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The Jason & Scot Show - E-Commerce And Retail News

Join hosts Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor, as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
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Now displaying: Page 5
May 7, 2020

EP219- Live Listener Questions

Episode 219 is a live show featuring live audience questions. Jason & Scot get to interact with listeners live. It's also a rare chance to watch the podcast, as the episode was recorded with video, watch it on YouTube. 

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 219 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday, May 7th, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

May 1, 2020

EP218 - Amazon Q1 2020 Earnings and Covid News 

Episode 218 covers some Covid-19 related e-commerce news, and provides an analysis of Amazon’s Q1 2020 Earnings.

Announcement

Next weeks show will be a live listener question show. Join our Zoom webinar on May 6th at 9pm ET, and you can watch us make a show, and ask your own questions.

News

  • Shopify becoming a marketplace? 
  • Google shopping is now free
  • Covid impact
    • 630,000 retail businesses have been closed since mid-March (about 61% of sf sq)
    • Forrester 16% E-Com -> 25% in april (70% digital influence)
    • 3% digital grocery -> 10% digital Grocery
    • Goldman Sachs: Retail Chain down 20.9% 
    • ShopperTrack: Traffic down 48%
    • Bankruptcies – JCREW, Neiman, JCP, Tuesday Morning, Lord & Taylor
    •  Gordon Brothers 25,000 stores and 100,000 restaurants could end up closing permanently this year 
    • UBS 100,000 retailers close by 2025 (15% -> 25% e-com penetration)
    • Everyone making PPE
    • Happy Story: Pets (“adopt a pet” surged about 335% in volume)

Simon Properties Opening Plans

Amazon Q1 2020 Earnings

Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 218 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday, April 30th, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Apr 26, 2020

EP217 - OfferUp CEO Nick Huzar

Episode 217 is an interview with Nick Huzar (@nickhuzar), the Founder and CEO of OfferUp (@OfferUp). OfferUp is the largest mobile marketplace in the U.S, facilitating consumer to consumer sales of second-hand goods.

In this interview, we discuss OfferUp’s recent fund raise, the acquisition of LetGo, and the state of C2C Marketplaces during Covid-19.

Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 217 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday, April 23rd, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Transcript

Jason:
[0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 217 being recorded on Thursday April 23rd 2020 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 Scott show listeners we are still recording during this fun pandemic shelter at home period and
because we normally when we’re not she’ll bring it home have day jobs record the podcast late late at night it really restricts people that are crazy enough to come on the podcast so we’re using this opportunity to go through what I would call our Marketplace bucket list.
So today on the podcast we have another bucket list guess this is pretty exciting.
One of the biggest Trends in US market places that’s kind of under the radar and if you go to like a lot of trade shows and stuff
but it is if you look at traffic data you realize there’s a really big movement here,
is what I would call a new family a new innovation around smartphone app based consumer to consumer or some people say person-to-person marketplaces.
So today on the show we are really excited to have the CEO of what I believed to be the largest one of these these new kind of mobile market places we,
the CEO of offer up Nick who’s are welcome to the show Nick.

Nick:
[1:43] Thanks for having me it’s great to be here.

Scot:
[1:45] Do you prefer person-to-person consumer-to-consumer or do you use some other lingo.

Nick:
[1:50] I think it’s I think it’s all the same that the the main idea is you know leveraging this technology that’s in all of our pockets to kind of reimagine local Commerce as we know it.

Jason:
[2:05] Awesome and Nick we may be the only ones in the planet that have a Marketplace bucket list but we’re we’re.

Nick:
[2:14] Everyone needs one.

Jason:
[2:15] Yeah everyone should have one but I feel like we’re the only ones that are cool enough to actually have one so thanks for helping us check one one off but before we jump into OfferUp in marketplaces
we always like to give listeners a little bit of color about your background so can you tell us what you’re doing and how you came to OfferUp.

Nick:
[2:35] Yeah happy to so I’ve always been in the I’d say the Internet space pretty much since I graduated college.

[2:42] Kind of dating myself now but I used to I remember coming out of school I had to explain to people on companies why they needed a database connected to their website so that’s kind of gives you an idea of when I graduated college.
But I’ve always been fascinated by I think the the endless possibilities with the internet so in some way shape or form of.
I’ve been in at various startups you know throughout most of my career I did some briefs tents at T-Mobile.
Spend a little bit of time at Microsoft you know I’ve done a few different companies my previous company too,
OfferUp was called connects most people have no idea who the heck we were I’m not surprised but we started.

[3:26] Connects pre Friendster and so sometimes I’ll server after remind people what the heck was Friendster or Friendster came before my space and my space came before Facebook so we were very early I think I’d like to say I learned a lot of a.
Mistakes kind of how to build a company and a startup.
And you know ultimately I had no plans on doing another startup there a lot of work but I had a daughter on the way and I was so excited I went into this room full of stuff.
That I had in my house and I was going to turn it into her nursery and that became the spark,
and that ultimately turned into OfferUp and you know for me would you know I had I didn’t jump on it right away I mean clearly you know I think there’s a long as a graveyard of companies that have tried to.

[4:15] Compete locally but.
I think what what what drew me to this opportunity was this device that is now in all of our pockets but back when we started off her up you know very few people had smartphones in fact there was no Android phone.
So you know what I what I could imagine at the time was like look I just wanted to make these.
I just wanted to clear out this room like quickly and there was no easy way to do that so,
again looking at this device that had was now in my pocket I just kept wondering to myself can we is it time to reimagine what local can be.
You know through these devices so that’s what ultimately you know created this spark for me to want to you know pursue this this this opportunity.

Jason:
[5:07] That that’s awesome and it’s it’s probably a coincidence I feel like I probably shouldn’t even lump the two of you together but
there’s a prolific track record of entrepreneurs coming from T-Mobile and being very successful at raising funds and I know this because,
the the guy I’m thinking of has the same name as me Jason Goldberg fab.com so.
That may not be good news for you but you’re following in his footsteps.

Scot:
[5:37] So what year did you found OfferUp is this like 2010.

Nick:
[5:43] I lose track of time and to be honest I thought like.

Jason:
[5:46] We’re all doing that now.

Nick:
[5:47] I’ve years ago I think 90 now yeah.

Scot:
[5:50] Okay so yeah right when the iPhone one came out so I was good timing
talk us through the funding history I looked up on crunchbase and they were very specific they said you’ve raised 381 million that was funny they couldn’t round up anyway congrats on that that’s that’s always you know,
fundraising isn’t the best measure of success but it is one so congrats on all the fundraising walk us through kind of the funding history there.

Nick:
[6:17] Yeah well I mean you know going back again to that that moment in my doorway in a room I wanted to clear out I think like like any entrepreneur
you have this big aha moment and then reality hits that you have to actually go build it and that’s when it gets hard and so.
You know again just you know why and I like to remind a lot of people that it people kind of tend to put us in this bucket of oh it’s mobile classifieds and I think.
That’s a fine public perception today but
that’s not to be clear not at all what I set out to build what we set out to build was you know to become the largest local Marketplace period
and that’s you know we what I saw as an opportunity was just unlocking local value and what I mean by that is you know 25% of.
Us households with the two-car garage it can’t park in the garage you know our homes are 30% larger than the 50s but we’re having less kids and so,
just so much stuff stuck in in our homes if you look at storage you know 10% of our population our at storage units but even beyond that and especially now
what about local retail what is what is in these stores like you can never you can’t visualize those things today and I think
the opportunity that I saw was you know again how do you.
Unlock all this value and my belief was it’s locked up because there’s a lot of friction in that experience and so.

[7:43] Anyhow that’s my long way of saying it took us a while to raise funds like the first year we only had a hundred thousand dollars raised,
and we just you know luckily I can code and design and my co-founder could you know set up AWS and set up the back end so between the two of us we pay ourselves literally nothing.
And just coded for basically a year straight.
Um and then year to we had to figure out how to get scale and I’ll spare all the details because I could go on for hours and all the failed experiments that we tried but that was very hard I was a very very hard time so ultimately.

Scot:
[8:23] Scale from a technology standpoint or scale from a user buyer-seller son.

Nick:
[8:27] Yeah buyers and sellers and so you know I used to show up to people who pretend you attend to your.
You posted your couch and OfferUp I used to show up and I’d buy it from you,
because we had very few post back then and I wouldn’t tell you that I worked at OfferUp I just wanted you to believe it worked and then I’d bring it back ultimately we had a small office I’d stick it in her office so you can imagine Five Guys coating it a few desks but just junk everywhere that’s what it looked like for a while,
you know it’s one of those fake it till you make it moments but it took us almost two years before we raised our series A,
and I think that was you know I think it was it was very hard I think a lot of people thought we were just trying to replicate,
and what had been done on the desktop you know I think,
you know we are all so early that was another lesson like you know we started really early and so there was no Android phones for a while and so I think that was another.

[9:24] You know I think it was one of those things where we just had to see smartphone adoption take off and then clearly we had to prove to investors that
we actually could get the flywheel to move in a Marketplace we could get buyers to potap by and sellers to post and just continue to get that final to work and so you know and when we raised our series a we were only in Seattle it was very very intentional
there was a handful of competitors at the time and I think they were probably really smart folks but,
on the technical side that I don’t think they were met you know really measuring and thinking about what is success and success is like its liquidity that’s everything and so,
we stayed in one ZIP code until we got that flywheel to Mu conversely we had competitors that were then launching,
they launched an app and so you can use it anywhere in the country and I you know I thought that was disastrous I thought that you know they were not going to.
Have success on liquidity so I didn’t worry too much about them so.
You know where as we raise more Capital over the years a lot of the focus has been early in the early days we just launching
new markets you know we stayed in Seattle for a year you’re so and then register a and with that Capital we wanted to prove that,
we could then roll into numerous other.

Scot:
[10:38] Yeah so you’re very knowledgeable out Marketplace is to just grind this out yourself or did you know how did you learn so much about marketplaces.

Nick:
[10:47] Yeah I have I have zero history in marketplaces that and so I actually think.

Scot:
[10:51] Scar tissue.

Nick:
[10:54] Benefit you know I remember hearing a podcast once with Reid Hoffman talking about.
Why PayPal was such a success and he said like look I didn’t come from banking like I didn’t know any better I just and I think that was the same.
The way I looked at this like I literally I can’t think of any time where we ever pulled up any desktop websites and marketplaces,
as an example of how to design OfferUp,
it was all just what what was the experience we wanted to create and let’s just design what that is a good example would be,
you know if you open up OfferUp today it’s going to show you items nearby you with some personalization.
And just like this infinite list of pictures when we launched nobody was doing that I mean this was pretty Instagram right so
it was a it was kind of a novel idea at the time and you know we wanted to kind of simulate this treasure hunt right we wanted to have this I just want to visualize
what’s in my neighbor’s garage or what’s in a business down the street so you know I think we’ve taken a lot of just approaches completely different and.
And back to your question I think that’s it’s probably just because we didn’t know any different.

Scot:
[12:11] Um so I noticed on the crunchbase list there you had some of the some of the late-stage guys some of the mutual funds that have kind of gone early that’s interesting and then I saw Max election so he’s a co-founder of a firm and then also part of the PayPal Mafia has that has he been a good
good addition to the team.

Nick:
[12:29] Oh yeah Max I’ve known Max just you know over the years and he’s always been very generous with his time and thoughts and.
Clearly very knowledgeable about payments and you know.
So I leaned on him periodically just to kind of pick his brain on what’s happening in the world and how he thinks about.
Your transactions and payments overall.

Jason:
[12:56] That is terrific Nick for listeners then might not be totally familiar with OfferUp can you kind of walk us through the basic buying and selling flow and kind of what pieces you you help facilitate.

Nick:
[13:11] Yeah for sure so I think on the buyers you know as I mentioned just briefly a moment ago our our view has been,
you know we want to you know we want to build the simplest largest and most,
trusted local Marketplace and that’s that shows up a lot in the product so you know when you open up the product think of it like walking into a retail store.
And we wanted to make it a very visual you know visual experience and luckily over the years one of our our.
Our beliefs was the cameras would constantly get better and we could you know really show these beautiful pictures you know it within OfferUp and that that has been true and so
you know that’s the first thing I think you notice is a buyer that it is a very different experience than going to a lot of traditional say desktop.
Marketplaces and that’s very intentional we wanted it to be kind of the treasure hunt we wanted it to,
be some elements of serendipity where you maybe are looking for a car and you end up buying a pair of shoes that that happens quite a bit you know on OfferUp,
and so you know our our average buyer you know is on OfferUp like three times a day they engage in OfferUp more like they engage in social media than they do in the traditional.

[14:32] Commerce and so yeah so if you’re a buyer and say for example you’re looking for,
I don’t know what’s popular right now like a lot of things are like like fitness equipment is on fire right now and think a lot of people are stuck at home and they can’t go to the gym,
let’s so let’s say you’re looking for some weights you scroll through you find something there by you then can then you can then read the profile about the cellar like how many radians do they have how far away do they live
do you have trusted connection through friends to that Cellar and you can read through just some overall profile information to make sure
that there’s somebody that you trust and her wanting to do business with and then the process of engaging on you know say those weights is actually very straightforward you can
if it is a shipping item you can just hit a button and have it shipped to you if it’s a local item you can just send them a message and say hey can we meet up tomorrow and,
you know the whole idea from the buyer standpoint was to make it you know a really simple experience but also back to this trust element having a profile and understanding who you’re interacting with,
not giving out your phone number like you know I think in a lot of traditional local market places you have to get your phone number to close the transaction,
um you know OfferUp is really Commerce wrapped around chat so you can communicate all the way to the point of cell without having to give it out personal information.

[16:00] And then on the seller side it’s literally as easy as taking and sharing a photo so like this chair that I’m sitting on right now if I wanted to sell this on OfferUp I would just pop my phone I would take a picture I would give it.
You know a price and maybe a short description and hit post and and less than 30 seconds my chair is now available for the local community to discover and we tend to find that,
people get engagement extremely quickly you know we’ve heard people that you know taking pictures and within a minute you know they get a whole bunch of Engagement.
And you know itself things very quickly so you know like I said that’s that’s a big focus of the product and will continue to be which will be removing,
friction and in the experience and so I think we’re far better today than I think the desktop players just because we’re leveraging.
The power and the smartphone but I still think there’s plenty of plenty of ways we can reduce friction for buyers and sellers.

Jason:
[17:03] Awesome so so your to set the marketplace buyers sellers can list items buyers can find items they negotiate amongst themselves on pricing,
do you offer an option to facilitate the transaction or do you get into the payment element at all.

Nick:
[17:25] We do if you enable your item for shipping so when you post an item as a seller there’s a toggle on there to enable shipping or only do local
that is a very fast growing part of our business we launched that in 2018 especially right now with,
with the people stuck at home it’s growing very very fast so you know and that case we take a small percentage,
of the transaction to be able to facilitate payments between buyers and sellers.

Jason:
[17:55] Gotcha and by the way you made me super nostalgic in the beginning when you said imagine walking into a store because that
we haven’t been able to do that in a few months and it’s like you know it seems trite now I know it was like a much bigger bet in 2010 when you jumped on it but like the the Insight that,
The Experience on the mobile phone would be dramatically different and lower friction than than the traditional desktop one is kind of big and I feel like.
Your.
Optimism around the camera I like it keeps paying dividends because I know the new Apple phones that have lidar enem I could imagine you’re gonna be able to get the dimensions of that that desk or chair that you’re selling.
Now or in the in the near future up those kinds of devices.

Nick:
[18:46] Oh yeah I like I said I think there’s.
We will continue its I always say that we’re kind of Reinventing herself every year so we’re going back and we’re going yep we can make this process better we have let’s save some time here so they’re just so much more we can continue to layer on the marketplace that we have but
back to the point.
You know it’s just these devices continue to get more and more powerful and we can leverage that to make it a better better experience for our customers.

Scot:
[19:17] Wrinkle so you guys recently announced with your last round that you’re acquiring one of your competitors called let go tell us about that and how that’s going and why you’re doing it and.
It’s always imagine you’re in the midst of integration that’s always fun.

Nick:
[19:36] Yeah so I mean you know I think the there’s a huge opportunity in the US and I think any time you’re going after a large Market you’re going to have competitors so as I mentioned even when we started we had a handful of competitors,
but I think we were the first to really start to get meaningful scale in a pretty big way.
We tried to stay as quiet as we could for as long as you could we delay doing press for a number of years we just kind of.
Hung out in our office which is in the swamp in Bellevue Washington and didn’t really tell a lot of people what we’re doing but ultimately,
you know we saw that go enter the US and.
You know I think what became interesting over the years was just kind of how we approached you know the market we’ve gone very
deep into many of the top 30 dmas and the country,
as you know as OfferUp we have markets like Phoenix and La where over 17 18 percent of the adult population in those markets is using OfferUp every single month.

[20:41] Um and with let go they you know they are as I said have more of a presence and other parts of the country and then so I think that right there made it.
Pretty intriguing to explore working with them more as we think about how do we how do we grow in other parts of the country even more how do we kind of drive a local adoption where we’re already strong.
So we thought there were quite a few synergies and not a ton of overlap I think people tend to gravitate.
To the market places where they have the most success I don’t think most users are going to use you know a whole bunch of these I think they’re just really going to focus on the ones that,
is producing the best value for them so you know I think that right there was you know as we spent more time with them it became more intriguing that there was a good you know Synergy in our in our businesses.
And then on top of that you know as we wanted to come together we just have a lot of you know I think,
product development ahead of us and things we wanted to build so you know raising capital on top of that was was intriguing it as well and so we’re feel fortunate that their investors invested and,
you know we have I think some of the best investors on the planet and OfferUp and they also participated it in this financing to.

Scot:
[22:06] Are you going to there’s one strategy and mobile apps to have kind of two apps out there because it’s almost like more virtual shelf space are you guys going to have kind of two apps a little bit of different flavor are you going to consolidate them into one.

Nick:
[22:19] Yeah well we think there’s a lot of opportunity ultimately in having one experience but we are definitely going to,
tread lightly and into as we explore integration with them the best way to do it so we don’t want we really want to make sure that,
you know we’re taking care of the let-go users and taking care of the OfferUp users as best we can but we’re,
I guess the point is we’re not going to just flick a switch we’re going to spend quite a bit of time and making sure we’re being thoughtful about how we how we come together.

Jason:
[22:51] Yeah the mobile app stuff is always very tricky because obviously like it’s super hard to get customers to download an app and be and particularly its even way harder to get them to be a regular user of that app and so.
Fragmenting your audience amongst multiple apps you know comes with some baggage but first God’s Point like it also potentially.
Boost your visibility in that App Store.
A random side no just because it’s so sad it’s funny but one of my big clients is Walmart and they’ve had this.
This multi-year debate about if they should have two apps general merchandise and grocery or one and I’ve always strongly felt they should have won,
a few months ago they finally agreed to do that and then a month before they merge the two apps covid-19 pandemic hits and the way it 10x is downloads of their grocery out.

Nick:
[23:46] Yeah you can’t you can’t predict that.

Jason:
[23:49] No no so I briefly thought I finally won that argument and then the the community the world spoke.
But I do I noticed that you like to increase the level of difficulty you were just having a kid and you decided to throw in a start-up and like you decided to do a big round of funding and a merger in the middle of a pandemic so.
Props to you for that.
Um the you know to set of marketplaces are super interesting from a marketing standpoint like there’s a lot of debate one big debate is do you expand geographically or not and it sounds like you guys made a.
Intentional decision to get a concentration in some Geo’s before you expanded but the other big question is.
Can you know can you really lean into marketing to one side or the other right so are you no do you try to in hand.
Entice Sellers and then that will like pull in the buyers or do you and try to you know do you try to get buyers and that’ll pull in the sellers like has there been a.
A strategy that’s been particularly effective for you or how do you think about that.

Nick:
[24:58] Yeah so you know in the early days if I was to say what was one of the harder periods and.
It’s going OfferUp it was definitely getting the flywheel to move and I’ve heard a lot you know a number of people say building marketplaces are really hard and then they’re also really hard.
To kind of break down and you know I know that pain because not only did we figure that in Seattle but.
Every time we entered a new market essentially we were creating a brand new Marketplace so you know what
I used to know what we used to spend a bunch of time on was looking at kind of the overall metrics that really mattered and I used to always say hey we need to get neighborhood sick we need to create the zombie apocalypse
like how do we get you know how do we get you know how do we get the flywheel to move where the seller post something then the buyers there and the buyer has an amazing experience and then they tell their friends and family and it just kind of keeps going and going and going and you know,
what what are those attributes of those markets that are really material and what we found early on was.
Population density definitely matters to a certain degree.

[26:04] You know whether matters like do you really want to move a couch and in Chicago,
in the dead of winter we actually you know we’re thinking about that and then we said no like nobody wants to do that and,
and so luckily we found markets that that we thought you know just had the right attributes and we really over invested in those markets and Allah is a great example I mean I always had massive Market a lot of people have cars they can move Goods around
the weather’s nice most of the year it’s very viral most of OfferUp s’ growth is we spend dollars on marketing but to be clear most of it is word of mouth and I think that’s it goes back to the obsession over the product and,
created a really simple experience between buyers and sellers and and because of that you know most people I run into ask them how they heard about OfferUp and it’s usually friend friend or a family member.
So

[27:02] Yeah those were I think some of the harder learnings in the beginning you know today where I you know I really give kudos to my marketing team like a lot of the work they do I mean we do all of our marketing in-house a hundred percent,
um you know and that team.
All kind of works together external marketing internal Communications and we’re constantly call them day Traders they’re constantly
um you know looking at markets differently and sometimes they’ll try to drive more Supply and Target sellers more sometimes they’ll pull back but they are constantly iterating all throughout the country
sometimes at a national level but many times on a local level to kind of make sure that,
supply and demand balances is where it needs to be.

Jason:
[27:50] Awesome and then we talked earlier about like when they check that that available for shipping option that you potentially can facilitate payments,
I forgot to ask.
Right is that exclusively through I could traditional credit card processor or do you guys offer like I imagine consumers could do this outside of you but do you guys facilitate any kind of digital wallet like a PayPal or something along those lines.

Nick:
[28:18] We don’t today but again this is a big growth area for us and I think there’s a lot of opportunity.
To make a much better payment experience in the US.
Especially now if anyone’s gone shopping recently who the heck wants to carry cash around anymore who wants to touch these POS systems at now like the one at the store down the street from me has like a piece of Saran Wrap over it,
and then it and then it right next to it it has a bunch of hand sanitizer so an egg.

Jason:
[28:54] Was already unappetizing now it could kill you.

Nick:
[28:57] Yeah now I can kill you right and so.
If you look to the rest of the world I feel like we are so far behind in the US and you know I’ve had people ask me well why is that and my response is usually you’re asking the wrong question to be asking who what company.
You know is going to be the one that helps to drive this and and I think you know because of our local presence and how many millions of monthly meetups we have and.
You know we have more kind of merchants Now using OfferUp you know I think there’s a big area there in the US but I get I get more and more frustrated.
Week after week of trying to figure out you know another new POS system I could go in there well if I put the chip in all y’all do the chip and then you hit this button why did I gotta do this and I’m.
I just want to pull your hair out every time it’s not a great experience and it needs to needs to evolve.

Jason:
[29:49] Yeah I actually have an Instagram feed that is exclusively pictures of handwritten notes on POS terminals explaining how to use them.

Nick:
[29:58] I gotta I gotta I gotta follow you then because I hear hear.

Jason:
[30:00] It’s Saturday it’s not hard to find.

Nick:
[30:03] Yeah.

Jason:
[30:04] Now how to find material and yeah it’s funny because it’s like people forget but PayPal and the US and Ali pay in China they you know their original purpose was not necessary to digitize cash it was,
to you know create a more robust trust system for peer-to-peer transactions and so I could certainly see that playing out.

Nick:
[30:28] That’s and that’s a big part 2 I mean that is that is a big part is really,
bringing trust into local transactions you know and and online you know it’s,
it’s already there anyway if you’re shipping things it’s already you know that’s that path has been proven again and again so this is definitely an area where we’re pioneering and there’s still a lot to figure out but something I’m definitely passionate about.

Jason:
[30:53] Nice and then unfortunately is like it’s things start opening up from the pandemic we’re likely going to be in a.
Some flavor of recession and you know a lot of consumers could be tighter on credit so you know I could even imagine things like like the installment model and things having a.
Having a role but in addition to that the other thing that would.
Maybe fit at some point is do you guys think about ever helping to facilitate that shipping when that’s an option.

Nick:
[31:25] Yeah so so today we as I mentioned we introduced this in 2018 we have payments and
we’re presently enabling shipping for items under 20 pounds and under $500 so you know part of that was simply just to kind of get the foundation and get the Kinks figured out and there’s been a lot of work,
as you can imagine when we first launched that but over overtime like I envisioned that anything on OfferUp should be,
deliverable in some way shape or form so I think there’s a lot of work to figure out how to do that the right way,
so that will continue to explore different ways to do that.

Scot:
[32:09] So if you’re if you’re not in the payment flow then unlike a traditional Marketplace like an Amazon or Ebay then presumably you’re not taking at a crate
so explain to us what is the business model where are people paying the list or our walk us through kind of the different areas where you make money.

Nick:
[32:31] Yeah so there’s there’s two different I’d say kind of buckets for monetization today at OfferUp and the first one is promotions and the second one is paying so
you know when it comes to Promotions our Focus there simply to help sellers to be more successful.
So you know we have first party ads for example where you know you could come in as a seller and you know you can pay it increase your visibility on the platform
just helps you sell things quicker there’s also a reoccurring subscription model there where you could say okay
myself quite a bit you know I’m going to I’m going to pay a monthly fee and I’m just going to keep rotates a five items into that into the feed
and we and we help to that seller to sell those items faster,
we also have a Autos business where you know this this was
I’d say a vertical that just blew up on us that we had we had wasn’t like we were Geniuses I swear there was probably just a convention
one year and I think Vegas and I think somebody must have stood up and said hey I’m selling a lot of cars on OfferUp and all said and this vertical just beginning.

[33:46] Huge for us across the country and so in the last few years you started to spend more time
thinking about how we can help auto dealers to be more successful so that is another promotional tool where we integrate with their their dealer management system so they don’t always have to use the app you know if a car goes on the lot the magically goes on OfferUp.
We also give them advertising analytics they get a special badge on their profile there’s a handful of things we do to make sure that
this they stand out and so we have thousands and thousands of paying car dealers and that’s growing very rapidly,
and then on the payment side it’s you know today mostly shipping as I mentioned.
And that’s that’s why we’re taking a small percentage of transactions there.

Scot:
[34:36] I’ve also seen some ads like a big Star Wars fan I see game stock advertisers bunch of cool stuff in the Star Wars category is that is that if you guys built your own ad Network or is that pulled from like another ad network of some kind.

Nick:
[34:49] Yeah so we incorporated you know the third-party ads that you see in there are a number of years ago primarily because it was easy one and two it actually.
Helped buyers and it was one of those where I was saying we’re never going to put ads in there it’s going to ruin the feed.
But I found actually the opposite was true where buyers were finding that hey maybe if I couldn’t find that kids bike down the street that I wanted but maybe I could see one you know,
from a you know some local retail store and have it shipped to me or go go buy it.
The other thing that it did was also enabled people to do some pricing comparison right so they maybe they see that brand new bike and they see one very summer,
in the feed and they realize they’re getting a really good deal on that so we do do some third party advertising which you can kind of see through out the feet as well.

Scot:
[35:47] Yeah I think you guys do a great job at it there’s a price and it’s very clearly an ad where it’s not like you know someone named other marketplaces where you’re kind of like you know
Max why is this showing up and you’re targeting is really good to other ones you’re kind of like why am I seeing this random iPhone accessory when I’m over here looking for couches.
So so that’s super helpful you mentioned earlier a bunch of kpis to get the liquidity going give a give lister’s any metrics you can share and you know I don’t want you to
get it any uncomfortable space but anything you can give us about the scale of the business to help them understand I think that would be interesting.

Nick:
[36:26] Sure yeah so I think the you know what I would say you know going back to.
Be buying things from people in the beginning liquidity and my mind is everything you know the switching cost to join to try any marketplaces,
is not not that high so we wanted to make sure that we were we were the best Marketplace we could be for local buying and selling so,
you know what I could say around that is you know on a monthly basis we have billions of dollars in GMB,
from transactions happening on OfferUp and so it’s great to see that we’re providing that value and success for buyers and sellers.
You could also probably glean this from the App Store but you know the OfferUp app is now but installed over 90 million times we’re only focused on the US.
So we’ve been a top I’d say we’ve been a top-10 shopping app for many years now so I’m pretty proud of that considering.
You know we’re up there with giants you know multi billion dollar publicly-traded companies so it’s pretty happy to see that.
You know people have been telling others about OfferUp at such a high rate that it’s kind of.
You catapulted us to the top and we’ve been there for for such a long time.

[37:45] And I think I think the other thing again but I’d share is kind of what I said before is we have markets a lot of our special you know top markets where you know we’re close to 20% of the entire
adult population using Opera every month and I think that’s only going to get better as we continue to improve on the product experience and drive more,
you know adoption there.

[38:09] Let’s try to think again maybe something worth sharing with listeners around just what’s happening you know with the marketplace today and so,
you know if anything you know I really feel for.

[38:22] You know a lot of people and what they’re going through out there right now I think a lot of businesses are hurting not just for additional but also tech companies and.
Fortunately for us it’s the opposite like we are we have been growing so quick over the last number of,
months and the categories are really changed like I think part of the challenge is people can’t you know they can’t go to the store down the street so how are they going to get certain Goods,
and so our shipping business or seeing a lot more people shipping things electronic specially videogames I think video games are very you know trying to keep the kids busy.
You know locally we’re seeing a lot of what I call kind of porch pickups where people said hey let’s stay stay stay safe as socially distance but hey I’ll just leave the you know just leave the dresser out on the.

[39:17] On the on the on the patio or the door and just leave my knee or the matter.
Ring the doorbell and show me that you’re leaving the money there so I think there’s,
you know I think people are behaving differently but we’re definitely seeing a shift in categories where like I said like Fitness is way up household goods Electronics tools,
things around the yard so not I don’t think surprising for most people but definitely seeing it’s been great to see how OfferUp during this time is able to really you know help help people and how those categories have changed.

Scot:
[39:57] Sprinkle the so we saw such an advisor when I say we is interesting we saw the
the stimulus checks hit like starting on the 15th and it’s we saw this kind of overall lift this is all public from webinar we saw this overall lift and then like this really interesting kind of taking off into another gear around then,
did you guys see anything around that stimulus check time.

Nick:
[40:23] Yeah so the you know this is an interesting time of year for OfferUp heart of it is usually spring cleaning,
and that’s definitely happening quite a bit but we’ve also noticed
around stimulus and and tax time it definitely a lift you know you can you can tell when people are getting their taxes or tax refunds and stimulus check so by the day as you can see like this huge,
step up and overall engagement.

Jason:
[40:55] Yeah like on the flip side of that are you finding any extra challenge like you know a lot of your goods were we’re sort of handed off person a person and I imagine there’s extra trepidation about.
Social distancing and stuff like that are you having to take extra steps to make people comfortable with with person-to-person transactions right now.

Nick:
[41:19] So we you know we spent a lot of time just kind of thinking about this and we have a Blog where we posted kind of our overall points of view and guidance on that I think the challenge clearly is it say,
it’s a local city by City,
decision and it’s still shocking to me that there’s still a number of cities that haven’t really quarantined so you know I don’t think it’s our call to be specific.
On exactly what you should and shouldn’t do but we did have some overall high-level guidelines and encourage people to pay attention to what you know your city and officials are saying locally and try to adhere to those.
But I think it’s a definitely a kind of a,
get a thread the needle lightly because we want to be able to help people but we want people to be safe and especially when stores and resources are close like where can they get things right now and so,
I think in one level we’re providing a service to help people but we want them to be safe and adapt.

[42:26] You know we’ve seen auto dealers for example selling cars right now and you’re kind of like well how is that working and what you’ve seen them do.
You know the post an item on OfferUp and they’ll communicate around it and then they’ll jump on the phone with the the buyer and they’ll do title and they do all the paperwork and financing.
And they just bring the card I just bring the car to the buyers house and they just wave at him out the window here’s your car congrats and I’ll leave the key right here for you and.
So this you know you’re seeing people you know adapt during a time like this to figure out how to how to make it work.

Jason:
[43:05] Yeah that’s fascinating and you mention Auto which is a an interesting category to me like you you don’t necessarily think of that as a.
Peer-to-peer ton of play but it really is right like is that a category you guys entered intentionally or was that a pleasant surprise or how is that played out.

Nick:
[43:27] Yeah so as I mentioned a little bit earlier it was it was a pleasant surprise I would love to say we were Geniuses and really figured something out there but,
um I think it’s again back to,
trading this this very easy to use local experience I think a lot of dealers started jumping on our platform because it was so easy to list cars and attract a lot of buyers,
and so we just move clearly benefit benefited from that so you know I think I definitely think today we’re probably one of the top places in the country,
to buy a car I mean we sell.
Millions of millions of millions of cars on offer up every year and so you know it’s definitely a big vertical for us that will continue to invest in.

Jason:
[44:15] That that’s awesome the like another one that I’m just somewhat curious about so I try to follow the Platforms in China pretty closely and obviously you don’t taobao is,
is a huge consumer to Consumer platform there and one thing I’ve noticed over the last like four or five years is.
They have dramatically pivoted from being super product-centric like being a catalog of product to being very content set direct so they’re like really leaning into the microblogs and the short video and all those sorts of things,
like I haven’t seen that as much by anyone in the u.s. like do you think that could work in the US or do you think there’s just a different sensibility or.

Nick:
[44:58] And just to elaborate on what you’re saying are you are you talking about where people are showing off products and are these short videos.

Jason:
[45:07] Yeah yeah it gets it’s like a seller would you know now is likely to have their own page on you know I like think of it like a microsite on taobao and they’re they’re doing like HSN Style,
you know what a little 60-second product demo videos to sell their goods.

Nick:
[45:26] Yeah I mean I think that’s definitely interesting you know I think that’s something that we could continue to explore and play with overtime,
you know I think there is a time and place for that
especially if you’re a power sellers selling you know a lot of items and you want to build some Affinity around what you’re doing you know today at least you know the majority of OfferUp is really kind of overall,
you know peer-to-peer so.
I wouldn’t say your I could see your average seller doing that and depth but I could definitely see I think more powerseller spending the time to do that and then again like I said before these,
phones keep getting better right the quality is getting better all around and so I think it’s just a more engaging experience versus what,
you know what it may have been in the past.

Scot:
[46:18] That’s a good let’s let’s explore that so you obviously spend everyday kind of marinating and the e-commerce juice of marketplaces and transactions or anything where do you think things are going to go in the next three to five years or we’re going to have like.
AR VR or do you think it’s just going to be better kind of experiences along the lines of what we’re having here.

Nick:
[46:39] Well I mean I definitely think there’s a big there’s a big movement happening it’s already been happening but
I think because of covid it’s probably going to move quite a bit faster and that is just the overall again unlocking of local value in my mind you know
85% of Commerce,
it’s still not online today it’s local and I think for everyone that’s in Tech we’ve kind of scratch our heads and like Oh I thought we all used you know the big e-commerce players that are out there and,
um I think they will continue to evolve and probably grow and chip away at that number,
but I think there’s just a lot of Locked Up value all around us and you know part of our vision is how do we create the best experience and help.
You know sellers to bring those those things online so I think that that moment is going to happen,
at an accelerated Pace especially right now you know I think there’s a lot of struggling businesses that,
you know soon as covid hit and their physical store closed then the answer was like well now what do I do and so,
you know if they can bring product online we can help to facilitate those those transactions in the pretty meaningful way so.

[47:59] My vision for OfferUp has always been I just I just want you to open up the app and for almost anything you need locally we have it and we’re able to help you facilitate that in the easiest possible way that we can do that,
so you know again it’s great to see
that we already have you know huge percentage of the population using the product and buying and selling things you you know billions of dollars worth of goods every month but I still think we’re in the first inning I think there’s just a lot more we can do,
you know for our customers.

Jason:
[48:30] Cool nigga you know one thing that we haven’t talked about yet is,
our friends at Facebook like they obviously have this Marketplace platform is that a direct competitor is that like how do you think about Facebook Marketplace and is that getting any traction.

Nick:
[48:46] Yeah I mean to be clear Facebook has had some type of Commerce even before we started OfferUp I mean you know I think,
Facebook has definitely been,
you know a large Network and there’s there’s a zillion different things you can do on there including Commerce so you definitely have to take them seriously you know as a competitor.
You know I think the other thing that I think gives me you know some level of comfort is just how many different things they have to focus on as a company like it seems like.
For every competitor that comes out they immediately have a solution or they’re trying to create their own there so I think they have many different things they’re trying to do and we have one and we’re going to go very deep and do that thing.
The best that we possibly can and obsess over that but you know definitely a competitor and as I mentioned.
Anytime you’re going after a large Market you’re going to attract competitors so.
Yep they’re the out there and definitely definitely spending time on Commerce for sure.

Jason:
[49:55] Yeah it’s usually a bad sign if no one else on the planet ever wants to go after the same Market you see.

Nick:
[50:00] Yeah your idea is probably not a good one.

Jason:
[50:02] And Nick that’s actually going to be a great place to wrap it up because we’ve used up our allotted time but if listeners have any comments or questions
we encourage you to continue the conversation with us on Twitter or on our Facebook page and I really want to thank you for
taking time out from this crazy pandemic to talk with us about marketplaces.

Nick:
[50:26] Thanks for having me it was good to finally talk to someone else because I’ve been hunkered down in my Den now for seven weeks so thanks for getting me out of the office mentally.

Scot:
[50:39] So we really appreciate it and then if folks want to follow any of your thought leadership or anything do you are you a Twitter or you still on prinster you mentioned that was that earlier.

Nick:
[50:51] Yeah you can find me on Twitter at Nick huzar.

Jason:
[50:56] Awesome and we’ll put that in the show notes so everyone be safe and well out there and until next time happy commercing.

Apr 17, 2020

EP216 - Marketplace Pulse founder Juozas Kaziukenas 

Episode 216 is an interview with Juozas Kaziukenas aka “Joe” (@juokaz), the Founder and CEO of Marketplace Pulse (@marketplacepulse).

In this interview, we discuss the state of North American marketplaces, their trajectories, and current impacts of Covid-19.

Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 216 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday, April 17th, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Apr 9, 2020

EP215 - What to read during a pandemic

This episode is a list of suggested resources to read for those looking to do some professional development in the commerce space.  (all book links are amazon affiliate links)

The episode also features an interview with Rishad Tobaccowala (@Rishad) Rishad’s is the author of “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data” published by Harper Collins. Additional writings can be found on the Re-Inventing blog. The interview starts at 15:50 of the podcast. Rishad also has an amazing photography feed on Instagram @RishadT.

Another book mentioned on this list is Remarkable Retail: How to Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Digital Disruption – Stephen Dennis. Stephen is hosting a virtual book launch party (including @retailgeek and some e-commerce celebrities) on Tues April 14 at 4:15pm ET, that will include myself and some commerce guest stars. Pre-register here.

Here are some always updated resources:

Here are all the specific resources mentioned on todays show:

Personal Development

Startup / Entrepreneurship

E-Commerce / Retail / Case Studies

Movies

  • Glengarry Glenross
  • Boiler Room
  • The social network
  • Girlboss –  Based on Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso’s autobiography #Girlboss
  • Office Space
  • Startup.com

TV shows

  • Undercover Boss
  • Shark Tank
  • The Profit
  • SiliconValley
  • Halt & Catch Fire
  • Mr Selfridge
  • Succession
  • Mr Robot
  • Black Mirror

Non Conventional

Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 215 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday, April 8th, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Apr 2, 2020

EP214 - Stifel Managing Director Scott Devitt on Covid-19 

Episode 214 is an interview with Scott Devitt, Managing Director of Internet Equity Research at Stifel, in which we discuss the potential economic impacts of Covid-19.

In this interview, we discuss the travel, hospitality, and e-commerce industries, with a deep dive into some of the factors that will impact Amazon.

To receive Scotts research and analysis, send an email to him devitts@stifel.com and ask to be added to his distribution list.

Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 214 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday, April 2nd, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Mar 25, 2020

EP213 - Deloitte's Kasey Lobaugh Recessions and the Future of Retail

Episode 213 is an interview with Kasey Lobaugh, Principal and Chief Retail Innovation Officer for Deloitte. This time we discuss a report Deloitte published last year "Boom, gloom, or doom? What the next recession might mean for consumer companies" which is suddenly very relevant to retailers facing the Covid-19 epidemic.

Kasey also gives a sneak preview of new report exploring the history of predictions around "The Future of Retail". Look for announcement about that research on Kasey's twitter feed @klobaugh

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Mar 19, 2020

EP212- Jason & Scot Show Live Listener Questions About Covid-19 Impact On Commerce

Episode 212 is a live show featuring audience questions about Covid-19 and it's potential long term impact on retail. Jason & Scot get to interact with listeners live. It's also a rare chance to watch the podcast, as the episode was recorded with video, watch it on YouTube. 

Subscribe to the audio version of the podcast at: http://jasonandscot.com. (or wherever you listen to podcasts)

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.

Mar 13, 2020

EP211 - ThirdLove Co-Founder David Spector 

David Spector is the Co-Founder of ThirdLove, a digitally native direct to consumer women's intimates brand. Dave founded the company with his wife Heidi Zak.

In this interview with Dave, we discuss the origin of the company, their data driven approach to designing products, the challenges with scaling a DTC company, and the potential role of omni-channel. We also discuss their public feud with Victoria Secret.

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 211 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live from the Etail West tradeshow in Palm Desert on Wednesday, February 26th, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Mar 6, 2020

EP210 - Amazon Grocery and News

Episode 210 is a recap of the weeks news, including eTailWest recap, Amazon Go Grocery,  Walmart new programs, impact of Coronavirus, and retailer earnings reports.

eTail West recap

Amazon

Coronavirus 

Walmart

Other

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 210 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, March 4th, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Feb 26, 2020

EP209 - Moosejaw CEO Eoin Comerford

Eoin Comerford is the CEO of MooseJaw. An omni-channel outdoor retailer, acquired by Walmart in 2017.

In this interview with Eoin we discuss Moosejaw's unique positioning as "The most fun outdoor retailer on the planet" and some of the innovative marketing campaigns Moosejaw has developed. We also explore their omni-channel strategy, rewards program, owned products, and some of the systemic headwinds facing the apparel industry.

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 209 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live from the Etail West tradeshow in Palm Desert on Tuesday, February 25th, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Feb 23, 2020

EP208 - Elliot CEO and Founder, Sergio Villasenor 

Sergio Villasenor (@sir_gee_ohhhhh) is the CEO and Founder of Elliot. Elliot is a modern, mobile first e-commerce platform that describes itself as: "The easiest way to sell there, there, there too, yes there & yes all the way over there. No-code e-commerce platform for every there & where you want to sell."

In this interview with Sergio, we get a great overview of Elliot's features, what sets it apart, and what their vision for the first is. Sergio also breaks some news about the platform. As of April 1st, they will offer a free SaaS version (except for payment processing fees), and will open source the entire platform.

You can join Elliots WhatsApp group by sending a message to 347-715-0728, and get early access to new features.

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 208 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, February 20th, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Feb 12, 2020

EP207 - "Billion Dollar Brand Club" author Lawrence Ingrassia h

Lawrence Ingrassia (ingrassia.larry@gmail.com) is the author of "Billion Dollar Brand Club: How Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker, and Other Disruptors Are Remaking What We Buy". (Amazon Affiliate Link)

In this interview with Larry, we discuss many of the brands covered in the book including Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker, eSalon, Mohawk, Anker and Tuft & Needle, as well as many of the ecosystem companies that developed to enable the DTC movement including Facebook, Quiet Logistics and Locus Robotics.

We discuss the trends of DTC companies turning to brick and mortar.  New ways to leverage data to identify product niche (what Larry called the "money-balling of DTC), and what the future may hold for DTC.

We also cover events that happened after the book was published, including the FTC's blocking the Harry's acquisition, Caspers IPO, management challenges at Away.

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 207 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday, February 11th, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Feb 1, 2020

EP206 - Amazon Q4 2019 Earnings Deep Dive 

Amazon released their Q4 2020 earnings on Thursday Jan 30th.  In a holiday quarter that has proved to be challenging for many retailers, Amazon soundly beat analyst expectations, and raised their governance for Q1 2020, driving their stock up.  Amazon's market cap is currently larger than the next six largest retailers combined, and their competitive advantage may be even greater.

In this weeks episode we do a deep dive into all the details of the earning report. We look at top line results, AWS, ads, physical retail, and Logistics. We break down what it all means, and leave you with our conclusions.

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 206 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Friday, January 31st, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Jan 23, 2020

EP205 - CES and NRF 2020 Recap

CES 2020 was in Las Vegas Jan 7th - Jan 10th.

NRF Big Show 2020 was in New York Jan 11-14th.

Scott Galloway (ProfG) hosting a 2020 Tech Prediction lecture the evening of Jan 14th.

PSFK Future of Retail 2020 event on January 15th.

We recap them all with a lens on what's relevant to retailers and digital shopper marketers.

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 205 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, January 23nd, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Google Automated Transcription of the show

Transcript

Jason:
[0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is Episode 205 being recorded on Wednesday January 22nd 2020 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 Scott show listeners well those of you that are regular listeners have probably realized we has been a little while since we put out a show
and the reason why is my colleague Jason here has been traveling like a crazy man.

Jason:
[0:55] This is true I have my annual fun start to the year with the whole CES in RF Marathon which I just got back from.

Scot:
[1:06] I thought this year you weren't doing CS what what what happened we had a client call and Russia.

Jason:
[1:11] Did end up yes having to go for a shorter than usual stay at CES but I did end up having to make an appearance.

Scot:
[1:18] What happens when you're the chief digital retail e-commerce strategist goes goes that way.

Jason:
[1:25] Yes when you yes it's true when you have that many words in your title like unplanned trips are part of the bargain.

Scot:
[1:33] Coco we thought would use most the show to kind of catch up on that and then try to work some news in there too let's start at CES in the first of all big question did you get any new gadgets.

Jason:
[1:45] You know a disappointing year for me personally and part of that may be because it was a shorter trip the,
the stuff like the stuff I tend to discover that like I personally want is maybe deeper in the CES catalog and I maybe didn't get to all of those booths this year I kind of had to hit the main.
Main Milestone booths so yeah nothing super excited I got I maybe have a little.
Personal problem hoarding Chargers and cables and so there are some nice new,
um third-party chargers for the Macbook so I did get a new anchor and the new hyper juice hundred watt charging systems.
Yeah no no super important purpose but yes I have some new Chargers that I have to hide from my wife I don't think she even cares about the spending I think she just cares about all the space that the unused.
Chargers take up in our life.

Scot:
[2:50] Yeah there's a drawer there where they all could live.

Jason:
[2:52] Yeah in my workshop it's more of a a system of drawers for.

Scot:
[3:01] They buy hcf like the 1985.

Jason:
[3:05] I mean people people laugh at me but then we need to find a 30 pin Mac charger for iPhone 3 I have one.

Scot:
[3:14] Boom I got it yeah.

Jason:
[3:18] Yeah so yeah got some new Chargers and I did this is kind of CES adjacent but I did get all new
networking hardware for my home office so I think you and I both did internet connection upgrades.
For the holidays and I added a fancy new firewall router access point and switch.

Scot:
[3:44] Furcal are you gigabit.

Jason:
[3:46] I am so so Comcast just add a gigabit in my neighborhood so we upgraded to gigabit and then I'm using,
this cool new device called the unify dream machine,
which is from I want to say it's a Ubiquiti networks and they do a lot of.
Commercial Wi-Fi equipment for like schools and institutions and things and so this is a a.
A Wi-Fi access point a firewall and and said a managed switches that are all controlled from their commercial software.
Way overkill for a home network but fun for tinkering.

Scot:
[4:35] Yeah I think I've seen one of those is it a it looks like a little cylinder.

Jason:
[4:39] It exactly so historically like they met they mostly make rack-mounted equipment and this is the first time they've,
they've made an all-in-one that that is supported by their sort of,
business level software and it looks like a cylinder and in fact it reminds people a lot of,
discontinued Apple Wi-Fi access point and so there's some people from that we're big fans of that,
that I forget what that was called like they are.

Scot:
[5:11] I had one I can't remember it's called him.

Jason:
[5:16] So yeah so people people think it's the spiritual successor to the Apple.

Scot:
[5:23] Cool what else any interesting Commerce news is he yes.

Jason:
[5:27] Yeah I actually thought it was a reasonably important year for Commerce,
like the Super Readers Digest version on this show it's the consumer electronic show I personally have been attending for 32 years it's the largest trade show in the u.s. like 200,000 people,
attend,
many years ago it was a buying show where people from retailers would go to figure out what they're going to carry for the year now it's mainly a PR show where they try to generate Buzz for new products to,
sell more new technologies but it's where a lot of consumer Technologies where watch for the first time so like the DVD player and the if you go back far enough the VHS.

[6:10] Tape system in the whole VHS beta War played out at CES,
and stuff like that in the Apple the Apple iPhone was famously launched during CES but not at CES as a Steve Jobs sort of did some clever counter-programming,
so people go,
both to like sort of do trend-spotting and see if there's any major new consumer electronics platforms that are coming down the path and from that standpoint I would like there's one big one that had the buzz I'll save for the end,
but there was a lot of smaller more tactical stuff that I think is going to have a meaningful impact on,
retail in particular digital merchandising it retailgeek.
So most of the listeners of this show are probably familiar with e-ink if you ever had a currently have a Kindle book reader it uses e-ink,
and it's a it's an important digital display technology because it's Dynamic you can change the image that's on it,
it's reflective so it works in super bright sunlight and it basically takes no power to display an image so you need electricity to change the image but once the image has changed.
It literally is moving ink around on the display and then you could turn off the power in the ink stays where.

[7:26] Where it was and so it's great for for not using a lot of power in an electronic book reader it,
great for having high visibility even in bright sunlight but a very common retail use case is it's the main display technology that used for all the digital fact tags that I talk about all the time.

[7:45] And one of the big drawbacks of e ink has historically been that it's only black and white or only black red and white or only black yellow and white so very limited,
color palette and so you couldn't do really pretty,
just blaze you couldn't use it for really pretty signs and this was the first year that they were showing full color E Ink that look very vibrant and High Fidelity and so.
You know we'll see you that.
You know maybe we'll have some color book readers in the near future and I suspect we'll see it trickled down to a new generation of electronic.
Price labels and fact tags for retail stores.
So that was an interesting technology and a way cooler display technology was released by Delta Airlines of all people.
And and so this is a new technology to sort of replace a.
Video monitor in a public area and it's called parallel reality and so Delta Airlines found this technology and invested in the company and they've announced that the first commercial deployment will be.
In the Delta lounges at the Detroit airport later this year.
And what this technology does is it lets a hundred people stand in front of a TV screen and have each of them get a different Custom Image that they see.

[9:13] So
so very precisely depending on where you stand you see a completely different image so the use case for Delta in this Lounge is all the customers stare at the flight status display and they all,
see a display that only has their flight information or prominently highlights their flight information.

Scot:
[9:32] Okay how does it know who's looking and we're there.

Jason:
[9:36] So first of all as soon as you describe this to someone they're like this sounds like it's going to be some kludgy gimmick and I was super skeptical so two halves of this problem the first half is,
can you really display an image that that is high fidelity and looks like discrete for each person,
and I went in with very low expectations and I was kind of Blown Away like it it totally works,
the the demo they had their like there's like the pixels weren't tiny so you could kind of see the pixels and,
the display is made up of a bunch of.
Of multiple smaller displays so you could kind of see the frame the internal frames so I'd say it wasn't,
but they were super open to saying yeah we know those are the visual flaws like we already have more advanced prototypes that solve those problems and what we deploy in Detroit later this year is going to.
Not have any of those those visual artifacts but basically what it's using is,
beamforming where they're essentially like each pixel is a projector and they can fire different color lights at different angles so by knowing exactly where your eyeballs are relative to the screen,
they can send you an image that's different from everyone else so that's the display technology as it's kind of like a projector inside of a television or.

[10:57] Thousands of projectors inside of a television and it works remarkably well and then you're very,
pertinent question how do they know who and where those eyeballs are to decide what to show each person and the answer to that is,
a combination of Wi-Fi RFID and your mobile phone so this is not,
this won't work for an anonymous use case in the Delta model the reason they're doing it in the lounge is everyone has to check into the lounge and show that they're a member so when you walk into the front desk,
you scan your mobile app they're using cameras similar to an Amazon go set up to track where you are in the lounge,
and they know who you are because you were holding a mobile phone with your unique ID on it to check in and then they're able to deliver your your unique flight information to you so it.
It's a kind of a combination of Amazon go for the identifying the person and their location and this new parallel reality display technology for,
for beaming the different messages and so it.

[12:07] It works better than I expected it seems pretty darn close to real we'll see if they're really able to get this in a while,
lateral out in an airport this year but like if it all works it's pretty easy to imagine a number of use cases for public displays and checkout systems and things like that and retailgeek,
what it would be really handy to be able to show different images to different customers on the same monitor.

Scot:
[12:30] Very cool was this the big one we're waiting for or know there's more to come.

Jason:
[12:36] No no more to come so the another interesting technology that like was kind of spooky as Samsung was showing this.
These avatars did they call neon life into these artificial humans,
and so you walk up to all these five or six foot tall monitors and if there's like a person in each Monitor and they can talk to you interact you with you and they look like.

[13:04] Completely real people like in so you would assume this was a video but these are computer generated people that are extremely lifelike,
and so the idea is that you could potentially walk into a retail store and you know there might be a artificial intelligence help agent.
That looks like a real sales associate that you're basically looking at through a glass window that can talk to you in,
and be more human that was the kind of use case that Samsung was pitching the the more interesting use case to me is like an you,
render different shapes and sizes of people and put apparel on them so you know could you could this be kind of like,
a digital mannequin scenario for retail stores and.
It was scary life like in the one thing I would say is they would call this an advanced science project so these avatars apparently took a super long time to build and they say that this technology is still three or four years away from being completely.

Scot:
[14:09] They have natural language parsing like kids or talk to them and.

Jason:
[14:12] They did but that wasn't part of the the magic so they were using that were using other Samsung artificial intelligence like in fact Bigsby is their artificial intelligent agent too
like decide what the Avatar was saying and to interpret what you were saying and so they weren't claiming any like.
You know new new Evolution there what was new about this neon life,
technology was how lifelike they could make the visual representation of a person and essentially you know it's,
it's like the next step to like not paying actors to be in the movie and instead having these these digital avatars that.
That will be acting in all the movies and stuff.
But I you know if it gets commercialized I can imagine a retail use case for that the next product that really caught my eye in this got a lot of Buzz at the show and I think this was a,
a darn impressive product came from L'Oreal and it's called perso,
Scot you may have followed this because I know you try to stay close to the beauty and cosmetics base.

Scot:
[15:24] I do.

Jason:
[15:25] But so the idea here is,
personalized beauty and cosmetic products that are formulated at home,
so so they initial concept has three different products there's a liquid lipstick product there's a,
liquid foundation product and there's a moisturizer so each of these is kind of a.
A metal cylinder like like one of those Yeti mug type things a metal cylinder and using an app you say I want this color lipstick,
and you know out of a set of holes in the top of this mug,
that exact shade of lipstick or several lipsticks come out that when you then blend them together with a in applicator or your finger like mixed to the particular color that you ordered.
And so the foundation comes out in a color custom color that you ordered the lipstick comes out in a custom color that you ordered and the moisturizer comes out in custom formulation that you ordered so it may be has.

[16:34] You know more moisturizing or sunscreen depending on the environment you're in or the the weather and a particular day and so the
to me the one that made the most sense in the kind of you know coolest use case is the lipstick they do things like you can point your camera at your outfit,
and it will recommend shades of lipstick that go well with your particular outfit and then it can produce,
that lipstick for you and so the reason I thought this was pretty impressive as it seemed to work really well people that tried it were seem to think it was,
not a gimmick that it was you know that they were quality products and they were totally legitimate and you know I've spoken to lots of women that think that the,
the custom shade of lipstick on demand would be,
total useful and I've smoked I've spoke to some women that think the custom foundations would be useful and I just think we're at this inflection point when more and more products are going to be customized for each individual user so whether that means
they're fabricated custom at a factory and quickly shipped to you or they have the ability to be customized in your own home this is essentially a
3D printer for Cosmetics or an inkjet printer for cosmetics and so I it to me it seemed like one of the first viable,
custom products in this category and one little Nuance that I thought was really clever about the whole thing.

[18:01] That the cylinder like could totally sit on your makeup counter at home and it seems like it would fit just fine but what happens when you want to take your lipstick with you and put it in your purse like that wouldn't work very well so it turns out the top of all of these cylinders,
is removable and it's magnetically attached to the cylinder so after you specify a color and it mixes some of that color up
you can just take the top of the cylinder off which is kind of the size of a makeup compact throw it in your purse and take your custom color with you so,
pretty clever and then you buy refill cartridges just like you'd buy refill ink for an inkjet printer.

Scot:
[18:39] That's where all the money is.

Jason:
[18:40] Yeah oh for sure but so I thought that was super interesting when you get into the Health Pavilion,
there were a number of players like one that caught my eyes was called DNA nudge and these guys are essentially doing a DNA test
and then they're helping you select,
Foods diet nutrition that match your unique DNA so again going back to this notion of customization that like,
you know the diet you select the foods you buy should all be predicated based on your your underlying DNA that they help you help you find.

Scot:
[19:20] Did you just come back and say error you are 99% an espresso beverage.

Jason:
[19:26] That is funny so I have.
Carefully avoided doing any of these DNA because I actually think there's some like significant privacy concerns and I like I don't know maybe I'm I'm.
Overly cautious but like I haven't wanted to just give my DNA to one of these for-profit companies with like dubious privacy policies.

Scot:
[19:53] Cool.

Jason:
[19:55] I don't know what about you Scott are you totally in on 23andMe do you do it like every month to see if your DNA is changing.

Scot:
[20:01] I've done both yeah it's pretty interesting.

Jason:
[20:03] Okay yeah I will be honest I would be totally.

Scot:
[20:06] Hi I don't have any murders out there I'm worried about.

Jason:
[20:09] Yeah well I read too much of a boring life to be very worried but I but here's the thing you could have an interesting relative that you're throwing under the bus by doing this.

Scot:
[20:18] Yeah they shouldn't do their crimes.

Jason:
[20:20] My fair enough,
yeah so again I can see it I might be being a little silly on that but I haven't wanted to do that so then you know it's the car thing is a big thing here they are,
like the car car tech now tends to get launched at CES not at the auto show.
So you know there's there's you know some interesting electronic prototype cars that may or may not ever see the light of day.
The huge thing I noticed this year in the car Pavilion is that every car seemed to have an Alexa integration like that seemed like that was.
Taking over as the like.
New cabin Tech that everybody was marketing and so I think Amazon announced that they're now over a hundred thousand consumer electronic devices that have Alexa embedded.
From more than 9,500 unique Brands and of course the new device with Alexa in it that I imagine you're going to need is the Lamborghini.

Scot:
[21:28] Yes absolutely.

Jason:
[21:29] I think that will round.

Scot:
[21:31] Finally took me over the edge.

Jason:
[21:33] Yeah that around out your stable just fine
they're like speaking of am Amazon Integrations I Amazon has a couple booths at the show they have a booth that's primarily focused on the Alexa and a lot of third party you know,
demos with that they have a booth in the home automation section dedicated to key and all the last mile Solutions and things but in the Amazon Booth one of the interesting ones was.
This this cpg company Reckitt beckon sir.
Commonly called RB they make a bunch of products like baby formula and finish is their big brand of dishwashing detergent.
And so they have upgraded all of their packaging to have Dash replenishment built in.
So when you get low on baby formula the box that you bought your baby formula in just recognizes that and automatically reorders more baby formula and when you get low on those.
Those PODS of finished dishwashing liquid the package automatically orders more for you.

Scot:
[22:47] The saw the Lamborghini thing in the it was funny there was like a poster which had like some amazingly handsome Brad Pitt of time looking dude and he said Alexa I'm hot,
and then she said she she knew to turn on the air conditioner.

Jason:
[23:05] Yeah yeah context.

Scot:
[23:07] So maybe wonder how often is Jason uttering Alexa I'm hot to his devices.

Jason:
[23:13] Yeah I feel like that's not even the most concerning thing you need to worry about me saying to Alexa.
I mentioned Samsung Bigsby earlier computer vision was a big thing I felt like half the booths were doing facial recognition for some nefarious purpose but Samsung built it in a refrigerators so,
in the past they've had these smart fridges that for example had a webcam in them so you could kind of like when you're in the grocery store and couldn't remember if you had eggs you could turn on a webcam and see the inside of your refrigerator.
Which I was like to point out probably wouldn't help you because your eggs are probably in a in an opaque car turn it Carton and you can't see how many are in there,
but that pesky detail aside they're now using Bigsby to do image recognition and take an inventory of your refrigerator so the smart refrigerator knows like,
that you have a quart of milk and how many times you've taken it out and likely how much milk is left in that core.

[24:16] So that was interesting there were a thousand Last Mile solutions that at CES so lots of people like with,
clever approaches and not clever approaches to porch piracy to delivering to your refrigerator to delivering to your garage to your car trunk drones and robots,
um
Kind of improved efficiency for for bow pass orders for store pick up orders and a lot of technology for like building mail rooms,
notify residents when they have packages all sorts of stuff like that so this is not really a retail show and so it's just interesting to me how,
booths were there like specifically solving a Commerce problem around the last mile.
Um so all those were interesting tactical things that I saw at CES that I think May,
may I make an appearance in the future of retail but by far the biggest platform that that you know was
the most strategically important that really had his coming out party at CES this year is the new wireless technology 5G.
So they've been talking about it CES for a number of years they've had prototype product but this is the first year that they have.

[25:38] Mass-produced products that meet all the certifications and work on networks that are deployed in the real world so this is kind of the
the first time that 5G was truly commercialized at CES and you know I I suspect in in the show's heart of hearts,
like if there's you know one news cycle that they want to win it's the you know the wave of coming 5G products and that everyone needs to throw out all their wireless devices and by shiny new,
new 5G devices and then it's going to magically change the world and there are crazy stats that they you know site about how much faster 5G is than 4G so,
you know hundreds to thousands of times faster bandwidth
way lower latency way more devices that can hang on the same networks and you listen all this and you go man 5 G's going to change the world it's the most important technology of all times and that's mostly.
The articles that are getting written about it but as I talked to more engineers and kind of you know.
Really started to understand what was going on I actually am now somewhat bearish on on 5G I think it's overhyped.

Scot:
[26:56] Yeah yeah they always the one I see that for his hearse like some remote surgery over 5G and you're like I don't think five G's going to solve the dead spots in fact up I have more dead spots because I won't be honest meat hours.

Jason:
[27:08] I'm not sure I'm going to be an early adopter of remote Robo surgery but if I am
I'm gonna insist that they have a wired connection to the robot and if for some reason they can't have a wired connection I would way rather have a Wi-Fi connection to the robot then a 5G connection to the robot.

Scot:
[27:25] Yeah we're going to belt and suspenders that puppy yeah if we're not yeah.

Jason:
[27:28] Yeah so it's going to be a long time before you ever going to do surgery on me with 5G but like here's here's the,
the huge Wrinkle In 5G that makes it kind of a mess technology for me is.
You know all these Wireless signals are over particular parts of the spectrum right and so like cellular signals and most of what we call LTE or 4G is,
in the 600 megahertz to 6 gigahertz range depending on which company and what what bandwidth they own and so 5G uses that same bandwidth,
and it uses some new band with that the government just sold the carriers that's at a much higher frequency and so it's what they're calling this millimeter wave frequencies and so this is,
20 gigahertz 295 gigahertz a way higher frequencies than the traditional Four G's and all of the,
dramatic improvements in bandwidth that they're talking about only happen on those new millimeter-wave frequencies.

[28:34] So the the 5G technology works on the 4G frequencies and it is faster but it's kind of incrementally faster in the same way that 4G was faster than 3G,
it's so call it
twenty to a hundred percent faster and then you get this you know hundreds to thousands of times faster when you get on millimeter wave and
so couple problems with millimeter wave number one it's mostly not built out and unavailable like there it's,
there are rumors that the the iPhone that comes out this year that will be the first 5G iPhone,
may or may not even support millimeter-wave but there's very limited coverage of millimeter wave in the United States like like when you don't company says they have coverage in a city that's probably one block that they cover
when this millimeter wave technology and then much bigger deal is that high frequency wave.
Is blocked by virtually any kind of structure so not only will it not go through walls it won't go through windows,
um so you won't ever get millimeter wave signal inside of a building for example.

Scot:
[29:45] Think you're gonna have to do your surgery in a tent.

Jason:
[29:48] Yeah exactly so a legitimate use case is
hey T-Mobile can compete with Comcast for internet bandwidth for Scott's home and if you buy it from T-Mobile what they're going to do is put a millimeter wave antenna on the roof of your building and run a cable inside of your house and convert it to a Wi-Fi signal inside of your house
and because the millimeter wave can be really fast to that antenna on your roof like they can legitimately compete with your,
your cable modem but you are not going to have a phone that you walk around in your office that's you know downloading movies in a second.

Scot:
[30:32] Nursing so a lot of infrastructure to be built to solve this millimeter wave from.

Jason:
[30:37] Yeah yeah and those those
like they need many more antennas and the antennas need much quote to be much closer together to really build out coverage for millimeter wave so it's a huge National infrastructure problem
and it doesn't seem like any of the carriers have really committed to like saturate their Market with millimeter wave yet so again you know most of what the carriers are talking about when they say 5G
is 5G over the existing 4G bands and,
it's a little better like I'm sure we'll all enjoy it but it it's by no means game-changing so that's that was kind of my,
my CES recap I think most people would say oh the big thing that's going to change the face of retails 5G I'm pretty convinced it's actually not but I do think a bunch of these display Technologies are,
potentially interesting and I really think that that this trend of more personalized products is super interesting for Commerce.

Scot:
[31:36] Cool so then you shot straight from Vegas Rider to New York and would a would you see it enough.

Jason:
[31:42] I did so yeah I got to do a prolonged my New York trip this year so I got there a little earlier,
as you know you and I were nominated for an award for best retail media and we were one of the finalists so I actually went to the awards ceremony on Friday night.
And I'm sorry to report that we did not win yeah so not a very credible award obviously I'm teasing.
Is actually the first year of this particular.
In our Enterprise and what they're trying to do is recognize suppliers for the retail Commerce industry because most of the awards are targeted at the retailer so that's kind of appreciate that and that's interesting and it was.
Very well-attended event for the first year but that sucked me into New York early so then I did the whole show I got to walk all the show floors,
and my limited time recap on all the show floors was,
that it was a very incremental year so rather than,
dramatically new stuff and new technology that you know didn't exist at the show asked year most of the booths in the main exhibit Halls were.
Here's our 10% better version of what we showed you last year.

[33:04] And a surprising amount of it was really oriented towards cost reduction and,
operations optimization so I would say like,
the it was rare to see customer-facing stories and improving customer experiences at retail it was mostly about taking costs out of supply chain and taking costs out of operations and Staffing and.
And increase Automation and that you know it things that are important to retail but frankly things I would argue like that's been a play in retail for the last five years and most of the good retailers today have.
Taking most of the COS out and you know so now I feel like to really move the needle you need to be thinking about your customer experience and improving,
that and I did not see a lot of great solutions for that on the inner F floor this year,
the one kind of new use case that showed up in a bunch of booths is what I'll call a smart shelf so this is like Amazon go like technology it's like a shelf that.

[34:12] Either using cameras or sensors or cameras and sensors,
knows what's on the shelf and it knows what you take off the shelf and it can probably recognize you and so sometimes this is used for self-checkout but way more often it was just used for inventory management,
for knowing when something was out of stock or helping navigate customers to the right product or or knowing when a products on the wrong shelf for all these kinds of use cases,
so I like frankly didn't think the juice was worth the squeeze walking the two main trade show floors at in RF,
the the floor I had the most fun on is this Innovation Pavilion that they've had for the last couple of years but it was much bigger this year
and to me like all the exciting interesting stuff was was definitely in this Innovation Pavilion and so this is smaller companies tend to be,
startup companies a bunch of companies,
from other countries like Israel was particularly well represented and you know here you are seeing a lot of Last Mile Solutions you are seeing a lot of.
Like using cameras to solve fitment and returns and things like that so I just I felt like there was a lot more interesting.
New approaches to customer experience in The Innovation Pavilion than on the main main interest rate show floors.

Scot:
[35:39] What was the strangest thing you saw.

Jason:
[35:42] Strangest thing I saw I probably should have come to rehearsal and gotten that question ahead of time so I could have thought about it.

[35:50] Yeah well I'll tell you an odd experience I had so you know I have this weird Affinity / fetish for these digital fact eggs.
And I keep predicting that they're going to be a big thing and they never are.
So of course I had to visit all of the exhibitors at this boot at the show and there's like six or seven.
Big manufacturers and then probably 20 little manufacturers of these things and then RF and so one of the companies I'm not even going to name them,
they're noted in my mind because they were the first tags that Amazon used in the four-star store in Amazon has changed vendors and they now use a different vendor but this first vendor
um had a lot of interesting tags and some new new technology in their booth in the way I remember what I what I see at the booth in order to kind of type up my show notes is I
take a picture of the booth and then I type my notes below the picture in Evernote so I tried to take a picture of this booth and they
tackled me and told me that no photos were allowed and I'm like,
okay do you have like a brochure something I could take no no we don't have a brochure.
So I'm like so wait you have a giant 30 by 30 booth at the show and you paid a bunch of money to come here and like.
You don't in any way want anyone to remember who the heck you are or be able to contact you after the show.

Scot:
[37:13] We were never here.

Jason:
[37:15] Yes I.

Scot:
[37:16] They make you delete the picture.

Jason:
[37:19] No and I mean I could have but I mean I just didn't even want to take a picture at that point I was I just thought that was so funny like
ten years ago that was about get super common thing and people are worried you're going to steal their intellectual property but I feel like if you have intellectual property that you don't want anyone to know about
don't buy a trade show booth.

Scot:
[37:38] Weird that is weird see I knew you had one in.

Jason:
[37:43] So that stuff was all interesting I went to most of the Keynotes and I feel like this is going to be a Captain Obvious comment to you but
I mostly went all the key notes which are all these big retail CEOs
and I've mostly decided that it's a complete waste of time going to any of these shows and sitting in on the on the CEO Keynotes.
Nobody ever said like they're all perfectly media prepped and they mostly Play commercials about their businesses and no you know nobody says anything very like informative or,
you know that isn't already on the public record at these things so I don't know why I always get excited to hear you know some retail CEO speak when.
Like in reality like it's not bad it's just it's just not valuable or super interesting.

Scot:
[38:32] Yeah yeah it's tough there at some point their public companies to so they're in their quiet period by the time this show comes out so they can't even really talked about you know anything that's.

Jason:
[38:43] Oh yeah no I don't even.

Scot:
[38:44] Air and yeah.

Jason:
[38:45] I don't even fault them but I just tough right and so you had like Kevin plank who's you know the founder of Under Armour and you know he recently stepped down as CEO but he's like.
Like Chief brand evangelists or something.
One that got like a little heat Michelle gas is the CEO of coals we'll talk about this later but like you know Cole's kind of underperformed a little bit for holiday and,
and so that's that's interesting but she also won the,
the internet Gala award as the person of the year and there are people that are pointing out like what's the state of our industry of like the.
Person of the year is like a CEO that's like let a company for five years that mostly has been in sales and market cap decline over that entire five-year period.

Scot:
[39:32] Emma close a bunch of stores they've closed Less stores than a lot of other retailers.

Jason:
[39:36] No I would say they have performed better than most of their peers and their Peril I think that's true and that's why it's kind of news that their their performances starting to,
to soften the the one thing that maybe was newsworthy about her Kina like obviously they get a bunch of Buzz for
being the first ones that were all in on like allowing Amazon returns and their store.
Um and I don't know why this gets so much coverage I mean it's an interesting tactic but to me it's not a game-changing thing.
But you know a big question has been like how valuable is that to Cole's like is it working and and she gave a full-throated defense of the tactic and said that it's working.
Quite well and that we're happy we're doing it and that we've expanded it to all stores but then she said like two sentences that didn't like,
and I'm like.

Scot:
[40:38] It was very vague yeah.

Jason:
[40:39] Yeah so so I don't know so that was a little interesting.

Scot:
[40:43] It was interesting there's a lot of pictures on social media accompanying that article and they showed Kohl's store and had a tiny little coal sign and it was just surrounded by Amazon promotional materials all throughout the front of the store and then inside the store.

Jason:
[40:56] Yeah and I think one of the things that's happening is you know Cole's is always been heavily promotional.
Like I think when you return something to Amazon you get like a fifty percent off of a Cole's item certificate that you know they're trying to juice you too.
To buy something presumably it's super little margins when you're on that visit,
so that stuff got a lot of Buzz as you know but listeners may not know a lot of my time as in RF gets booked up with,
these these various committee and Council meetings that are going on and so you know we're members of the digital Council which is a big group of.
Of people that are primarily focused on digital Shopper marketing.
And so you know they have a long meeting at the show and you know I'm still on the board of what used to be called shop dot-org now called the digital Advisory Board.
And we have a long meeting during the show and there's usually some interesting content at those meetings so I would say both of those meetings were good and I'm probably biased because I was the speaker the digital council meeting.
And I gave a presentation about like what western Brands can learn from China so sharing a bunch of,
interesting tactics that are going on in China that my hypothesis is you know that people ought to be trying in in the west and.

Scot:
[42:22] Is this the salty wait for you tried to get your your prediction of QR codes out there.

Jason:
[42:28] Potentially I'll do anything I can.

Scot:
[42:29] Talk about it the Ulta.

Jason:
[42:30] I'll do anything I can to win the forecasting battle against you just got so yeah.
No I did not I did not hit that hard but I got good feedback and I enjoyed doing it it's a scary audience because you know I talk to people all the time but this is like.
50 of my closest work friends that are all like smarter and more digitally savvy than me so like if you say something wrong.
They're pretty likely to call you out on it so which is not necessarily as true in my day job.

[43:04] So I was pleased that that went well and then in a rare treat for me I stayed for a couple days after an RF this year,
and there are a lot of events that other people program to take advantage of everyone being in town for an RF,
so PS FK is a research company that does a lot of great retail content they do a bunch of retail tours in New York the week of in our.
And they had kind of a direct-to-consumer day where they had a bunch of leaders from direct-to-consumer companies come in and talk and so,
I got to send it on that and that was kind of interesting content I think I inadvertently got some Buzz cuz,
unlike some of these really polish CEOs for the big retail companies like the CEOs for some of these startups probably share more information than they should and so one of the founders of neighborhood Goods was there there there.

[44:00] Kind of new retail concept there are like a retail Marketplace so vendors paid rent space in their store they open one store and,
Texas in Dallas there now they just opened a second store in Manhattan and they're about to open a third store in Austin and in our industry via all the Talking Heads I would say they get a ton of Buzz,
and,
you know the one thing they don't do is disclosed like any sales data so you know you never know how meaningful their sales are but the CEO at one point mentioned that their best-selling skew by volume,
by number of units and dollar volume is a t-shirt with their logo on it.

[44:42] And so I you know in my mind thinking like that probably says all you need to know about you know how much of the vendors products they're selling that are paying for space in those stores if they're evil logo t-shirts their best.

Scot:
[44:55] Ouch then he went Savage on social media.

Jason:
[44:58] I did not mean it to be super- but I just thought that was an interesting data point and then I went into the belly of the Beast,
our friend Scott Galloway who loves his predictions as you'll know.
He had an event he's a professor at NYU and he gave a lecture at NYU,
kind of a couple hours sharing his recap of his 2019 predictions and doing his 2020 predictions so I sat in on that and.
I don't think any of the predictions were very new to those of us that follow him regularly like you know he tends to be pretty repetitive and and so these were mostly repetitive,
predictions but there was a question and answer session afterwards and I thought the question-and-answer session was really interesting and people people asked him good questions and he had you know insightful answer so that would that part was fun.

Scot:
[45:56] Yeah he's a very anti Sheryl Sandberg Casper and then he's he's been antitussive for a long time and he's gotten his like face ripped off by Tesla this.

Jason:
[46:06] Yeah so it's funny.

Scot:
[46:08] Predicting it will go bankrupt and you know there's crazy and it's fraud and.

Jason:
[46:13] Yeah yeah he thinks it's way overvalued and he
it's kind of funny because he talks about he like he openly talks about this he's like people that agree with me tend to agree with me on most things I got like he's you know philosophically aligned on most things but he's like most of the people that follow me,
like Tesla way more than me
and they have way more digital privacy concerns than I have so he's like whenever I share my position on those two things I tend to get creamed and so like it almost became a joke like people standing up there were like challenging him on his,
Tesla predictions and like you know people came up and like made an argument for the Tesla evaluation and why it was reasonable and stuff and so there were some,
pretty funny back and forth on that stuff and he was making fun of the fact that like that's most likely what he'll get murdered for,
and then he did a podcast after this event where him and Kara Swisher who generally agree on most things on their podcast like got in a pretty heated argument,
on the whole should Apple unlock the terrorists phones and and Scott comes down heavily on absolutely Apple like should,
should immediately unlock the terrorists phones in the privacy concerns are kind of,
BS in Scott's mind and so and he recognizes that like,
that's the other thing he gets a lot of heat for is that most people that follow him don't agree with that position.

Scot:
[47:43] Wasn't swisher and RF like interviewing the politician or something.

Jason:
[47:46] She was I don't remember who she interviewed because that was during one of my meeting so I missed it.

Scot:
[47:53] I think it was Paul Ryan I didn't understand what the heck that had to do with retailgeek.

Jason:
[47:57] Yeah so there's kind of a tradition that interrupts like a big part of interests job is Lobby is federal lobbying and it that's particularly relevant right now because why.
These privacy laws that all the states pass are passing have.
Potential major intended and unintended ramifications on retailers like a lot of them like arguably make it illegal to run a loyalty program for example,
um so so the lobbying is a big deal in RF it's a lot of their energy as in lobbying and so if you look at the keynote speakers over the last several years in RF
they had Bill Clinton shortly after he went out of office they had George Bush Senior shortly after he went out of office and so they tend to have a
a big name politician and this year it was Paul Ryan but I didn't get to see it
I didn't hear any particularly newsworthy things come out of it but I can't speak to it firsthand.

Scot:
[48:53] Furcal anything else we need to know about NRF.

Jason:
[48:56] So that was my in a referee cap that kind of match up with what you followed on social media in the news or did I give you.

Scot:
[49:03] Was it seemed like kind of the the timing was interesting because you know at the same time you had the Casper S1 filing drop in this kind of,
pivoting to General news but kind of overlapped with an RF a fair amount then you had a fair amount of bad news from Q4
some of this it's hard to tell if it was just kind of there's a bunch of retailers that are kind of in that Molly gedan bucket that held on through Q4 is it's kind of crazy to once you make it to August you might as well not close any stores until
until January so it's hard to know how much is kind of an overhang kind of a holiday overhang and how much is kind of.
The holiday actually wasn't as good as we thought were those some of the topics that NRF.

Jason:
[49:47] Yeah so not in the formal presentations but in the sort of hallway conversations this this was a big point right and,
you know you and I have talked about on the show we were talking about it in December that I sort of felt like it was going to be a soft holiday that you know they were going to be
profitability challenges in talking to people at this show one of the interesting things that kind of reaffirms that it was a soft holiday is
there is apparently like a ton of excess product in the market which has not been the case the last several holidays and so retailers are getting asked to take a bunch of.
You know deeply discounted inventory from manufacturers and what we would call distressed inventory,
that there's a glut of that on the market this year and so that's a bad sign it means retailers didn't sell through all their inventory the manufacturer didn't move as many units as they expected and now they're going to liquidate all that inventory at low cost which.
You know means consumers closets are going to fill up with with cheap clothes and you know it's going to be longer before they can they can sell new stuff and you know a bunch of more of this like.
You know desirable Brands will show up in TJ Maxx and,
places like that so there's a bunch of negative ramifications and you know it's.

[51:06] The my theory is like it's for two reasons like,
that we just did have a soft holiday and people didn't sell as much as they wanted but the last several holidays I feel like retailers have been super careful about constraining their inventory and being really smart and using a lot of,
new modern tools to predict demand better and so they actually,
we're in really good inventory positions the last couple of years and what's different this year is potential fear of tariffs,
and so my my theory which I have no way to validate but my theory is that a lot of manufacturer is particular know they're getting their goods from China.
Made more stuff before tariffs kicked in as a hedge against potential tariffs and so they just ended up with higher inventory positions and they've been you know trying to sell that through to retailers,
and so as you know we have a glut of product and that that actually bodes,
poorly you know for the end of Q4 but also for q1 sales across much of a bunch of retail categories.

Scot:
[52:12] Yeah.

Jason:
[52:14] So I during the show or around the show you know there are bunt you know holiday earnings announcement started to come in.
Before this show MasterCard released there.
Sort of holiday recap and MasterCard has this product called spending pulse where they Aggregate and anonymize all the,
the spending behaviors of everyone that carries a MasterCard branded card.
And they said holiday retail sales were up 3.4 percent from November 1st to December 24th and the online sales were up almost nineteen percent and so those are decent numbers,
that would calm pretty you know favorably with last year I think those are very similar to last year's numbers.
And that would imply that everyone had a decent holiday but then the individual retailer started announcing their earnings and nobody has earnings.
That seems like they jive with that Master card number right so so not shocking the JCPenney was down but they were down you know lower than expectations so they were down seven and a half percent which is huge,
we alluded to this earlier but Cole's was down point two percent and they've been one of the,
the you know better performers in the apparel category for a while so the fact that they're down was was alarming and surprising.

[53:32] L Brands was down 3% Macy's was down,
point seven percent which they had been up the previous quarter so that was a big holiday Miss and then I think to me the one that was most surprising and alarming and kind of triggered some,
some stock alarm Bells was Target and their same-store sales were only up 1.4 percent versus,
5.7 percent last year so that was a big mix against their guidance and you know you,
you listen to that bloodbath of retailers like almost nobody you know performing above their comps and you try to reconcile that with the whole industry being up 3.4 percent and it just doesn't make sense to me I think,
I think that Master Gardener is just wrong or or like there there's something unique about MasterCard carrying people that you know is different than other spending.

Scot:
[54:27] Yeah yeah the.
Jury's out I think until we see how Amazon and they report on the 30th and will be here on the Jason Scott show recapping that for everybody that's going to be really really important and then the second most important going to be Walmart and I'm not sure,
you there in Feb 18 kids are in that off-cycle yeah.
So it's going to be awesome to see how that goes because if they both didn't do well then it really is a head-scratcher but even if they you know let's say Amazon grew like 25% or something.
It's kind of makes the,
you can get the e-commerce number to 19 percent but like what the heck happened to the rest of retail who actually grew everyone that we know that reporting didn't it would have to be Walmart or you know.
Someone else I don't know,
Costco yeah maybe it's the dollar stores there's there has been a bunch of strength and kind of like what we call the value plays the dollar stores the Wholesale Club's the T.J.Maxx has maybe those are the guys that kind of saved the day and there's haven't reported yet.

Jason:
[55:47] Yeah but I think no matter how you slice it like this is another version of bifurcation that like you know if holiday sales are robust like they were not,
robust for everyone that there were you know huge winners and losers and you know if that was the case which it certainly seems like it was
you know you're going to see that play out in you know future store closures and bankruptcies and all the other things that you know retailers have to do when they start to get into distressed.
Situations and you know along those lines I think we have already seen a bunch of announcements now that they've gone through holiday,
the upcoming store closures.

Scot:
[56:30] Any other news you want to cover.

Jason:
[56:33] I mean those are the big things like just to recap the store closures real quick like that was like expresses closing a hundred stores JCPenney's closing 6 more stores
Pier 1 is closing half their stores Bed Bath & Beyond closing 40 stores,
a slightly surprising one of me is bows which had a chain of company-owned stores.
Is closing all of their bricks and mortar they're going to be you know a pure brand and Direct online sales only so you know a significant amount of store closures to start the year,
so it's kind of falling into your whole you know Mama gettin story that you like to always talk about.
And then I guess just a couple of small little news items that are like you know pretty interesting in the Commerce base Google made an acquisition of this company called pointy.

[57:25] And I wouldn't expect people to necessarily recognize pointy but pointy is a,
a data company that makes it super easy for particularly small retailers to upload their store inventory to Google.
So that lets you do local inventory ads where we're like you know you do a search for a coat and Google says oh that coats in stock in this store that's a block from you.
And it also you know facilitates the sort of instant purchasing Google and a lot of other things and so it's it was interesting that Google's acquiring this capability to help retailers on board.
Their inventory to Google much easier that you know could be the first of a bunch of steps we see in Google trying to get more serious about Commerce,
and then you know the Gap had previously announced that they were going to split Old Navy off from the rest of the company,
and they kind of had assigned CEOs and then this month announced that they're actually not going to do that they fired that CEO in the,
the son of the founder I came back to run the company so so a lot of drama going on at the Gap right now.

[58:44] Yeah well I think they were another example like I,
I don't know I think it's a high level the story was a bunch of the Gap brands are underperforming the one Gap brand had been performing strongly was Old Navy and you know so there's an argument that like.
Old Navy wasn't getting full credit in the public markets because they're being dragged down by these other brands so you split up.
The strong brand Old Navy from the weaker brands,
and you know maybe you can carve out more value that of course ignores the fact that,
like all of these Brands share a shared infrastructure the same it stuff the same e-commerce stuff the same supply chain stuff when you split them up you got to spend a minimum shh money to rebuild that you know.
For both companies and and I think the thing that made this untenable was.
Old Navy didn't have a great holiday either and so you know they were left with the prospect of potentially splitting up and having two distressed Brands neither one performing very well and.
You know they just spent a bunch of money and and you know their employees Focus was all put on this this.
Split instead of focusing on on customers and in the right product in the right right brand positioning for that stuff so so I think it became scary and they pulled back.

Scot:
[1:00:08] Must be frustrating imagine if you were on that team and you probably had to separate all the point-of-sale systems and the customer databases and.

Jason:
[1:00:18] Yo and I'm.

Scot:
[1:00:18] Pretty far down the path.

Jason:
[1:00:19] Like I'll be honest I'm sure there were people that were far down that path and the whole time they were doing it we're saying this is stupid we shouldn't be doing this and now they're pissed that they wasted all that.
Because it's yeah it's not going to see the light of day but you know sometimes those are unavoidable things like you know there,
there are storied brand I hope they find their way through it.
But Scott that's probably going to play be a good place to wrap it up because we have hit our usual 1 hour mark so we've used up more than our allotted listener time,
as always if people have a comment or question feel free to drop us a note on Twitter or Facebook
and for sure we need to get those iTunes reviews going for the 2020 year fresh reviews are super important so if you haven't written a review for a podcast yet we'd love it if you jump over to iTunes and write us that review.

Scot:
[1:01:15] And make them five stars thanks everybody.

Jason:
[1:01:17] Yeah until next time happy commercing.

Jan 6, 2020

EP204 - 2020 Annual Predictions

2019 Recap - Predictions made on episode 159

Scot

  1. At least 5k more store closures in 2019. Yes.  9,300 US store closures per Coresight.
  2. Amazon – Prof Galloway is big on Amazon having to create a AWS spinoff and has moderated that to tracking stock. I’m going to predict Amazon doesn’t do either of those things. But this WILL be the year they break ads out. Yes. Galloway was wrong.
  3. eBay/Alibaba – I think this is the year when they both need to do something big and the stars are aligning for a combination there. Nope.
  4.  Shopify gets acquired by one of the big ad-based companies (facebook/google most likely) Nope.
  5. Walmart stumbles in e-commerce. Nope

Score 2/5

Jason

  1. Amazon store count exceeds 1000 stores Nope.  571 Amazon Stores
    • 22 Book
    • 15 4-Star
    • 8 Pop-ups
    • 25 Go
    • 2 liquor
    • 499 Whole Foods
  2. Walmart buys a last mile firm Nope
  3. Another big  bankruptcy (going to be a tougher than expected year, JCP, category killers Office, BBBY, Neiman). Yep (Payless ShoeSource, Destination Maternity Shopko,Forever 21, ShopKo, Gymboree, Things Remembered, Charlotte Russe, Diesel, Z Gallerie, Charming Charlie, Barneys, Sugarfina, etc ...)
  4. Mobile commerce revenue passes Desktop – Aided by PWA’s, and payment API’s we see mobile gap narrow. Nope.  60/35/5 Desktop/Mobile/Tablet Nov-Dec via Adobe.
  5. Fads (Voice Commerce, Customer facing AI, SocialCommerce, VR BlockChain). Yes

BONUS: Amazon breaks out prime revenue (No)

Score 2/5

An epic fail for Jason & Scot! It turns out the future is difficult to see (and our case the timing is also tough).

2020 Predictions

Scot

  1. Shopify wilts a bit - new competition comes out with different angles (marketcap stays static)
  2. Fedex does something drastic - buy eBay? Merge with Alibaba?
  3. The year of returns - “happy returns” - a startup raises $100M+ in space.
  4. Mallageddon continues At least another 8k stores
  5. Google gets aggressive in ecommerce
    • 10% traffic to ‘shopping actions’
    • buy ebay/fedex

Jason

  1. Walmart - growth slows due to completion of grocery build out. Marc Lore leaves Walmart.
  2. Amazon - Opens affordable grocery concept. Digital grocery wars heat up.
  3. Owned brands continue to grow. 5% of retail in 2019, could be 8-10% in 2020 (as measured by IRI, for CPG private label).
  4. Installment Payments heat up - At least one company is acquired (Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, QuadPay, Sizzle)
  5. Digital in-store heats up, QR codes make a comeback

Bonus:  Cashier-less stores (Amazon Go), blockchain, 5G, big data, and personalization won’t have a significant impact on retail. No DNVB will break out. No major retail anti-trust actions in US. Brick & Mortar Marketplaces won’t take off (Showfields, Neighborhood Goods, B8ta). Shopify won’t compete with Amazon.  

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 204 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, January 2nd, 2020.

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.

http://jasonandscot.com

Google Automated Transcription of the show

Transcript

Jason:
[0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode at 204 being recorded on Thursday January 2nd
2020 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scott Wingo.

Scot:
[0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners will Jason happy New Year happy new decade hope you had a really good last decade and I hope you had a good holiday.

Jason:
[0:53] I did Happy New Year to you. I'm with you on that new decade but they're you know there's some controversy about whether it is a new decade or not.

Scot:
[1:01] Yeah I don't believe that it's a it's a 10 plus one problem we'll just to sweep sweep past.

Jason:
[1:07] Yeah it's the twenties as far as I'm concerned so.
Yes but it has already happened I nailed our intro despite the fact that we typed 2019 in the show notes.

Scot:
[1:22] Azle Easter I got them there for you you found it.

Jason:
[1:25] Yeah I was I felt I felt special about myself that I was able to fix that on the Fly.

Scot:
[1:32] Who said the most important question is have you been able to see the new Star Wars movie.

Jason:
[1:36] Oh my God Scott I've been thinking about you nonstop because yes I got to see the new Star Wars movie and obviously we'll will be spoiler-free but I I was totally happy with it and enjoyed it.

Scot:
[1:48] Yeah yeah me too weird thing happen to me where I've gotten to where I kind of like the Mandalorian almost better than the movies so I don't know.

Jason:
[1:57] So here's why I've been thinking about you nonstop my 4 year old is now both feet in on Star Wars everything.

Scot:
[2:06] Good quality parenting right there.

Jason:
[2:08] So we wouldn't want some of the movies there's a ton of like kid-friendly Star Wars content you probably knew all about this but there's like the Lego movies and cartoons and all this different stuff,
and like for Hanukkah he got a lightsaber which he has not been separated from since and.

Scot:
[2:27] Nice.

Jason:
[2:27] We got a bunch of Star Wars books including I got him,
like a graphic novel version of episodes for 5 and 6 and so now every night as part of our bedtime ritual he's his down with me and we we you know read us a segment from the book.

Scot:
[2:46] Give us your Darth Vader voice.

Jason:
[2:48] Yeah I'm not doing any voices on the podcast sorry.

Scot:
[2:53] Baby geek I am your father.

Jason:
[2:55] Exactly I have said that exact phrase tan.
The what's super funny is my wife and I like you have enjoyed Mandalorian and we were watching it one night and Stephen King in like you should have been asleep and it came in and saw I like.
30 seconds of Mandalorian which we have not let him watch Mandalorian but Steven is totally 100% fixated on Mandalorian.
So he's already convinced that mandalorians are way better than Jedis.
Like the only character he likes from all of the previous Star Wars work is now Boba Fett and he like he brings them up and every contact and we're like.
You seen 32nd.

Scot:
[3:44] Team Honda.

Jason:
[3:47] Anything he's like he's like four and he's asking like.
Like when he sees Yoda in like Clone Wars he's asking like how is he only a baby in Mandalorian.

Scot:
[3:59] You have time like it's really confusing.

Jason:
[4:05] Star Wars is super confusing to explain to a four year old white guy because you start with the premise that like the bad guys have red lightsabers in the good guys have other colors and then like,
it's only Don's I knew that all the bad guys used to be good guys and then become good guys again and so I.
It's super like that Santa can that it yeah yeah it's a very convoluted but suffice it to say there's a bunch of Mandalorian and baby Yoda posters up in his room and he's like we're leaving in a Mandalorian World which just makes me think of you.

Scot:
[4:37] Regal Walden toys are coming out so that it's going to be exciting in the next couple of weeks are all the they held them because they didn't want to spoil some of the plot elements of Mandalorian soon there's a big wave of toys coming so it's good time.

Jason:
[4:50] I know and in fact a bunch of entrepreneurial people because they did not release baby Yoda toys during the show because they were trying to prove your point keep him Secret.
So everybody and their brother started making baby Yoda toys and like there's been like you know a huge intellectual property Crackdown and there's like you know hundreds of people from Etsy that have been.
Don the cease-and-desist orders over that.

Scot:
[5:17] Speaking of toys I saw on Twitter that you were going to try to hit one of the new Toys R Us did you make it to him.

Jason:
[5:24] I did I am wearing a button right now that says I don't want to grow up I'm a Toys R Us kid.
Because I went to the Houston store a few days after it open so there's,
Tyreke and for our listeners like Toys R Us went bankrupt or done at super sad huge disruption in the toy industry,
a company bought the the intellectual property of Toys R Us and they did a partnership with beta who's been on the show a couple times,
the open initially to Toys R Us stores so there's one in New Jersey and there's one in Houston Texas.
So I got to go to the Houston Texas one and it was fun it was fun to see the brand,
back alive and reimagined then it was a you know it's very different than a Toys R Us a traditional Toys R Us store because these are.
Kind of 20,000 square foot Mall base toy stores versus.
80000 square foot big box toy stores but it was a fun immersive retail environment with a bunch of toys and,
this mall which is a a mall Scott like a week before Christmas felt like a ghost town to me like it was.
Tragically empty but I would argue the Toys R Us with the second busiest store in the in the whole mall and.

[6:49] Behind Apple you're exactly right side note people are only in the Apple store to get tech support but still.
But this one was really busy and people like had made a special trip just to go in like the brand is so strong so it looks like these first two stores are doing pretty well and I know there's a plan to open more so
kudos to them for saving the brand and beta for doing a pretty good toy execution.

Scot:
[7:16] Nice the so
thanks for the trip report this is our annual recap and he's always run long so I think we should just jump right on into it so being the first show of the decade and the year
it is our custom I guess we've done this for fact,
to do an annual prediction and then Square ourselves so way back in episode 159 we had our predictions,
or 2019 so I think what we'll do is score each other to start out with and then we'll put out our predictions so why don't you go to my last year predictions.

Jason:
[7:58] And before you jump and let me just say I despise this show I've had red
leading up to the show in the reason is is I've never done very well
that however will I have done I've gotten progressively worse every year and last year while I did quite poorly you did stupendous wave and so,
it's like I've dreaded even seen what my predictions were last year and hearing about them so I'm just going to rip the Band-Aid off and we'll get through the show
but your first prediction for for 2019 was that at least 5K more stores would close in 2019
and let's get this out of the way you blew away that prediction coresite which is the
company we most often use for kind of tracking Us store closures had like 9300 stores closing this year
IHL did a study in the world even more store closures than that in their in their study Dope by any measure way more than 5,000 stores closed and you know in hindsight I should have let you get away with that prediction because that's why,
it was too easy.

Scot:
[9:12] Well no I don't know if there's a lot of people saying but that was kind of going to be the worst.

Jason:
[9:19] That no so if you had said there is going to be worse than last year that would have been a slightly more predict like.
Tempstar 5000 was less than last year or this year but yeah I agree,
most people thought there be fewer closures this year than last year in that bike by depending on how you count did not prove to be the case that much more controversial thing on the whole store closures is it more
open and closed if you go by the course I track her a lot more closed than open but if you go by other studies,
that are the feel more comprehensive like they're actually were more swords that open then close so.

Scot:
[9:58] Yeah and I know the size Matters right to some of these are mattress stores which are pretty big.

Jason:
[10:04] And I whoop all a lot of the people that say way more stores open then close are also counting like restaurants and stores for example and the end restaurants have a lot of charm and so,
a lot of controversy but bottom line you started out of the gate strong you're one for one and.
Your second prediction,
you just you just jumped right into the gutter because your second prediction was that Professor Scott Galloway would basically be wrong.
Which I like as a general principle but more specifically what you're talking about is the,
an inner 9 people the climate a year ago he had just published a book about the the for one of which was Amazon so he was
he was publicly speaking about Amazon a ton and he you know was really beating a drum around having to split up Amazon and they're potentially Amazon would voluntarily spin off some of their businesses because they're so lucrative and so you know the talk to usually about 8 if you ask until your prediction was kind of
to go negative and say
you always wrong and Amazon isn't going to be split up and isn't going to voluntarily split up in any parts of their business and,
you were certainly correct none of those things happens.

Scot:
[11:28] What have I learned from this anti Galloway bet is that he throws out so many things he gets one right and then looks like a genius show his we work one with hit.
The bus was other ones didn't put the he's ridden the we work one for a good six months.

Jason:
[11:43] Yep yeah I feel like he the first one that hit for him that really like you know he made a lot of hay en was predicting Whole Foods would be acquired by Amazon and then yeah he was instrumental in that kind of picking the,
he was an early picker of the we were demise the pressure point
he also predicted Amazon would acquire a bunch of other people besides Whole Foods that they didn't in my favorite prediction is about 3 years ago he said that Amazon had peaked in that you should short the stock.

Scot:
[12:14] I would not have been good.

Jason:
[12:16] Side note yeah that would turned out not to be good investment advice.
So yeah for your point like anyone in this predictions face like the whole key is to throw a bunch out and just remind people of the ones you got right and not bring up all the ones you got wrong.
But you're doing great you're two for two yeah so third prediction that.
Either or eBay and Alibaba would need to do something big in 2019,
and so you use you propose that potentially they might do some sort of joint venture or some sort of combination.
And I have to say he's got as far as I'm aware that did not happen.

Scot:
[13:03] Yeah but itself StubHub when you said that's pretty big.

Jason:
[13:09] No not relative to their socks.

Scot:
[13:11] It was Lucy 4 billion of 30 billion market cap that's more than materiality.

Jason:
[13:23] Again I'm dreading my own predictions so I'm grading you very very strictly enough so I'm going to say you're two for three right now.

Scot:
[13:35] Another thing just point out is the eBay CEO just got up and left one day if that was kind of surprised I don't know if we count that as something big happening or not there's this line with the Borden peace out.

Jason:
[13:49] Yeah need to do something big.

Scot:
[13:50] That's kind of a shot.

Jason:
[13:52] Sell the property will parts of your company and then watch the Executive Suite I don't think that was the spirit of I think you were more proposing they would do something that would help them reacquired growth.

Scot:
[14:05] Yeah but another thing I didn't anticipate us this anti-china thing that we have going on here right now so the tariffs were one thing but there's just.
A lot of anti-china going on right now that I think is going to make this murderer and possible I don't think the US government would let app.

Jason:
[14:24] Yeah I think there's there are some number of entanglements there that that would be challenges there aren't there were some little Partnerships there some interesting things we like,
well I guess it's more JD and the Walmart in the US but.
Back on track your two for three and your fourth prediction was that Shopify gets Acquired and you said potentially by one of the big add bass companies like Facebook or Google +,
once again to my knowledge that did not happen are you agree or do you have a argument there as well.

Scot:
[15:03] I agree and
you know what's really amazing is if you look at kind of your your Shopify when I made this production was their stock is like at 1:44 and they were attending. Nick on all the stuff like 3x so
weather like a 1012 blade on a company now they're $47 company
they're pretty much on acquirable I think at that price and then the valuation multiple is extremely lucky so if you look at all the different
soccer the service companies yet uses range of like 8 to 10 x there's something like 15 to 20 x is just crazy,
good as those guys they essentially don't they will be at choir and not not a choir.

Jason:
[15:53] Totally agree there they're killing it both in terms of their their financial success and valuations but also their they're just winning in the marketplace and they're like you have continuing to capture more Greyhound away from the Enterprise guys and they're doing a bunch of interesting things
so we'll talk more about them in the future I'm sure but yeah they're a bunch of people that would like to acquire them but for your point like
there is not that's not really economically viable at this point and then number 5,
Walmart stumbles in e-commerce and I took that to mean.
That they're the rate of e-commerce growth would slow over 2018 which was pretty solid gross at like 40%.
And they actually were exactly at 40% again in 2020 so there,
they're growing very quickly they're growing faster than Amazon certainly much faster than the,
the market overall and their growth rate in 2020 or 2019 was basically the same as 2018
so like by that measure I'm not giving them a stumble in 2019 but do you you agree or was you think it was some other dimension they stumbled in.

Scot:
[17:15] Agree I probably underestimated how long they had to kind of Wind by converting grocery over but I think this year probably will give you the.

Jason:
[17:29] I feel like that's a common theme in all of our predictions ynm that I've noticed both you and I are sort of afraid to double down and be like wrong one year and then say say it again the next year but many of our predictions come true a year after we predicted.

Scot:
[17:43] Lyrics the Alexa are pause airpods I did like 2 years and then it came up here I didn't God darn it.

Jason:
[17:49] Exactly which is frustrating yes so being super brutal you ended up 245 which is way off your your historic average.

Scot:
[18:02] Yeah I usually bat 500 but it wasn't wasn't there this year I mean on the stuff I feel like e-commerce slow down a little bit.

Jason:
[18:13] Oh no I for sure feel like it has and I do think.

Scot:
[18:16] But the pace of innovation is really slowing which is makes up makes it harder to throw out big predictions.

Jason:
[18:21] Yeah I also feel like
it is this point like it's the timing of many things is tougher to predict than the actual events themselves and the Horizon is now longer than a year for your point so that's
that's that another challenge with this whole predictions thing but I'm not remotely confident that I didn't any better so so
with no further Ado let's let's see how I did.

Scot:
[18:51] Yes yes so your prediction so let's jump into this the first one is you were very giddy you probably had just visited three or four of the Amazon stores and you said look
I am sure this can be over a thousand Amazon physical stores by the end of the year
so I think.
Whole Foods helps a lot here in this is there were there were a bunch of Articles out there that Amazon was going to because Wall Street Journal that they're going to have,
thousands of Stories the right now we're sitting in about five to six hundred so you got Whole Foods
500 Whole Foods there's some pop upstairs for Stars book stores throw all that together you get sky like 555 75
so that's a pretty big Miss 57% is f on any grading scale so sorry I did not get that.

Jason:
[19:53] Yeah no I'll be honest I thought,
perhaps Amazon go with scale and much more you were generous that they were actually a lot more pop-up stores the last year they closed most of the pop-up store so it's possible there's fewer Stars this year than they were last year of you
if you included those so yeah I wildly miss that in the only like slightly interesting thing in that in that whole thing is I feel like the one concept that has scales slightly More Than People realizes the 4-star store
so there now 15 for Star stores which is like coming up on on you know the number of bookstore so pretty soon we might have more,
more 4-star stores that we have book stores but nowhere close to a thousand I was wildly wrong.

Scot:
[20:38] What are the clothes the popups cuz I've kept an eye on them in our malls and they're pretty popular MMOs price at the.

Jason:
[20:46] Yeah yeah well you know for a while they had a ton of them in Whole Food stores,
and yeah I feel like they opened a lot of them in places where they could get real estate rather than in places where.
Where there was a like strategic audience need a few pop-up stores their main are some kind of interesting Concepts so that yeah I don't I don't know.

Scot:
[21:12] So that's 0 4 5 4
for those homegamers keeping track of the score then your second one and this was one where I think the timing probably is going to be what
this was on the heels of Target buying ships and here we are a year later that's gone really well you have Target,
Ecommerce accelerated they're constantly talking about how should you store is doing well and all those initiatives that if they can anchor on ship,
so your prediction was that in 2019 Walmart would buy a last-mile firm and that did not happen I think the big
idea and last-mile will there be a couple one was going to
just kind of Associates kind of on their way home free stuff and then the second one is this whole body camera thing where they're going to
pop Associates right in your house to deliver stuff I don't think that is really caught on either.

Jason:
[22:10] Yeah I know II do I agree I think they I made that prediction cuz I felt like,
that honey how stuff is really growing for them and they would need more Last Mile capacity and I still think that it is true,
I didn't foresee that last year but you know
like as whole food as a FedEx has kind of gone push the last run away from Amazon
that the company they're running to is Walmart and so we we've seen some like bigger strategic Partnerships between Walmart and FedEx and now that you know they're starting to be some some economic weakness at FedEx,
I do not want to talk about this year's predictions but that
you could almost imagine at one point that that could be an acquisition or some kind of deeper strategic partnership but nevertheless
did not happen last year.

Scot:
[23:03] So that says 045 stole your third one and I think you made a comment last year that you need to be less specific to this one's kind of interesting.
And they said there could be another big bankruptcy but then you said such as JCPenney
one of the office guys Bed Bath Beyond need and Marcus so you kind of had an ore in there or are you know we could have took her to this again.
Being generous since we're sitting here at over to there were a lot of bankruptcies so we had the seat jabri we had Forever 21.
What's rue21 was that a result 2018.

Jason:
[23:49] That might have been 18 or not sure.

Scot:
[23:51] One of the maternity stores Payless shoes and we'll see we had there was one of the mattress stores.
So there were there were some pretty high-profile bankruptcies.

Jason:
[24:07] I'm taking the win but in hindsight like that was a lame prediction like of course somebody's going to go bankrupt every year so if you're not specific at Tulane prediction and if you are specific the names I mentioned.
I still am taking the win and I would point out like the one that gets talked about the most which is actually one of the smaller ones is Barney's was like the,
start a story brand that went bankrupt and I know the one that almost doesn't get talked about but was most crushing and near and dear to your heart is sugarfina.

Scot:
[24:37] Yeah. Steer.
Okay so your fourth prediction.

Jason:
[24:44] Wait wait let's recap the score I'm now one of the three.
Infinitely improved over over the previous two.

Scot:
[24:50] Yeah yeah
you're all on at are two more to make up some some room here so your fourth prediction was that mobile Commerce Revenue would pass desktop and lessors of the show know you are a big fan of pwa
which is not a rap band it's some kind of a technology for mobile stuff and also the new payment apis and some of the other stuff you thought we're going to close the mobile,
I'll defer to you since you're the guru on this didn't did you.

Jason:
[25:21] Yeah did we mention that that e-commerce is slowing down a lot,
none of those things happened at near the scale that I thought they would end so for sure no
mobile Revenue did not pass desktop revenue and I I thought I could like save face and say well that didn't happen
it did happen on the big shopping days
bright like so you know you could kind of make try to make an argument that oh I totally happened on December Monday or things like that but the reality is even over the holiday. If you'll get November through December,
60% of all revenue happened on desktop 35% of Revenue on mobile and 5% on tablet so bottom line I wasn't even close.
Sad.

Scot:
[26:12] Yep sorry dude so let's see that gives us one out of four,
all right last chance on number 5 on this one,
Scot of one of your anti predictions you said following things are going to be fads and not take off voice Commerce AI That's customer-facing social commerce virtual reality and boxing.

Jason:
[26:38] Yeah and again not a very awesome prediction but I'm going to take the win on that and say that those things are all we're all basically feds at least in 2019,
the one that feels like it's trying to get some traction and some some aspects of social commerce but but I would still argue they weren't like.
Meaningful in 2019.

Scot:
[27:02] If I give you that one.

Jason:
[27:03] Yeah I'm desperate for I'm desperate for a win that would give me the 22052 at least IU.

Scot:
[27:08] Yeah yeah and then you threw out because you're you're Jason you just couldn't stop at 5
got a Bonus and you said Amazon is going to breakout Prime Revenue you're really specific I had to go back and listen.
Cuz I had a feeling you're kind of get a little slippery on it so Amazon has not broken out that's that's a no.

Jason:
[27:31] Yeah what really happened is I misspoke what I meant to say is that callonwood breakout primary.
For Amazon and I yeah I said it wrong.

Scot:
[27:43] Yeah but since I was a bonus will you know we won't
we won't count it so it's practically a tie this year so which is to me that's a loss cuz over the over the The Arc typically beat me by three or four answers.

Jason:
[27:59] And so it would be a win for me but since you basically came down to my level it doesn't I don't think it feels good for either of us but at least.

Scot:
[28:06] What are you get better.

Jason:
[28:07] At least we've established our credibility now so I'm sure it was on the edge of their seats to hear our wise predictions for next year now that we've shown how I'm nipotent we are.

Scot:
[28:17] We're going to rebound to I can feel it go do you want to join to do yours first.

Jason:
[28:22] No I want to hear you're so I can potentially use them.

Scot:
[28:27] Yep so here's my five predictions so I mentioned earlier that Shopify is kind of gone up 3x in a year that just feels you know,
very nose bleeding to me and there's a lot of new competition coming out so I think whenever you have a value creation event like that where they've essentially created 45 billion dollars out of town are there could be a lot of money chasing Shopify,
I don't know what their weaknesses but every company always has one so it's going to be interesting to see,
what comes after them what angles they come after and all that good stuff so that's that's my prediction is that they're going to wilt a bit and you know I'll put a.

[29:14] I need to put something more specific there I'll say they did kind of stay at this market cap or go down
10% somewhere between kind of here in temperature I don't think there's going to be another kind of like huge run up type your and it's going to be largely
your folks waking up to say wait there is competition out there for this business model.
But you don't think that doesn't get talked about this to turn just has to be like through the roof right so just on a unit turn to have to just be turning tons of customers and now in a cohort,
it probably is its revenue for the cohort pipe the GMB for the cohort crime makes up and then that's what drives the revenue,
overtime it just feels like there's going to be sup Rider light shown on part of their business model that isn't,
this kind of perfect kind of price for protection company.

Jason:
[30:09] No I would agree with that I do think that maybe the one thing that that mitigates that a little bit is they are starting to successfully go upmarket a bit and get like some slightly more.
Stables lower turn customers with higher gym be so so maybe that balance is out in the long run.

Scot:
[30:29] Yeah it's like a million at the base of the pyramid though and it takes a lot at the top of the pyramid.

Jason:
[30:35] It just takes one Kylie Jenner.

Scot:
[30:37] That last.
That's my first prediction my second one and another prediction we would kind of I can't remember which was did that for a long time is part of me just like the earpods I was saying,
Amazon will get into delivery that is,
that would be a double a man because it sucks such an obvious once and for the longest time FedEx UPS said no no no there are partner or not our competitor
the bloom is totally off that one right now where was like okay this is bad in fact you mentioned earlier FedEx is like getting hammered over this
and so did Amazon kind of dug the knife in further where they won't even let seller fulfilled Prime sellers use FedEx because they say the service level isn't good enough.

Jason:
[31:32] Yeah you talk about throwing some holiday shade.

Scot:
[31:34] Ouch ouch so as a result of FedEx is under a lot of pressure right now and I think it's going to cause some kind of interesting thing to happen
you know you got eBay out there kind of rudderless right now you could see FedEx eBay you could see you mention Walmart I think there's going to be some interesting,
kind of marriage that happens with FedEx in and it's can be driven from the world of e-commerce.

Jason:
[32:04] Get I like that one.

Scot:
[32:06] Predictions for 3 this is not my forte but there's just a lot of Buzz around returns so there's several startups you could probably write them better than I can save Mall.
BCS contact me about this which means it must be like just kind of,
yeah they're all trying to solve returns problems and there's all kinds of clever ways of doing this of no Consolidated return centers different ways of managing the supply chain that kind of thing so I'm going to say 2020 will be the year where
you know they're just probably be some kind of a winner that emerges from that and they'll be kind of like ShopRunner has try to do and not to successfully the offer a prime and
a network of retailers that form an alternative prime one of these startups will be successful and I guess I'll Define it as.
Raising over a hundred million something like that something that's like pretty pretty.
Obvious that their leader they'll be pretty successful in in kind of taking a run at offering an on Amazon,
multi retailer multi-brand approached returns.

Jason:
[33:25] So that's funny I wrote a similar prediction I didn't end up using it because I thought it was two wonky but I
totally agree with the sentiment it does like I think it's returns it become a huge acute problem and so you know we're seeing lots of new investments in the hole
reverse Logistics base to try to solve it so it that that seems reasonable although somebody raising a hundred million dollars is not peanuts so the so I like your.
You're taking a stance.

Scot:
[33:58] That's my third and fourth one is a keeping with my mall again which has been a winner for for two years in a row I'm going to say you know what you call 9000 store closures in 2019
it's a good start. So I think we're going to have many more store closures I'm going to say at least eight thousand so continuing to keep,
about the same as last year if not more I think we are going to see,
I just feels like we're still over stored in a lot of different categories like drug stores that kind of stuff so I put that one out there.

[34:34] And then this one this is one of these I've made a long time and I'm always wrong but I've some reason I'm back to it this year I just finally believe
Google has is waking up to the Amazon Fred and and starting ticket much more seriously now they're there,
terrible branding job at it but I think execution wise there is something there they have this Marketplace which is essentially called shopping Google shopping.
Actions and you know the sink,
they're getting pretty serious about it and I think this year they're going to get really really serious about it so what's that mean so I think I think.
Overall I think I could see them actually in the hunt to buy an eBay or FedEx or something like that that could be interesting
and then you know another one is the shopping actions is it's always just been this kind of on the edge like well a little Beyond 2% of
Android latest Android lollipop popsicle
Twix and yes it is a being like percent of a percent of a percent and not Material so so I'm thinking they get pretty serious about it meaning it's going to get a lot of exposure I'm on
not only just some fraction of Android but across all Google properties.

Jason:
[35:59] So I like it how like what were you cancel BC to know that that that happened like you expect them to be like I'd top 100 retailer like what would what's the.

Scot:
[36:11] I think yeah I think 10% of shopping traffic going through it would be material so I would come start there.

Jason:
[36:20] Oh wow yeah that's quite mature okay.

Scot:
[36:22] And I would look at like search marketing as someone like the referee on this search marketing.
Was that search engine land or one of those.

Jason:
[36:31] Ya SE land.com.
At least to get the ball rolling you know the last month they announced Bill ready who is that executive PayPal is the new,
like VP of Commerce a Google so they like they haven't a new person to sort of weed that initiative so that maybe bodes well for your prediction.

Scot:
[36:53] Yeah I worry about it because these payments guys want you when you've been in the payments world everything looks like a nail so so I worry we're going to get Google pay 8.0 embossing.

Jason:
[37:07] So yeah supposedly and I I don't know but I think he's got some non-competes and supposably like is being hired explicitly not to get involved in pain.

Scot:
[37:17] I did not know that.

Jason:
[37:19] So maybe that will benefit you.

Scot:
[37:23] Let's we can only hope.

Jason:
[37:24] Yes yes I like it though.

Scot:
[37:27] All right those are my five what are your five.

Jason:
[37:29] Awesome duck so my first one is I'm just going to take yours from last year and protect them for this year.
Thinking of you just missed the timing and given all the ones that that have happened the past that's my new strategy so last year you predicted it Walmart,
would would have a hiccup in 2019 so I'm going to say in 2020 is the year that the Walmart rate of growth slows down and I don't,
actually mean that that,
is a distressing anyway I just think sometime this year they're going to finish rolling out online grocery pick-up to all of their stores and they're going to have to comp against,
stores that were opened last year where has for the last few years they've had this benefit of opening a bunch of stores and going from zero to some,
some big number of digital grocery so I think it's going to be much tougher to maintain that 40% growth rate so I expect that growth rate to go down,
which is enough kind of natural and then I'll throw out a wacky one and say I also actually think that this might be the year that Mark Laurie exits from Walmart.

[38:43] Just think like,
that he's probably been there awhile like we weave you know started to see some of hit a lot of the jet people have,
kind of transitioned out now Andy Dunn has transitioned out that the guy has basically unlimited funds in the bank like I think he may just be like he's accomplished with what he can accomplish it at Walmart and we we might see a Changing of the Guard.

Scot:
[39:08] Did Nadal Ray say that he had like four years to make a trillion dollars but so it feels like they're being expensive choice.

Jason:
[39:18] Yeah I think it will be a I think he could afford an expensive choice I don't know how that would all work out like I could imagine him to go shooting some sort of payout,
it made sense for both parties will see.

Scot:
[39:35] Is that a nand or nor.

Jason:
[39:37] Yeah so I want my official prediction to be that the rate of growth slows but if Mark Lori does away this year I want permission to go. Galloway and just like launch a website that's called Jason predicted that Mark would we.

Scot:
[39:52] Got it so it's amore with the Galloway Asterix.

Jason:
[39:56] It's the color its color exactly.
So then my next permit prediction again following the trend that I like to always you always make some Amazon prediction so I'm going to steal that and.
How to be honest like part of me feels like this is too easy and not a very controversial prediction but so many things don't happen that that like I do think it's fair
I think this is the year that Amazon finally opens its own grocery concept bike separate from Whole Foods and I think it's going to be
targeted at a more affordable price points and I think it's going to dramatically heat up the sort of digital grocery Wars and most notably,
the Walmart Amazon Kroger battles.

Scot:
[40:44] Cool.

Jason:
[40:46] So number three is that I think we're going to see a lot more emphasis and talk about
owned Brands this year and that's going to significantly grow as a part of retail so last year about 5% of all retail goods were,
like private label type products and I think it could be dramatically bigger in 2020 I think it could be sort of in that 8 to 10% range.
Which would be a huge disruption in the retail Marketplace.

Scot:
[41:19] What's your data source.

Jason:
[41:21] The 5% is actually 4.6%
and I will have to I do have to get my intern to pull it out
but that's predominantly focused on like the cpg and grocery
space so it's one of those those Data Tracking companies but I'll find it for you.

Scot:
[41:47] So it's not Jason Goldberg go to himself.

Jason:
[41:49] No no no I we need a credible we need a credible external.

Scot:
[41:53] Is a data point out there were on the lam purses.

Jason:
[42:00] Yeah I like that one we just put it in the Echo chamber and and it'll become real.

Scot:
[42:06] That'll be interesting so that does that include digital native recall brands or this is more just like Target spending up.

Jason:
[42:17] Yeah,
so I'm primary thinking about omnichannel retailers like Shifting the focus to Brands they own rather than so like to be it's more of the the,
Captain Jack's of the world like I think Walmart's going to make a major effort to grow their own Brands Target you know me
is is putting a huge effort into their new grocery brand and I I just think,
the big macro Trend in in retailers we're going to see a couple retailers really try to can compete on,
sort of Assortment and being the everything store and then in North America to me that's Walmart and Amazon and every other retailers going to try to win by selling stuff that no one else has and so I just think that's going to result in a lot bigger,
Pechanga retail selling their own stuff instead of other people stuff.

[43:12] We shall see ya.
My fourth prediction is you know you you have on the area that there's a lot of momentum at the moment and returns and reverse Logistics another one for me is the installment payment space so I said installment payments are going to dramatically heat up
and I think that's going to result in at least one major acquisition in that space so I think like,
when I talk about installment payments I'm talking about a lot of these companies that are sort of alternative credit means a lot of them are kind of like,
Finance your purchase in for for monthly payments that kind of thing and cities are friends like affirm and afterpay and Karma and I I just think that
you know next year you see one of those acquired Maybe by a major credit card company or Bank
you know I think some of the big traditional Financial folks are going to want to own a piece of that hot space And so there's going to be some good acquisitions.

Scot:
[44:15] Who who do you think this is an addiction but I'm curious who you think the buyers are going to be like traditional like Financial folks like City or or is.

Jason:
[44:26] Yeah so I think I think the big the big Banks participating banks that have a retail credit Division if you are receiving retail credit services so you do private label credit cards for like Best Buy,
these guys are now taking a chunk of that space and and they've accomplished something that you've always wanted to do which is their built into the checkout flow
which is super valuable to these credit card issuers and so I could easily like imagine
one of those credit card firms wanting to acquire one of these guys I also think you could,
you know it could be a PayPal or,
square or you don't even like one of the big credit networks like Visa.

Scot:
[45:15] Singing payments do you have plans to move to Africa this year.

Jason:
[45:20] I was going to but I've been told that I only have one job and so I'm not qualified to to like move to Africa and remotely do my two CDL jobs.
Who would you be referring to buy a by chance.

Scot:
[45:36] So Jack Dorsey CEO of Twitter and and square
it's just kind of randomly said he's going to move to Africa for some. Of time if she can get Scott Galloway it really angered him he's very upset about.

Jason:
[45:52] Yeah but In fairness like I think of you a shit like Square in particular you're like,
why is my guys been in a lot of his time on this Twitter thing and then now he's going to do it from Africa like that that would seems like,
that would be a legitimate reason to have some concern.

Scot:
[46:12] Yeah yeah yeah.

Jason:
[46:14] Yep I would love to visit Africa but I think it would be on vacation and then my V prediction.
Is one that I feel like I used to do all the time and then you know I skipped a year,
so what will try it again I think this is going to be a year that digital in-store really heats up and the surprising piece of that is
this much-maligned a technology that people in our industry like to make jokes about the the ugly QR code I think is going to make a
a major comeback at retail and we'll see a bunch of of a Retailer's deployed QR codes for various forms of mobile wallets and particularly for like,
letting you scan products and read reviews and things like that ends in retail stores.
So those are my five and then.

Scot:
[47:08] DuckTales risky people hate QR you want a visceral hatred of York.

Jason:
[47:12] Yeah I feel like it's it's a bit of sneaky success I feel like there's a lot of people but they're pregnant primarily pendants that like have all this negativity around the QR code but didn't secretly you know.
There there's a bunch of of use cases where the QR codes have been like Paramount like it's,
it's you know a huge chunk of all payments at Starbucks and it's Walmart pay which is secretly been a success and it's you know it's it's Snapchat and if you go to China it's everywhere is WeChat so,
so hopefully we'll see you by usually I am dead wrong in these things so I am not overly confident about any of them but.
But I'm at least throwing it out there and again because the bonus is always treated me so well I thought I would throw a bonus in this year.

Scot:
[48:03] What do you have for this year.

Jason:
[48:06] So my bonus is I'm just going straight negative because I'll be honest when I first read these forecasts all five of my forecasts are things that we're not going to happen and then I realized
that I can't I can't be that guy right so so I tried to make more optimistic reasonable forecast but then I reserve the right to point out all of the Ebenezer Scrooge bah humbug,
moments so here's my long list of things that are not going to happen this year cashierless retail stores like Amazon go blockchain
5G big data and personalization none of those those Technologies are going to have a major impact on retail Talking Heads are going to go crazy about them and write stories about how you know if you don't do it immediately you're going to go out of business,
but I think they're going to be the examples of success are going to be few and far between I don't think,
everyone loves to talk about DJ need a vertical Brands but I don't think any of those are going to break out in a be particularly successful in 2020,
I for sure don't think we're going to see any major retail antitrust actions in the US.

[49:11] So that would be my negative Scott Galloway prediction I also don't think the the brick-and-mortar marketplace stores
so that's beta showfields neighborhood Goods I don't think they're going to have a huge success or break out in 2020 and Shop of eyes getting a lot of Buzz right now but the the,
thing I hear most about Shopify is that they're going to become a viable competitor for Amazon and I actually don't think they're going to compete with Amazon at all in 2020.

Scot:
[49:42] Yeah that the people that say they can compete feel like they think it Shopify would have some front door kind of marketplace Tech experience that kind of what you think people are looking.

Jason:
[49:54] There's people that talk about maybe they aggregate traffic and have some kind of marketplace experience where you could shop across multiple vendors you know they they bought a logistics company this year in the rapidly building out there with just aches and on paper that looks like,
fulfillment by Amazon and some people are like oh that's competing with a fulfillment by Amazon but as I as we said earlier in the show I admire Shopify think they're making a bunch of the right decisions and they're doing really well.
None of the services they provide to a client in my mind.
Replace or compete with any of the services Amazon provides in anyway and like,
I think they're for the most part synergistic in there they're going to have a lot of customer overlap but it's the end of the day
Amazon is in the business of generating a huge amount of traffic and monetizing that traffic and they sell that traffic to their customers
and that's exactly the opposite of what Shopify does Shopify does everything for you but get you any traffic whatsoever and you are totally responsible for bringing your own traffic and so I just think,
that's a that's a,
both sides of that strategy makes sense for both companies but I just I think all the pendants that are like oh you know the secret competitor for Amazon's going to turn out to be Shopify I just don't see it.

Scot:
[51:15] Any other bonuses you want though there.

Jason:
[51:21] No no no no I think I press my luck enough
hopefully that you know there's some nuggets in their our listeners will be able to use they shake their 2020 and that will be able to redeem ourselves when we unquestionably
I enter the new decade next January.

Scot:
[51:43] Yeah you know what
maybe it would be fun as if listeners I'm just doing this off-the-cuff so what if listeners wanted to add some and we could kind of like aggregate
some of the better ones in and talk about them on the next show but then also when we do the recap see what had a third competitor which of these listeners and see how they do against you.

Jason:
[52:05] Yeah that's a great idea because I it's it's kind of boring coming in second so I feel like third would be that's why I've been to just.

Scot:
[52:14] Looks like it would feel better if it smells cancer.

Jason:
[52:17] Fair enough. So maybe I try to take only the worst products that be funny I try to cherry-pick the worst predictions and then it still be me
so yeah I'm totally in on that if listeners want to
jump on to Facebook and we leave any of their own predictions or hit us up on Twitter will be happy to aggregate them put them in the show notes and include them in our recap next year
and that's going to be a great final call to action because it's happen again we've used up our a lot of time so definitely love to hear all of our listeners predictions and also feel free if you just think,
Scott and I are crazy
and you want to refute any of our predictions we'd love to hear your thinking behind that and as always the beginning of the year before you get really busy at work is a perfect time to jump on iTunes and finally give us that five star review.

Scot:
[53:10] Things are running Jason congrats on salvaging a tie out this year.

Jason:
[53:15] Thanks very much it it it it feels good to be West behind than I usually am thanks everyone for listening and until next time happy commercing.

Dec 13, 2019

EP203 - Shopper insights from NPD Checkout

NPD Checkout is a product from NPD that scan physical and digital receipts from a panel of more than 100,000 users to get a unique look into consumer purchase patterns in a variety of product categories.

Jeremy Allen, Group President of Checkout, and Patty Altman, SVP Client and Business Development at Checkout join us to discuss what we can learn about the holiday from their dataset.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 203 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday November 16th, 2019.

Dec 6, 2019

Support the Show:

The Jason & Scot Show as been nominated for "Best Retail Media Resource" by the VIP awards.  We'd appreciate your support, if you could take a minute to vote for us.

Adobe Recap

Taylor Schreiner is the Director of Adobe Digital Insights. He uses Adobe's data to give us a recap of the Cyber 5 (the five shopping days from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, this year Nov 29 - Dec 2).

Adobe Holiday Dashboard

  • Thanksgiving  11/28 - $4.2B (up 14.5% YoY) below forecast of $4.4B
  • Black Friday 11/29 - $7.4B (up 19.6% YoY) below forecast of $7.5B
  • Saturday - 11/30 - $3.6B (Up 18% YoY) at forecast
  • Sunday - 12/1 - $3.8B
  • Monday - 12/2 - $9.4B (up 19.7% YoY) at forecast

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 202 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday December 4th, 2019.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Dec 4, 2019

Support the Show:

The Jason & Scot Show as been nominated for "Best Retail Media Resource" by the VIP awards.  We'd appreciate your support, if you could take a minute to vote for us.

Adobe Recap

Taylor Schreiner is the Director of Adobe Digital Insights. He uses Adobe's data to give us a recap of the Cyber 5 (the five shopping days from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, this year Nov 29 - Dec 2).

Adobe Holiday Dashboard

  • Thanksgiving  11/28 - $4.2B (up 14.5% YoY) below forecast of $4.4B
  • Black Friday 11/29 - $7.4B (up 19.6% YoY) below forecast of $7.5B
  • Saturday - 11/30 - $3.6B (Up 18% YoY) at forecast
  • Sunday - 12/1 - $3.8B
  • Monday - 12/2 - $9.4B (up 19.7% YoY) at forecast

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 202 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday December 4th, 2019.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Dec 3, 2019

EP201 - Cyber5 2019 Hot Take

Cyber 5 is the five shopping days from Black Friday through Cyber Monday (this year Nov 29 - Dec 2).  

Adobe Recap

Adobe Holiday Dashboard
(note: numbers updated after show was recorded)

  • Thanksgiving  11/28 - $4.2B (up 14.5% YoY) below forecast of $4.4B
  • Black Friday 11/29 - $7.4B (up 19.6% YoY) below forecast of $7.5B
  • Saturday - 11/30 - $3.6B (Up 18% YoY) at forecast
  • Sunday - 12/1 - Not reported
  • Monday - 12/2 - $9.4B (up 19.7% YoY) at forecast

We'll have an Adobe analyst on next week to break down results.

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 201 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Monday December 2nd, 2019.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Nov 26, 2019

EP200 - Walmart Chief Customer Officer Janey Whiteside 

Episode 200 is our 4 year anniversary, featuring an interview with Janey Whiteside, EVP and Chief Customer Officer at Walmart.

Anniversary Recap

Janey Whiteside Interview 
(Timecode 6:34)

In this wide-ranging interview, we cover many topics, including:

  • Janey's background at Amex
  • The role of Chief Customer Officer at Walmart
  • Doing things at Walmart Scale
  • What does digital mean at Walmart
  • Private Label
  • Amazon
  • Challenges and opportunities of value focus
  • Innovation
  • The future of retail

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 200 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday October 9th, 2019.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Nov 21, 2019

EP199 - Dreamforce and Retail Earnings

Episode 199 covers the 2019 Dreamforce Conference as well as this weeks news including Walmart and Target earnings reports..

Dreamforce

Salesforce held their annual Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco this week.  They launched a major new functionality "Customer 360 Truth" a universal customer data platform.

Singles Day - 11.11 Day - $38.38 billion US (up 26% YoY)

Earnings Reports

Other News

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Episode 199 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday November 21st, 2019.

Nov 12, 2019

EP198 - Holiday Forecasts

 

A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 198 covers the 2019 holiday forecasts, store visits, and news.

Reviews

Jason & Scot both received the new Apple AirPods Pro and the Amazon Echo Buds.  Both liked the Apple product better.  Echo buds had better noise cancelation, but an inferior fit/design, poor microphone, and a case that’s too big for a pocket.

Trip Reports

  • Nordstrom NYC Flagship
  • Amazon Bookstore remodels and FourStar
  • Showfields
  • Macy’s new Story display 
  • Starbucks Pickup Only location

News

Holiday Forecasts

NRF

Nov-Dec excludes automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurant

3.8% – 4.2% over 2018 to a total of between $727.9 billion and $730.7 billion (vs 2.1% last year, or 3.7% last 5 years).

AlixPartners

November-January

Total Retail increase of 4.4% to 5.3% 

Deloitte:

November – January

Total sales are expected to exceed $1.1 trillion 

Total Retail 4.5% to 5% rise in 2019 (vs. 3.1% last year)

Digital $144-$149B 14-18% growth (up from 11.2% in 2018)

Kantar

Oct-Dec

Total Retail 3.8% (vs. 3.1% last year)

Online 14% vs 10.8% last year

Salesforce

November 1 to December 31

Digital revenue growth this holiday season at 13% YoY to 4136B

Hub: https://www.salesforce.com/solutions/industries/retail/holiday-insights

Adobe

Nov-Dec

14.1% increase online (totaling $143.7B)

MetaForecast (summary of the forecasts):

14.25% Online  (range is 13-18%) 

4.35% Total Retail (range is 3.7% – 5.3%) – last yr was 2.1%

Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 196 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday November 7th, 2019.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Nov 8, 2019

EP197 - Personalization Deep Dive

This episode is a deep dive into Personalization.

  • Definition and Level Setting
  • Best Commerce Practices
  • Future Opportunities
  • Conclusion and Recommendations

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 197 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Monday, September 30. 2019.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Nov 4, 2019

EP196 - Apple Flagship, News, and Listener Questions

 

A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 1946 covers a visit to Apple's new flagship on 5th Ave in NYC, recent industry news, and listener questions.

Apple 5th Ave Flagship Reopens

News

  • 2019 Holiday season has 6 fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas
  • Credit card companies release new e-commerce payment flow EMV SRC 
  • Best Buy moves to one-day delivery
  • Nordstrom opens New York Flagship
  • Barneys Bankruptcy
  • eBay, Nike, and Underarmour get new CEO's
  • Google Shopping flash sale and ‘buy on google’

Listener Questions

Q1: Michelle Grant - Amazon and Walmart have patents around predictive shipping. Could you speculate on what impact predictive shipping will have on commerce? You mentioned it in episode 187, but it would be great to get more details.

Q2: Holly Marie Pfeifer What’s the future look like for personalization with ITP cracking down on Safari and talks about Google being close behind in restricting third party cookies?

Q3: Jeff Vogl I saw Jason’s question to Tobi about performance and PWAs, do you see them actually sticking? I know they “hot” right now, but how many PWAs do either of you have on your phone? Of those, besides Amazon, how many do you really use? Seems like something that works for the Amazons and Nordstrom’s of the world, but do you see it as a mid market reality?

Q4: Karri Koivuniemi Any new info regarding what Adobe is doing with the Magento? What's your brief take on the current ecom platform landscape?

Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 196 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday October 24th, 2019.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

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