, Brian and Phillip are joined by Jeremy Muras from Lion Capital to talk about the ins and outs of private equity. What are some of the major differences between Private Equity and Venture Capital? Private Equity benefits brands with not only large amounts of capital but a proven track record of successfully growing brands. How can Private Equity help brands resonate with their ideal customers and tap into previously unexplored channels? Jeremy's Journey: A Look Into His History: Jeremy has been in the digital industry since the early 2000s and got interested when he was located in Hong Kong and he got close with the team that built Monster.com. He worked for a luxury lingerie company called Agent Provocateur, ran TopShop.com for a brief spell, and then made his way to Burberry where he worked as the eCommerce Manager for Europe. While at Burberry, Jeremy and his journey were the first to execute purchasing directly from the runway, in-store pickup, and various othering pioneering innovations. From there, he found his way to Lion Capital where he operates as an expert on digital marketing and allowed him to expand his expertise. Distinct Differences: Private Equity vs. Venture Capital: Essentially, private equity is equity or shares that represent ownership or an interest in a particular company that is not public. Private Equity requires companies to prove that they can scale and be able to demonstrate a number of years of profitability. Part of the challenge that Private Equity firms face in today's ecosystems is that a lot of successful DNVBs have exponential growth, but haven't demonstrated consistent years of profitability. Lion Capital typically invests over $100 million into a business and tends to not go much go lower than that. The goal is to achieve a positive return on investment in 5-7 years. Going Deeper: How Does It Work?: Private Equity firms typically get their money from large institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies, and banks or other accredited investors like high-value individuals. Large institutions are investing in what is effectively betting on entrepreneurship being a growing portion of economic advantage in the United States. Unlike Venture Capital, Private Equity is not going to make risky investments that have not proven themselves. The gates that brands need to get through to acquire private equity are designed to give confidence and assurance to investors that their investment will be profitable. Hands-On or Hands-Off: How Involved Are Investors?: Jeremy mentions that the consensus is split pretty evenly amongst investors whether they want to be hands-on in scaling their investment or not. As the industry has become more competitive, the active investor has started to take dominance in the preferred model of a firm. Demands are higher with the disruption coming from digital and other verticals. Brands can factor in the level of involvement that they want from their investors when it comes to choosing the right fit. When to Seek Private Equity: When is the Right Time?: At what point in the lifecycle of a business does a private equity firm become involved? Lion Capital typically becomes engaged with businesses that are in the growth stage of their lifecycle because they need to see years of data proving success yet also need room to grow. Extending companies into new areas or diverse verticals are also good signs for Private Equity because that is something that capital could assist with accomplishing. In the United States, a lot of brands are exclusively national and have not gone international yet, which is a prime goal that private equity can accomplish. Broadening Horizons: Expanding Into New Territories: There are a lot of companies that never break out of their verticals because they do not have the capital or the expertise to pursue new markets. A product does not necessarily become a brand without guidance and funding. Lion Capital looks for a brand within a category that is niche that can then be blown up in regards to growth. The qualities and endorsements of smaller brands can reach wider audiences with the appropriate injection of capital. The Work of the Investor: What's the Deal Flow?: Deal flow is a term to describe the rate at which business proposals and investment pitches are being received and is imperative for Private Equity firms to maintain. Firms have large amounts of capital that they need to employ, and if they do not have an adequate deal flow, then you will fail in distributing the funds. It's becoming harder and harder to compete for deals amongst investors because of the high level of current business evaluations. Sourcing deals through non-traditional means is how firms are competing in today's economy. The Secret Sauce: What Private Equity Brings to the Table: A huge differentiator between what Private Equity and Venture Capital bring to the table is that Private Equity brings with it a huge set of experience and skills that has a proven track record of building successful brands. Operating is difficult and you need to scale within your operating function to really add value. You need to make a decision whether you are prepared to invest to scale internally or if you want to build out a center of operational excellence that covers key aspects of your business. The reason you bring in an active investor is to embrace what they offer and to trust their expertise and guidance when it comes to scaling your brand. Getting Hands-On: Planning and Guidance: Private Equity needs to be involved with strategic planning and budgeting because they have to account for their bottom line. Lion tries to bring founders along for the growth journey, and while they would like to keep management teams intact, firms have access to a large network of talented executives that can take the brand to the next level. There are different definitions of value, so sometimes strategic planning choices can be different than what a founder initially tries to accomplish. Firms have to be very clear with their intentions and cannot take footing away from the founders because that relationship is what the initial agreement was based upon. The Brand Journey: Potential Changes for Exponential Growth: Moving a brand away from its traditional way of expressing itself towards new channels where new storytelling can resonate with customers is the goal. Brands stay a constant throughout their lifetimes, but their messaging and values can potentially change along the way. AllSaints has tapped into the zeitgeist of its customers and has made its message resonate amongst them. Private Equity firms can provide a window for brands to see beyond their traditional messaging and discover ways to truly make the brand shine. Brands Mentioned In This Episode: Lion Capital Monster.com Agent Provocateur TopShop.com Burberry AllSaints As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some specific ways that Private Equity can take your brand to the next level that are different from how Venture Capital would help your brand? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels, we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Welcome to Step by Step, a 5-part series from Future Commerce to help walk you through how to launch and grow a successful business. This season, we're talking about funding. Today is episode 3. Robin Li joins Phillip & Brian, Principal at GGV Capital, to talk about discuss the process of raising venture capital and an initiative called Evolving E. Listen Now! Show Notes:  Main Takeaways:  Robin Li from GGV Capital joins Phillip and Brian in the third episode of Future Commerce's Step by Step. New York is becoming a hotspot for DNVB and retail portfolio companies, and GGV is leading the charge  "Founders have to have their own vision and you as a Venture Capital partner are there to help them execute and make things happen." Is Shopify the new Main Street? Robin has some pretty amazing advice for brands who are thinking about finding a venture partner Introductions And Career Changes: Meet Robin Li From GGV:  Fun fact: Robin actually started her career out as a special education teacher with Teach For America before going to business school.  Then while interning at Qiming, one of the top venture capital firms in China, Robin met Hans Tung, who happens to be one of the most prominent VC's in the world, with a spot of Forbes's Midas List.  This led Robin to learn everything she could about venture capital in both the United States and China, as she spent that entire summer stationed in Bejing.  Robin stayed in venture while being back in business school, leading her to work at Flextronics for the last quarter of business school before ultimately returning back to GGV, where she has worked for the last five year years. Robin was originally located in Silicon Valley, which was the heart of venture capital for a long time, but is now in New York (since last year) because New York has become the center for DNVB brands and retail portfolio companies.  New York's Ecosystem is Changing: GGV is Leading The Charge:  New York has long been associated with industries like finance and real estate, mostly massive legacy brands, but according to Robin, this is all beginning to change, and New York is being rebranded as a hub for retail, entrepreneurship and tech companies. In fact, just a few years ago, GGV only had three or four portfolio companies in New York, and now, that number is over thirty.  These companies include fitness brand Peloton, lingerie, and lifestyle brand Lively, and GGV's portfolio companies in New York and everywhere span multiple industries.  Brian says that while New York has always been a bit of a retail hub, GGV has become very invested in DNVB's, or "new retail". Robin says that retail, especially in e-commerce are massive categories right now, and those tend to be very big in New York, especially because social media, and the talent to power it is very big in New York. Eevolving E: The Bridge Young Brands Need to Move Forward:  One of Robin's ways of helping brands and entrepreneurs is an initiative called Evolving E (Evolving E-commerce) that she founded Ryan Darnell who is the managing partner at Max Ventures, as a way to connect all the moving parts in entrepreneurship, and the entire thing started as a meetup. Evolving E has since expanded and has become a bridge for entrepreneurs and young brands in multiple aspects of e-commerce. Now, Evolving E hosts multiple online and offline series, masterclasses, and events, like the recent summit Evolving E held that is in it's fourth year. An example of a recent masterclass: Recently Evolving E did a masterclass on TikTok which is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms, and this can really help younger brands with in-house marketing that don't have access to the massive marketing largesse that legacy brands do. Evolving E has morphed into a massive community consisting of everyone in the e-commerce ecosystem.  Marketplaces Are Changing: Serendipity Can Now Be Found Online: One topic that Phillip points out that has been discussed on Future Commerce is the idea that malls are dying off and that the old idea of the marketplace is dying.  But new marketplaces are forming, especially in some of GGV's own portfolio companies like Poshmark, and StockX, both companies which host internal communities as well. And speaking of marketplaces, we are seeing a reemergence of neighborhood-esque shops, both online and in-store thanks to platforms like Shopify.  Brian wonders if Shopify has become the new Mainstreet?  Landing on Venture Capital: Aligning With Portfolio Founders:  Who are the founders that GGV as a firm are looking to work with? "In many ways, we are the believers behind the believers, we  are looking for globally-minded founders who are looking to change the world" Brands mentioned in this episode:  Poshmark eBay StockX Lively Amazon Peloton As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! Are you at the stage where your brand is looking to partner with a venture capital firm? What are you looking to gain from building a relationship with a venture partner? Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels, we love hearing from our listeners!

Welcome to Step by Step, a 5-part series from Future Commerce to help walk you through how to launch and grow a successful business. This season, we're talking about funding. Today is episode 2. Phillip & Brian are joined by Brian O'Malley of Forerunner Ventures to discuss venture capital. Listen now! Show notes Main Takeaways: Brian O'Malley from Forerunner Ventures joins Phillip and our own Brian in the second part of the Future Commerce Step by Step Series. There are many choices when it comes to venture capital, but where do you start the decision process? How can you make your brand stick out to venture capitalist firms? Founders are driving the evolution of the economy and are continuing to drive innovation. Background and Introductions: Meet Brian O'Malley and Forerunner Ventures: Forerunner is one of the only firms that is dedicated to the journey of the consumer and understanding what is going on in peoples' lives. By partnering with companies early in their investing journey, Forerunner works with them over the years to build strong businesses that stand the test of time. Third-party research is available to everyone, and Forerunner does their research to get the exact data that they are looking for that goes beyond reactionary researching. Brian joined Forerunner about a year ago but has been in the investment field for fifteen years and has worked to translate offline retail experiences to online businesses. Back to Basics: What is Venture Capital?: Venture Capital firms tend to provide early round capital to businesses that traditionally wouldn't be getting any outside money. The Seed Round is the first institutional round of investing where larger firms get involved outside of friends and family putting money into the business. Series A is when you first establish a board and start to think of your business from a corporate governance perspective. (This is when Venture Capitalists typically get involved.) While they do put some money into the fund, the majority of the money that Venture Capitalists put into business comes from limited partners. At the end of the day, you want to make more money for the limited partners than what they initially contributed, so VC firms are beholden to live up to growth promises and owe the money back to the partners. More Than Just Money: What Else Do VCs Offer?: At Forerunner, they respect the entrepreneurial process and understand that it's hard to get something off the ground, so empathy is important. A lot of time is spent understanding the consumer so that the firm can advise the companies in their portfolio how best to reach that consumer. Strategic guidance is also issued to help do the right thing faster or to avoid doing the wrong thing and saving months of setbacks altogether. Trying to assemble the right people to accomplish goals is also a unique perspective that VC firms can provide to their portfolios. Content is King: Brands that Want to Tell Stories: Some of the well-known brands that are in Forerunner's portfolio are Bonobos, Cotopaxi, Glossier, Outdoor Voices, Stadium Goods, and many more. Convincing consumers to spend their hard-earned money relies heavily on a brand's ability to tell its story and reach consumers on deeper levels. Forerunner's portfolio has done an amazing job at content creation, which is why you have probably heard about a lot of the brands contained within it. How are these companies getting their growth and is their growth something that more capital would accelerate? A Variety of Reasons: Why Do People Need Capital?: Are brands seeking capital because they cannot financially compete with the rising customer acquisition costs in social media? At the most basic level, raising capital is validation for entrepreneurs of the business that they set out to build. At Forerunner, they want to work with brands that are confident in their ability to grow even without capital but provide good reasoning behind how the capital will accelerate that growth. Ultimately, raising venture capital isn't for everyone, so firms are looking for the right type of alignment that will make their portfolio grow into household names. What Are Firms Looking For?: A Desirable Business Model: Figure out what is going on and how to get your costs in line before you seek capital and don't use capital to "fix things." Firms have the luxury of looking at businesses that are doing well and are looking for a match where they could have a positive effect on the business. What are some ways you can demonstrate your business plan to a potential investor in a way that shows how the capital would accelerate your growth? Different levels of involvement and criteria can highlight where firms can help your brand. Connecting with a Firm: Some Ins and Outs: What are some ways that VC firms can connect with founders? One of the main indications that Forerunner looks for is if a brand has insight into the particular consumer that they are serving. Founders also have a choice in who they choose to go with when it comes to receiving capital if they have enough interest from investors. What are some qualities that you would want in an investment firm if you were raising capital for your brand? Key Factors: The Dos and Don'ts of Due Diligence: Forerunner looks at many things when it comes to choosing brands to give capital to such as who are the people, what is their vision, what is the state of the stage of the business, and what's the deal? A lot of the times when an investment firm decides on a company to invest in, that company has other options of investors. Founders are doing more and more due diligence around firms to make sure that the deal is a good fit. How do VC firms appeal to prospective investments? What Type of Investment Do I Want?: Breaking Down the Options: Founders need to be more wary of who they are working with as well as where the money is coming from. What are the different types of venture capitalist firms and partnerships? A lot of the differences in firms stem from where the money comes from thus dictating the results that the investors want to see from their investment in a company. Be wary of perspectives and keep an eye out for investors who don't just want a quick turnaround for their money. From Start to Finish: The Time It Takes: There are always exceptions to the rule, but the timeframes range from a couple of weeks to years of a deeper relationship building for an investment to occur. From an ownership standpoint, Forerunner wants to own enough of a company for it to matter, so anywhere from 5%-30% ownership. At the end of the day, investment firms want to own a material part of the company that they helped to build. Oftentimes, ownership is accumulated over time depending on the success of the company. Projections and Premonitions: Where is Retail Headed?: Retail isn't dying, it's just changing and adapting with new customer expectations and technology. Traditional brands will slowly take a back seat to younger and innovative brands that are embracing change and optimizing of the local experience. New waves of founders will take their passion and translate that to their companies and change the face of retail. In 5-10 years, Brian predicts that there will be a bigger emphasis on where things are coming from and convenience in addition to more options on the labor side. Brands Mentioned In This Episode: Forerunner Ventures Bonobos Cotopaxi Glossier Outdoor Voices Stadium Goods As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some qualities that you as a brand owner would like to align with an investment firm? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels, we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Have you ever wondered how to get funding for your retail business? Wonder no more! In a new series from Future Commerce - the number one retail podcast - we walk you through all that you need to know in order to build and exit from a successful retail business. In partnership with Shopify Plus, we'll take you from zero to hero, Step by Step. #Show Notes Brian and Phillip are joined by Jamie Oliver and Jordan Knapp from Shopify Plus to discuss funding for your eCommerce store in a new part of the Future Commerce Shopify series. This series is targeted towards the merchants with online stores between the $1 million and $5 million range and entrepreneurs that want to think through the avenues of raising capital. How do you choose what type of capital would be the best fit for your brand? What are the steps my brand should take to attract an investor, and how do I make the investment process easier? Main Takeaways: Introductions and Dreams: Helping Merchants Achieve Their Goals: Jordan leads the Market Development team but has been in eCommerce for the majority of his career. A year and a half ago, Shopify set out to explore new channels and see where they could place Shopify Plus in the market to expand it in new directions. One of the ideas between Jamie and Jordan was about the fact that very few of the merchants are selling on Shopify without bigger dreams or aspirations. Their goal has been figuring out who the investors to empower Shopify merchants to get the funding best suited for their needs, and thus, in the Investor Collective was born. Scaling and Growth: How Shopify Plus Grew: Jamie joined Shopify in 2014 on the HR side was responsible for hiring for Shopify Plus just as it was starting. The needs and wants of the merchants on the platform were pivoting, and the Shopify Plus team scaled in a way to meet these needs. In 2018, Jamie left the recruitment team and decided to join Jordan's product development team. The Investor Collective is integrating with venture capital and private equity firms. Venture Capital vs. Private Equity: What's the Difference? In terms of investment firms as a whole, the motto is value creation on repeat; their main functions are to source and acquire companies, improve the operations of those companies, and then either sell those companies or go public. Venture capital tends to look at earlier seed-stage business and often takes a minority stake in the company in addition to offering their expertise and talent pool. On the private equity side, they are looking to take a bigger stake in the business and will typically provide a lot of capital to take that business to the next level. Understanding the options available to you is extremely important. The Reason Behind the Series: Why Partner With Future Commerce?: After digging into the Shopify Plus merchant base, the Shopify Plus team came to realize that a substantial portion of their merchants had garnered some form of investment throughout their lifetime. If they can assist merchants looking to obtain capital and provide them with more information, then everyone benefits. There are a lot of negative rumors and misinformation floating about regarding investing, but arming yourself with knowledge can prevent these. When it comes down to the contract, it is always negotiable, so knowing what you are trying to do is imperative in the process. The Investors Collective: Going Beyond the Deal: The Investors Collective is a partner program that interfaces with venture capital and private equity firms that are actively investing in consumer products in the retail space. Shopify Plus also hopes to educate investment firms and their portfolio companies about Shopify Plus and the capabilities of the platform. The collective provides expertise, a lifeline for information, and when investment firms have opportunities, they receive complete white-glove service. At the end of the day, the objective is not just to build a cool network but to evangelize why Shopify Plus is the right platform for the DTC entrepreneur. Making the First Step: What is Right for Me?: Phillip asks Jordan and Jamie to put themselves in the shoes of a merchant who might be looking for capital and to walk them through the beginning steps of choosing what type of funding to pursue. In any situation, any time you accept cash, you are giving up some control, so if you can fund yourself, try to do that. Consider an accelerator because you are getting actual resources to assist your growth as opposed to just cash. The average VC investment in 2019 for an angel seed was about $1.8 million. Series A refers to the first time you get money, Series B is the second, and so on. What Comes With Money: Some Advantages of Funding: Some advantages of accepting money are that success is incentivized for your investor, so they want you to succeed, and an injection of funding can help you achieve your goals. Operational expertise also comes along with your investor, along with a conglomerate effect that comes with discounts across the parent company's network. There is a spectrum that ranges from the gross side to the cost reduction side when it applies to your company. Without early and midstage investments, there wouldn't be any businesses without taking on some risk. The Struggle of the Firms: Challenges in Today's Investment Environment: The biggest challenge present today is that there are a lot of new funds, and everyone is trying to raise a new round. If you are an entrepreneur looking for investment, this is probably the best time to pursue investment due to the influx of funds available to you. This makes it difficult for VC firms because there is more capital available than there is opportunity. With this new paradigm of available capital, how do brands know which type of funding is the best fit for them? Finding the Right Fit: Investor Matchmaking: Figure out what you want in your firm: do you want a firm that is going to let me be autonomous or do you want a firm to be very hands-on with your business? There needs to be a firm that links the right amount of capital as well as lines up with your short and long term needs. Look at the brands that the firm has worked with in the past and see what those brands have done after receiving capital. A true digital agency is always needed for a DTC eCommerce brand, so some firms are building a suite of services to fit all of these needs. The New Breed of Merchant: Where is Retail Headed?: How can investment drive this new age of DNVBs? Anyone can be anything that they want with all of the resources available today, so it all comes down to a brand's influence and customer service. This environment puts the power back into the hands of the artist, and none of this would happen if it wasn't for investors empowering creativity. How would you embrace your entrepreneurial side if you obtained the perfect investment? Attracting an Investor: What Makes Me Stand Out?: With the immense opportunity in the retail space, private equity firms are starting to play a significant role in accelerating the growth of brands. Get out there and make your brand known and make connections that can build connections with private equity firms. Come to the table prepared with the type of data and information that is required of the firm to do their due diligence, and if not prepared ahead of time, make sure to make time to get this information. Raising capital is a full-time job, and a lot of brands don't realize just how time goes into the process of raising capital, so set priorities. Get your hands on a due diligence document and start preparing your data and your company for investment. Brands Mentioned In This Episode: Shopify Plus As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some steps that you can take right now to prepare the road to investment? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels, we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Have you ever wondered how to get funding for your retail business? Wonder no more! in a new series from Future Commerce - the number one retail podcast - we walk you through all that you need to know in order to build and exit from a successful retail business. In partnership with Shopify Plus, we'll take you from zero to hero, Step by Step.

Zine culture in the 90s bred the digital-first content brands of the 2000s, which have led to thriving online marketplaces where content begets commerce today. The best example we can think of is a digital property called Highsnobiety, which tracks the intersection between urban culture, streetwear, and luxury. In this episode Jeff Carvalho, co-founder of Highsnobiety, joins us to talk about how commerce is their next great investment and how it's bringing their readers closer than ever before.

Two of the smartest people we've ever had the pleasure of interviewing join the show this week! In our main interview, Mike Lackman, CEO at Trade Coffee joins the Future Commerce team to talk about how subscriptions and curation are driving user adoption and repeat business at Trade Coffee. In our "what's new and what's next" segment at the end of the show, Hitha Herzog, retail analyst and author of 'Black Market Billions' joins us to talk Nike's Amazon Exit, Coty's $600MM Kylie acquisition, and the effect of counterfeits on the marketplace during Holiday 2020. Trade Coffee Coupon Code Save 30% off your order of Trade Coffee with coupon code FUTURE Listen now! Show Notes Main Takeaways: Mike Lackman, CEO of Trade Coffee joins Brian and Phillip on today's episode and he brings with him a coupon code. Trade Coffee is bridging the gap between a marketplace and a retailer, and are making quite the disruption in the process. Educating customers not only makes them happier with their shopping experiences, but also moves the success up the production funnel.  Hitha Herzog, retail analyst and author of Black Market Billions, joins us to take us through the acquisition of Kylie Cosmetics and other happenings in the world of retail.  Coffee and Vocabulary: Empowering Coffee Consumers: Phillip was at a hipster songwriting circle in Nashville and four of the ten circle participants said that Trade Coffee was inspiring them recently.  Mike says that Trade Coffee does two things very well: it connects consumers to the country's very best roasters and craft coffee and it also helps roasters across the country reach consumers in a way that has never been done before.  In their research, Trade Coffee found that consumers are completely lacking in the vocabulary that enables them to decide the way they want their coffee to taste. If people are more aware of their choices, they are going to be in demand of certain things that craft roasters will then be able to supply. Unexpected Outcomes: Breaking the Mold: All the CPG professionals that assessed Trade Coffee early on said that it was going to be a tasting journey in which consumers would find their perfect coffee and then have that coffee be delivered repeated.  In actuality, more than 95% of Trade Coffee's consumers have expressed an appetite for continual discover of new coffees rather than the ability to repeat a single SKU.  This consistent desire for discovery is the key to Trade Coffee's business. Spotify and music streaming services have trained us to go find new things all the time, and that training is extending into consumer goods.  The Coffee Calling: How It Started: A failed Latin teacher by training, Mike was excited by the small team at Trade Coffee when he first found the brand.  Trade needed someone who not only understood the digital marketing business but also someone who understood the hard operations side of the business.  Mike was also a very frequent drinker of coffee who knew nothing about it and the curistic process of getting to know the Trade Coffee team really highlighted the problem that needed to be solved.  Brian met Mike at Grocery Shop where they discussed marketplaces and the role of a niche marketplace in today's economy. A Niche Marketplace Hybrid: Blurring the Lines: The lines between what makes a retailer and what makes a marketplace are getting blurry.  Mike thinks of Trade Coffee more of a retailer because all of their product is made on demand, but there are definitely some marketplace-like dynamics. Having differentiated inventory with reasonable availability that is unlocked by curation and matching is what Trade labels as the keys to their success. The coffee drinker who is making coffee at home is likely a grocery shopper that shops at a brick and mortar location, so how do you convince that shopper to buy online? Changing Habits: Taking Coffee Buying Online: Trade's mission is to turn coffee drinkers into coffee lovers, not to be the coolest, hip store for people who already know a lot about coffee.  For the first year, establishing credibility to match consumers with their ideal coffee and removing the risk from that has been a focus. Going one step further, being able to show the way they interpret (with granularity) the answers to the questions that Trade asks is also important. The story of the roasters, the art on the bag, and the testimonials are all icing on the cake to get people to start trusting their coffee purchases to online retailers. The Customer Relationship: What Does the Future Hold?: One of the big trends that Brian and Phillip called at the beginning of the year was guided selling and the education of the customer, something that Trade is excelling at.  By adding what is traditionally considered friction to the purchase process, Trade has broken the mold regarding educating their customers, and they are looking to add even more friction in the future.  If you're figuring out how to partner with great merchants that can make your insights actionable, then all of the data you are collecting won't be used to its full potential. Trade tests their product extensively so that they provide credible recommendations. Choose Your Own Depth: Similarities to Spotify: A lot of comparisons are drawn between Trade Coffee being like Spotify, but Phillip thinks it's more like Stitch Fix. You can choose how deep you go into Spotify; you can either just push play or you can  dig into any of the additional features as well as the artist biographies. Trade Coffee has customers that run the whole spectrum of involvement of the information at their fingertips. You have to carefully select what group of customers you design experiences for.  Mistakes Along the Way: Personalization Woes: With so many different flavor profiles and customer types, one of the first mistakes that Trade made was when they tried to be too exact with their product matches.  Customers like covering as much ground as possible within a tight enough circle and don't necessarily want the same type served to the over and over again.  Trade can use the data they have garnered along the way to empower roasters to create high quality product.  One of the most important forms of feedback that Trade can get from their customers if they keep buying product.  Subscriptions and Partners: Defining Important Roles: Subscriptions are a tool and not a model and being non-discretionary is imperative to Trade Coffee. Trade takes the role of matchmaker and the role of the craft coffee producer is to do what they're great at: producing amazing artisan coffee. You have to recognize the limitations of the matchmaking model; Trade can't use Instagram in the way that others do because photos do not explain what they do.  Recognizing where you fit in the business model and tackling those limitations are keys to success. Finding the Perfect Fit: Which Model Works for You?: If you are not upsetting things from a channel conflict perspective at least a little bit, you're probably not trying hard enough.  Mike brings up that he listened to the episode with RXBAR CMO Victor Lee and says that for the consumer that wants different stuff every time, Trade is a very good fit, just like RXBAR fits so well into the grocery store model. Trade is happy to empower their customers with their power to make their own decisions and doesn't force them to stay in the channel.  Rent the Runway is a great analogous example to what Trade Coffee is trying to do. Armed With Knowledge: The Power of the Smart Customer: Consumers don't have a way aside from artwork and buzzwords to differentiate between what coffees are good and which are not.  If Trade can empower their customers to determine what is good for them based on the way it tastes, then growers are roasters are able to distribute their product based on quality of taste in the eyes of the consumer. You have to move value up the supply change, and educating your customers does just that.  Trade tries to base decisions based on behaviors and not on demographics.  The Millennial Boomer?: Or the Baby Millennial?: Baby Boomers are starting to adopt practices and habits that they might have turned their noses up towards a few years ago.  The Millennial design aesthetic has become a stamp of approval for brands in regards to what customers are seeking out.   Brands are finding success in older generations by catering towards millennials.  How do you bridge the gap between generations? The Next Five Years: Predictions for the Future: Mike predicts that grocery is going to encounter some of the same disruption that retail and other industries have seen.  The model is not going to be disrupted by putting more product on shelves and letting customers sort it out themselves.  By continually improving their processes, Trade is going to be able to deliver consistently enjoyable shopping experiences to their customers.  It all depends on the market and what consumers want, but if you bundle everything under the umbrella term "grocery", you're probably on the wrong path.  Unabashedly Opinionated Opinions: Meet Hitha Herzog: For the closing segment Brian and Phillip are joined by Hitha Herzog, retail analyst and author of Black Market Billions. Phillip can't believe that Hitha doesn't like Jerry Seinfeld. She would take Larry David over Jerry any day.  Hitha is here to talk us through some huge news in the world of online makeup sales.  Coty Acquires Kylie: A Makeup Giant Acquisition: Coty, Inc. acquired a 51% stake of Kylie Cosmetics for $600 million dollars, valuing the cosmetics company at $1.2 billion.  Kylie is the most followed person on Instagram and the revenue from the makeup company was estimated at $117 million. Kylie and her team have organized scarcity with their product which has led to an enormous demand.  When the products first launched, the Kylie Cosmetics Lipkits drove a sense of urgency by only releasing a set amount of product.  A Giant Departs: Nike Leaves Amazon: Nike is about to stop selling on Amazon.  Nike is moving to a more direct to consumer model and cutting out the middleman. They have the ability to reach and directly market to the consumer base that is buying their product.  Getting off of Amazon also mitigates the possibility of counterfeit product being sold through the platform.  Changing Models: How Shopping Has Evolved: 20 years ago, shopping was a destination so it was an effort to shop, but today, the mall is as close to you as your phone.  We no longer have to go to edifice to buy our stuff.  Brick and mortar is now much more geared toward experiences as opposed to the actual purchasing of products.  Nordstrom just opened a flagship store in Columbus Circle that is all about the experience of shopping.  Brands Mentioned In This Episode: Trade Coffee Spotify Stitch Fix Rent the Runway Coty, Inc.   Nike As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! How can you educated your customers to make them warriors for your brand and increase LTV? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels, we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

We all need Heroes - and Alistair Crane and recurring guest Ingrid Milman Cordy join us today to talk about how any retail business can become a Hero to their customers. PLUS: Shoptalk's own Zia Wigder joins us to talk about their decision to program only female speakers in their 2020 event. Listen now! Join FC INSIDERS, a newsletter essay with deep insight you need to guide the future of your retail business, technology, or agency. Subscribe today. Show notes Main Takeaways: Ingrid Milman Cordy from e.l.f. and the CEO of Hero, Alistair Crain join Brian on today's episode to talk about Hero. Bridging the gap between in-store associate interactions and online shopping behaviors is an extremely powerful tool. There is massive untapped potential in local and smart brands are starting to make moves.  Zia Wigder from Shoptalk joins Brian and Phillip to discuss an enormous announcement about Shoptalk 2020.  A Brief History: Alistair Crain and Hero: Alistair has always been in technology and he was previously the CEO of a company called Grapple that was acquired by a Visa subsidiary. He came over to retail about five years ago when an old friend of his had an idea of connecting associates that are in-store with customers that are browsing on the website.  With a standard retail cycle, there are periods when associates in-store have availability to be helping customers but there are no customers in-store. Hero gives associates and store teams the power to connect live with customers who are shopping on the store's website and gives customers guidance through video and live streaming that gives them a better shopping experience.  The Decline of Footfall: Combining Physical and Digital: Why is it important to engage both the physical and digital in one place? Over the past 5-10 years, messaging has become the single biggest use of mobile phones and even before the start of Hero, customers and associates were connecting through means of social media.  In tech, technology usually tries to "create the wave" but Hero filled a need for a trend of communication that was already happening. Sales that happened from these online interactions were not being attributed to store targets, so Hero provides stores a professional, secure, and trackable method of associate to customer interactions and sales. Traditionally Luxury: Unlocking High-End Interactions for Smaller Businesses: Associates connecting on a one to one basis with an online customer is a high-end experience that naturally lends itself to the luxury market.  Traditionally, only bigger brands (usually in the luxury space) would have an eCommerce and online footprint large enough to accommodate direct communication with online customers, but Hero unlocks that potential for smaller brands.  Younger, technology competent people just want to shop and just want the ability to find out quickly if an item is in stock and where they can get it.  Sneaker companies have been adopting this communication trend and have been using it in more and more innovative ways.  The Importance of Local: The Future of Commerce: There has been a trend on the show highlighting the importance of local when it comes to commerce.  Doesn't it make the most sense to connect with local representatives when customers are interacting online?  You should also put stores where you already have business, and this can be discovered through communication tools like Hero.  How can you make the most of existing online customer interactions?  The Shift of Messaging: The Death of Omnichannel?: A few years ago, omnichannel was omnipresent at conferences and events, but today, it is a word that is barely mentioned.  Omnichannel communication is now a part of everyday business and not just a sideshow.  Brands with heritage and locations around the world have a big advantage with their physical footprint against online exclusive giants like Amazon because they can provide an actual experience to their customers.  Smart retailers are making local pay with authentic local experiences by making their online customers come into stores. The Power of Knowledge: Expertise Seals the Deal: Alistair brings up Ace Hardware as an example of an extremely authentic brand that demonstrates the power of associate expertise when it comes to assisting customers. Online DIY stores are overwhelming and it is so much more reassuring when an associate with expertise helps you with your questions.  Store influences have the power to serve as local influencers for your brand.  How are you capitalizing on your store associate's expertise? Lingering Connections: Extending The In-Store Experience: Customers remember positive in-store interactions long after their time spent physically in the store.  Ingrid mentions how powerful it is when she receives a text from her trusted Lululemon associate that there are new items in store (which she usually ends up buying.) Brian brings up how impressive the knowledge was of the associates was on a recent trip to Everlane. Smart brands are brands that are encouraging and rewarding their associates for creating unique and personalized content. Bringing Local Back: Massive Untapped Potential: Brands are ignoring the fact that local retail space is reasonably priced and there is so much opportunity in local that is not being tapped.  Brian harkens back to the recent episode with Ishani Gujral in which he came up with the idea of a bidding system for large retailers to bid on local retail space. Alistair brings up Appear Here that serves as an Airbnb for retail space. There is a lot of macroeconomic pressure to make your business successful before you even open the doors to your first location. Bigger brands like Etsy are starting to take advantage of the untapped potential of local. Your Biggest Assets: Your People and Places: The people that work for you and the locations where your brand reside are the most important assets you have. Invest in your employees: give them a living wage, encourage their growth, and empower them to make them the best representations of your brand.  There is a lack of willingness in big retail to take any risk. Tech players take multiple year strategies, and retailers need to find a way to make some riskier decisions that will pay dividends in the future.  Unselfish Experimentation: Non-Traditional Returns: Everything you do does not have to have a direct influence on your P&L and there is a reason to do some unselfish experimentation.  You have to try some things that are not going to work because the knowledge of things that don't work is just as important as knowing what is lucrative.  Experimentation is part of Amazon's makeup and they fail quickly and hard, which allows them to constantly be on the cusp of innovation.   How can you unselfishly experiment with something this quarter that you wouldn't normally try to pursue?  Predictions and Inklings: A Postive Recession?: Alistair has been wondering if we've been heading into a recession and thinks that Q1 and Q2 of 2020 are going to be very interesting.  A recession would flush out the brands that aren't even living up to their own core values and Alistair believes there is too much funding floating around and not being used efficiently. Alistair wants to turn website traffic into actual footfall in-store and he is going to invest in companies that makes this happen. There has never been such a good time for product innovation on both the tech side and the retail side so take some risks. Shoptalk 2020: Women in the Spotlight: Zia Wigder from Shoptalk joins Brian and Phillip to talk about the big news that Shop Talk 2020 will be 100% female speakers. There needs to be change in this industry, change is happening too slowly, and Shoptalk is making a stand with this decision to expedite this change.  Zia goes into some of the criticism and opposition that has arisen with this decision but has been surprised that the vast majority of feedback has been positive.  You need a transformational step to drive change because incremental steps are not effective. A Big Change: Piloting a Shift in the Industry: In 2021, men will be included again the lineup, but the ration will forever be 50/50 from now on.  This change resonates with the social conscious dynamic in the industry and Phillip predicts it will be massively successful.  Zia is not worried in the slightest about finding the talent for the talks, but the challenge will be to find a list of speakers in the right topics.  You can apply to speak on the Shoptalk website along with many more ways to get involved with the event. Brands Mentioned In This Episode: Hero Ace Hardware Lululemon  Everlane Appear Here Etsy  E.l.f. Shoptalk As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some ways that you could unselfishly experiment with your brand? How can you empower your employees to become the best representatives for your brand? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels, we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Brian bought 5 different mattresses and lives to tell the story. Phillip reviews DTC candle brands. Yes, really. ALSO: the guys sit down for an amazing interview with Megan Whitman, the Chief Digital Officer at Kopari Beauty, who joined us to talk about her experience growing the digital channel from "absolute zero". Kopari today is available everywhere from sample boxes to Ulta and is partnering with the likes of Drybar to reach even more customers. Show Notes Main Takeaways: In today's episode (in a new format by the way), Brian and Phillip interview Chief Digital Officer at Kopari, Megan Whitman at Klaviyo: BOS. Once a brand reaches a certain level of success, what are the benchmarks for measuring that success past standard KPIs? Buying a bed online can sometimes not be a smooth process. Brian and Phillip don't understand the online candle business or how people buy scents without first experiencing them. Coconuts and Asymptotes: A Brief Introduction and a Fated Meeting: Brian has a theory about asymptotes and was riffing on this idea with Phillip when he was overheard by Megan who joined in the conversation. Megan was the first employee at Kopari, a coconut-based beauty company that has been around for about three and a half years that sells mainly on their direct-to-consumer site. Kopari still mainly focuses on its direct-to-consumer business despite being in large beauty retailers because they care about what their customers want and want to create real relationships with them. It all started around coconut oil and how this miracle ingredient can enhance various beauty products, but as the company grew, more parts of the coconut began to be used in Kopari's products. From Nothing To Game-Changer: A Keynote-Worthy Journey: Megan was one of the keynotes at Klaviyo: BOS and gave a great talk about how to fool your brand's growth one stage at a time. When Kopari first launched, starting from nothing and bootstrapping everything became the best learning experience for Megan as she had a hands-on connection with all of the technologies used to grow the company. Tools like Klaviyo have become so good that it makes it possible for brands to go to market quickly and provide great experiences for your customers. Megan used to work at an agency before she joined Kopari and recounts how tools like Optimizely allowed marketers to create customer experiences easily and on their own. Two Different Approaches: Nostalgia Brands vs. Modern Brands: Phillip comments that nostalgia or legacy brands typically approach innovation with a lot of thought and deliberation while planning an intricate series of things, but more modern brands are executing on the fly and learning as they go. Megan admits to doing things on the fly and the expectation of doing things on the fly is ingrained in the culture. There has to be a healthy balance of doing things quickly and not doing too many things at one time that might result in conflicting messages to your customers. Brian points out that technology has set the stage for the expectation of things to be done quickly. Timing is Key: What Makes Modern Brands Different?: Modern brands compete in a lot of different channels, while doing a lot of different things at the same time, all while telling different stories; so how do you balance this? Timing is the key, and it is a very difficult thing to master. You don't have the attention of customers for a long enough time to tell them everything about your brand, so you have to test to find out what they want to hear. Which of the stories you are telling actually ties your customers back to your brand? Evolving Metrics: Going Beyond the Sale: A brand reaches a turning point once they start looking beyond basic sales metrics to measure whether or not they are successful as a brand. Kopari has had a tough time deciding what their metric for success is beyond the sale (even though the sale is always the goal). Soon, Kopari is going to run an experiment with customers who do not know the brand in which they will be shown one specific story via advertising during the test period and at the end of this test period, they will be asked if they know about Kopari. This test will show what marketing story resonates the most with Kopari's customers as well as to measure other more qualitative KPIs. The Capture Dilemma: Sales vs. Customers: Phillip brings up Greats (which was recently acquired by Steven Madden) in a discussion about capturing a sale vs. capturing a customer. Megan admits that Kopari has been traditionally more focused on the sale, but recently has been shifting from focusing on being a product company to being a brand. How do you take the stories you have and leverage them to reach your customers in meaningful ways? If you don't have a thoughtful and socially conscious start to your business in today's social environment, why are you even starting a business today? Owning It: Connecting With Your Customers: With today's technologies, it has never been easier to reach out directly to your customers in order to hear their thoughts and opinions. What's even better is that customers enjoy giving their feedback and participating in the development of brands that they have a connection with. More than ever, brands are striving for actual relationships with their customers as opposed to just storytelling alone. How do you create meaningful connections with your customers, and how can you improve those that already exist? Collaboration Nation: Finding Customers Through Other Brands: Phillip has noticed that Kopari has been doing a lot of collaborations and asks what a strategy might be to identify potential customers through the existing customers of the brands you are collaborating with. How deep do you take a partnership with a brand and how do you identify this level of involvement? Megan gives some background on Kopari's collaboration with Drybar and gives some details on why this collaboration has been successful. Even if your customers are not the exact same as the customer of the brand you are collaborating with, you have the potential to reach customers in different channels. Megan's Advice and Predictions: A Future Commerce Sendoff: Brian asks Megan what she thinks is imperative for DNVBs to be focusing on the next nine months as well as what she sees happening in the space fin the next 3-5 years. One thing that drives Megan nuts is with the sheer amount of channels used to reach your customers, we need to figure out how to deliver the right message, for the right customer, in the right channel, at the right time. How do you decide on what message to deliver per channel to your customers? Is this something that can be solved with a tool, or is this more of a strategical approach? Sleep Time Woes: The Online Mattress Shopping Journey: Brian and Phillip both recently purchased some mattresses and take us through their experiences in buying beds online. Brian originally had a Zinus and eventually bought the Wayfair Sleep mattress (which didn't go well) which they switched for a Nora Mattress (which they also didn't like) and eventually bought a Casper mattress from Costco. When Brian and his wife inevitably didn't like the Casper mattress either, he had to physically return the mattress to Costco. Buying mattresses in a store is probably a really good idea, but in case you need to return your bed, Phillip goes into detail on Casper's return process. Blind Purchasing: Buying Something Online Without Experiencing It First: There is a whole slew of products out there that simply don't make sense to buy online before physically experiencing them. (According to Brian and Phillip). Otherland is an online candle brand that Phillip compares with the not digitally native D2C Yankee Candle. Malin and Goetz, Snowe, and Year & Day are all more examples of online candle brands that Phillip wants to explore because he simply doesn't understand how you can buy a candle without smelling it first. Brands that already have scents make an easy jump when incorporating that scent into candles. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Kopari Klaviyo Optimizely Greats Drybar Zinus Casper Tuft & Needle Otherland Malin and Goetz Snowe Year & Day As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! Do you like the new format? How can you identify which stories to send to certain customers to reach them in the most impactful way? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

A NEW FORMAT. BOOM! In part 1 of #132: Matt Taylor created something special when he created Tracksmith. Based on heritage and collegiate styles, Tracksmith has redefined outdoor apparel in a space that is dominated by household names and global retailers. In the second half: LVMH bids on Tiffany and Sucharita Kodali of Forrester gives us the low-down on 180-year-old brand. Show notes Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are joined in today's episode by Matt Taylor, the Co-Founder and CEO of Tracksmith and they are recording today's episode at the Trackhouse in Boston. Tracksmith is geared towards dedicated runners and has fostered a dedicated fan base based on those values. With customer acquisition costs on the rise, where should your brand focus its efforts to make the most out of your hard-earned dollars? Capturing the passion you have for your brand helps identify your ideal customers, and is invaluable when it comes to developing your brand's identity. Heritage: An Accurate Description of Tracksmith of a Brand: Matt recalls the first time the brand was in the Trackhouse back in 2015 when Tracksmith used the building as their first pop-up location. As a runner for his entire life, Matt has been involved in running since middle school, which makes running a big part of his life. After college, Matt got more and more interested in running, and before starting Tracksmith, he was the Head of Marketing for the Running and Training categories at Puma. He built an iPhone game with Usain Bolt before the 2012 Olympics that gave him a bridge to take a year to work and develop Tracksmith. A Powerful Combination: Fusing Interest and Passion: Tracksmith is described by Matt as a combination of personal interest and passion, but also a representation of his years of experience in the industry. There is a lot of talk about timing within the market when it comes to starting a business, but very few people talk about the importance of timing in a founder's personal life. There is always a risk when starting your business venture and everyone's situation is different. What personal factors contribute to an ideal environment if you were to leave a corporate job and start your own venture? That Tracksmith Feel: Diversifying Against a Giant: Hailed as an Anti-Nike, Tracksmith has developed a unique feel and has a special way they have decided to tell their story. You can't manufacture authenticity, it has to come from a sincere place and for Tracksmith, that authenticity comes from a genuine passion for running. As other running brands have grown, they have left behind a void in the market that is comprised of the core, committed running consumer. Tracksmith has made it a mission to serve the dedicated running audience, and it is something they constantly check in with to make sure they stay on message. The Pressure to Grow: Navigating a Harsh Environment: There is a lot of pressure to grow in the current environment, especially if you are venture-backed. Brian asks Matt if he thinks that it's inevitable for Tracksmith to broaden its horizons given the constant push for growth. Matt doesn't think that will happen any time soon because there is such a consistent market in the running vertical so there is no pressure to build a multi-billion dollar brand in the immediate future. Where is the line drawn between staying true to a core customer and growing to reach other customer sets? Who Is and Who Isn't?: Identifying Your Customers: There is a very strong feel to Tracksmith, so Brian asks if Matt thinks that this strong feel is exclusionary in any way. Tracksmith does not view their brand as exclusionary, but rather aspirational which can sometimes feel far away for some people. People tend to think negatively first instead of coming together to build something up. Tracksmith is geared towards people that have made running a part of their identity, and overcoming obstacles is especially poignant to that group. Selective Partnering: How to Choose Compatible Brands: Phillip is interested to know what Tracksmith's approach is when it comes to partnering with other brands. Tracksmith partnered with Rowing Blazers after they did a pop-up close to the Trackhouse and quickly realized that both brands shared a passion for their respective sports. Team endurance sports specifically become harder post-college due to the difficulty of finding a crew, so there was hope for discovery in partnering with Rowing Blazers. Tracksmith just announced a partnership with outerwear company Boathouse as well as a partnership with Article One Eyewear. Facilitating Community: How To Foster Relationships With Your Brand: From the beginning, physical interaction was very important for Tracksmith for their customers to connect with their product. Most brands in most spaces don't have an opportunity to create a community, but the running community already exists even before they purchase anything. Tracksmith was hosting runs from inception, but having a location in Boston facilitates the community even further. Boston is unique in the running world as it holds a special space in the minds of the running community. CAC On The Rise: What It Costs to Run a Business in 2019: A connection that is outside of the purchase experience is trending to be the main way that brands are reaching their customers. There is an opportunity for Tracksmith to build longer-lasting relationships via print due to its very visual nature. Over time, unselfish content builds a stronger connection with your brand but is very hard to draw a straight line back to your revenue. Tracksmith's biggest driving force for content is photography; pictures and words drive everything else they do. Patience is a Virtue: Emotionally Capturing a Brand: Tracksmith specifically takes extra time to highlight the runner themselves, and that is comprised of more than just the run itself. If you do care deeply about something, there is a process that you go through that bypasses our current world of instant gratification. Matt grew up in a family of makers, and when you grow up around that, he was immersed in the value of something that is handcrafted with time and love. Running is in such stark contrast to the world of today where everything is so instant. Building Up Your Employees: A Major Key to Success: Employees are the face of your brand and provide your customers with their experience with the brand. Relationships with customers are starting to supersede your story when it comes to building brand loyalty. Tracksmith naturally attracts employees who are passionate about running, and that passion comes across in customer interactions. Phillip has personally experienced the employee passion at Trackhouse when an employee recognized him from an interaction that was months ago. Pursuing Your Passion: Advice for Other Founders: Phillip asks Matt if he has any advice for other founders that are considering taking a risk and pursuing their passion. A lot of people want to give you advice, but a lot of that advice is specific to their personal experience, and this doesn't necessarily apply to you. Absorb as much information and advice as you can, but you need to discover what makes your situation unique. Identifying what makes your brand unique will help you form your voice and brand identity, Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Tracksmith Puma Nike Rowing Blazers Boathouse Article One Eyewear As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! How can you capture the passion you have for your brand and impart those feelings in your content and product to truly impact your customers? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Monday Update #003 in time for evening commute! Billionare heiress Veronica Chou launches Everybody & Everyone, a socially-conscious fashion brand. PLUS: The Conscious Closet by Elisabeth L. Cline, and a review of INSIDERS 011. Listen now! Learn more about Climate Neutral Certification here: http://climateneutral.org Join Future Commerce and contribute to the Climate Neutral Kickstarter here.

Jump into the world of Madrona Venture Labs! Our deep dive conversation with Ishani Gujral illuminates the ins and outs of a VC Lab. The best part: she guides a fun-sized ideation session on the fly. Get ready for the worst ideas ever!

"The best marketing is when the customer doesn't know they're being marketed to" says RXBAR CMO, Victor Lee. His statement may ruffle some feathers but the truth is that great storytelling transcends marketing and becomes valuable entertainment. Episode 130 of Future Commerce covers lots of ground from the founder story of RXBAR to their broad category expansion in mass market and grocery, and how they have built tremendous brand affinity on a culture of honest, often blunt, simplicity and transparency. Future Commerce has partnered with eTail to bring our listeners exclusive content and interviews. A huge thanks to the team at eTail for providing the show with such great content and material. Main Takeaways: Phillip is joined by the CMO of RXBAR, Victor Lee as part of the Future Commerce Etail series. RXBAR has created a legacy brand with marketing that is aggressively transparent and honest. In this day and age, a brand really can't dictate to consumers who they are; consumers tell the brand who they are, but brands like RXBAR can decide for themselves. Storytelling in commerce has been skewed to mean many different things, but Victor gives us a very real and applicable definition of how to make your brand into a storyteller that matters. RXBAR's History: Some Insights About Protein Bars: RXBAR is a whole, real-food protein bar that has been around for a little over six years. It was created in Chicago by two founders, one of which was an avid CrossFit aficionado who paid attention to what he was putting into his body. The protein bar industry was booming, but most of the protein bars on the market did not live up to the promises they made when it came to their ingredients. He then took his food knowledge and created the first versions of RXBAR out of his kitchen. An Iconic Voice: How RXBAR Developed Their Messaging: Phillip asks Victor to talk a little bit about the voice and tone that RXBAR has established and how that has become iconic at this point. There was a problem with the big food industry and manufacturing industry, and RXBAR purposefully set out to not follow the negative standards being set by those industries. Having a clean label product means that you can produce a label in which your product is made with the fewest ingredients possible. One of the tones and mantras that RXBAR has held onto is the no BS Law, which can be interpreted as both the aggressive "no bullsh*t" side and the no "bad stuff" side. Radical transparency and no BS work almost as mission statements for RXBAR. Broadening Horizons: Not Just a Protein Bar Anymore: There was a recent campaign featuring Ice T that captured the radical transparency that RXBAR has come to be known for. In this day and age, a brand really can't dictate to consumers who they are; consumers tell the brand who they are. RXBAR is maintaining its tone, but they are shifting focus to the product itself and what makes it no BS. RXBAR also launched a kid's line of bars as well as a line of nut-butters this past year, bot of which maintain the guardrails set in place by the quality of the brand itself. Expanding Without Dilution: Tips from an Expert: From a CMO's perspective, how do you approach widening a product line in a way that does not dilute the brand as a whole? If a product, brand, or company is afraid of a category because that category has been around for years, then that category never innovates. There are lots of buzzwords regarding disruption and innovation, but RXBAR was able to go into a category to call out kind of what consumers need. The best part about the truth is you never have to remember it. The Keys to Success: How Victor Does It: As a CMO, or at any level, you can't treat your role or job as a role or a job, you have to be a fan of it. Victor is naturally curious about what other people are doing and why and the behaviors of such, because if he's not, then he's not thinking about his job the right way. Typically, school rewards you for being right. But life and your career reward you for taking risks. The average attention span of a human being is less than a goldfish; if Victor can't tell you something in three seconds, he loses, and he is fascinated with the psychology behind that. Misunderstood Storytelling: The Harsh Truth: Everybody says, "I want to tell a story," but then when it comes down to the creative execution of it, sometimes it's not a story, it's an ad. If you tell a good story, and you're honest and forthright about it, and you're not trying to sell something that's not marketing, that's a story. Brands should want to hear the stories of their consumers and not the other way around. If a consumer tells a brand the story of why that consumer used a product and why it was more beneficial for their life, then that is the story that needs to be told. Leaving a Legacy: Things to Strive For: The end of the whole journey of a brand is the legacy that a brand leaves behind. If tomorrow this brand did not exist would anybody notice? Legacy comes in many forms and fashions, and it can be defined in many different ways and calculated with many different formulas. How would you measure your brand's impact? Brands Mentioned in this Episode: RXBAR As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! Where you aks yourself if tomorrow this brand did not exist will anybody notice? And is that a good barometer of "did you do the right thing and did you resonate"? Did you make an impact? Did you have the all-important legacy? And does this matter? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

If you thought a deep-dive on supply chain couldn't be stimulating, think again. Hugh Holman, CEO at Observa, gives us a primer on what it takes to implement retail planning and forecasting. Observa is building retail compliance systems powered by AI, on-demand workforces, machine learning and machine vision - not just to enforce compliance, but to arm retailers with data to plan orders, manufacturing, demand planning. Main Takeaways: Brian is on location at Grocery Shop 2019 and is joined by Hugh Holman, the CEO and Co-Founder of Observa. Observa is breaking open the black box of real-time data that shows what is going on in a physical retail location. What are the further applications of real-time retail data? How can brands and retailers work together to create experiential shopping experiences for different groups of consumers? Hugh's Story: Experience Gained Through Technological Mastery: Hugh has spent most of his career as a technology manager; starting at a startup and soon became the CIO of Aqua Star. At Aqua Star, Hugh was placed in a role where he was in control of driving technology and technology strategy. After obtaining his MBA, Hugh moved into a different role focusing on strategy at Aqua Star that let him modernize the company and approach the market differently. Eventually he took over retail sales and was running a $400 million dollar business in the retail sector which provided the foundational experience he needed to found Observa. What is Observa?: Fixing the Black Hole of Real-Time Data: When Hugh was at Aqua Star, he noticed that there was a black hole of data in retail that did not show real-time data of what has happening in the store. You could subscribe to data sources that provide data in four week chunks, but we do not think in four week chunks in today's retail climate. At Aqua Star, Hugh was developing trade programs with large corporations and wanted a way to see if these trade deals were driving sales and boosting customer acquisition. Observa was created to give brands a way to see what the consumer sees in store, in real time. What Makes It Tick?: How Does Observa Capture Data?: Observa in actuality is a retail audit service company so they are measuring retail store execution. Observa has created a network of over 90,000 field workers called Observers that go into stores and use Observa's mobile apps to collect information on what is happening on the shelf where products are placed as well as promotions across the store. Observa processes the data and images sent in from the Observers using AI and image recognition to generate a thorough snapshot of what is happening in stores. Observa is agnostic to the data capture mechanism, so it doesn't matter where the images or data is coming from, and they are able to turn this into usable information. Getting Into the Details: What Happens With the Images? Brian asks Hugh to talk a little bit more about what happens with the images once they are received by Observa. Observa is using computer vision by using artificial intelligence to do image recognition. The intelligence and neural network within Observa's system is being trained to recognize products so that when it receives photos, it can instantaneously recognized them and categorize what is in the photos. This enables Observa to measure what is happening in stores and compare that to expectations and recognized deviations for actionable insights. Further Implications: Actionable Data Beyond the Surface: Brands can also use the data captured by Observa identify inventory problems and plan for future stock orders. Inventory data in most computers is not accurate and phantom inventory cannot be removed until you identify the problem: which Observa does. Retailers and brands always end up erring on the side of caution and will be able to do so with accurate insights if they have a true omnichannel strategy. The consumer experience today is a combination of brick-and-mortar and online experiences, and the more data you can collect on both experiences will help you make the most informed decisions. Planogram Perfection: How Orientation Can Influence Purchases: A planogram (or modular) is a design that indicates the placement of retail products on shelves in order to maximize sales. Observa's technology is giving brands the capability to measure performance directly against planograms. Planograms are used by the retailers themselves to create the ideal layout to generate the largest profit for individual stores. By getting the expectation of a store via a planogram, Observa is able to identify the problems within the store and direct change. Deeper Dives: Shaping Retail Data: Traditionally, the ability to capture data on product placement was reserved for eCommerce, but Observa is bringing those actionable insights to brick-and-mortar. Brian asks if these new data points are creating new roles in retail strategy thanks to previously unobtainable data. Observa is also taking a consultative role with retail brands because of the large amounts of data they are capturing across their entire portfolio. Traffic heat maps have been used in grocery stores for a long time, but newer mechanisms are being used to track customer segmentation. Emerging Trends: Checkout-less Payments: Retailers have started to adopt checkout-less payment solutions and Observa's data will begin to become even more valuable as purchases happen closer to the items themselves. Image recognition is an important part of checkout-less payments, and the reliance on barcodes can lead to customers making mistakes when checking out. The ability to identify the package and not just the barcode on a product provides a huge value for retailers exploring this technology. Is adding a checkout-less option a lucrative move for most retailers? Brands Vs. Retailers: Where Does the Power Lie? Brian asks Hugh who he thinks has more power when it comes to retail: the retailers themselves or consumer brands. Hugh clarifies that instead of a competition, the relationship between brands and retailers should be a partnership. There is a lot of conversation about segmentation of the market and presenting curated experiences in retail. We might see different sections in stores tailored to different people within various categories. Visions of the Future: Hugh's Predictions: Brick-and-mortar retail is growing and the consumer experience is changing along with this growth. Going forward, the retailers that pay attention to the wants and needs of the consumer and then try to implement changes that fit these wants and needs are the retailers that are going to be successful. Warby Parker and Allbirds are testing store locations and seeing what the impact of having tangible product is upon their customer base. The focus should be on understanding the consumer using data, and applying those actionable insights to both eCommerce and retail presence. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Observa Warby Parker Allbirds As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! How can your brand use Observa's data to improve retail performance. Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at mailto:[email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!

Monday update is back! Today we OWN IT. The theme of this year's Klaviyo:BOS event was to own your channel. We chat about tools like Webflow that are shortening the path from concept to launch - giving designers , marketers, and creatives the ability to own their entire experience without a developer. Listen now!

"The intersection of content and commerce" asks the question - would you buy Cheesy Blasters while watching 30 Rock? Odds are, you would. And that's the bet that NBC/Universal is placing on investing in bringing DTC brands to their large audiences across their portfolio of original programming and content. From Goop to the Minions we go deep on the opportunity at hand with Evan Moore. Listen now! Main Takeaways: In today's episode, Brian and Phillip are joined by the Vice President of Content and eCommerce at NBCUniversal, Evan Moore. Over-personalization has started to run rampant, so how do you battle against too much personalization? NBCUniversal has taken a content-first strategy across its vast portfolio to create meaningful marketplaces and platforms for different verticals. Empowered creatives are becoming the driving force in the commerce powerhouses of the future. A Brief History of Evan: The Intersection of Content and Commerce: For the past 11-12 years, Evan has worked mainly in a digital product capacity for several different companies (e.g. Ticketmaster, Goop, Beautycounter) all at the intersection of content and commerce. At Goop, Evan had the opportunity to put the commerce and content strategy into the world and drive a lot of massive commerce scale using Goop's strong content. NBCUniversal was trying to do something similar so they hired Evan to execute the same strategies at scale across their entire content portfolio. How did Evan merge the content and commerce to create successful brands? The Goop Story: From Email Newsletter to a Commerce Powerhouse: Brian mentions that Goop is one of the first examples he can think of that has a brand taking an email newsletter and turning it into a commerce powerhouse, but how did that happen? Goop has been around for about eleven years and the first six years it was mainly an email newsletter that had recipes that Gwyneth Paltrow wanted to send to her friends. Over the next six years, Goop grew organically and built equity with its audience around some lucrative content verticals like clean beauty, high-end fashion, travel, and home goods. Just in the last few years, Goop kicked its monetization into high gear by giving brand partners great exposure to its audience and finally launching its eCommerce marketplace. Plagued by Targeting: What is Too Much Personalization?: Having content comes first establishes ideals and allows your audience to almost fanatically align with a brand's ideals. Really good content is the antidote to over-personalization of the internet and there are fewer companies that have harnessed the power of storytelling better than NBCUniversal. Retargeting algorithms are effective at driving lower funnel activity, but they are not cognizant of who the customer actually is. (Phillip apparently doesn't avidly love toilet seats.) Even with how far AI technology has come, we still don't understand how people identify themselves of the meaning they derive from the products that they buy. The Antidote: Combating Over-Personalization The stories that we tell and that we read are how we connect with each other and with the rest of the world, which inevitably informs our decisions on what we consume and the brands that we align ourselves with. NBCUniversal reaches a massive part of the US audience lets brands tell stories that its massive viewer base can connect with. Create your audience first and then decide what the need before you create a product. As we get to a place where more and more content is becoming niche, if a brand has a message that you don't relate to, it will be harder to align with that brand. Shop With Golf: Capturing a Coveted Demographic: The first result of NBCUniversal playing with its new content and commerce model is Shop With Golf, a part of the Gold ecosystem of brands. The site fills a white space within the golf that features lifestyle content that relates to golfers, which is a sought after demographic. (Golf is Goop for men.) Over the past six months, 45 different brands have been featured on Shop With Golf. Bill Murray and his brothers even did a music video for Shop With Golf. Next Steps: Expanding the Model: NBCUniversal is looking at how to apply the model used for Shop With Golf across the entire NBC portfolio. While looking at their portfolio, the goal is still to create a marketplace of interesting brands and providing them a platform to tell engaging stories around relevant contact that reaches audiences that care about those stories. Evan clarifies that NBCUniversal is not trying to compete with retailers, but are becoming a channel for both consumer/packaged goods brands and direct-to-consumer brands. What Evan and NBCUniversal are doing could be an antidote to brands like Away and Amazon are doing. Bringing Commerce Closer: Purchasing in the Moment: Evan joins both Brian and Phillip in their excitement about up and coming shoppable formats. Consumers are more willing to transact wherever they are when they are using their digital devices. The eCommerce experience is no longer a differentiator as much as it is a commodity. Can consumer demand create enough need for brands and marketplaces to pursue options for consumers to purchase at the moment they see a product? Defying Expectations: Empowered Creatives Driving Progress: Phillip asks Evan what it's like bringing transformational initiatives to a larger organization and how that compares to his previous experience. Evan would have expected to get more resistance to bringing in new ideas, but the hunger to grow that is present at NBCUniversal has been the opposite of his expectations. Empowered creatives working with a plethora of resources and opportunity has proven to have quite the impact. Evan has been able to do something different, impactful, and valuable to both consumers and brands on a massive scale. Standing Out from the Pack: Artistry Leads the Way: What should big merchants be doing to separate themselves from other brands? Right now, artistry and creatives should lead the way in regards to where a brand's money ends up. There is nothing more important right now than telling stories. Brands that tell stories and can capture the values and ideals of their customers in a content form are going to be the brands that stand out. The Future Commerce Send-Off: Predictions for the Future: Evan predicts a decentralization of marketplaces occurring at the same time as a proliferation of content channels and commerce will stay closely coupled to the content. The antidote to becoming over-personalized is having empowered creatives that are looking at data and making creative decisions about what that data means. Brands should be taking a second look at television and the scale that companies like NBCUniversal can bring to brands is a huge opportunity for direct-to-consumer brands. The wall between digital video and television and the difference between the two is almost negligible. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: NBCUniversal Goop Shop With Golf Away Amazon As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! How can you use storytelling to reach customers and connect with their values? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at mailto:[email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!

Product discovery and marketplaces are all the rage right now but when Jules Pieri launched a product discovery marketplace 11 years ago she pioneered a cross-section of entrepreneurship that launches products more than 300 times per year. The Grommet is a curated marketplace of small businesses producing unique products from inspirational founders. Listen now! -- Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are joined on today's episode by Jules Pieri, Co-founder and CEO of The Grommet. The Grommet is a unique marketplace that takes the guesswork out of finding quality brands that represent truthful and meaningful brands. Today's market has paved the way for the romantic entrepreneur, but how do you turn your great idea into a successful business? The marketplace model has seen a prolific rise in variety, but how do you know what products and brands you can trust when shopping in a marketplace? Small Business Innovation: The Story of the Grommet: Phillip first met Jules at Magento Imagine and was entranced by the founder story of the Grommet, which he had never heard of before the conference. Jules started The Grommet eleven years ago, which launches one innovative consumer product from small businesses per day, a lot of which have become household names. The Grommet was founded because Jules saw that technology has made it easier for individuals to create products and larger companies were becoming less and less innovative. The innovation of small businesses proved to be very disruptive and now The Grommet is viewed by around four million people every day. From The Wrong Side of the Tracks: An Entrepreneurial Playbook: Brian asks Jules to talk more about herself and how she came to start the Grommet. Jules recounts how she grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in Detroit, was the first person in her family to go to college, and when she was fourteen, she snuck behind her parents back and applied for boarding school. From very early, Jules developed a playbook for doing things that were scary and uncomfortable for her, and she learned to like it: a perfect platform for an entrepreneur. Her career tracks through three different phases: an early career as an industrial designer, later working for two separate start ups, and finally, Jules worked for some larger brands that led her to coming up with the idea for The Grommet. Left on the Cutting Room Floor: The Fallout of Innovation: Phillip recently listened to a podcast with Malcom Gladwell and Rick Rubin about the artistry is left on the cutting room floor as a musician and that the final product is only released after several edits and fine tuning. Larger brands have a tendency to play closer towards the plight of the musician where a lot ends up on the cutting room floor, but smaller brands have a lot of advantages in innovation, but tend to be capital constrained. Brian is reminded of an older episode with Sucharita Kodali from Forrester in which Sucharita describes her experience regarding the purchasing cycle of Toys"R"Us. Why do you think most products don't make it to shelves when being evaluated by large brands? A Call to Action: Citizen Commerce is Shaping the World: Jules has recently coined the term "citizen commerce" which means that every act a person takes to vote with either their time or money to support a product shapes a business. If you really care about a cause or a product, you have the opportunity to make that happen in the world by being more intentional with how you spend your time and money. Jules suggests to take a mer 10% of what you spend and put that towards products that you truly believe in and think will make a difference in the world. Consumers' demands and expectations of brands have become heightened and consumers have the power to determine winners in the marketplace; consumers can change the future of the world by not engaging with brands that don't meet these heightened expectations. A Massive Product Stream: How The Grommet Chooses Products: The Grommet lends credibility to the products it chooses to highlight each day, but only 3% of products actually make the cut. It takes a lot of time to figure out what companies truly stand for, but Grommet does that research for you and takes the time to make sure brands are being truthful. The Grommet engages deeply when a company is or is about to be in production and helps them craft their story and get that product to market. The hardest thing to do is get an audience in a crowded world, and retailers aren't interested in a single-product company in the current climate. The Power of the Marketplace: How Different Landscapes Highlight Different Products: What are the challenges that marketplaces face today, especially considering the hype around marketplaces as a business model? Jules sees that there is a trend to move more towards marketplaces and becoming increasingly more niche. Etsy and Amazon offer opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to marketplace originality and ease of shopping. There are a lot of interesting (yet scalable) marketplace models and The Grommet has a very interesting place in this landscape that they will be developing in the near future. Diminishing Returns: But Not How You Think: The return rate at The Grommet is an infinitesimal 3%, where as other eCommerce sites see returns in the high teens to low twenties percentage wise. The Grommet accomplishes this by using video to create product understanding, and the simple fact that they don't present products that aren't worth your money. The Grommet wins customers based on quality and trust, but most marketplaces are antithetical to those qualities by not providing products that are authentic. There was a recent article in the Wall Street Journal that examines how the ceding of product control has led to thousands of banned, unsafe, or mislabeled products. The Power of the Entrepreneur: Romanticizing Business: Statiscally, 66% of millenials and 75% of high school age students want to start their own businesses. Jules believes that there is a healthy ecosystem forming around the entrepreneurs that The Grommet works with and a lot of products that used to be locked up behind large companies, are now available to the public. It is not just the fact that there is an explosion of entrepreneurial companies that has led to this current market, but also due to an explosion of services and platforms that are helping the entrepreneurial brands. "In the Gold Rush, you want to be in the pickaxe business, because even people who never find gold still need the tool." The Right to Exist: Who Says What Products Belong in a Marketplace?: Phillip points out that crowdfunding platforms are an easy way to suss out need for a product in the marketplace. Jules reveals that the audiences on crowdfunding platforms tend to be older males with high disposable incomes, and the powerhouse consumers in the economy are older females with high disposable incomes. There is a whole world of opportunity beyond crowdfunding platforms, and companies like Away earn their place in the market by making the experience of purchasing their products better than that of their competitors. Jules personally does not like some of the trendy brands message of cutting out the middle the middle man to get a better product (which she affirms is a lie). How We Make Stuff Now: Turn Ideas Into Products That Build Successful Businesses: Jules has written a book called "How We Make Stuff Now: Turn Ideas Into Products That Build Successful Businesses". Based upon ten years of running The Grommet, Jules wrote the book to put all of the things she learned from makers into a form of reference for other makers out there. Writing a book was a low-priority bucket list item for Jules, but she found that there was no book like this out there, so she needed to create one for the industry. Due to her unique background and way of thinking, this book is clearly a stand out from other books out there and is truly unique in its advice and suggestions. Getting Capital: How To Get Funding for Your Product: CircleUp is a platform that aggregates angel investors and does equity funding in a vetted and curated offering to smaller companies. Phillip spent some time with Jason Calacanis and the world of syndicates and angels doing more passive investment is a new way for companies to bring entrepreneurship to market. Now is such a magical time to build a business because there are so many options available to you in regards to getting funding. Jules sees a huge competitive advantage in pursuing capitalist funds that promote diversity, especially the inclusion of women on their teams. Predicting the Future: The Standard Future Commerce Question: Phillip asks Jules to talk about a challenge or obstacle that some listeners may be facing right now. Every single week, Jules is blown away by some of the innovations that come through The Grommet. "Sometimes the world is just waiting for you to work an idea. Don't get discouraged if there is no proof that your idea is a great one." If you examine the market and don't see a need for your idea, that could mean that your innovation will be the exact thing that the world is waiting for. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: The Grommet Forrester Toys"R"Us Etsy Amazon Away CircleUp As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! Where was your most unlikely source of inspiration for one of your successful products? How are you capitalizing on today's entrepreneurial market? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

With retail customers like Dollar Tree and White House Black Market, Oracle knows a thing or two about commerce. Their recent report, published in conjunction with CommerceNext, dives into how brands of all sizes - from DTC to Enterprise and Luxury, are investing in 2019 and beyond. Main Takeaways: Bob Meixner, Director of Product Strategy - Commerce & Loyalty at Oracle, joins Phillip on today's episode. API-focused commerce gives brands the power and flexibility to create innovate commerce solutions. Headless commerce is the future, but sometimes developing standalone headless solutions brings you back to square one with functionality. Thanks to some insightful marketing research by Oracle, we have greater insight into where brands are spending their recently increased marketing budgets. First Meetings and Background: Who is Bob Meixner?: Phillip first became aware of Bob at CommerceNext where he was a speaker with a session called "Measuring Up: How 100+ Leading Retailers are Investing in Digital Commerce". Back in 2006, Oracle acquired an enterprise content management vendor called Stellent (for whom Bob worked) which was one of the first acquisitions made by Oracle in the customer experience space. Bob later got the opportunity to lead the presales consulting team at eBay and Magento which was an exciting challenge given Magento's growth. Wanting to get to know a different side of the industry, Bob took his current role as being the Director of Product Strategy - Commerce & Loyalty. Oracle Today: Who is Using the Platform? Phillip asks Bob to talk more about what companies are using Oracle today, especially given Phillip's perspective that it is all large scale, enterprise corporations. Bob informs us that they have taken a lot of time taking on-premise systems that had longer implementation times and reimagining them as a cloud solution that is API first. The expectation of the software vendor being the actual hosting provider of the platform is something that is a big shift from the way platforms used to be hosted. Oracle has developed an architecture that allows you to have total creative control and extensibility on both the frontend and the backend while not losing upgradeability and the benefits of what you would expect in modern SaaS. Examining the Report: How Retailers are Investing in Digital Commerce: Phillip alludes back to Bob's talk at CommerceNext and talks about how interesting and comprehensive the report covered in the talk was. Oracle wanted to get a take on where folks were investing and they thought it would be helpful to publish some numbers on where digital commerce professionals were investing on a year to year comparative basis. Respondents include over 100 people at various large brands such as wholesale manufacturers, direct to consumer brands, multi-brand retailers, and digital-first multi-brand retailers. Download the report to take a look at the report yourself and get a better insight into the data. Key Insights: What Does the Report Tell Us?: Great news: budgets are on the rise in regards to eCommerce marketing and interesting enough, direct to consumer brands are increasing their budgets at a higher rate than traditional retailers. These budget increases are being used to make transactions much more frictionless which includes things like alternative payment types and chatbots for customer service scenarios. If you think about a lot of buzzwords in the industry such as augmented reality and voice, those are not being heavily invested in. The biggest barriers to achieving eCommerce goals are managing the array of solutions that brands deploy in their commerce and marketing stacks, issues with quickly executing on commerce initiatives, the inability to get a unified view of the customer, and aging technology systems. Things Are Harder Than They Seem: The Difficulties With Commerce: In another bit of research done by Oracle in partnership with Jeanne Bliss, there were over a thousand consumers surveyed that showed that consumers are willing to pay a premium for personalized and novel experiences. More than half of consumers are comfortable sharing personal information if they receive a better experience. People are willing to share information, but how are brands capturing this information and what are they doing with it? These challenges have not been solved yet due to all of the different solutions that claim to solve it, but many of them only solve a piece of the puzzle. Ways to Stick Out: Getting Ahead of the Competition: The Oracle report also mentions that there is an opportunity for brands to differentiate themselves amongst their peers by investing in voice technology. Bob adds that ignoring voice technology might be something that is a detriment to your brand. With the move to a headless world, voice technology will be a major player in the toolset that allows customers to interact with the brands they shop at. Phillip did a talk a few years ago called The Shopping Cart is Dead that spoke about similar possibilities with voice technology. How to Be Successful With Innovation: Tidbits to Live By: The fear of the unknown does not keep consumer brands from trying new things. Retailers and brands need platforms that allow them to succeed quickly or fail fast because that is what you need to figure out to succeed in today's economy. There are some many different unknowns at all levels in commerce, so leveraging platforms that have open APIs that let you experiment with new technologies is imperative. Open APIs that build differential experiences for their customers are going to be necessities for brands to push the envelope. Bringing It Back: How Oracle Is Approaching Innovation: Oracle Commerce Cloud is API first, cloud-native, and grants its users the ability to inject commerce into any level of engagement. Sometimes people approach commerce with the need to reinvent the wheel, but if you do this, you end up back where you started from. Oracle wanted to make sure that they provided a platform that lets your brand go headless where it makes sense, but gives the powerful automation that doesn't come along with custom-built API interactions. "Quick is king right now. Most people suffer from spending an inordinate amount of time with their legacy platforms trying to do basic functions". The Future Commerce Tradition: Thoughts for the Future: Phillip asks Bob to give his thoughts on what commerce will look like in the next few years in addition to what challenges retailers will face. Bob mentions that direct to consumer startups will need to figure out how to scale if they truly want to succeed: scalability is king. Enterprise retailers need to move faster because the ability to think and execute like a digitally native brand is how they're going to survive. In the luxury market, brands need to continue to invest in the overall customer experience because the value of the overall experience is greater than the actual product or service than the brand provides. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Oracle As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! Where would you focus a larger marketing budget to make sure that you are keeping up with headless trends while still providing stability and functionality for your commerce platform? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! With retail customers like Dollar Tree and White House Black Market, Oracle knows a thing or two about commerce. Their recent report, published in conjunction with CommerceNext, dives into how brands of all sizes - from DTC to Enterprise and Luxury, are investing in 2019 and beyond. With retail customers like Dollar Tree and White House Black Market, Oracle knows a thing or two about commerce. Their recent report, published in conjunction with CommerceNext, dives into how brands of all sizes - from DTC to Enterprise and Luxury, are investing in 2019 and beyond.

No episode today. Climate change is the biggest threat to the future of our lives, country, and world. Youth across the U.S. will lead a #ClimateStrike on September 20 to demand legislative action to combat climate change #StrikeWithUs strikewithus.org

Brands and consumers alike are addicted to Amazon. In this interview Kiri Masters, Author of "Amazon for CMOs", joins us to talk about her new book launch, how brands are battling addiction to the big-A, how consumers are being lured in with everything from advertising to QVC-style programming, and how everyone from Lady Gaga to Mitsubishi are competing for your attention on the world's biggest store. Main Takeaways: Today, Brian and Phillip are joined by Kiri Masters, the founder of Bobsled Marketing, author of the upcoming book Amazon for CMOs, and co-host of the Ecommerce Braintrust Podcast.  With its plethora of sales channels, many brands don't know how to find the perfect Amazon solution to sell their products on the platform. What are some best practices for being successful in selling your products on Amazon? Amazon has grown exponentially in recent years, but what do the next few years hold for the eCommerce giant? First Meetings Up Until Today: The Kiri Masters Story: Phillip and Brian first met back in February of 2018 when they were on the Ecommerce Braintrust Podcast talking about voice commerce. (Now that's on brand.) Bobsled Marketing is an agency that helps brands with their Amazon channel across branding, marketing, and operation support. Kiri started Bobsled Marketing about five years ago after a completed unrelated career in banking.  It's a passion of Kiri to not just keep their passion and learnings at Bobsled to themselves, but to share them with the world.  The Amazon Buffet: Many Different Choices for Many Different Companies: Phillip asks Kiri to give some examples of the advice they give and the expertise they impart to their clients when it comes to Amazon.  As an agency, Bobsled mainly deals with mid-market companies that have already done well in their own sales channels but need some clarification around Amazon-specific sales channels. If you're not educating yourself on the different business models within Amazon, then you are already behind the curve.  There are so many different paths and options you can choose with Amazon so it can be challenging to align your brand with the correct channel if you are not educated in its structure.  A Missed Opportunity: Why Don't More Brands Sell on Amazon? Kiri is still surprised at the number of household brands that do not have a presence on Amazon: but why are they not present on the platform? A lot of the information that you find written about selling on Amazon is geared towards the "wantrepreneur" crowd and not towards established brands. Amazon brings in about 50% of the eCommerce market, so not considering Amazon as a place to sell your product is missing a crucial portion of your retail strategy. Amazon serves as the point of discovery for a large portion of online shoppers. Starting With Amazon: What is Different About Brands that Start on Amazon?: Amazon is creating an addictive product not only for consumers but for brands as well.  There is an organic problem on Amazon when brands cannot control the shift to retention marketing that has become a trend in online retail.  On one hand, Amazon doesn't want merchants or sellers to interact directly with customers, but on the other hand, with regulatory issues like taxes, Amazon takes a backseat. The lack of direct connection with the customer is a major pitfall with brands who sell on Amazon because they are giving up any data that they would otherwise collect on their shoppers. Feeding the Beast: Selfish Trajectories for an Ecommerce Giant: Amazon has started to share customer acquisition metrics with the brands and sellers that are selling on their platform. All of the metrics that they are now launching look great on paper, but it still all circles back to Amazon building a self-serving advertising business. Lady Gaga launched her makeup line on Prime Day, but what does this mean for Amazon going forward? Amazon's private label strategy upsets a lot of brands because the extent of data that Amazon has on its shoppers seems much more significant.  Is the Future Bright or Dark?: Insider Insights Into Amazon's Trajectory: Kiri believes that Amazon is trying to fill gaps in their assortment rather than becoming an OEM manufacturer. Amazon is starting to look more like a social media channel every day as they are pushing more towards content creation. If Amazon is looking to create a massive marketing powerhouse, they need to vastly broaden their offerings at the top of the funnel.  Amazon has to make its platform stickier to keep people more engaged as everyone is competing for real estate in the attention of the consumer.  Amazon Live: Marketing Through Informational Videos: Brian asks Kiri and Phillip if they had watched Amazon Live, a QVC-like video stream that can showcase brands on the Amazon platform. Amazon Live is a pay-to-play channel but shows that Amazon is offering a lot of different ways to leverage the Amazon platform to get their products noticed.  As brands with backing come in with larger budgets, a lot of the smaller brands might not be able to compete with the spends.  Do you think offerings like Amazon Live will help smaller brands compete with larger brands for awareness? The Cost of Amazon: How Much is Too Much to Spend for Acquisition: The acquisition cost to get customers on Amazon is high, but after spending that much to get a customer, that customer belongs to Amazon. Anker started out selling exclusively on Amazon but used customer feedback and intelligent data capture to grow the brand. Digital native vertical brands like Glossier and Away have stated that they want direct connections with their customers and have stayed away from selling on Amazon. Other brands have a mote of sorts around their brands from Amazon because they require extension customization like Care/of and Madison Reed. Digitally Native Brands vs. Amazon: Is It Possible to Compete?: Kiri asks Brian and Phillip if they believe that digitally native brands can compete without having to sell on Amazon in the future? Brands are now able to put together a tech stack that is quite similar to what Amazon Prime can offer.  Amazon set the expectation for how brands have to interact with their customers in regards to logistics and fulfillment, and now brands can deliver at a palatable price point. Phillip brings up Nike, Allbirds, and Tumi to demonstrate a way that brands will eventually begin to differentiate between brand and product Amazon for CMOs: What's It All About?: Amazon for CMOs is co-authored by Kiri and her friend Mark Power who also runs an Amazon agency (but they are still friends). Kiri noticed that a lot of frank and honest conversations about Amazon between Executives was happening behind closed doors and this advice was based on your network and ability to connect with these people.  Kiri and Mark wanted a resource for the Executive audience that brought the voice of the industry into the book and talks about how brands are doing things.  The book also contains about 15 interviews with CMOs and Executive at large retail companies.  If you want a free copy of the book, they will be giving away free Kindle editions during the launch week of September 24th if you sign up on the site.  Looking Ahead: The Future of Amazon: Brian asks Kiri the standard question of where she sees Amazon heading in the next few years.  Kiri sees some external factors coming into Amazon's future, and a lot of those on regulation, which will lead to AWS splitting off from Amazon itself.  AWS was built for Amazon internally initially, so if it is separated, will the retail division have to pay market rates for AWS? Anti-trust in the United States has broken apart companies that eventually came back together, so there is a cyclical nature to splitting up large corporations. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Bobsled Marketing Amazon Anker Glossier Away Care/of Madison Reed Nike Allbirds Tumi As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! Where do you think the next few years will take Amazon in regards to becoming a marketing giant? What are some of your best practices for selling your products on Amazon? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Nick Ling and Emmett Shine's new company, Pattern Brands, is on a mission - to create consumer brands which encourage you to enjoy everyday life and to create good habits. In this interview, we dive into why they formed Pattern, what the plan to do with it, and how they plan to change the world. Listen now! Main Takeaways: Nick Ling (Co-Founder and CEO) and Emmett Shine (Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director) of Pattern Brands join Brian and Phillip on today's episode. Pattern Brands is changing the way that its brands connect with their customers and helping them find more enjoyment in their daily lives.  How do you address and counter digital burnout in a digital world? Small and accomplishable tasks are actionable items that Pattern is encouraging its customers to complete to improve their lives. What is Pattern Brands?: The Founders' Story:  Gin Lane has been a digital-based agency that has focused on the start-up economy that grew out of New York City. Gin Lane became Pattern Brands, which is a family of brands that has products and guidance designed to help people find more enjoyment in their daily lives. While at Gin Lane, the team asked themselves how they could work together for years into the future, and Pattern grew out of that process. "We were all feeling this feeling of digital burnout, and Pattern itself is a reaction to that which strives to create an alternate reality in which we want to spend our time". Bridging the Gap: Having a Professional Service and Turning Those Lessons Inward: Gin Lane was a partner in bringing a lot of businesses to market and helped entrepreneurs go from a business-focused pitch deck, to what the business could potentially be. Gin Lane's employees often felt like they were employees of the companies that were in their portfolio, so this created a different relationship between these brands.  At Pattern, the team is doing a lot of the same things they would have done during the Gin Lane days, but are focusing on their brands as opposed to partner brands.  By understanding digital technology and products, Pattern was able to supplement their staff with skills that they knew they needed more expertise in. A Team of the Highest Caliber: Lessons in Hiring: Brian was struck by that part of Pattern's mission is working with people that they want to work with and asks if that has led to the hiring decisions they have made.  At any moment, Pattern can call upon any of the fifty or more entrepreneurs that they have worked with in the past, which has allowed a broad array of talent to come across.  Newer entrepreneurs rarely are in the position of being asked by a company like Pattern for their opinion, and these insights pave the way for meaningful hires.   Phillip asks if Nick and Emmett consider what they are doing at Pattern to be a reshaping of all of retail and where we are in that curve of change. The Reshaping of Modern Retail: The Curve of Change: The generation of consumer that is now entering their thirties has a very different set of values than the Baby Boomer generation, and the evolutions in consumer goods are a direct reflection of this change of values.  It is very hard for legacy brands to honestly say that they are serving this changed system of values.  Pattern is a reflection of the environment that we are in right now and is a direct response to the stresses of the current environment of the world.  Brian states that Baby Boomers feel to him now as they used to look at him, and points out that he feels digital burnout very strongly. Digital Burnout: Reconciling Strategy and Self Care: Is there a way to both promote digital strategy while promoting ways to deal with digital burnout? A lot of the authors that are writing on digital burnout are in their early thirties, and one of the main issues is that it is so hard to identify what is happening as you are going through burnout yourself.  For comparison, technology is a tool that has moved exponentially in our lifetimes, but our biology is something that is firmly stuck in place. We are in the infancy of technology in the grand scheme of civilization, so we do not have the tools or vocabulary to address and identify the issues that come along with that. What Does Success Look Like?: The Failure of Meritocracy: Emmett brings up a recent article in the Atlantic that talks about the failures of meritocracy and contrasts that to the opposite Attention Economy. These competing forces are squeezing all of our personal time and even our sleep. Consumers have an expectation of your brand that you didn't set, but there is a new expectation for brands to either build communities or have a conscious.  Pattern is trying to recognize the role we play in society, the marketplace, and government in a for-profit way. One Small Step: Re-Focusing Attention Through Accomplishable Tasks:  Speaking to an entity that acknowledges you is very important as a consumer, even if it is something we don't consciously strive for.  Pattern is trying to help young adults recognize that the balance of where their attention is focused might not be the best for their well being.  One of the main ways in which Pattern is changing behavior is by encouraging small and accomplishable tasks that promote better self-care and remedy digital burnout.  We are eroding and losing touch with each other due to digital burnout and Pattern is hoping to reverse this erosion, Rhythms of Life: Disruption and Connection in the Digital Age: Brian brings up Care/Of and how they are focused on building a connection between the consumer and the brand in a way that hasn't happened since long ago. Is there an active shift between how brands and consumers interact with each other? Pattern is thinking about intimacy at scale and trying to give people the acknowledged experience of small-town general stores but on a larger scale.  Emmet comments that they are starting to describe their brands as "direct-with-consumer" as that implies a bi-directional relationship. Changing Behaviors: Breaking Digital Chains: Pattern is trying to change peoples' habits in a non-aspirational or patronizing way by meeting people where they are at and expressing and allowing vulnerabilities.  The guidance component of Pattern is human-led (not AI or automated) and this allows for a more human connection between the brand and the consumer.  What are the benefits of having a human-led guidance component as opposed to an automated system? Nick states that they are trying to help people redefine how they spend their quality time, but that isn't easy. Fostering Change: Power Through Commerce: Commerce can connect people globally (as it has for millennia) and it can change the future. What other areas could be ripe for fostering such a level of global change? Commerce focus entrepreneurship is the way you provide global change and mobility for founders and businesses in the United States.  Phillip states that this journey of improving lives and addressing digital burnout is one that he has been going through himself. Deeper Dives: Future Commerce Alumni Questions:  Emily Singer from last week's episode asks how Pattern balances philosophy with the need to sell products. Pattern is trying to help people be intentional and conscious of how they use consumer products, just how the food industry has come to a more conscious positioning in the past twenty years.  As a brand, Pattern is intentional with how they communicate with their consumers through Instagram by restricting usage to only six hours per week.  Pattern is not selling a product, they are selling a way to use your time. Looking to the Future: Personal Betterment For All: Brian asks Nick and Emmett to talk about where they see commerce headed in the next five years. Nick says that we are at the beginning of the revolution of commerce instead of at the end of it and we will continue to see legacy brands struggle as millennial values overtake the industry.  We will also see more and more personalized brands as technology is allowing us to serve smaller and smaller groups of people.  Emmett believes that automation and AI will continue to advance and that there are benefits to technology and what that democratizes. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Pattern Brands Gin Lane Care/Of As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! How can your brand encourage your customers to make changes to improve their lives? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

How do brands create retention strategies centered around content to keep their customers consistently purchasing? Emily Singer, the founder of consumer brand-focused newsletter Chips + Dip, joins the show to talk trends, brand analysis and how modern brands are using storytelling to create rich, immersive experiences for their customers. Listen now! Main Takeaways: Emily Singer, Marketing Manager at Alma and the Founder of the Chips + Dips newsletter, joins Brian and Philip on today's episode. Brands are trending towards developing unique voices that automatically identify their target customers.  How do smaller brands compete with the widespread voice of larger brands? Phillip and Emily have visited Showfields, but did it live up to the hype? Chips + Dips: The Story Behind the Content (And The Author):  Emily gives us a walkthrough of a typical issue of Chips + Dips as well as what she prefers to cover in her writing. (Spoiler: there are dip recipes with every edition.) Phillip asks Emily to give us a brief history of how Chips + Dips came about and to give us the "Emily Singer Story". Early in her career, Emily wanted to work in media, and Chips + Dips came about because she wanted an outlet where she could write the stories that she wanted to write. No one was creating a casual analysis of news and trends that focused on the brand stories instead of looking at numbers and revenue, so Emily created Chips + Dips to fill that void.  Untangling the Threads: Discovering Brand Trends: Brian asks Emily to explain a bit how she untangles the threads she discovers in the world of brands and marketing.  By latching onto things that may seem insignificant or small, Emily can use her unique mind to piece together the bigger picture amidst several publications. Emily blows Phillip's mind by letting him know that she has a separate Instagram account that just follows brands so it doesn't disrupt the flow of her interests on her main account. (Phillip also brings up how he doesn't let Brian choose music on his Spotify account.) Bridging the Gap: Insights from a Direct to Consumer Insider: Emily talks about her first direct to consumer experience with JackThreads (which was acquired by Thrillist) and what she did when working with the brand.  Most recently, Emily worked at Daily Harvest, and how the subscription service company differed from her other direct to consumer experience.  Phillip brings up how there are brands (such as JackThreads and Gilt Groupe) that harken back to a certain "era" of eCommerce and how these brands change with the times.  People are more thoughtful and intentional consumers nowadays which has caused brands to shift their focus to customer retention as opposed to flash sales. Retail and Direct-To-Consumer: Competing For Your Attention: Brian asks Emily to talk a bit more about content and the role that content plays in retail and brands.  In the retail space, brands are spreading their wings and trying to cast a wider net and provide customers with more ways to engage, and content is a simple and logical way to do that.  Outdoor Voices sells workout gear, but they also have a very robust Instagram story approach that allows consumers to engage with the brand differently. "Brand is all about storytelling and building a rich, immersive experience." The Power of Touchpoints: Reaching the Customer in New Ways: Phillip brings up Haus, a brand that has one product, and how Haus needs a way and reason to talk to you outside of selling their product.  Do companies with a narrow vertical need to expand the number of customer touchpoints to remain relevant?  Emily discusses Great Jones, a cookware company, and how their strategy differs because what they sell is supposed to be a more permanent fixture in their customers' lives. Brian references the episode with Charlie Cole from Tumi and how Tumi wants its customers to use their bags for a long time so it has to create new touchpoints to stay relevant with their customers. Smaller Brand Strategies: How to Compete with the Big Guys: Phillip remembers the panel he led at Commerce Next that covered how smaller brands need to reorient the way they view lifetime value to be customer-centric. Floyd has partnered with Airbnb in a collaboration called Stay Floyd that features home rentals fully outfitted with Floyd furniture. Brian cleverly points out that stories with multiple characters are the best stories, and when you think about brand partnerships, you see how their stories merge and create something more complete and powerful when told with others.  In the episode with Jeremy King from Pinterest, Jeremy spoke about how Pinterest was trying to lead its users to interact with the real world, and Phillip compares this to brands with a conscious.  The Most Interesting Store in the World: Did It Live Up to the Hype?: Back in Episode 89 with Brandon Singer (Phillip mistakenly says it's Episode 97) was when Showfields was first discussed, and now Phillip and Emily recently visited the location. Emily describes Showfields as one of the few companies trying to make a direct to consumer department store. (Neighborhood Goods is another one that is opening in New York this fall.) When Emily first visited Showfields, there was only one floor and felt much more like an Instagram experience than an actual department store. Each brand has its own micro experience, but there is no cohesion between the different brands because the Showfields brand is too strong and competing with the brands it contains. (Phillip agrees with some serious sass.) The Other Side of the Screen: Phillip Tries a Thought Experiment: Phillip tries a thought experiment and asks Brian and Emily to think about the persona of brands and not the persona of the consumer. Should brands enable their consumers to be content creators to then leverage that consumer-created content to make their brand more socially aware? What people care about and value is more important to a marketer than their personality.  Brands that are focused and have a strong story will find their audience without having to cast a wide net to capture the attention of a vast range of consumers. (Tracksmith is a great example of this.) What the Future Holds: Emily's Predictions: Emily predicts that retail space is only going to get increasingly crowded and increasingly noisy, thus making staying in business a challenge Retention overgrowth and finding ways to foster brand affinity and lifetime value are going to be keys to staying in business and being successful.  You don't need to build a billion-dollar brand, you can stay small.  Building brands that are sustainable and thoughtful calls upon the people running the brands to be more thoughtful themselves when it comes to raising capital. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: JackThreads Thrillist Daily Harvest Gilt Groupe Outdoor Voices Haus Great Jones Floyd Airbnb Showfields Neighborhood Goods  Tracksmith As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! Is it possible to bootstrap a brand when organic is dead and social marketing is pay-to-play? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

The Uberification of pot, CBD and having a clear strategy in a world of microtrends. Interview with Chelsea Clements, head of performance marketing at Green Growth Brands.

What does the perfect fit really look like? Sabrina Abney, Ecommerce Director at Mizzen + Main, and David Pastewka , Co-Founder at Drapr, join the show to talk optimizing virtual try-on solutions, "comfortable AF" clothing, technology in digital-first marketplaces, and crafting the best-possible customer journey. Listen now! Main Takeaways: David Pastewka, co-founder of Drapr, and Sabrina Abney, Director of eCommerce at Mizzen+Main, join Brian and Phillip on today's episode. Mizzen+Main is using innovative technologies like Drapr to take the online customer experience to new levels of personalization and ease.  Customers are becoming increasingly accustomed to a one-to-one retail experience, and body data is allowing brands to create just that.  Body data is allowing brands to get deeper insights into their customer bases to not only understand physical attributes of their core customers, but also to predict what sizes need to have larger inventory to meet consumer demand. A Virtual Try-On Company Meets Quality and Comfort: The Drapr/Mizzen+Main Story: Phillip met David a few months ago at the Drapr booth during RetailX and was taken back by how Drapr allows customers to virtually see how clothing from various retailers will fit over their actual bodies in a way that is as close to photo-realism as possible while browsing on a store's website. Sabrina takes us through a brief history of Mizzen+Main and how the founder came up with the idea after observing a bunch of sweaty interns.  Phillip remembers the first time he encountered Mizzen+Main through one of their memorable domain: comfortable.af.  Solving Fit Issues of Digitally Native Brands: Drapr Saves the Day: Sabrina comments that all digitally native brands are challenged by the fact that customers can't try on products before they commit to a purchase.  The ability to see what a piece of clothing looks like on your body is a huge boon when it comes to making the decision to purchase.  Brian recalls the marketing campaign that featured JJ Watt as a great example of way to identify customers that connect with your brand. Drapr is trying to replicate the experience of trying something on your body, and then standing in front of a mirror.  The Science Behind Try-On Technology: Replicating Fabric Online: Brian asks David about how they handle the ways in which different types of fabrics behave and interact when worn.  While the "feel" of fabric cannot yet be captured online, the fit and draping qualities of Mizzen+Main shirts were captured with 3D scanning and cloth simulation. The main goal of the process was the capture the realism of the shirts to make renderings as true to life as possible.  Sabrina explains that innovation is the fabric of Mizzen+Main's products and brand identity, and the technology behind Drapr is the perfect intersection of values.  Benchmarks of Success: Quantifying Innovation: How do brands determine what is a successful innovation when the metrics of success are constantly evolving along with technology? Sabrina reveals that there are KPIs that are being tracked (which are constantly being tweaked) along with invaluable customer surveys. Brian geeks out the potential massive reduction in product returns that come along with the ability to see how clothing fits before purchasing.  "Success doesn't look like just a conversion, but looks like a positive customer experience which requires the ability to quantify whether or not it's a good experience." Conversations Drive Direction: The Power of Customer Feedback:  Phillip asks David if the conversations that are being had with their customers are informing the future direction of Drapr.  Every single case and customer is so different, so the conversations give invaluable insight into how customers behave and what benefits them most along the customer journey. The data from just the first set of customers using their tool has given Drapr enough information and direction to shape the next few months of development.  Phillip harkens back to the episode with Jeremy King and how everyone at eBay was required to speak directly to customers as part of the company culture. Doing More to Earn Customer Loyalty: The Cost of Being a Premium Brand:  What can premium brands do to encourage customers to spend more on products that are at more of a premium price? Sabrina speaks about how listening to their customers and making their voices heard attributes greatly to brand loyalty in addition to their innovation.  Mizzen+Main is in all Nordstrom stores across the country, has over 700 retail partners, and has started opening their own branded stores.  Just getting a customer to feel the fabric and try the shirts on is a huge factor in customer attribution, and it doesn't necessarily matter where the customers interact with the fabric.  Shaping the Future: Content Creation from Body Data: Brian asks both Sabrina and David if digital try-on has lead or if it will lead to content creation sometime in the future.   David says that content creation will play a huge part in Drapr's future, where you won't be putting clothing on a body that looks like you, but you will be simulating clothing on your actual body.  This extremely personalized image of a customer in a digitally rendered version of clothing is immediately shareable and be considered content creation.  Brand loyalty doesn't necessarily translate to loyalty of the technology that powers it so how do you bridge the gap from brand loyalty to loyalty in technology? Intimate Personal Knowledge: The Management of Body Data: Sabrina discusses the conversations that Mizzen+Main had with Drapr regarding the usage of customer data and how that data would be managed. Who will own the data in this partnership between Mizzen+Main and Draper, the brand or the technology provider? Can body data of a customer base help in the future development of a brand? Brian brings up how a 3D body scanning app is in on Drapr's roadmap amd David confirms that there will be pilot programs being released within the next few months. Making It Easy: How to Use Body Data for a Tailored Customer Experience: Creating audience segments and campaigns for these segments based on body data is a natural trajectory for Mizzen+Main's marketing plan.  Sabrina mentions how size data can be used for birthday specific marketing, as a pain point in birthday marketing is that advertised pieces would not always be available in the customer's size.  Customers want a more one-to-one experience with product recommendations in not just style and color, but with fit and size that make it easier for them to shop.  Brian asks Sabrina is Mizzen+Main's customers will come to expect a personalized experienced based on their body data in the future.  Beyond the Customer Journey: Further Uses for Customer Body Data: With the knowledge of customers' sizes, Brian asks Sabrina if body data affects the supply chain in regards to planning production trends.  As their core customer starts to get older, the body types and sizes that sell the most products change along with the customer ages.  Sabrina enlightens us that they are using their own version of predictive modeling to plan how much to make of certain sizes.  When customers find another brand that has clothing in their size, Sabrina predicts that it might already be too late and you have probably already lost that customer.  Five Years From Now: What Does the Future Look Like: David predicts that everyone will be shopping as themselves online due to the undeniable advantages of shopping online. Technology is progressing to the point where you will soon visit a brand's website and see pictures of yourself there in that brand's clothing.  Sabrina thinks virtual try-on will replace size guides in regards to customer expectations on clothing sites.  The entire customer journey from email, to advertising, and even to browsing websites will be tailored to an individual level. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Drapr Mizzen+Main Nordstrom As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! With body data becoming more robust, where do you think the future of retail personalization will be within the next few years? Is there a point where customer data goes too far when it comes to intimate physical knowledge of customers' bodies? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Few updates for your Monday morning: we launched the Future Commerce Sustainability Initiative, we're publishing bonus content on the next two Tuesdays, we're at Etail East in Boston and don't miss this next Friday's episode with Mizzen and Main! >> Click here to subscribe to FC Insiders today!

Pinterest is giving their community tools to engage in commerce, not to interact more online but to get out and discover the world around them. In this episode, we interview Jeremy King, the SVP of Engineering at Pinterest and former CTO of Walmart.com, to discover how they're using advanced machine vision and context to power the catalogs and commerce experiences both on-and-off-platform. Listen now! Main Takeaways: Jeremy King, SVP of Technology at Pinterest, joins Brian and Phillip on today's episode. Is the open-source format the "secret sauce" to being successful when developing advancements in technology? Inspiration engines like Pinterest are fostering real-world interactions and building communities.   Customization through personalization sometimes leads to repetitive product recommendations, but there are ways to battle this using big data. Jeremy King: A Brief Professional History: Jeremy has been at Pinterest for only 4 months, but previously spent 8 years at Walmart running Walmart Labs and helped them go through their digital transformation.  Brian heard Jeremy's talk at NRF and asks Brian how he ended up at Walmart and to talk a bit about his journey with the company. Eight years ago, Walmart did not have a very large presence online, but throughout his tenure at the company, they vastly expanded their eCommerce entity.  Technology Leadership: What is the Secret Sauce?: Phillip harkens back months ago to when Wayfair was on the show and comments on how open-source adoption can change the image of your brand. Leadership from a technology perspective is a monumental task in regards to advancement in technologies for brands.  Jeremy talks about the difficulties that corporations such as Walmart face in technology that simply does not scale to the massive size of the corporation itself.  Open-source contributions and a healthy approach to technology selection are the "secret sauce" that Jeremy attributes to success in technological leadership. "Most companies these days have to have a new respect for how much technology plays in their success or failure". Open-Source Technology: The Power of the Community:  If you are using technologies that are not open-source, you are typically beholden to the direction and decisions of a single organization as opposed to the community of open-source technology.  Try things in house first, and then look for other solutions that don't already lie within your team.  Pick the places where you want to be innovative and insource those things then outsource everything else to save you time and effort.  What parts of your business do you outsource and where are you trying to innovate in-house?  Social Media versus Discovery: How to Make Something Shoppable: With over 300 million visitors a month, Pinterest was going to be a unique opportunity for Jeremy to scale the team and build technology for a product that people already love.  How do you make a discovery platform like Pinterest more shoppable?  As a discovery engine, people go to Pinterest with a positive mentality so making shopping more accessible is the goal as opposed to interrupting social media behaviors.  Pinterest is also a great platform for team collaboration as it allows a positive and creative environment to share ideas and feedback. The Shift Towards Commerce: The Evolution of Purchasing:  The number one request from Pinners is to have a clear and easy way to purchase items that they have fallen in love with while using the platform.  Retailers are often surprised that their catalogs are largely already in Pinterest due to people pinning their favorite products.  Brian and Phillip also refer to their most recent episode and bring up how discovery platforms are replacing traditional department store experiences. People are coming to Pinterest to build inspiration, something that was traditionally accomplished with physical catalogs and in-store experiences.  Room For All: Discovery for Both Big and Small: Hundreds of millions of pins as catalog items are helping small companies with discovery as 97% of Pinterest's top 1000 searches are unbranded.  Companies can use Pinterest to introduce themselves to prospective shoppers and reach people they never would be able to reach otherwise.  Brian identifies this as a great example of passive shopping and Phillip expands on the concept in specific reference to Pinterest.  Any other shopping experience would rely on the conversion at the moment of product consideration, but with Pinterest, people are looking to be inspired along their entire retail journey.  The Secret Sauce: How to Succeed in Technology: Phillip asks Jeremy to give the listeners some about on criteria about decisions regarding technology and how to outfit a team. Jeremy recalls how he brought the startup mentality to Walmart and created the world's largest startup with Walmart labs.  Access to data on a company-wide basis is paramount for your team to be able to use that data to solve problems. There are also some basic company culture choices that Jeremy recommends such as engineers sitting with your business team to expedite business decisions and processes.  The Digital Community: Fostering Relationships Offline: Brian asks Jeremy how he sees technology either bringing communities together and then how commerce relates to the building of a digital community.  Pinterest's goal is to help you find inspiration so that you can bring your ideas to life in the real world, and when ideas overlap, they create real-world relationships. The team at Pinterest wants you to get out there and go do things, and the communities you find of like-minded individuals are natural by-products of this.  Brian gets some visions of shared Pinterest workshops in the future, and Phillip sees it as the antidote to the digital wellness movement.  Jeremy's Predictions: The Landscape of the Next Five Years:  Phillip asks Jeremy to talk about his predictions for the next five years from a technology and commerce perspective.  Jeremy says that machine learning technology is what makes Pinterest so great, and hundreds of calculations a second tailor your Pinterest home page. Where will machine learning technology be in five years and how do you think machine learning engines like Pinterest can use that technology to provide the best experience for their users? According to Jeremy, machine learning development will contribute greatly to the beautification and personalization of discovery platforms over the next few years.  Quantifying Serendipity: Overcoming the Issues of Customization Through Personalization: Brian brings up how customization through personalization can lead consumers to only seeing the same type of products and asks Jeremy to talk about how Pinterest is tackling this issue. With its use of boards as a method of categorization, Pinterest can tailor the machine learning model to find out what people are inspired by.  If you can quantify the moment of inspiration (coined Serendipity by Jeremy) you will be able to calculate the most effective times to break the mold of recommended products and boards. Knowing what your customers need and what they want can only be found by actually communicating with your customers. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Pinterest Walmart Wayfair Jet.com As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! Is the open-source format of technology building something you would implement for your brand? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

🎶"I love you, you love me, Barney's filing bank-rupt-cy!" PLUS: who is the vegan-curious Subway customer? Listen now! Main Takeaways: Vice President of Global E-Commerce and Customer Experience at e.l.f Cosmetics, Ingrid Millman, is co-hosting with Brian and Phillip this week. Barneys New York has filed for bankruptcy but does this spell the end for the high-end department store model? The perception of luxury is shifting with younger generations and brands that don't change with the times will eventually phase out.  AriZona Iced Tea has partnered with a cannabis brand and the pairing could be a benchmark for the future of cannabis retail. Barneys Is Bankrupt: Tough Times for High-End Department Stores:  Barneys New York has filed for bankruptcy (no Phillip, not the dinosaur)  and Ingrid captures up all of our inner feelings by saying that the Sex and the City characters within all of us are saddened by the news.  Brian has surprisingly never seen Sex and the City, so Ingrid makes him take a Buzzfeed quiz which yields surprising results.  There is a rapid expansion of markets that don't make sense for the Barneys brand that has succeeded at being a single store in New York.  Ingrid states that it is a tough time for high-end department stores and brings up how other big names in high-end department stores (like Henri Bendel) have been closing. Discovery on Instagram: Are Department Stores Dead?: Brian rebuttals by saying there have been many luxury stores that have been very successful in taking their business online. "The department store was traditionally the place where discovery happened, but now discovery happens on Instagram." With the advent of social media and the tailoring of advertisements that accompanies it, Instagram knows more about you than a department store ever would.  Brian guesses that Barneys Warehouse could have been a contributing factor in Barneys' demise because a lot of what Barneys sold was sold at a discount at Barneys Warehouse.  The Cannibalization of High-End Pricing: What is the Cost of Discounting?: Phillip points out that the concept of doubling down on your high-end inventory before you make the addition of discount products to your brand has never been talked about on the show before. A recent article mentioned that the Nordstrom family wants to increase its ownership of Nordstrom beyond 50% as a result of their plummeting sales.  There are a lot of luxury brands that cannibalize their full price sales by selling through discount outlets such as Nordstrom Rack. Phillip states that casualization in the workplace and a shift in the perception of luxury are contributing factors to the failing high-end department model.  The Flash Sale Model: Disillusionment Through Discount: Ingrid attributes the financial recession around 2008 as the advent of flash sale type brands such as Giltand these discounted luxury goods removed some of the enchantment that was associated with luxury goods.  The older generations are typically buying the traditionally high-end brands and if those brands do not take notice of the buying habits of younger consumers, they will being to age out.  Phillip identifies Barneys as a cultural icon that he would have previously considered too big to fail, but it will have to change dramatically to stay around.  Brian points out the continuing trend of brands that are struggling even though they are trying to innovate such as Walgreens having to close hundreds of stores.  The Competitive Edge: Battling Against Giants: CVS has announced a paid offering called Carepass that promises discounts, free shipping, and prescription delivery for about half the price of Amazon Prime. (Funny how this announcement lines up with Walgreen's announcing their store closings...) Brian predicts that we will begin to see more offerings like this from different brands popping up to compete with Amazon. Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu will be bundled for $12.99 and Phillip points out that we've come full circle and are back to where we started: with basic cable. Phillip is excited to try something aside from Netflix because he only watches The Office.  Mountains of Digital Waste: The Ruins of Digital Civilization:  Ingrid is very into all of the cooking shows on Netflix such as The Great British Bakeoff, Chef's Table, and The Final Table. Brian states that he wishes you could just buy the equipment that was being shown on the cooking shows while watching. (Or the shoes right off of Carrie's feet. RIght, Brian?) Streaming Service Linear Commerce is the ability to purchase products directly from digital media as it is being displayed in various programs. Phillip recently heard about "the mountains of digital waste" we create that we use for a moment and then never again, but it will exist forever in data houses that require fossil fuels to be powered.  Recycle Commerce: Single-Use Plastics As Sustainable Currency?:  Brian gets excited about being able to swap plastic bottles for a train ticket in Rome as part of a 12-month program called "Ricicli + Viaggi," or Recycle + Travel that aims to reduce the usage of single-use plastics.  Ingrid has a conspiracy theory and is worried that this program will have an opposite effect and make people buy more plastic bottles because they will be able to use them to get train tickets.  S'well recently announced food storage containers and Phillip thinks that they are really pretty.  Brian loves the idea of sustainable currency and wonders why we can't factor other things in such as adding a carbon offset value to everything we purchase. (Credit to Phillip for that idea.) Weed and Iced Tea: The Pairing You Never New You Wanted:  Brian has been champing at the bit to talk about AriZona Iced Tea's venture into the world of weed with their partnership with Dixie Brands, Inc. AriZona Iced Tea and Adidas recently collaborated on a shoe that was initially sold for $0.99, caused such a crowd that the NYPD had to shut down the launch, and then later started being sold for upwards of $700.00 per pair.  There are lots of interesting collaborations between cannabis companies and "nostalgia brands" such as the recent pairing between Green Growth Brands and Abercrombie & Fitch.  Beyond Meat: Major Food Chains Are Exploring Meatless Options:  Subway is going to be testing out plant-based Meatball Marinara sandwiches at select locations.  Subway is not alone in their shift towards meatless options as Del Taco, Burger King, Tim Hortons, and Little Caesar's are all going to have Beyond Meat or Impossible Burger options.  Ingrid brings up that there are tons of people that are interested in reducing the amount of meat they consume or going meatless but they live in areas where those options are not readily available. (Brian lovingly dubs these areas "Meatless Deserts".) Phillip brings up a Twitter thread from Charlie Bilello that chronicles the rise of Beyond Meat and the numbers are incredibly indicative towards the success of meatless products.  Both Brian and Ingrid share some love for Oatly and how their marketing is making oat milk look like the coolest thing ever.  Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Barney's New York Henri Bendel (R.I.P.) Barneys Warehouse Nordstom Gilt Walgreens CVS S'well AriZona Iced Tea Dixie Brands, Inc. Adidas Green Growth Brands Abercrombie & Fitch Subway  Oatly As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! Where do you see the high-end department store model in five years? Is cannabis a sustainable business model when it comes to partnering with non-cannabis brands? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

When brands like Outdoor Voices launch a new content platform it gets us thinking about retail-brands-turned-content-creators and begs the question: who is the winner in the attention economy? Do brands have what it takes to create engaging and timely content? Listen now! ##Main Takeaways: In today's brand economy, everyone is expected to be a storyteller and have content play a large part in their retail strategy.  Brian and Phillip use their own experience as a guide and describe the qualities it takes to be a successful content creator.  In some cases, content is dictating how product is being created so brands that master their content game are becoming majorly successful. Strategy is an integral part of achieving your goals and it takes a specific skillset to combine strategy with brand development. ###The State of Content: Everyone Has to Be a Storyteller: Outdoor Voices is launching a storytelling marketing platform called The Recreationalist that is positioned around showcasing the fun in outdoor activities as opposed to most outdoor brands that focus on performance. Brian states that we are at the peak content level period where every brand needs to be a storyteller and everything is content.  The way we are consuming content has changed dramatically in the past ten years and we are more willing to put our focus on content that is current and innovative.  Creating content consistently is a large commitment that extends past just being employed at a company. ###The Lasting Content Creator: Avoiding Creative Burnout in A Demanding Climate: Given their standing as "authorities" on the subject, Brian and Phillip describe the perfect combination of qualities that allows someone to be a consistent content creator. (Strangely it sounds like they're reading their own biographies. Imagine that.) You can't have a strategy without a goal, and everyone on your team should know what that strategy is and have a clear direction on how to achieve it.  Creating content in a particular media takes a different skill set that might sometimes conflict with your ability to be a successful retailer.  If you're going to get into the content game, get in with both feet and don't just try to do it halfway. ###The Shifting Tide: Content is King: In the attention economy, most brands are competing for the same groups of content consumers so these brands must stand out from their competitors.  Brian recently heard a VP of Product at a large furniture retailer say that it's better to create content, see how that content performs, and then create a product that fits that content.  "People want to quantify that you're spending has a direct return but when you're creating content, what you're spending on is brand." Aggregating the listeners or consumers of your content is a challenge because they are coming from such disparate places across all channels. ###What's On the Horizon?: A Sneak Peek at the Future of Future Commerce: Phillip is excited to announce that Gladly is now a sponsor of the show and to check out last week's episode with Charlie Cole and Joseph Ansanelli. (Welcome to the family!) In the most recent issue of Chips + Dips, aperitif culture was examined and Phillip suggests that Future Commerce could be your retail aperitif. (That was a stretch...) Brian thinks that the world is ready for a canned Gin & Tonic and has an entire five-year strategy for this plan.  (Well this episode derailed fast.) Phillip teases that Ishani Gujral from Madrona Venture Labs will be making an appearance on the show soon to talk about how they approach ideation and how they help founders launch new companies. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Outdoor Voices Gladly Madrona Venture Labs As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! How can you use content to identify a trajectory for your message and brand? Is outsourcing a content creator a good expenditure of funds? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.