EP311 - Video Commerce with Qurate's Brian Beitler
Brian Beitler is the Founder and General Manager of Live Shop Ventures, a video commerce initiative within the Qurate Retail Group, which is the parent company of HSN and QVC. Brian has also served as the CMO of Qurate Retail Group, in addition to many other interesting marketing roles in the retail world.
We met Brian at Etail Boston and arranged this interview. We cover video commerce, differences in adoption between Western and Eastern Markets. The role of livestreaming, and the benefits of being a "commerce platform with video" vs. "a video platform with commerce." We also explore the origin on Live ShopVentures, it's first video marketplace on a mobile app, Sune, and the benefits on incubating a start-up within an established company.
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Episode 311 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, August 31th.
Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
Jason:
[0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 311 being recorded on Thursday August 31st 2023 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo.
Scot:
[0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners Jason as you know one of the most common questions we get from our huge listing audience is about live streaming with e-commerce is it a big deal why is it seem to be growing faster in the East versus the west and how important is it to live live streaming so we thought we'd get a expert on the show as a guest that could help unpack that for us all and you better than someone who's LED marketing for numerous historic Brands and served as the CMO for the mother of all video shopping sites QVC / HSN and so that's exactly who we found, we're excited to welcome to the show Brian beitler he is the founder of mobile V Commerce app called soon and the general manager of live shop venters both part of the Keurig group.
And I'm not sure Jason but that's a lot of words in the title but I think it's maybe half of the words in your title but welcome to the show Brian we're excited to have you.
Brian:
[1:36] Grateful to be here and I'll work on trying to lengthen the title so I can keep up with Jason.
Jason:
[1:41] Set your set your goals higher Brian.
Brian:
[1:43] Thank you for having me.
Jason:
[1:48] Brian we are thrilled to have you and as our listeners will quickly figure out and we are eager to jump into all this video Commerce stuff but before we do we always like to give the listeners a little bit of perspective about our guests background and where they're coming from and in your case it's a super impressive retail / consumer background so can you can you give us the version that your mom would share with her friends in the elevator.
Brian:
[2:15] Happy to do so so I'll back up a decade or two but I started well where I consider I started my career was at Mattel that huge toy conglomerate in fact they're very popular right now coming off of a I think a major hit movie.
It's doing very well.
Yes I think so has the rest of the world at this point but I started my career there and fell in love with the toy industry and thought that's where I would really spend.
My entire career when I left Mattel.
In the early 2000s I at the time was leading the core part of the Hot Wheels brand a dream job as a father and a former young boy.
[2:56] But I thought I would give myself a taste of retail in the toy industry so I actually left metallic thought I would spend a couple of years on the retail side working with it.
A brand I knew we all knew and loved at some point in our childhood called Toys R Us and truthfully I the reason I'm here today is I fell in love with retail there, and what was different for me about retail versus consumer packaged Goods was just the speed of retail it felt like it moved at light speed compared to kind of course EPG brand management, and you know I often tell the story you know working in those days to change you know the package on a five car pack took a couple of years to get it to Market and.
I joined Toys R Us and we had this idea to launch a birthday club and.
At the time I went to the CEO of the company John I learned and it was how quickly could you get it in Market could you do it in a couple of months.
And that and I was often running and in love with retail and so spent a couple of years there and then just continued to be given these remarkable opportunities to work with, really amazing Brands and helping them reshape their narratives with their consumers or and or finding new Pathways new emerging ways, I could grow I was you know there at Bath and Body Works when we launched e-commerce we redesigned the site as a marketing site decided oh we might be able to sell something.
Through here and that's been my journey so from from Bath and Body Works to Kohl's department store.
[4:24] Then my hand in the bridal industry and private Equity with David's Bridal and then women's apparel and you know fast forward.
A few few years and here I am at curate Retail Group.
Working in what I think is an exciting future for digital Commerce.
[4:42] All of those roles you know usually leading the marketing you know the marketing or e-commerce function for those various Brands and learning a lot making a lot of mistakes a lot of mistakes I'm getting a few things right every now and then, and you know kind of Landing in a pretty exciting place here at grea where we think we're going to do something you know again interesting a new in the digital space.
Jason:
[5:04] Yeah and a couple of fun facts brand you've LED marketing for for a bunch of those Brands you just mentioned and while you were doing that I was nominally helpful in building a bunch of the the backend e-commerce functionality for those same Brands and so I think without knowing it you've hated me your entire life for all the the features you wanted and didn't get or the the the pace of evolution so I just wanted to apologize publicly for all of that.
Brian:
[5:34] I appreciate that.
Jason:
[5:35] But one of the things I particularly love about your career is is I have this theory that, you know though all of retailers has been profoundly disrupted by digital but not all at the same time and so there were there are industries that are disrupted a long time ago and there's you know if you're a grocer or a car dealer you're probably getting disrupted you know right now and I feel like you serendipitously or maybe intentionally have have been in a bunch of Industries.
Right at the peak of their disruption so your Toys R Us when when shopping online became a thing and then urine Beauty when that became a thing and then you are you are in the the the heat of the the apparel Wars online and now you're you're squarely in the v Commerce space and it's you know one of the things we talked about the most on the show so whether you did that on purpose or not congratulations on on surfing that digital disruption wave.
Brian:
[6:32] No I appreciate that I think much much of it was serendipitous I would say that the pieces that probably weren't was my desire to always work for, brands that were leaders in their respective category or industry and as I look back and reflect that's probably one of the things that has been the most rewarding and probably given me the best.
Growth is being able to work with you know brands that were at the Forefront Mattel at the time was the leader in in toy manufacturing still still are.
Toys R Us at the time was the leader in toy retail Bath & Body Works was the largest kind of.
Bath & Body brand at the time Cole's was it was a chaser of you know kind of the discount Department space and ran past JCPenney's and Sears and its competitors and so that for me has been exciting because you know I think being with those who build powerful platforms, let you learn from the best and you know here I said today with curate retailgeek which owns QVC and HSN.
You know the largest livestream platform on the globe by far the industry, leader having changed the landscape of how you could use television to shop you know some 35 years ago and continued it for nearly four decades now so that part of trying to work with brands that, I felt were really leaders in their space because I thought it would be a great place for me to learn has certainly been intentional and then this digital Crossroad just happened to kind of line up and almost all of those places at the time I was there.
Jason:
[7:56] That is awesome and today I sort of perceive you you are on the Leading Edge of the curate retailgeek Roop with your current responsibilities and I definitely want to talk about those but if I have the story right before you took on your current role you also had broader marketing responsibilities for the core QVC HSN Brands is that.
Brian:
[8:19] I did I did that's that's right I joined you know curate retailgeek rupe.
And 20/20 is the chief marketing officer for QVC and HSN are two largest video Commerce businesses, at the time and you know fast forward we obviously are in the midst of those businesses are in their own form of transformation and disruption right for.
In some ways you know you talk about a Crossroads, ask for businesses you know having come through retail when e-commerce was exploding and and Retail foot traffic was being affected as people.
Spent more time online and less time in stores if you look at where accurate retailgeek Roop you know is today right streaming has remade the way we View television and so we've had to remake our business, there as well primary our audience used to be almost entirely on.
[9:07] You know on cable or we reach over 100 million households in the US we used to reach all of those almost on cable and over the last several years is as people have migrated from cable to streaming services we've migrated our business we still reach 100 million households, but today we reach many of those through streaming services because they don't have cable subscriptions any longer and so, you know joining another business who was in the midst of transformation again was was somewhat serendipitous I was excited about the future video and video Commerce had use that, extensively at kind of my two preceding roles and so part of the excitement of joining curate was joining someone who is at The Cutting Edge of this but to your point that's been migrating, and then as we look at the future we said Gee what places do we really own, from an e-commerce perspective and we own the 10 foot screen the screen that you see in front of you from a living room perspective.
[9:58] We do really well on the laptop you know the desktop for for e-commerce shopping like most traditional e-commerce retailers but as we thought about the small screen that wasn't a place where we had really built, for the future yet we thought were really well positioned we could certainly see what was happening in in Asia and the explosion of Live And mobile driven Commerce.
And realize that that was going to happen here in the west as well.
And felt like we were in a position to innovate around that but we needed to put some real Focus around that so you know about a year ago I stepped out of my role as Chief marketing officer of QVC nhsn, to build live shop Ventures and ultimately to launch the soon platform that we're going to talk about today.
Jason:
[10:42] Amazing and and I for sure I'm going to get into that but I did think you could help us clear up a few just basic questions about the industry first a I now have some some Envy because your TV is 10 feet at home I'm kind of jealous but the.
You you call that V Commerce and I'm just curious like I hear all these different phrases all the time I hear people kind of talk about live streaming when they they don't necessarily mean live and video like is there a preferred label that you guys like to kind of describe this, this industry.
Brian:
[11:18] For sure we love the V e-commerce label in fact we think V Commerce will be the new e-commerce and what we mean by that largely is that, more and more consumers shopping experiences will be driven by video in fact if you look at today's youngest consumer right gen Z or the Next Generation Rising almost all of their Discovery happens in a video experience.
If you think about it and it could come from one of the well-known video players right who's in this space Instagram which has become largely video Tick-Tock who obviously has led the way there YouTube.
All of these places if I think about and I have so fun fact I have six kids, the youngest is squarely gen Z 12 years old the oldest is Millennial 29 years old and I watched their journey and most of their Discovery right the new trip they're going to take.
The next meal they're going to make the next product they're going to buy the next television show they're going to watch is all coming through their video feed.
Yet in the e-commerce space we're still largely dependent upon static images and or in the physical space on boxes and shelf talkers and that's just not the way that the rising generation discovers.
Anything new.
Scot:
[12:34] Yep ingredient it's interesting you have a built-in test bed is that was that part of your strategy.
Brian:
[12:40] I think that that if.
Scot:
[12:42] We need more kids I need to get another generation.
Brian:
[12:44] If you went back in math my career I did a pretty good job landing at the right Brands and price basis for my for my kids ages the only one they might say I got wrong was the bridal industry I was a bit premature on the bridal industry, but but you know as I look back so we do we talk a lot about be Commerce and that for us means live it also means pre-recorded, right it can mean you know things that are that are behind the scenes it's anything that really leverages video to help tell the product and Brand Story to a consumer in a way that helps them make better decisions and get to yes faster.
That's where we see the Innovation going that's where we see all brands needing to play we think it will look different in the west than it looks in the east.
And that's because different consumers and different markets and different level of kind of retail development but we think it'll be globally relevant over the course of the next you know five to ten years.
Scot:
[13:37] Brickell as the entrepreneur host on the program Jason's a big company guy he's a you can tell by his title.
He's corporate drone and he doesn't know who he works for half the time over there there's like he's like I think I have a boss but I don't know I don't know who approves my expense report Seymour, that's how big is a company and you know one of my favorite books is the innovators dilemma where and I'm sure you're familiar with it where you know most companies like tear you they were super Innovative and really did a ton in the category and you know a lot of them don't make it it's interesting to me that you're now working for a company that you know obviously.
Is working to not get caught in that in most companies don't kind of sounds like and I may be reading too much in this you you either put your hand up and said I want to do this or they said we need someone to incubate this and you volunteered I'd love to hear the story of how your kind of like starting this company inside of a bigger company that that's interact to excuse you know the extent you can share our what you want to do that that's always interesting to hear because a lot of a lot of big companies don't do that.
Brian:
[14:39] No I appreciate that you know we feel, you know we I feel honored to kind of be in an organization and part of a company that's trying to lead that way Forbes just named, secure it retail one of the you know the country's top three hundred Innovative companies right so we're recognized for having thought about this space and we've innovated over the course of the last, 35 plus years if you were to look at what QVC nhsn looked like 30 years ago they look very different than what you see today both in the way that we reach interact with customers and so you know the story here you know I'll keep it relatively 34 for time sake but we were looking at you know the future of curate and looking for where we think, you know girls could come from I was obviously looking at that in my core role as Chief marketing officer I let our you know our insights and analytics team and we were looking at the consumer and we're looking at the businesses and the ages of and cohorts of consumers where we did really well and where we felt like, there was opportunity for us and one of those that was clear was we had an opportunity with the younger consumer and unlike many many brands that will often make the decision to go how do we stretch our brand younger it's one of the hardest things to do our view was to say.
[15:49] We have a core customer we love our QVC and HSN customers 50-plus their affluent they have disposable income they love to engage with us and Us in this way as we think there is, potential for growth with still the 50-plus customer we have plenty of, consumers who can discover our experience who aren't you a shopping there and we think can fall in love with it but we did recognize hey there's a there's a rising generation that's that's embedded and videos embedded in the way that they operate, why aren't we doing anything there so I did raise my hand and talked a lot about you know that consumer and about the power of video and our expertise and, you know that with.
David Robinson who was a new CEO Who had who had joined us in you know late 21 had a knife or for growth and an eye for the digital landscape and.
You know started he started to think about where our future would would would lead and he knocked on my door.
[16:45] Early and 22 and and we started to talk about what the future could be and how we might do that and decided he decided to establish the e-commerce Ventures is a new unit inside the organization and I join that team to help, you know lead a component of our Innovative future and so it does take having.
A CEO that's got a mind for Innovation and you know the ability to say we're going to make the investment necessary to do that so.
You know this isn't one of those I feel you know grateful for the fact that I get to work in this call it an intrapreneur setting.
We're not chasing you no seed series a series B series C where we're going as a company we believe that we need to invest in the future and this is one of the ways that we can do that.
Scot:
[17:29] Yeah that's neat that you still sounds like you get the flavor of kind of a start-up within a big company but you can use infinite resources you guys have.
Brian:
[17:37] Yeah and that we think gives us an advantage and that that's true I we operate we don't have an operation in New York I soon is based in New York right are.
QVC is based in West Chester Pennsylvania HSN is based in st. Petersburg Florida.
Right so you know we set this up in a new location so that we could operate as an independent and entrepreneurial company but knowing that you know.
Just an hour train ride away I've got hands and resources and folks that can kind of help us get through some of the tougher things of getting something off the ground.
Scot:
[18:09] Yeah exactly now do you have a pretty wide aperture what you could do so you could you say hey we want to just try something real fast on Tick-Tock or is your mandate it kind of needs to run through one of the mother ships or tap into.
Brian:
[18:24] No not at all.
Scot:
[18:25] The mothership or something.
Brian:
[18:26] No we have a very a very wide mandate most of the team comes from Industries outside of kind of are.
Our CORE family fact most of the town I've hired has not been former or current QVC or HSN employees they have been, you know team and talent here based in New York City most of them which is where we found the talent pool that, looking forward to kind of build this future and we have a pretty wide aperture to test and try and that's we say we've been up for for several months now we're still we largely consider this the beta version because we are, finding the things that we think will be the best fit for the market and create the best experience for both consumers for Brands and ultimately for creators because we do the reason we refer to this as a platform is, we don't see this as just a one-dimensional or two-dimensional relationship you know brand to Consumer retailer to consumer, but we're also trying to build a place where creators can build a livelihood as well where Brands can create their own content to connect with consumers and where we've built kind of a new way for consumers, the kind of interact and discover new brands.
Jason:
[19:32] That is awesome and so it sounds like the soon mobile app is kind of the first public release from live shot Ventures am I thinking about that right.
Brian:
[19:42] Yeah it's the soonest kind of our first public facing you know component of the platform we have components that are that will face Brands and that will face creators to help round out this ecosystem that we think.
We'll create a new way for you know these different constituencies to meet one another in a pretty exciting and interesting.
Interesting way and they'll be more to share I'm not going to share a ton about those back-end Solutions at this point but there will be more to share in the future as we as we continue to round out the experience, we think it takes to really make this kind of new be Commerce mobile experience.
Jason:
[20:22] Awesome so maybe you can help it like paint us a picture like what is the unique value prop of soon like is it live is if e-commerce like is there a particular category focuses on or what's the.
Brian:
[20:35] Yeah to know it's appreciate you asking so look at the core of what we're trying to do is take the the style of video that is loved by a young consumer set column you know.
Gen Z too early young Millennials we can't digitally native consumers what we mean by that that's a buzzword everybody said but we simply mean people that seem to have been born with an iPhone implanted in their hand, or some sort of device and if you go back up to 2007 when the iPhone and these devices launched we're looking at people to kind of get there.
Hit their teens or younger in that view I look at you know the way that they navigate and that's kind of our core audience because they've grown up with this fat.
Device being their primary form of discovering the world so that's our Target so our goal was to build.
[21:23] An experience that would make sense to that to that audience so would be short would be fast could would be personalized.
I would include the kinds of voices that they're used to hearing from that they trust and that they find credible.
Would give Brands a place that are searching to find a pathway that are working so hard to build there.
Their products but are can get caught in the jungle that are the very very large marketplaces would give these younger Brands these Innovative brands of place to meet the consumer and to be discovered and to be seen and to have their whole story told.
You know it's one thing to just become a product listing on a.
On a massive platform like Amazon or Walmart it's another to be able to have someone who understands the consumer tell your brand story so the value prop is to really build what we think is this entertaining.
[22:13] Joyful serendipitous shopping moments where you can just discover Brands when you're when you're on the go we think.
In some ways part of what.
So wonderful about the e-commerce experience is also what's so difficult about the shopping experience and what I mean by that is e-commerce made it easier than ever to buy something.
It also made it very difficult to just go shopping and if you think about the experience we used to love as teenagers by the way that gen Z teenager still allowed which is the notion of wandering a physical location a mall or a Target or pick your brand or.
You know any of those physical experiences where you can just wander and things just inspire you and you you may have gone into by something you may have had an idea in mind you may have not had an idea in mind.
But it was fun and it was a Pastime and it was, enjoyable just to go shopping digital Works differently digital is great if you know I need I need luggage for my trip to Europe I'm getting a backpack I'm going to take a three months and traveling through Europe.
[23:18] You can go to the internet and I'll help you find the best backpack in the most array of choices at the price but if you just.
Want to sit back and shop and so our goal was to build a platform where the Serendipity of shopping could come up again you could just thumb if you're standing in line at the.
At the Starbucks or if you're standing in line at the store you're standing on the platform in the subway station, or you're sitting in class and you're done listening to the professor and you just want to see what might be in your feed that's relevant to you this could be as fun as opening Tick-Tock or opening Instagram.
This would be opening shopping for the joy of.
Jason:
[23:52] I love that there's a this entrepreneur Julie rain Wainwright who founded real real and I don't know if she actually said this but she's always attributed with his quote the internet solve buying but broke shopping it's I.
Brian:
[24:06] It's a great quote I've heard I've heard that quote I'm not sure if it's hers or not either but I fully subscribe to and that's and that's the reality and so this is a way to bring it back in a way that we think is relevant to you know this.
Young emerging audience who's up who's about to have a lot of spending power.
Jason:
[24:26] Yeah now I'm curious you've talked about this as a platform and it sounds like it's what I would think of as a sort of two-sided market place that you both have to you know recruit and keep happy a bunch of world-class creators that are creating content and you've got to recruit and keep happy in audience that consumes that content and buys stuff that shows up in the content and my am I thinking about it right in terms of it being a two-sided marketing challenge.
Brian:
[24:54] Yeah I think I think we've called three-sided because we think he have to keep the consumer happy you have to keep the brands and their Founders happy and then you have to, you know create something unique and special for creators who may or may not work directly for the brand that they're going to create content for, and so our thought process is thinking about all three of those audiences as we build and it's why you know we don't see this as a, you know as a Sprint but is building something that we think will be lasting because we're trying to build something that's going to be relevant and meaningful to all three of those participants in the platform.
Will you operate as a marketplace right so we're not buying retail we're not buying inventory in the traditional sense right we're building the destination we're working to drive consumers to the destination we're working to source and find great creative talent that we think can build the right kind of content and then we're looking, and reaching out into the.
You know into the Reit into the brand landscape to find Brands and products that we think would do well with this with this audience and so we got all three of those things kind of.
You know working at once if that's not easy but sometimes the most rewarding things are difficult.
Scot:
[26:04] Yeah absolutely the marketplaces are hard because you're kind of building to businesses at once you get kind of the consumer and thus the demand and the supply side it can be.
But once the network effects it going it's a great business but sometimes it's hard to kind of kick start them do you feel like you guys are at kind of like that product Market fit or you're still kind of.
Experimenting and figuring out or like.
Brian:
[26:25] Yeah we think you know what we're excited about today is the engagement from the number of brands that have come on our platform has gone much faster than we expected.
The consumer You Know download and engagement we're in that that nice stair-step each month each week of downloads, increasing on the platform so we feel that we're moving very strongly towards that you know that market fit place but that's why we say we're in beta right well when we're, one more there will declare that were there and we'll change the even the way that we go to market even more aggressively but we're excited about the early signs both the excitement from creators excitement from from Brands who come on board, and again the excitement from the early consumers who have engaged with us the early adopters and starting to experience the platform and so all of those things right now are very positive and.
Giving us a lot of optimism as we think about the future.
Scot:
[27:25] There's wear it sometimes, great to be in a big organization when you're ready you can say hey we need a little distribution and suddenly you know you can you can turn that funnel on you got to be going to make sure you're ready for it and it sounds like you probably haven't you know you should definitely get out of beta for you do that but then even you know even you know how do you do the shoots the right way and you know, inside the work there's tons of just knowledge around streaming and video quality and I'm sure there's some interesting craters that overlap that would be fun to tap into it even brands that you know I'm sure if you were looking for a brand it's much easier being part of the larger or more brands are going to take your call versus you know Joe's startup LLC.
Brian:
[28:11] Yeah yeah I would say one of our I think that's well that's well well said one of our advantages right is the reality that for you know, for decades we've been helping small Brands become household names become very large businesses because we understand the power of live we understand the power of video and using it to help.
[28:30] You know a Founder commercialize their their story and help it reach and reach an audience and so.
For sure that is valuable as we talked to Brands who go hey this isn't you know this isn't just somebody out of there, out of the corner of their garage going hey we've got an idea for the future of video shopping this is you know the the leader in video and live shopping who said hey we're going to build a new platform a new experience for a new audience and, we're going to bring our expertise to video shopping to that to that platform and we're going to help you learn how to do it as a brand we're going to help you learn how to do it as a Creator both of those things have been very important, add helping us you know get to yes as we don't get a lot of NOS as we have conversations with Brands right now we get a lot of people excited, even in this early Journey even recognizing that we're in the beta phase because they believe in the business where you know we're over 300 Brands already interested in on the platform, at this stage and you know we're early on we launched in March.
And so it's not been hard to get people excited about the potential here and I think part of that is because they can look to the parent of who's building this, and who's making the investment.
Scot:
[29:46] Yeah very cool would you say so that made me I'm a huge shark tank junkie and I always love when Laurie's on there because she always has that trump card of like, I can probably get you on HSN and everyone's like who so she could tend to get a good deal so then it made me think are you dealing with Challenger Brands kind of like you know things we people maybe haven't heard of or is this kind of like you know Kate Spade or whoever I don't want to go into details but like more long-term brands that are just kind of looking for a fresh new channel is there.
Resonating.
Brian:
[30:22] Yeah so we have a lot of what we call emerging Brands and we can define those in a couple of ways right so there you know I'm an emerging, might have been around for 10 years or 15 years but they're just very tightly, geographically located maybe they just had a couple of stores and a little direct consumer website but they weren't really propagating their brand through there, back in the emerging and we have several brands that look like that we also have Brands there.
Relatively young this could be year 1 year 2 year 3 right and they started as a direct consumer brand and they're looking for other points of distribution and other places to be able to tell their story.
[30:58] But we've not preclude ourselves from from other brands that are better known and more, National in nature because again at the end of the day you know where our Focus has been, I'm in the early days is and it's because this is this is an area that works really well and video right or proper products that are problem solution oriented products and, Kelly's are great Brands who innovate and develop some new products that solve a consumer problem those do really well in video right now and if you think about, all the you know Tik Tok made me buy it friends you know so many of those products are built around the idea of hey we've got a new solution, a problem that you have or we've got a new take on solving a problem that has been solved a bunch of other ways but never quite solved this way those are the kinds of products and brands that do really well and we find those both in this emerging space and we also find.
You'll also find it in some more established brands.
But the focus has really been can we bring consumers content that's interesting to watch because what the product does for a consumer is.
Have itself useful and highly valuable and that's if you spend some time on the app you'll see a lot of products, better focused in that in that regard and so you know we've not been exclusionary and by any stretch of the imagination but we do have a lot of young and fun emerging brands with some amazing Founders and some amazing founder stories behind them on plan.
Jason:
[32:23] That is awesome and Brian a fun fact about Scott like most people watch CNBC for Shark Tank and then they accidentally stay on for for Jim Cramer Scott's the one guy that watches CNBC for Jim Cramer and then accidentally.
Brian:
[32:37] Technics days I'm free.
Scot:
[32:38] I watched a shark fresh shark tanks on ABC come on.
Jason:
[32:41] Yeah.
Fair enough Earth but inside not I keep telling Scott Scott keep saying hey we need to get on On Cue be on Shark Tank to get into QVC and I keep telling him that curate retailgeek has great merchants and if you have awesome product you can get in regardless of what whether you know a shark or not.
Brian:
[33:00] And that you know what that's so true Jason that in the reality is is that again if you have a great product curate wants to hear from you and that's and that's the truth and you know we understand what works well for our audience and we understand what works really well.
For the video platform and if you bring it you can find your way there I will tell you we get a lot of submissions and for obvious reasons.
But yeah you absolutely could find your way there without getting on Shark Tank although a little bit of notoriety never hurts.
Jason:
[33:30] Know for sure so I'm curious about a tactical element of soon it seems like you made a conscious decision to natively be a nap and and on the one hand.
Like man you look at all the data and mobile apps are where it's at like that the overwhelming majority of all minutes spent on mobile devices are an app's you know the top apps have the best engagement and all this stuff but the flip side is, it's a brutally competitive space and it's like really hard to get people to download the app and then it's really hard to get them to to reuse it like I'm curious did you guys.
Like debate about a mobile web experience versus an app and and decide that that's where you needed to be or how is that played out for you.
Brian:
[34:15] Yeah so we absolutely did they say it was probably one of the one of the bigger conversations right as we thought about our future and our Direction working with my team and and.
Our partners to think about hey what's the best way to go forward and build a new shopping you know destination and we certainly researched all the hurdles.
As well but we saw all the things that you highlighted in the beginning right the notion that, more time is spent on apps particularly from from the target audience we were going after the engagement is much higher the commitment once you have it as much stronger all of those elements that.
This is going to be a heavier lift but it's going to be the right lift for us and.
And we have to be committed we know it's going to take time but this is going to be the right lift because inside that app also it just gives you the flexibility to do and create some experiential things that just aren't as as.
[35:12] They're just not as intuitive or as functional as they are in a mobile web app.
Right so you know I'll give you I'll give you one of the features that we love that's just really hard to do in mobile web but amazing an app so you know part of our vision was to be able to create this window, shopping experience again right to bring the joy back to shopping we're literally as you thumb through things consider each one of those swipes the window, write as if you were walking down your favorite shopping destination and you know there's an amazing product with an amazing Storyteller so instead of being on a mannequin in a fixed window it's by a voice that, you know has some credibility and authority and as they tell you about that but what if you want to see more from that brand well you just swipe left.
And you're into that brand store.
Or what if you want to love what if you love this soon said what if you love this Creator we call them soon satyrs that's telling you the product and you want to do you want to see more will you just you know tap the screen and up comes all the video content that that person is created, doing that in a mobile app mobile apps just don't have the same kind of tactical functionality that you can build inside of an app I'll be realized, part of this if we were going to build a new experience we needed.
[36:22] The flexibility in the capabilities to be able to use everything the mobile device gives to you you know ultimately we don't have haptics in our experience yet we will you know they're all those things that are that are native to the app experience that you know.
Is opened up an iPhone and ultimately Android which are not on yet but will be in the future.
That we wanted to be able to have access to to give it the richest experience even knowing we'd have some hurdles and getting apps downloaded keeping them on the device and getting people back to him.
Jason:
[36:52] I got it that totally makes sense another one that comes up a lot in a specially you mentioned it seems like adoptions a little earlier in China so I watched the Chinese Behavior a lot to sort of see a bit it predicts how things will evolve here and it's interesting there are amazing social platforms that had huge engagement that are all pivoting to become shopping platforms right so that's by dance that's we and then there are amazing Commerce platforms like Ali Baba and Team all that are kind of pivoting to become engagement platforms and so that's why you know ding dong live and Ali Baba live and all of these these things like I'm kind of curious do you have a position like in the long run what wins right being a a platform that has a lot of video engagement and adding Commerce to it which in the u.s. I guess that could be.
Tick tock on Instagram or is it a platform that really is good at Commerce and adds adds the video engagement and so you know maybe that's that's obviously but Amazon or Walmart and then I assume like The Perfect combo of both of those is of course you guys.
Brian:
[38:00] Yeah so I'm not trying to sidestep but here's what I'll say, video wins video ends and I'll come back to it and here's a here's why I say that so do I think you know Tick-Tock and Instagram and all those who are building you know shopping experiences into their platform, have an opportunity to win and do conversate for sure do in fact I'll give you an example I often share.
With you know Brands and others as I'm eating and it's a very simple question for both you Jason and Scott have you ever bought anything while you were in an airport.
From a retailer awesome have you ever gone to the airport have you ever gone to the airport to go shopping.
[38:36] Right so the reality is that airports have a purpose right which is they help you get from one place to another and it's a very valuable part of your life experience.
But what airports learned is have had a lot of people in my space I'll bet if I put some stores in here for you those people will buy something that is for sure going to be true with these social platforms they have a lot of people in their space.
[38:59] If they create opportunities for people to buy people will buy but the purpose for opening Tik-Tok is not to go shopping, and people are finding Pathways there because that's like that's a place where I'm at and I'm learning their shopping there so now I can do this so I know if I'm Atlanta I like Ferragamo I know in the Atlanta airport there's a Ferragamo so I can find my way there.
As a as a consumer and make it a point to go there when I'm in airports where I know the brands that I like are at, but that's very different than then going to your favorite neighborhood street or going to your favorite you know mall to go to go shopping and so we think those places exist on the other side you have right you have what's happened in the physical space that's taking place in the digital space right so malls have tried to figure out hey shopping isn't enough to get people here I need restaurants and entertain I need other things that are engaging, and team on everybody else is going to go down that pathway as well and go hey, if I want to keep people here I need I need things that are engaging because consumers are expecting more well-rounded experiences from all the places that they go and so our viewers to say listen if you know let's just build something, that recognizes that that's what the consumer needs and wants and create a place we're going shopping and being engaged and being entertained is, in and of itself the point the experience and we believe there will be space for that for an experience like that but I think I think Commerce is going to happen.
[40:25] In all of these spaces if you bring video to them I think it's going to happen on on you know brand own websites as they bring video that's the that's the core of it, and again if you step back and go well gee how much space is there you know retail such a fixed base well that's what we all said.
You know 20 years ago when e-commerce showed up like e-commerce can't grow the retail space there's a fixed space it's going to be you know give some take some.
At the end of the day retail is just larger as as the platforms and places, have continued to evolve and to explode if you think about the difference between where we are and you know where Asia is and where we see the Western markets I think part of this is understanding that I think Asia is unique in that there.
Retail ecosystem you know take China it's just very different.
From Mars when you consider the scale their population and how much of that is urbanized versus still you know in more agrarian spaces and so it's not exactly the bear to make the comparison between.
[41:25] Those two spaces and you know they have different tastes and different preferences and so I think for us in the u.s. I think part of the difficulty has been we've been trying to apply.
A formula from Asia to Western markets versus saying hey what's the formula that's right for Western markets and video.
And let's let's take stock of understanding what the Retail Landscape looks like here what the consumer behavior and preference for shopping looks like here and then how do you build something that's around that I think brands are starting to figure that out I think we're, you know we're just at the corner we're probably today where e-commerce was in 2001-2002, right so we're on the verge of exploding but if you remember back in those days there were a lot of brands that we're saying yeah we're not going to need any Commerce site.
And and then five years later everybody in the country headed e-commerce site.
Scot:
[42:17] Yeah that first of all you should have qualified your question I'm pretty sure Jason is gone to airports just to go to the Starbucks.
That much of a Starbucks not or are you just like is muscle memory for him he's like I want to Starbucks he just ends up at O'Hare and he's like oh oh I don't have a flight but man this this latte is delicious.
The so I started a company Channel advisor andqvc was an early customer of ours and I got to go on that behind the scenes tour where you can watch the production room and it blew my mind as an e-commerce person because it was like this pure intersection of data meet Stevie because you know the talent on are would have a may be mic'd up, and the producers say when you talked about you know how the vest feels they watch this I think it was like orders per second some velocity.
And they would tell him to talk more about that and if a product didn't make a certain velocity there like next so it's really so I'm kind of thinking you know can you guys because you're you've got both sides of the marketplace are you giving your creators some really interesting kind of youqvc any HSN informed data on on you know.
How how to make a better video and sell more product and that kind of thing or you may be too early in your journey but it seems like you guys Doug be like right in your strike zone.
Brian:
[43:40] No that's the you know that's part of the secret sauce that's why we're so excited about this space it's taking that learning and absolutely the analytics right that we're putting in place and ultimately the.
That algorithms that will drive right the personalization feed and the coaching that's given not just to creators but then ultimately to Brands is all built around enabling their ability to be as effective as possible at producing a video and what works depending on the category so.
That's core to what we are doing at Stone is using data to drive decisions around content to drive decisions around.
The speeds that ultimately will be will be you know shared with consumers right to create as much likelihood or much potential for success as possible and you know you you hit on the head Scott right part of this and part of what's made.
You know curate successful for so long is that what seems very soft.
Is very data-intensive and using data to make those decisions and we see that as being one of our core attributes in our core advantages is a boat as we build.
Jason:
[44:51] That certainly makes sense Brian I'm sad because I know we're running up on time and I have one more topic I want to make sure I get in which is this whole debate of video versus live video and I know you do you think about QVC and there's a lot of scarcity built-in which makes the the live model make a lot of sense and in China a lot of it has scarcity of deals and things in the u.s. I hear a lot of people calling things live that aren't even live and so I'm just curious like what you know do you think it needs to be live or is it a place for both like what how do you guys feel think about the live versus store and play video Commerce.
Brian:
[45:32] Yeah so we use both at soon so we think live live has a role in the sense of creating excitement creating a bit of scarcity also creating the the Serendipity the moment and the authenticity and organic and credibility of the content most of the content.
In our mind is shot or created live meaning we're not trying to do a bunch of takes and a bunch of edits of the work in fact I tell people all the time I said it's part of the magic of one of the longest running show Saturday Night Live it's one of my favorite shows maybe maybe part of your audience loves that show as well as right it's taped in front of a live studio audience and part of what makes that show so engaging.
Right is that reality and the fact that there's room for errors or groom for mistakes you know you may see one or two but it just feels so, in the moment we think that matters a lot in the experience but today.
I don't know I don't know the facts but I suspect a lot of SNL is watched after the fact.
[46:29] But the fact that it was shot in front of a live studio audience is what makes it so engaging so what we think about video we talk about it live here we often mean look what we want this to feel is live like meaning it should feel like you're having a fantastic conversation sometimes it will actually be live.
But the vast majority of the content is going to be consumed post life because let's be honest gen Z doesn't really meet anybody for an appointment anymore from a from a watch perspective right they watch things on their own time when it makes sense for them, and it fits into their their life that doesn't take away from the fact that if the offer is big enough, for the products right right they'll show up in force for a live moment and so we believe that you need both in order to.
[47:15] To create something that's compelling but for us you know largely what we think matters is creating content that is done by people who really know how to speak, can do it in one take right because you know they're good at what they what they do and can bring that level of Candor to the.
To the content and that's that's what we think really will resonate candidly with people of all ages we don't think this is that's just specific to young people that's specific to everybody, we love candidness, we love I think you open the podcast here saying Hey listen if you make a mistake or two we're not going to stop and rerecord and all those things right and you're going to listen part of what makes this so natural is when it's.
Captured in the moment we think that's true for video Commerce as well.
Jason:
[48:00] That I love that that that's a perfect way to sort of describe that the approach it makes perfect sense to me side note the reason we do that on the podcast is because Scott makes so many mistakes that we couldn't possibly go back and fix them all.
Scot:
[48:15] Hey I think Brian was saying we're influent we're popular influencers that's how I.
Jason:
[48:19] I feel like he's like as an l and the Jason and Scot show are the two.
The two top top tier entertainment vehicles I think that's very fair but Brian I'm super sad to report that we've used up our allotted time this has been a great conversation and we sure appreciate you taking time to talk with us.
Brian:
[48:39] I appreciate you having me on the show thank you so much guys.
Scot:
[48:42] Brian if folks want to learn more about your online thoughts or you are you an influencer yourself do you publish somewhere or you just want to encourage them to check out that.
Brian:
[48:54] No you so you can absolutely follow me on LinkedIn for sure I do Post.
On occasion I'm not an avid poster right now because my head has been down here but please do that and then again I would encourage you to download soon if you have an iPhone you can visit us at soon dot live too.
Hear more about this if you're a brand and you want to be a part of it part of what we're doing here please go to soon dot live you can fill out a form and and someone from our our merchandising team will reach back out to you for fairly quickly and get you connected but.
Yeah thank you again for the time.
Jason:
[49:30] Brian we will put all those links in the show notes for anyone that wants to follow up with soon and until next time happy Commercing!
EP310 - Sam's Club VP E-Commerce, Sabrina Callahan
Sabrina Callahan is the VP of E-Commerce at Sam's Club. She participated on a panel at E-Tail Boston entitled "Humanizing your brand through effective storytelling".
After her panel, she sat down with Jason to discuss all things digital commerce at Sam's Club. This broad ranging discussion included:
Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.
Episode 310 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on live from e-Tail Boston on Tuesday, August 22, 2023.
Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
Jason:
[0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this episode is being recorded live from e-tail Boston Trade Show on Tuesday August 22nd 20:23 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and unfortunately Scott wasn't able to join us so you're getting twice the Jason for the same great price which if you think about it is double the value.
And while I know it's disappointing to miss Scott we're making up for it by having a way better guest I'd like to welcome to the show Sabrina Callahan who's the VP of e-commerce at Sam's Club.
Sabrina just completed a panel here at retail and titled humanizing your brand through effective storytelling Sabrina welcome to the show.
Sabrina:
[1:04] Thanks for having me Jason.
Jason:
[1:06] We are so excited and I'm hoping this ends up being a permanent replacement for Scott.
Sabrina:
[1:09] I think I'm up for it I've heard him so I think I could do it.
Jason:
[1:12] I feel like in the first five minutes you're way more interesting and pleasant than he then he he's kind of a curmudgeon.
Sabrina:
[1:18] I'm not I'm just not even going to say anything but just know that I'm ready.
Jason:
[1:20] Smart so before we get into all the meaty topics I always like to let listeners kind of get to know the background of the guests a little bit so did you work for Sam's Club straight out of the Cradle how did you come to Sam's Club.
Sabrina:
[1:34] Surprisingly no not right out of the Cradle.
I've been here for the last four and a half years and Jamie rule mark my five year so I'll get the coveted 5-year badge but kind of backing up all the way to, my background I was born and raised on a small farm in Kansas.
Jason:
[1:53] And in Kansas a small farm is like 100 acres right.
Sabrina:
[1:57] Yeah exactly so I grew up on the farm grew out in the field by somebody dad does all of the crops and my uncle has the dairy so I was out on the tractors driving the semis trying to not get myself.
Killed you know all of the fun things that come along with Farm life and left went to University of Kansas.
Chuck that's exactly right that's Rock Chalk.
And then graduated in journalism and then made my way down to Dallas so as much as I love Kansas and small-town farm and and everything I wanted to kind of experience, bigger city and been in Dallas ever since and we love it there so worked at a start-up in the beginning my entire career has been in digital and marketing and brand and social media and everything that goes kind of along with that storytelling and driving digital performance so I was a star but at startup and then I went over to Hilton corporate and was there for about seven years loved it there I think I.
Jason:
[3:00] Are you okay this event is a tan on Hilton property.
Sabrina:
[3:03] I know listen you're not supposed to say it don't say it.
Jason:
[3:07] To our loyal Hilton listeners were sorry.
Sabrina:
[3:10] But what if he found out I was staying at the Hilton and walking all the way over.
True loyalty rate my shoes weren't word up for it today but no I was at Hilton for about seven years I loved it there and really grew up there and they took a they took a lot of.
[3:28] You know bets on me and allowed me to thrive I was there in the e-commerce space really when they launched the pilot of e-commerce, and and got to work with some of the biggest hotels, in the world with them and a lot of great opportunity got to start managing people you know they kept growing me and investing in Me And It ultimately LED I was in the e-commerce space for the majority of the time and then It ultimately LED to driving and leading the social media strategy and Innovation for Hilton so it was across all 15 Brands and at the time.
There was a lot of opportunity to kind of pull it together and say what's the role of social media, for a for a big company right not just hey we're going to go post but how do we think about the tech stack how do we think about the member feedback to drive business impact how do we think about, content and how do you think about influencers in the role of influencers in the partnership and understanding the rules of the Ft c-- all of the fun things that come along with that and then how do you make sure that, the Brand's all understand the value of it and lean in the right way so I got to present Hilton's first Evers social center of excellence and then that led to, a lot of opportunity that opened me up in the social space and I was on maternity leave with my third baby, when Walmart came knocking.
Jason:
[4:50] Wow congratulations on that by the way.
Sabrina:
[4:52] Yeah three babies is a lot especially we're in August right now and school starting so it's slightly chaotic around my house but still good so.
No so then Walmart and Sam's Club came knocking and I didn't think I would leave Helton but I really had some fantastic conversations during my interview day and a lot one of the last ones with was with mr. Tony Rogers and have you met him before he's.
Yes so you know you know.
Jason:
[5:26] Put my life in his hands on an airplane before.
Sabrina:
[5:29] Oh yes good luck yeah.
That's good you're here to talk about it so that's good no and so we.
We hit it off and they offered me the job and and four and a half years later it was a big giant move in a bet for me but it was obviously well worth.
Jason:
[5:49] Very cool and you've actually had some really interesting responsibilities at Sam's waiting up to your your turn responsibilities briefly talk about some of the projects you've been in.
Sabrina:
[6:00] Absolutely so his pitch if he will at the time was come build a 60 billion dollar brand with me.
Now how can you say no to that so that was a fantastic first start and so coming in really we built the brand together I learned I think about 10 years worth of information from him about Brandon, three short years but we developed the brand so the look and feel the tone of voice the target audience we revamped all of the marketing channels including you know site email everything digitally and then really launched social media right so Facebook Instagram Pinterest, YouTube you name it all the things that have to do with social media including the influencer strategy again and and moderation and care so.
We did some really fun things I think it was a bit of a whirlwind so our first brand campaigns got to do you know the Super Bowl with Kevin Hart all of the the fun things that come along with leading you know a pretty awesome brand.
Jason:
[7:09] That is very cool and for listeners that might not be familiar Tony was the former CMO at Walmart and Sam's and the next time he calls you I have a feeling free jewelry is going to be part of the offer because he.
Sabrina:
[7:21] Yeah I should make a list of things that I want.
Jason:
[7:26] It should be a long list but be my suggestion that he's at signature Georgia.
Shout out to tell me I know he listens every week very willingly and so in the current role you are responsible for All Digital at Sam's Club and is that a thing is digital a fad at Sam's Club or.
Sabrina:
[7:44] We just a Fab yeah who probably probably gone.
Yeah no big deal yeah is super super fat yeah so I along with two of my peers we lead the e-commerce business and so I'm basically the upper funnel piece, so working really closely on the traffic strategy so what types of traffic re driving in and then how are we actually moving that traffic down the funnel so you can think about that of all of the Cross category, you know Stories the homepage anything that really allows us to show the breadth of what Sam's club offers so not just the categories and Merchandising but also the membership the Sam's cash that we offer the Travel and entertainment all of the things that come along with an actual full membership not just retail only.
Jason:
[8:32] Yeah and there's all kinds of interesting Dynamics to me it seems about marketing em in a membership environment versus a.
Traditional, wide open and retail business so I assume you're trying to get people in the funnel for membership and at the same time you're trying to get members in the funnel for individual transactions.
Sabrina:
[8:54] Absolutely right the bigger the base the more sales you can expect so it's a balancing act right in terms of we need them to be purchasing things but ultimately we need more members and we need them to renew right so at the end of the year would it becomes renewal time we want them to see have seen the value throughout the year that they say oh this is a no-brainer when we're on the brand side or I was on the brand side a lot of it was we're trying to build brand Advocates because there's nothing more powerful than someone saying you've got to join Sam's Club I joined and I love it, so that was the the sole purpose of we're building Advocates we're building brand passion we're getting them excited and every piece that we're pushing you should be pushing our value prop of the overall membership.
Jason:
[9:35] Awesome so before we dive any deeper in that I need to know what your favorite Members Mark product is.
Sabrina:
[9:39] Oh okay it's really hard to just pick one so I think I'm actually gonna pick two.
One of them because one of them is very seasonally relevant and one of them something we do all year long so the seasonally relevant one I'm going to say.
There's so many things I would say probably the members Mark beach towels and or pool towels I've had some of the same ones.
For since I started working there they are thick their giant and big and they have a fantastic value to Market and we just keep I keep adding every year this year they didn't kid towels to with awesome designs on them so I'm a big fan of mild that's you know anything about you're advocating for something I advocate for a lot of things there and not because I work there but because I genuinely like them and then the other one that I love that I try to get everyone to do is we have these Members Mark southern style chicken bites.
And you just pop them in the airfryer and sad sad to say is good and bad it's sad to say I give my kids then like once a week but they're addicting some always like well they're just for the kids and then I end up eating them all for dinner to they're just really good.
Jason:
[10:43] I'm well familiar with all those phenomenons and I'm going through an airfryer phase right.
Sabrina:
[10:48] Few are so easy.
Jason:
[10:49] I'm I gotcha yeah it seems and I thought you were going to go with salty snacks I mean that's the easy answer and then you curveball Benny with the beach towels which as a parent I have learned you need way more beach towel.
Sabrina:
[11:03] It's important we've got a pool and we always have kids coming over and using all the beach towels so it feels like it becomes a full-time job and then you can't find them all and I don't want to go spend a ton of money to replace them, and so we either have them on hand or they're not that expensive to go by Exo.
Jason:
[11:19] Now I don't know if you checked with the home this week but your pool has probably evaporated it is hot in Dallas.
Sabrina:
[11:23] Oh my gosh it is hot I think it was like 109 on Sunday.
Jason:
[11:28] Yeah good call to come to Boston.
Sabrina:
[11:29] Yeah yeah I walked around this morning it was so nice you Dallas is brutal yeah I did you ever see the thing that went viral with the guy who he was pointing out the temperatures and then he showed McKenney and it was like a hundred thousand degrees he's like everyone in McKinney's dead.
That's how it really feels.
Jason:
[11:46] It does and pro tip is someone that does a lot of business travel we probably don't want to mention to our family that it's more comfortable here than it is at home.
Sabrina:
[11:55] I already texted them like sorry.
Jason:
[11:58] Just saying be careful so I have a new and it's so Members Mark is a of course the famous owned brand for Sam's Club.
And I won't put you on the spot with any proprietary information but it's a on its own a very large brand I think Walmart in the past has disclosed that it's over a 10 billion dollar a year brand so so remarkable the Walmart, there's a number of own Brands but of course the one most associated with Walmart in my mind is great value, and so I'm now in a murdered with a new Great Value product that's only available in Canada.
Sabrina:
[12:32] And it'll only available in Canada what is it.
Jason:
[12:34] And I just imported two cases of them to my home in Chicago Great Value ketchup flavored potato chips.
Sabrina:
[12:43] Oh my gosh things are off we got two cases.
Jason:
[12:48] Do not recommend you you try them but here's the thing there was you guys just had your earnings call congratulations it was a very very successful quarter.
And Doug mcmillon to see ya.
I don't know if he did it on purpose or on accident but in the investor car he talked about a trip to Canada where they made him try catch, potato chips and he kind of said it's the only Walmart owned brand products that he doesn't want so now my thing is I show up at every meeting.
With a bag of these potato chips.
Sabrina:
[13:22] I don't see him in here.
Jason:
[13:24] I did not I didn't think about bringing him to Boston and you have to like it's a pain too.
Sabrina:
[13:28] Okay packing with potato chips in an airplane.
Jason:
[13:32] Chick early well.
Sabrina:
[13:33] Get interesting yeah well now I'm intrigued yeah so I'm gonna have to drive it.
Jason:
[13:37] Procure some.
Sabrina:
[13:37] Yeah I can't wait to try them yeah.
Jason:
[13:40] Come away if Doug comes for a visit just saying.
Sabrina:
[13:42] Yeah perfect you don't as much as I'd like to be picking my kids will probably even like two.
Jason:
[13:46] Oh my God my son my son would definitely the more like something's unappealing to my palate the more likely.
Sabrina:
[13:53] I'm a to be fair I've seen my kids dip potato chips in ketchup.
Jason:
[13:56] Yeah of course.
Sabrina:
[13:57] So it seems to actually make a little bit of sense yeah.
Jason:
[14:01] Um so zooming into Sam's a little bit like obviously in this last decade one of the huge changes is this whole mobile, um and I imagine it's fundamentally changed how people shop, the you know you hear a lot of stats about even how much people are using mobile in the store in the club so like I'm somewhat curious I don't think please don't be offended, don't think of Club as the earliest adopter of digital not saying specifically but all club like.
Hilton was impacted by digital before Club was right and Circuit City was probably impacted by a digital a little before.
Sabrina:
[14:44] Sir.
Jason:
[14:45] Of our club was so that being said like, is like how has the Advent of mobile changed how you think about marketing and customer experience at Sam's today.
Sabrina:
[14:55] I mean it's extremely important so you're absolutely right at Sam's Club when we look at that the performance and understand where people are headed that's where we focus our time and energy Ray where do they want to be where they going how do we get ahead of it and provide a good experience which requires us to know where they're spending their time and we've seen a pretty significant shift.
Into Mobile and app experience specifically and so what we've what we've done is try to get a better understanding of what's the data and the behavior that they're taking within the app so let's just focus on specifically app right because there's desktop there's mobile web and then there's a and if you think about it there's trial barriers to downloading an app on your phone right you don't just immediately say yes I'm going to put the app on my phone so there has to be a reason and a journey to move them from mobile web into actually you know committing and putting the app on their phone.
[15:51] So I think there's different ways to say well what's a trigger to get them to download but we know one of those giant triggers is this can I go I so everyone loves scan ago if you've done it you know and and you have to download the app and actually.
You know use it in the club to be able to make the purchase through scan and go what's interesting that you might not know is if you hope if you've got scan and go and overall digital and you're looking at it the numbers are pretty strong if you take out scan ago and you just look at online digital penetration only about a third of our members or shopping online so so to me I'm like well hang on a minute they have the app on their phone so we broke through a massive barrier already of loyalty they're purchasing with us but they don't see the value of shopping online.
[16:41] Unless they are shopping on the app in the club so the opportunity becomes massive I got two thirds of our own member base for good acquisition and new members coming in if I just even start with our member base how can I give them a reason to see the value of pulling up the phone and building a relationship through digital when they're not in our clubs and I think that's what we've been trying to focus on and get to so really then it becomes the traffic drivers.
[17:07] Right so how are they coming and how do we get them to ultimately make that decision to move from Google to the app or to mobile web to add to cart and ultimately ultimately make that conversion and we're really taking a lot of time and focus around the data so for instance they come in on the homepage did they come in on a category shelf page that has a bunch of items did they come in on a specific product page did they come in because they wanted to check their Sam's cash total what drove them in how much time are they spending did they bounce or did they stay did they look at things what was their scroll rate did they spend a lot of time we really focus on what it is they're doing what types of things are finding worth adding to their carts and then we start figuring out okay how can we drive bigger baskets your category penetration or introduce new member benefits like we were talking about earlier rate so if I've seen that you know Jason's come in and he comes every five weeks and he buys the same 15 things to stock up as house well how do I show him the amount of Sam's cash he's earned.
[18:15] In between that five to six weeks to get in to come in and then give them things to potentially you know get them excited to purchase through digital using that hands cash or whatever it is that that you can create those triggers using the data so ultimately focus on on driving more app frequency and.
[18:33] Also say as we continue to see the shift to mobile and to app I think members are at the center of everything we do so remember obsessed and as we see what's working and not working with what's working we can lean in, great okay they love it keep doing it if it's not working we know about it so every week we start off the week of one of the members saying what do they not like about us last week right so we look at not only the MPS but we look specifically at the word for word feedback so through member surveys the customer call center the social media I mean we're all pulling it up looking at the Facebook groups and looking at the comments and saying hey we could have done better here and so as you think about that and you put that lens of app and digital this is working this is not working how do we think about our roadmap and our prioritization to provide a better experience to remove, the things that are giving them reasons to not want to shop online with us and pick the big ones and and start to move the needle which ultimately is part of the reason we saw an 18% complex you too.
Jason:
[19:37] That's amazing and I do I want to double click on the data but before I do I just want to stay in the app thing for one more SEC because I couldn't agree more, people way underestimate the difficulty of getting customers just to download the stupid app.
And in many cases I have a lot of clients that like don't have quite the, Market awareness of Sam's and they'll ask about building an app in before I let any of my clients build an app I take them to an Apple store and we sit down and Apple Store and.
Talking thing you'll notice about half the people in an Apple Store are men and women that are my age or older and they're in line at the Genius Bar because they do not know their iTunes password.
And guess what you can't do if you don't know your iTunes password and download an app.
And so there is just this this huge barrier and the.
For normal retailers the mortality of apps is huge two people download it only use it once like the abandonment rates are super depressing so for a lot of people like you go like.
Explicitly focusing on app downloads is often a mistake.
Um I don't actually see Sam's heavily promoting the act of downloading the app what I see you guys promoting are the.
Benefits and the problems that are solved with the app is that I'm assuming that's an intentional decision.
Sabrina:
[21:00] 100% right because I think if you go into the club which I think is again, the true power and value of a true end-to-end Omni retailer right and and that's our challenge always is when you go into the club you feel the club, right the the first experience coming in like you're like this is awesome and where do I start right and it's a full brand experience and you feel the I feel you see you touch you experience the items.
And digital you don't necessarily have the ability to do that so the challenge becomes how do you bring your brand to life, through digital and you have to know those touch points and I would say.
You're exactly right is is it's really hard to do say go download our app it's another thing to say hey do you want to get out the door quicker.
Jason:
[21:47] Get this line.
Sabrina:
[21:48] And I would tell you I would say 10 out of 10 people are like yeah they're not going to say no I'd like to stay in touch in line the waste my time no they want out and it's actually really yeah.
Jason:
[21:57] Desert home with the with their their their significant other.
Sabrina:
[22:01] That's very true like listen okay we'll say nine out of ten, 10th person's a sad sad person but either way the the opportunity becomes okay we'll give them a reason valuable enough for their time and attention that it's worth downloading that app on their phone I think what's been interesting to is navigating the conversations rate because when you see the value of app and you see the growth and app me like yes app app and everything is focused on app you tend to forget the actual member journey to get to the app right so they may have started on desktop, when you know they were sitting at work and me and they were trying to figure out where to start for dinner that night that desktop Behavior may have said okay actually I was looking at something at work today and now I'm pull it up on my phone and they went through mobile web and then ultimately they shop with us a couple times and now all of a sudden oh I didn't realize they had an app that app would be easier right so there's a journey and you can't forget everyone else that that is experiencing it before they made the decision to put that app on their phone and so you it's hard to prioritize and forget about about everyone else you have to understand there's a journey in between.
Jason:
[23:08] No I couldn't agree more in before I go on I do want to just one shout out to scan and go because it's amongst my favorite digital experiences because unfortunate truth of many digital experiences is, they're awesome and members our customers love them but they often are problematic for us as retailers IE often, it's taking something that the customer used to do and shifting it to something we have to do right so you think about online grocery, the customer used to get the bananas now we're getting the bananas right if those are home delivery the customer used to drive those home now we're driving those home scan and go is one of those rare things where it both increases customer satisfaction or NPS score, and the member is doing something that we used to have to do for them so I feel like that just amazing, on the data side like obviously one reason a lot of people like to get people in the digital echo system and using the app is because you do get all that wonderful data that, describe activating that's one of the areas where I feel like clubs have an unfair advantage because of the membership structure right like most of my retail clients they talked about this capture rate and what they mean is what percentage of my customers do I have any idea what they bought.
[24:25] Right right because a lot of people buy with cash or they shop anonymously or, they pre-shop digital and then they you know paid on a different credit card and there's this whole, you know family amalgamation all these complications which is why if you walk out of this room right now there's 47 CD P vendors all trying to help retailers, solve this data Quagmire and I'm not saying it's not still hard at membership-based retailers but you do kind of have an unfair built-in Advantage like you pretty much know.
What and how much each members fans and on what.
Sabrina:
[25:00] And I know they're out there I might just stay in this room and close the door.
No but there's a reason why they're booming right because it's a it's a lot of work to figure out I would say yes coming into the membership space I was, very excited and shocked by how much data we really truly had every time you know member makes a purchase we see it so it allows you to kind of.
Really understand what it is that's driving their trips how often they're coming where they're shopping what are they buying you can also start to understand their typical journey and behavior, so I'll give you two examples of the way we're kind of leveraging data I know I already talked about app but let me kind of put it into real life for a second.
[25:46] One of those is and I'm talking specifically to like end-to-end experience so one of those I'll start with on, specific promotion or sales or event right what gets exciting is you can put this money into Market you can understand where they're coming in so first of all to drive the traffic and you're looking at a year-over-year confer a marketing campaign okay great so the traffic was there and hit the pages you needed it to hit well now you can say okay what they do next right and you can start to say all right did they move from that page to the next page and so you can see the analytics team has done fantastic jobs not only of having the data but making the data.
[26:30] Readable digestible and actionable is a completely separate, right so there's a lot of work that happens behind the scenes of late great I'm looking at a table of a massive amount of data but what am I supposed to do with this to make a business decision and what they can do is they can take that and they can build it out for me across the funnel so they'll say okay traffic was up well and then it moved to the next page to it so it actually moved from let's say the home page or landing page we built to the Shelf page with all of the categories and then it moved from that category page to the product page and you can see all the product pages that were tagged with in that event in that campaign, then you can and it has your year-over-year growth of each so you can see the continued strength in growth throughout the funnel and then it moved to check out and ultimately her to cart and ultimately to check out and so you can see okay but you can also see when it's off right what happened okay so something's off you can say oh well that's because X percent of our items ran out of inventory in the first two hours because maybe we didn't estimate, demand properly right and so now all of a sudden okay we'll stop marketing that so go back up to your upper funnel and stop talking about those because you're making some angry members because they're falling off here and not because there's not strength in the funnel, it's because it's not actually available when they tried to go add it to their car so we got them all the way to the PDP and then something breaks.
Right so it makes it makes it really easy to be able to do that in a way that allows us to actually pinpoint the issue.
Jason:
[27:57] Side note that used to be way harder to do in the store circular let's hard to erase the printing when you run out of.
Sabrina:
[28:04] Yeah it's not it's not exactly it's not exactly possible okay so and then other than the the funnel I think the other thing is understanding kind of their behavior on the pages, so if you think about let's just take the types of traffic coming in where they going and is it working raise so if they're coming in through paid marketing or if they're coming in through CRM or they're coming in through SEO where are they going and is it actually doing its job, right and then once it lands how to use the data up to optimize the right message you're putting in front of them at the right time so, not only just on personalization right so let's take our home page you have, frequently ordered items you have no inspired by a recent views things like that but you also think about well where is it they're clicking on that page the most and how do you take that that, that knowledge and that data and say okay here are the things we need to be putting in front of them based on that traffic driver that came in so we can connect the message, and make sure that we're taking advantage of that quality traffic so that we can actually move them down that funnel.
Jason:
[29:08] Yeah that's amazing and hearing those two examples it makes me think and hope that we both have kids in school hopefully they become data analysts because.
Seems like there's an ever-increasing problem with processing all this data I heard a rumor that Walmart has like seven petrol bytes of data and I don't actually know what a petrol B is, but my seven-year-old tells me it's a big number.
Sabrina:
[29:33] I don't know what that is either but I'm not doubting it.
And you're absolutely right like I think it becomes a if you have so much data right at your hands how do you make sense of it how do you organize it and again make it actionable because otherwise it's just a bunch of days that you're just sitting on and you're not actually doing anything with it to improve the experience, Sokka.
Jason:
[29:53] Compounding that data problem even longer we have the whole omni-channel, right and you know we used to talk about what percentage of our sales were digital and you know try to get that digital percentage up but increasingly, every customer using digital tools somewhere on the path to purchase and very often they're using physical stuff so how do you guys think about that at Sam's eye.
That seems like it makes that whole analytics problem even more.
Sabrina:
[30:18] Of those it does but it's good right like you don't want them necessarily only shopping in the cupboard only shopping online you want them to think about it and we try to put ourselves, through this Member First mindset.
Approach right so what is it that's driving that that needs data that purchase intent so are they just looking for inspiration right they're building their patio where there's getting ready for tailgating so they need a full solution or you know is it they just needed their paper towels or their bananas or their bottled water and on top of that you think about what what's the most convenient way for them to shop at the moment maybe they're on their way home from work and Sam's Club is right there five minutes from their house will they can.
[31:00] Hop in because they know that they had a list of they can't remember what was on their list and they're already here so they're just going to do it maybe while they're in there they don't want to deal with the line so we give them another convenient option of scan ago okay well maybe they head home and then all of a sudden that night after Sam's Club is closed they realize they forgot all of the Lunchables for school tomorrow, bummer yeah been there multiple times and also big bummer or you're out of milk and you know your kids are going to cry because they have cereal every morning and now you've got an issue or whatever it is and I think based on whatever situation there and we want to make it convenient for them to be able to choose Sam's Club so you've given them the two options in the club will now you've got multiple options from an online purchase perspective you've got curbside so I'm going to put in my curbside order and I'm going to be able to go get it in the morning when it's ready and it'll be ready just in time or you're going to go you know put in a same-day delivery the next morning and you know you're going to get it really quickly or you can order on you no shipping and get it there in 23 days and you can wait a little bit because you can get free shipping as a plus member so you kind of see the opportunities for us to build around you you remember us have told us was most important to you and what you need so you know what the quality you want a great value you want it conveniently we know that about you so how do we think about all of the different scenarios you might be in and make it as easy as possible for you to choose Sam's.
Jason:
[32:26] Yeah and I'm assuming those successes and near-misses come up a lot and all that qualitative data on your.
Sabrina:
[32:34] They tell us yes they tell us they're like you know know but also a lot of times yes it worked.
Jason:
[32:39] Yeah I worked with a retard once they said there's two outcomes successes and learnings.
Sabrina:
[32:43] That's exactly right that's exactly right.
Jason:
[32:46] If that were true I would be a lot smarter than I am so.
Sabrina:
[32:48] So yeah it's a it's interesting because you see you know from one member of might have been a great experience and the same exact experience didn't work for the next member and it's because it's like well how do we put how do we let them know of all the options that they actually have to shop with us and let them choose the right Journey for them so a lot of it also is an opportunity around awareness right so do they know we have a curbside we just launched delivery not that long ago right so do they even know we have same day delivery I think you then get to the point of in the funnel again is this a conversion issue or is it just an adoption issue or is this an actual awareness issue, right so being able to kind of pinpoint where those opportunities are and the funnel I think is just just as equally important.
Jason:
[33:31] You know at the beginning of the show you mentioned that earlier in your exams career one of the projects you worked on was the actual Sam's brand which a would be terrifying to me because it's I mean.
Is always Gary but then when the blank brand quite literally is the name of an American icon is kind of more.
Sabrina:
[33:51] Little bit little intimidating.
Jason:
[33:53] You don't want to screw that one up but when I think of, the sort of original Sam's brand right it was a lot about the store experience right and we've just spent 45 minutes talking about, all the cool new paths to Sam's and a lot of them are digital like do you guys have to think about.
What the Sam's Club brand even means to members today in a different way than maybe you you were able to five years ago or ten years ago.
Sabrina:
[34:23] A hundred percent and I think you know we have continued to evolve with the members to to be able to say hey these are the most important things for them so let's continue to evolve the brand I would say yeah like starting out in the beginning it was really clear and again we used the member feedback to say like if we look at our brand passion index well here are the things that they're talking about and it's not driving a ton of volume and they don't really like it or they're rather neutral okay well when they are talking what are they talking about right both negative and positive and when you've got the - address it and when you've got the positive lean in right and the way you can lean in is on digital, so they not only from all of the marketing channels whether we know we talked about earlier marketing the social media all of those things but it's also on digital in the experience so if you know they like something how do you make it easy for them and bring the brand to life and tell the story so it's not just about again items are merchandising but it's the full membership experience and the ability to say hey like welcome to the club, right I think when we we've identified some of those opportunities when we think about their full Journey so the first year is extremely important to us they become a member.
[35:31] If they didn't join in the club how do you make them feel like they're part of the club if they didn't come to a membership desk and say Hey I want to be part of this you might have gotten them through something a non-digital, well we also know that that first 90 days is extremely important and how do you get in front of them and say okay this is awesome welcome to the club and you should be shopping with us digital did you know our Omni proposition did you know the value and convenience that we provide and the team looks at those ways I think one of the things we did was build.
[36:03] A digital membership booklet that's like okay we don't really talk about anywhere all of the things that the membership has to offer any more digitally we usually relied on the Associates at the membership desk to do that for us as they're like hey now welcome to the club here's everything you have well when you join digitally you're kind of Flying Blind right so okay I'm here now what do I do right what do I even get and if they don't want to spend a ton of time looking around and or it's not easy for them to find it then how do you introduce the journey that says welcome, look at all this stuff that you now have access to as a member of our club and and really kind of bring that brand to life and feel it even if you can't have your foot in the club so there's opportunities like that where we look for for bringing it to life and I think there's probably many more to go but we use the data and the members to say hey this feels like a gap let's figure out how to address it.
Jason:
[36:55] I'm in is that the big filter because I.
Follow-up question is going to be what are the things that we could expect to see evolve over the next five years and you know we're at a trade show where there's a bunch of vendors that each have a interesting widget that.
They want to sell and you every one of them you could imagine use case where that would be really cool and I imagine for someone in your shoes one of the challenges is which of these three hundred things is actually.
Going to add the most value to to our members lives right and.
Sabrina:
[37:27] You're a hundred percent right and which way is the right path and I would say when I talk about Sam's something that I love is that it feels like we run, like an 84 billion dollar startup, and it truly feels that way and one of the reasons it feels that way is because of how quickly we test and learn and you know we work really closely with product and Tech and Engineering with a problem what's the problem we're trying to solve for the number that's what everything starts with right so again back to the member Obsession hey they're saying this is an issue and I think if we could solve it for them it could be really impactful so we give that problem to the product Tech and Engineering teams and they come back with like I think this could be it let's go test, we don't know it might crash and burn but we think this could be a potential path and they do a lot of customer surveys research to say, feels like it's down the right path and could solve for this problem and then they go out and they if it does well great let's try to scale a little bit more maybe move it across some of the platforms and see if it works across desktop mobile web and app maybe IOS and Android different behaviors right and then once they say oh okay no this is actually going to work and they're telling us they really like it we run, and I think that's the way we've done we've always done it is what the members tell us their problems in their pain points it's our job to go solve them for them and then run as quickly as possible and let them tell us whether we figured it out or not.
Jason:
[38:49] That sounds like a totally sound approach and I know I can't put my thumb on the scale but I hope one of those problems ends up being that I never have to run out of Lunchables again.
Sabrina:
[38:59] Yeah me too that could be really nice.
Jason:
[39:02] Significant quality of life.
Sabrina:
[39:04] My kids would appreciate it.
Jason:
[39:05] Exactly and sadly Sabrina that is going to be a great place to end it because it's happened again we've used up all our allotted time there are 45 CDP vendors waiting outside this podcasting studio and I've promised them all the time.
Sabrina:
[39:15] So excited yeah I'll thank you I appreciate it yeah nice of you.
Jason:
[39:21] But it's been a real Joy chatting with you and we appreciate you sharing a peek inside the covers with all our listeners I hope you'll come back.
Sabrina:
[39:29] Thank you guys for having me this has been awesome and I've Loved listening to your podcast you guys are extremely entertaining and I'm excited and honored that you guys had me here today.
Jason:
[39:38] Scot and I both agree that one of us is funny we just don't agree on.
Sabrina:
[39:41] It's clearly you because I'm replacing him so it's obvious who it is but we won't tell him he'll have to just hear it let he'll have to listen to the his own podcast so he decided not to come to ya.
Jason:
[39:51] Yeah he definitely does not listen to the show he's like the one person in e-commerce that doesn't listen.
Sabrina:
[39:54] Perfect yeah oh great.
Jason:
[39:58] It's been great thanks again and until next time happy commercing!