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Welcome to the Json and Scott show this is episode 330 being recorded on Tuesday September 30th that’s a lot of threes

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I’m your host Jason retail gee Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scott Wingo.

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Hey Jason and welcome back Json and Scott show listeners if this episode sounds a little different to you it’s because Jason and I are in the same room which hasn’t happened I asked our,

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analyst team which includes chatgpt.

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The Json and Scott show historian.

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Yes and the historian said that our last episode recorded live was episode

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292 which was came out on June 13th 2022 so it’s been 3 years um since we did a live 1 and that was about I think we’re at shop talk back then 1 of the,

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the shutter.

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Which might have been in the same venue as probably in in.

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Have been in the Mandalay Bay you never know.

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Yeah we we are in a fancy suite and I feel like we have we’ve recorded before in fancy we get invited in nice places.

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We do I’m having vuja de
yeah yeah the and another note I don’t know if you realize but a lot of people say how long have you guys been doing this and I looked that up

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our first episode dropped on November 14th

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2015 where we talked about the first singles day which this crazy company in China called Alibaba had come up with this clever way of promoting themselves so that,

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we are coming up dangerously close on a 10 year anniversary doing this.

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I know it’s it’s remarkable to think about I don’t.

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It feels like 20 years I kept I kept saying in my head it actually started earlier because I have this whole story we were on the shop.org board and but then this like actually having a good bit after that.

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Yeah
yeah uh I felt old back then but we were totally Young.

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But yeah I think we’re getting younger now though we got Benjamin where Benjamin Button podcasters.

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I like it.

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So we have a thousand things to catch up it’s something about 2 months.

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Going to be a 6 hour show.

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Well I made sure that we did this when you were hungry so we have a time box of how long you can.

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Before I get hangry before hungry goes to hangry okay.

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Yep so I’m going to give it like 30 to 40 minutes.

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All right I’ll let you be the judge.

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So we could we could do some speed rounds so I had on the topics here the cover so first of all it’s been 60 days and you’ve been to about 820 places so I want to get any kind of updates on that

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and then we actually went to 2 different shows we could talk about I went to retail Club

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and then you went to someone something in Paris that was so fancy I can’t even say the name of it.

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Yeah it’s really tricky it’s called um NRF Europe.

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There you go yes in a you Europe yeah so I want to hear what all is going on in Europe so let’s start there so how was internet Europe.

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Yeah so this is the first year of interf having a show in Europe uh obviously they’ve had Big Show here in the US for.

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Is it like a franchise with the Big Show or a totally different vibe.

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No it totally is uh so big show is a 100 years old which is crazy to think about.

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I know it’s not replacing Big Show but yeah.

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And so then last year they did a Asia show they did a show in Singapore um which
shockingly you and I were not invited to I don’t believe,

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yeah but I here by all accounts it was just excellent and well attended and so they’re now trying to have a show on the 3 big continents so they’re trying to have a show on Europe and so the first year was in Paris which is as you know the mothership for my,

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my corporate over awards at pubis.

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Ah I see why you went.

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Uh well it was.

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Now to see you rub elbow.

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Yeah yeah yeah so I had some clients that were interested in going so we we all went together and got a chance to speak on the stage and I would say for the first year of a show,

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it was it was impressive like the if I dropped you in the middle of the trade show for

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you would have felt very familiar there were quite a few vendors that were like pretty you know big robust booths there were a lot of attendees perusing and learning new stuff,

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they’re probably there were some good stage content there was probably less tracks than say a Big Show in New York um,

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I would I would say like for the first year of a show it was super impressive.

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Cool did it have 8000 Brazilians.

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They did not there were a lot of foreign languages,

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1 of which was English um but yeah 1 of the challenges you know Everyone likes to always think of Europe as a place and it really isn’t right like and and so particularly in retail,

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there’s big retailers in Germany that don’t do business in France or England and so you you know you had a lot of attendees that were,

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like very regionalized and so in some.

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And European.

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Yeah yeah and so you know poor if you’re an exhibitor which you and I both made a living as exhibitors in the past,

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you know you have to have 3 different language speakers that at least in the booth and.

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Good news is all these people in Europe can speak multiple languages I don’t know how they do it I can speak barely speak English.

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Yes I believe my boss speaks about 5 languages better than I speak 1 which is annoying.

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Yep and then did did you do content or you were there more on the spectating side.

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No so I did a a session on the the big stage with the the chief experience officer from Sam’s Club,

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so Diana Marshall so she’s awesome
she she owns all customer experience at at their clubs and so she had her team came we did a retail Safari we visited a bunch of uh retail in France,

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and we had a fancy dinner with my boss at our corporate headquarters the pubis corporate headquarters is 33 Shams to a it’s a.

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Oh very nice that sounds fancy.

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Yeah it’s a pretty prestigious retail shop and we we actually do run a shop there we have store called pubis drugstore that we’ve been running since 1954.

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Wow any
JS cargo
or is that just cliche.

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No they so there is also a restaurant at pubis on the shanto and they do serve as escargot so yes I would probably just get a burger but you I know have a much more refined pallet.

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Les Big Mac
and.

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The deluxe there right because no.

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Yeah I can’t remember the whole thing and then uh so Sam’s isn’t in Europe so she they were just kind of bringing the US perspective.

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Yeah yeah and they are they’re in a number of other markets not Europe at the moment but yeah so they were they were going as the Learners and and sharing some of the the innovations that they’re doing there so.

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Have clubs even jumped to Europe is that a thing.

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It is a smart thing there are some clubs there’s kind of like some B2B wholesale clubs like restaurant supplies and things like that are a little more popular the,

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retail specific clubs not in the same way we have here,

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there’s a lot of retailers that are trying to add paid membership options as a step up.

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Mhm interesting,

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cool well on the retail Club this was a new show from the founders of shop talk
and grocery shop so Anil

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Christina and I forget the other 2 but the same team and it’s interesting I didn’t know that she probably knew this but when they sold that to what is it hive.

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Hi via or hi Maybe.

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Hi I don’t know how to say it so they sold those 2 shows to an event group

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or they kept underlying technology so the technology that they had to develop for the way they do apps and I’ve been in these meetups it was kind of the same platform so it had an odd familiarity to it but what they decided to do is make it kind of a,

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like a getaway or an escape type of a thing so it was a very unusual in that a it wasn’t a convention center and it was on the beach and when we were deciding if we wanted to go,

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I love different so we decided to go all in on my new company refi by and I couldn’t really Envision it until we got there but it was at Huntington Beach which was really cool and there’s a.

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Southern California.

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Yeah so it goes Pacific Coast so there’s hotels Pacific Coast Highway and then there’s like a parking lot kind of a thing in some areas

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that some areas there’s peers and stuff but there’s a little parking area there for beachgoers and then there’s a very long beach and then those

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so actually we’re on the beach we were in that little parking lot so they take over a stretch of that parking lot and they converted into a trade show with tents and all kinds of things so it was really a lot of fun it was way more,

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boutiki kind of reminded me of the very early shop talk where you know I think

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was was that like a under a thousand people and there was also that summer in RF show that had this kind of Boutique Vibe I can’t remember the.

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Like the merchandise Summit the waiter became Nexus yeah.

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Yeah yeah that where it just kind of felt like more approachable like you kind of you knew like if you knew 20 people you could kind of meet everybody that you want.

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Was there like 1 track of content so or were there multiple things going on at the same time.

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The whole thing was AI so so that’s why it was in our sweet spot but within their they did have several tracks and it was less
their whole be different part was shop talk into some extent grocery shop have largely turned into panel,

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Channel driven discussions so they were kind of like the you know not panels so there was a lot of workshops a lot of retailers presenting with vendors kind of in concert with each other type things and then there were like some expert

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areas where we could just sit and talk about different topics and I led 1 of those on you know where
it was funny they had someone.

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You had a controversial topic.

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Yeah and and you know they just kind of said could I talk about it I was like sure I’ll take any side of an argument as you as you well know
so

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you know and I think it kind of got spurred by I had Roy Rubin founder of Magento on my retail gentic podcast and he kind of said he sees a day where we may not have websites at all and they’ll be the first billion dollar kind of a digitally native vertical brand,

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there’s probably some new name for this maybe AI we’ll we’ll use and without a website so it’s just going to sell directly to Consumers maybe through social and or and on social you don’t really need a website like Tik Tok shop um someone has to check out but you know,

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we won’t count that.

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Agentic First Commerce.

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That can be hosted by some you know in any
Some Cloud somewhere or stripe or something and then over on the Gen AI side eventually you’ll be able to transact

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this was recorded a while ago and so so they they kind of thought that was an interesting point to discuss so they simultaneously and I think they may have should have stacked these in hindsight but they had a guy from Skechers kind of saying no websites will never go away and here’s why,

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and then I had to do the side of the argument that you know yes we won’t have websites so it was it was a fun to.

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You are Roy Rubin in this scenario.

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I I was a Roy Rubin yes I got to put on his shoes they were a little small for me but but I I suffered through.

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Prestigious though
yeah I’m coining it right now A nvb
agentic native vertical brand.

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All right I like it let’s go buy the domain name all right
do we do AI or calm I guess it doesn’t matter if there’s not gonna be a website.

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No yeah you don’t you don’t need a URL you just need a AC you just need a ACP stack.

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Forget domain names
Okay cool so it was a lot of fun so it was really good and for us for my company it was great because it was everyone in retailers and Brands is thinking about this so so they were our people so it was great.

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And did you guys use that occasion to Launch.

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We did yes so it kind of worked out that having done 5 software companies this is a strange 1.

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You’re going to get it right eventually.

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Well it changes every time so I don’t think I will
the engineers because everything we’re doing is AI augmented they’re using you know clogged code and and these types of things.

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So not Cobalt.

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No not Cobalt there wasn’t really in the consideration set but you know maybe next time or maybe if you start a company you could,

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and so they’re going,

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they’re going fast but then they’ll hit a slow spot so it’s like hard to time so as we got closer we realized if we really,

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push some things hard we could launch at the show so it worked out to be a perfect time for us to launch our product I was also worried it’s been kind of like 1 of the worst kept secrets in in my world that chat CBT is working on a checkout,

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felt like that would create a you know a blast zone and as a small company it’s very hard to get a pressure release out that,

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doesn’t land in the blast zone of a big company doing something so it worked out great we were not in the blast zone and then I think what are we 3 weeks later while we record this yesterday that actually dropped on the 29th so September 29th so this our release.

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So mark that day and.

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So that was good so that was well received and we got to finally you know kind of reveal what we’ve been working on and and share to the world kind of our take on things so it’s been a lot of fun.

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Well congratulations on that it’s exciting I’ve I have some fomo for not being able to go to retail Club.

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Yeah next year we’ll have to you know tell your boss no more Paris or maybe they won’t line up so we’ll have to kind of see how it lines up next year.

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Yeah yeah yeah we’ll have to see I think interf is going back to Paris next year I don’t know what the plan is after next year like it might move around in Europe or something.

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Yeah seems like they have NFL level aspirations to expand the brand which is which is smart.

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All those 3 letter acronym organizations are very similar.

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Hey if the NFL can do it the NRF can.

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Yeah they even have some of the same letters in common.

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Kind of they absolutely do
cool so let’s kind of let’s keep the road trip fibs going and let’s talk about the road trip we’re on right now
how what are some of your key takeaways from grocery shop.

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Yep so as you you just alluded to we are at grocery shop which is the,

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the digital food show saying food because well it’s mostly grocery I think there’s increasing amount of kind of digital restaurant coverage here as well,

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and the I’d say the topics here are pretty predictable I would have came in expecting 3 big topics I would have expected a lot of discussion about macroeconomics and,

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tariffs and pivots to more value Brands and private labels and all of that I would have expected of course a lot of conversation about AI,

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you you and I are like pretty pretty deep in it but like
to a lot of other people AI might mean like,

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process enablement and making your employees better and making content more efficiently and all this stuff it might not necessarily mean,

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net new consumer behaviors replacing websites and stuff like that but I would have expected a lot of AI stuff and then retail media networks and for sure if you go look at,

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money spent on this show all the big sponsors and exhibitors it’s so funny because it used to be a bunch of vendors that were trying to sell stuff to

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Walmart and instacart and and all these big retailers now it’s all the big retailers spending money

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trying to sell stuff to to all the the brands because it’s all Walmart connect and and door Dash ads that are that are the big big signature sponsors.

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Yeah I think the brands must feel very excited to be be be you know sought after so much for this or.

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Yeah I think there’d be more excited if if they didn’t feel like a wallet.

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Yes yeah yeah yeah that’s true
and then because retail media networks is so popular and you’re now known as the guy that’s anti- retail media Network do they throw tomatoes at you when you walk by or how does how does that go for you this is a tough gig for you.

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Yeah no I mean obviously my my
opinions and optimism about retail media networks are a lot more nuanced than like you you like to portray them.

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No it’s Curie blame but I’m curious I knew that.

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No no I think Kerry and I agree more than we disagree um and I think things are,

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things play out wildly different than I expect all the time I just want to be totally clear anyone that listens to our.

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We do have our annual predictions which you’re not very good at let’s.

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Episode every year knows.

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The tenure balance on.

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Side note I’m super pissed because I feel like my prediction for like 8 of our ten years was that this is going to be the year of electronic shelf labels,

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and I I got tired of losing that prediction so I stopped saying it but like I’d say about 75% of the booths at this show and 100% of the booths at interf Europe were electronic shelf label booths.

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I was going to tell you I saw these really nice color ones and I thought oh I got,

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tell Jason but I figured you already if I ever send you a picture you’re like oh that’s an ABC 123 and it you know that’s old technology and blah blah blah so I feel like you’ve already seen it there are I’ve been impressed by the number of digital shelf things on the show.

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Yeah well at the at the risk of digressing even further I get to work with a bunch of like really smart interesting people and 1 of the favorite people I get to work with is this Legend in our industry named Andy Murray and Andy,

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founded a a 1 of the original Shopper marketing agencies called Saatchi X he’s the former Chief marketing officer Walmart he ran Asda in the UK so like a a true legit retail Legend

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and he calls me about once a week right now and he’s like super excited he’s like dude there’s this new thing

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called electronic shelf labels and I think I think they’re going to change the world.

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It’s obviously doesn’t listen to our podcast because you’ve been talking about this for 10 years.

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Exactly and I’m like I’m trying to politely say yeah yeah I agree Andy I’m pretty pretty excited it’s a thing.

00:17:18.488 –> 00:17:33.096
And listeners can’t hear you but you’re very dapperly dressed you’ve got a pocket square which is unusual and you’re wearing some branded socks which is not unusual but you gave a really nice panel today that I saw or I guess a fireside chat is a better branding of the.

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There was no fire involved I almost none of the Fireside Chats.

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Virtual and no fire fireside chat and then sadly I didn’t get in until and I missed your first thing so you’re and then you have something tomorrow so run listeners through the 3 things you you have 2 you’ve talked about and 1 coming up.

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You’re overselling me I had 2 things so I had had 1 today and so we had a panel with the the head of Ecom at Sam’s Club,

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and so everything Sam’s Club.

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It was a panel yeah.

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Yeah if if people if people aren’t keeping pubis track,

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Sam’s Club’s a new pubis is called
so we’ve been working with Walmart for a long time and we were very honored to to add Sam’s Club to the portfolio this year so so I’ve been getting to spend a lot more time with those folks,

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so so this panel was on kind of seamless on Omni Channel experiences and the the evolution of,

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of that whole thing and so we wanted a retailer and a brand so the the retailer was Sam’s and the brand was Marzetti foods which Marzetti is beloved manufacturer of many of the sauces that we eat both,

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both the the grocery sauces but all the restaurant branded sauces most so for you and I most relevantly all the Chick-fil-A sauces.

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I heard that the Chick-fil-A 80 gallon Ranch squirty thing is very popular in my house
people we drink the ranch dressing the ranch I guess it’s a dip by the gallons so thanks to those folks yeah.

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I might know a guy if you if you if you need a connection that could be.

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Sadly I don’t think I can carry that much on the plane on the way.

00:19:02.559 –> 00:19:08.502
No hopefully hopefully they they ship
yeah so that was the panel today and uh.

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Now are we using Omni Channel harm like when I was last in deep and e-commerce that was on the way out everyone was like saying harmonized like what’s the latest lingo on the.

00:19:16.981 –> 00:19:31.595
Uh so yeah so I don’t like to get into all the buzzword Bingo the none of these words are perfect I hate all these words a lot of people still use Omni Channel if you were going to use something new it might be connected Commerce.

00:19:31.295 –> 00:19:33.007
Hmm I like that.

00:19:33.139 –> 00:19:39.551
The 1 that has the most momentum at the I am glad to be rid of the word channel so like,

00:19:39.701 –> 00:19:49.646
you and I are super old we started out at multi-channel and then multi-channel became cross Channel and then cross Channel became Omni Channel I did another event earlier this year and someone’s like,

00:19:49.869 –> 00:19:59.350
what’s your what’s your best advice for Omni Channel and I said don’t do it
and there and they looked at me very disappointed like that wasn’t in the rehearsal um,

00:19:59.627 –> 00:20:13.790
and what I mean by that is like all this emphasis on the wrong on the wrong thing like that retail used to be about channels and you had 1 guy that owned the catalog and 1 guy that owned the stores and then eventually e-commerce when it became a thing and,

00:20:14.326 –> 00:20:18.087
all all of those those divisions are sort of meaningless at this.

00:20:17.787 –> 00:20:22.263
It was vertical and now it’s all horizontal yeah
yeah and what’s tomorrow about.

00:20:22.119 –> 00:20:35.375
Yeah so tomorrow is the 1 I think you’re you’re going to miss it but I think it’s the 1 you’d be more interested in its kind of the expanding Universe of Commerce touch points so there’s 1 I don’t know if you’ve heard,

00:20:35.700 –> 00:20:37.274
yeah yeah um,

00:20:37.755 –> 00:20:45.975
yeah uh so so social commerce um so 1 I have 3 panelists 1 of the panelists is Tik Tok shop uh.

00:20:45.675 –> 00:20:50.173
Which you and Sutra both said would never be a thing I just want to put that back onto the record.

00:20:50.116 –> 00:20:51.539
Yeah I feel like you.

00:20:51.289 –> 00:20:56.639
People don’t go to a cocktail party to buy stuff
that may have been tsukareta quote.

00:20:56.389 –> 00:20:59.573
Yeah um I think you might be putting some words in my mouth.

00:20:57.394 –> 00:20:59.946
But you strongly agreed you guys.

00:21:00.055 –> 00:21:12.361
I will acknowledge that like I definitely have never been the most bullish on Commerce on the social platforms and in spite of my lack of optimism Tik Tok shop is wildly successful.

00:21:12.097 –> 00:21:13.136
They pulled it off.

00:21:13.088 –> 00:21:26.488
Total total props to them and so there’s a lot I think we can learn from their execution side note you’re helping me practice because I somehow from their birth have mispronounced them Tik Tok shops plural,

00:21:29.223 –> 00:21:36.397
yes yes yes so I’m desperately trying to to reform my pronunciation
yeah I’m sure I will.

00:21:34.336 –> 00:21:37.725
Good luck tomorrow if you if you think too much about it you’re sure to.

00:21:37.689 –> 00:21:44.275
I’m I’m sure I will blow it on stage yeah so we’re gonna we’re gonna talk about those sort of expanding social channels,

00:21:44.287 –> 00:21:54.154
door Dash will be on the panel and we’re like increasingly like that’s a Commerce Channel Beyond restaurants and ready to eat food and.

00:21:53.854 –> 00:22:04.033
This is exciting today I saw the announced an autonomous delivery robot that can go on a bike lane and it’s really cute it’s got like little it looks kind of like a mini Herbie the Love Bug

00:22:03.895 –> 00:22:11.454
and so it’s got like these 2 cute little big eyes that are at sensors and it looks like it zips in these bike Lanes so it’s not like 1 of those slow little tank looking,

00:22:11.659 –> 00:22:14.428
you see so that could be an interesting topic.

00:22:14.381 –> 00:22:26.182
Yeah yeah yeah I will have to add that to the to the the discussion guide for tomorrow
and then we have ELCA shop who’s from Elf Beauty
uh and so.

00:22:24.939 –> 00:22:28.219
Oh we should have her on the podcast if you could swing it.

00:22:28.268 –> 00:22:32.810
That’s a great idea I will see what I could do to make that happen listeners tune in.

00:22:31.188 –> 00:22:41.938
Do you have special so today you wore your Sam’s socks do you have Tik Tok Elf or doordash socks or pubis.

00:22:41.638 –> 00:22:48.590
I don’t because I I don’t really Pander to panels panelists I Pander to poop as this client.

00:22:48.296 –> 00:22:55.152
Got to be a client to get the socks I got it all right we got to get you some Json and Scott show is like a if there’s no 1 you’re pandering to you could slot us on.

00:22:54.852 –> 00:22:58.889
Ooh I should I do have Jason socks grocery shop gives you weird.

00:22:58.589 –> 00:22:59.753
I have Jason.

00:22:59.503 –> 00:23:07.681
Weird speaker gifts
every year right and so 1 year it was these cool like aprons and oven mitts,

00:23:08.108 –> 00:23:17.223
it it’s kind of jumped the shark because you know what it was this year it was soap in the shape of a Frozen TV dinner so like a Saulsbury.

00:23:16.923 –> 00:23:19.783
I got that and I was like what and it smelled kind of funky.

00:23:19.657 –> 00:23:31.579
Yes it was not a appealing looking or appetizing in any way sort of thing but 1 of the years here at grocery shop it was socks with your grocery shop character on them.

00:23:31.279 –> 00:23:42.846
Nice very cool
this is my first grocery shop and my favorite part of this show is all the free samples of food I’ve been I did not know that was a thing so I would go into a talk and there’d be a bag of Cheetos,

00:23:43.213 –> 00:23:47.076
um the Cheetos Naturals order of those are called those are actually delicious.

00:23:46.800 –> 00:23:48.308
Yes I also can recommend.

00:23:48.008 –> 00:23:52.737
Had to pause myself not to eat the whole bag I looked at the calories I was like oops this is a this is.

00:23:52.497 –> 00:24:05.019
The side note to to my friends that live you can explain this to me there are 3 servings in that bag each serving is 110 calories but the bag is 390 calories.

00:24:04.719 –> 00:24:09.628
I also saw that and I thought well maybe that includes eating the bag or something or maybe it’s like a fractional or.

00:24:09.611 –> 00:24:15.493
I’m assuming if you eat the whole bag at once that you’re burning more calories or something I don’t I don’t know.

00:24:21.130 –> 00:24:31.237
And buy samples I think you like there’s there are a lot of food samples and stuff but in the store of the future there’s a lot of grocery shop swag samples is that what you meant or
oh okay.

00:24:29.164 –> 00:24:41.939
Oh no there’s like actual food yeah I got some Sasquatch soap I got I’ve always wanted to try that but not like Risk a whole bar and then there was a couple food items I thought well I’ll try these so yeah I actually didn’t get in the swag,

00:24:42.384 –> 00:24:44.481
you there was a limit of 5.

00:24:44.271 –> 00:24:57.052
Uh I don’t think they’re here this year but last year uh feastables was here in a big way which made me very very popular in my family
yeah yeah
we should get him on the podcast.

00:24:48.592 –> 00:24:58.380
Ooh Mr Beast
he’s from North Carolina
yeah Greensboro
Greenville
I’ll work on it.

00:24:58.549 –> 00:25:02.316
There’s no entrepreneur in that neck of the woods that doesn’t Revere Scott Wingo come on.

00:25:02.016 –> 00:25:09.755
Well I think he’s way on some other level than I am
what other content did you get a chance to check out.

00:25:09.942 –> 00:25:14.616
So I I have tried to consume as much content as possible um so.

00:25:14.316 –> 00:25:19.460
LinkedIn feed has been a just like a a buffet of of grocery shop content it’s been great.

00:25:19.496 –> 00:25:28.347
I try I try to pick out some interesting Snippets from each thing I sit in on and share them I feel like there’s you know what’s competing with me now is the darn AI,

00:25:28.546 –> 00:25:39.446
so at every and I think this is just going to be a thing in the future at every 1 of these sessions there’s now a bunch of people with their phones or laptop open and they’re recording the session and the,

00:25:39.524 –> 00:25:42.474
the stupid AI robot is writing like,

00:25:42.883 –> 00:25:56.271
a summary of the content which I’m totally fine with and that’s useful and I’m grateful to have all those in my library but then they have them plumbed to a workflow where it’s generating an automatic LinkedIn post,

00:25:56.506 –> 00:25:58.795
and so there you yeah they’re now.

00:25:58.495 –> 00:26:01.133
It’s not as witty as you can’t can’t possibly be.

00:26:00.905 –> 00:26:07.340
I feel like I’m sure I’m going to lose in the long run but right now I feel like my curation still has some some advantages.

00:26:07.232 –> 00:26:12.291
You know the AI can’t get humor the store off on that even the grow which is supposed to be the funny 1.

00:26:11.991 –> 00:26:23.360
A lot of people in my family would say the same about me
yeah but they’re giggling when they say it so I feel like I’m winning when when someone’s giggling while they’re saying you’re not funny
exactly
exactly.

00:26:20.320 –> 00:26:25.403
Rings the whole joke
the whole purpose
anything stand up.

00:26:25.368 –> 00:26:32.674
So a topic that I should have anticipated that came up that was maybe not on my radar ahead of time is,

00:26:32.741 –> 00:26:36.033
the impact of glp1 on this industry um

00:26:36.016 –> 00:26:47.871
and so obviously intuitively it makes sense but I like the scope of the numbers is somewhat startling so like 1 out of every 8 Americans is on a glp1 and depending on what stats you believe,

00:26:48.220 –> 00:27:03.092
they consume 20% less calories or spend 10% less at the grocery store and so there are all these companies that you’re either a glp1 headwind company or a glp-1 Tailwind company so if you have,

00:27:03.249 –> 00:27:12.358
high fiber products or nutrient-dense products or products that help remediate this the digestive symptoms,

00:27:12.587 –> 00:27:21.264
it’s a huge Tailwind if you’re you know unhealthy calories or alcohol it’s a very real headwind and,

00:27:21.534 –> 00:27:31.491
most of the big Grocers have now said that they can like absolutely see the impact of glp1 in their
their shopping data.

00:27:31.263 –> 00:27:35.205
That is interesting yeah
Yeahs on my side it retail,

00:27:35.301 –> 00:27:46.237
Club I kind of started this mental framework of the AI having kind of 3 subsections so there’s like a lot of you know back office optimization things like

00:27:46.130 –> 00:27:54.896
pricing and store allocations and supply chain and all that and then there’s like a level up it’s kind of like from there up to the home page so there’s,

00:27:54.957 –> 00:27:58.622
tons of vendors that have taken what I call the conversion enhancers,

00:27:58.773 –> 00:28:07.816
come out with a better recommendation engine a better on-site search engine a better lots of on-site chats trying to copy Rufus and Sparky type

00:28:07.654 –> 00:28:17.490
things so on and so forth and then you have the stuff that sits above that that’s kind of saying all right how do you optimize the traffic source that is this new way of selling things out,

00:28:17.623 –> 00:28:19.636
the links so so I think

00:28:19.594 –> 00:28:29.629
here at grocery shop so it’s been kind of an interesting book end because at retail Club everyone was like thinking about all 3 kind of simultaneously and they had projects going in all of them they tend to.

00:28:29.827 –> 00:28:39.099
You know the if you think about those buckets the most risk so these AI people kind of have it’s like it reminds me a lot of the early Chief digital officers where they kind of have their neck out in the org

00:28:38.979 –> 00:28:40.072
so

00:28:39.923 –> 00:28:52.734
they you you don’t start that with like a replatform right like a with a capital R like a big project like that with a capital P you they would do like little things like the conversion enhancers or or something like these channels I just saw on the marketplace so

00:28:52.626 –> 00:28:54.152
I think that’s kind of like what

00:28:54.062 –> 00:29:08.093
I saw a retail Club a lot a lot of it was they were thinking about the infrastructure maybe doing 1 or 2 things in the middle and then doing a little bit more on the on the other side because it’s less risky and new and not and it’s going to bring traffic which everyone loves traffic and also

00:29:07.961 –> 00:29:16.469
everyone’s trying to remediate the you know Jai is kind of a pull and that it’s like okay there’s all these people using this and it’s early and let’s learn about it

00:29:16.344 –> 00:29:24.005
the push is and I was surprised at retail Club to learn this I I saw it in the data but like people were more freaked out than I was expecting

00:29:23.867 –> 00:29:38.523
their Google SEO or their free organic Google is down but a lot of them their sem is down too even though they’re actually spending more so you know the fact that Google is at reacting to chat TBT and causing less traffic to go Downstream because they’re having to put answers

00:29:38.373 –> 00:29:48.360
do AIO reviews AI mode and Gemini it has caused a dramatic drop for many retailers depends on where they are in this adoption curve it seems to be going like on the.

00:29:48.336 –> 00:29:51.160
On The Cutting Edge of this whole thing is like

00:29:51.076 –> 00:30:05.305
Beauty and and kind of things that are in that younger generation and and and then grocery prize and feeling it at all on the other side of that all the things in between whereas here I haven’t heard anyone talk about that and it’s all mostly back office things and and

00:30:05.215 –> 00:30:14.914
hardly anyone talking there’s vendors that are you know trying to talk about all 3 but more of its back office and they’re even just kind of like thinking about it and learning more about it.

00:30:15.016 –> 00:30:24.931
Yeah yeah I glad you brought that up because I actually want a rift with you a little bit on that because I I come as no surprise to anyone I try to consume all your content and I’ve I’ve heard your framework a couple times,

00:30:25.232 –> 00:30:30.309
and I like sort of independently had my own framework and I I think they’re similar,

00:30:30.730 –> 00:30:41.582
they might even be the same with just different semantics but I want to not even I’m not debating it I’m I’m striving to learn and get better so I thought if I put mine out there we could we could potentially.

00:30:41.282 –> 00:30:42.417
While the joint framework.

00:30:42.159 –> 00:30:48.000
See if we could we could refine them both right so first 1 I think is exactly the same I’ll call it,

00:30:48.132 –> 00:30:59.399
the back of house use cases or the efficiency use cases all the things retailers were already doing you can now do better and more efficiently with AI right and so the 1,

00:30:59.555 –> 00:31:12.216
that I actually see the the biggest early results on are all the the store associate enablement all these tools that take tasks out of the retail store that that stuff is all real like you know all the money you spent,

00:31:12.956 –> 00:31:21.524
changing shifts and scheduling hours and all of these things all the supply chain optimizations that they do right so so AI.

00:31:21.224 –> 00:31:34.408
And there’s a physical world thing that that is very prevalent here at grocery shop where you know I would say there’s probably 20 booths that have some kind of a robotic thing and if we had seen these 5 years ago we would have stopped in the hall and been like what the heck is that,

00:31:34.516 –> 00:31:41.402
uh even walking in the lobby I had to like get out of the way of a robot that was cleaning the floor you know it was just like a little R2-D2 cleaning the floor yeah

00:31:41.331 –> 00:31:53.102
totally you know autonomous doing its thing and you know so there’s lots of things now that will go and count your shelves kind of at night and I remember early on we would talk about those as if they were like this huge new experiment and

00:31:53.090 –> 00:31:56.725
now that seems to be relatively like a mundane.

00:31:56.708 –> 00:32:00.054
Oh yeah yeah I think I think there’s a ton of that for.

00:31:59.754 –> 00:32:01.112
I think a lot of it is unlocked because.

00:32:00.818 –> 00:32:08.173
Out of stocks and Merchandising compliance and like when I started my career every brand in America hired a bunch of kids,

00:32:08.612 –> 00:32:12.523
college kids to go to school stores with disposable cameras,

00:32:12.806 –> 00:32:22.246
and take pictures on 35 millimeter film of all the shelves they paid for and send them back and they went into some giant Procter and Gamble shoe box,

00:32:22.445 –> 00:32:28.213
and think about it it wasn’t like every brand sent someone to go take a picture of the same.

00:32:28.333 –> 00:32:29.403
Seems inefficient.

00:32:29.259 –> 00:32:41.853
Yes yes so so AI has has very credibly and legitimately made a lot of uh things in the store and in the retail model more efficient right and,

00:32:42.112 –> 00:32:49.653
many of those things pay for themselves like there’s vendors that are very excited about them and they’re they’re certainly right to be so um.

00:32:49.353 –> 00:32:50.410
And then what’s next.

00:32:50.663 –> 00:32:56.528
So number 2 for me is what I call the on-site customer experiences,

00:32:56.828 –> 00:33:02.230
so you’re you’re calling that kind of like the below the PDP stuff but that’s uh.

00:33:01.930 –> 00:33:03.083
What the homepage.

00:33:02.820 –> 00:33:17.433
Yeah yeah so that’s the like all the AI improvements to ratings and reviews it’s the better search engine it’s an on-site answer engine instead of a search engine so to me both Rufus and Sparky today are,

00:33:17.608 –> 00:33:19.440
examples of,

00:33:19.789 –> 00:33:33.207
on-site customer experience AI it’s the customer experience chat Bots it’s all all of these things that walmart.com or target.com might have as part of their experience that are AI based,

00:33:33.466 –> 00:33:42.942
and they are also very meaningful and interesting and you know there’s a lot of vendors here that are focused predominantly on those and so then my third bucket is,

00:33:43.261 –> 00:33:54.966
offsite customer experiences so things that are changing consumer Behavior about how they discover products decide what to buy and where to buy it from,

00:33:55.495 –> 00:34:08.552
before they picked a retailer so that like chat gbt you know could send me to a Shopify site or an Etsy site or something else Google AI mode could could do that,

00:34:08.919 –> 00:34:19.285
some kind of Auto replenishment AI service for my dishwasher that you know helps me figure out my my dish soap replenishment all those sorts of things,

00:34:19.417 –> 00:34:27.998
that are sort of Upstream from picking a particular Merchant to me is that third bucket and so you say it slightly different but I kind of feel like they’re pretty similar buckets.

00:34:27.800 –> 00:34:41.656
I agree yeah yeah yeah and I feel like you’re you’re probably influenced by the Walmart you know they talk about the 4 super agents so they have a an associate 1 a what you’re probably,

00:34:42.684 –> 00:34:43.297
1 yep.

00:34:42.997 –> 00:34:50.958
Yeah so customer facing is Sparky uh the associate 1 I don’t believe has a name but the app that most of them live in is called at Walmart,

00:34:51.367 –> 00:35:04.953
they have a 1 called Marty which is uh the partner 1 uh so all the vendors Walmart has been kind of a a leader in automation for vendors for a long time they used to have this thing called retail link and you know they have a lot of tools that vendors use so now,

00:35:05.104 –> 00:35:06.516
they have an AI tool,

00:35:06.901 –> 00:35:21.370
and then the third 1 is for developers because you know this but a lot of people may not know Walmart has more than 10,000 Engineers Building Technology Stacks at Walmart and 1 of the most proven use cases of all for AI is,

00:35:21.713 –> 00:35:28.203
coding efficiencies and coding optimization and I I’ve I’ve heard rumors that refi by relies heavily on.

00:35:28.834 –> 00:35:32.667
Yeah it’s in our DNA you got a got a mCP it up.

00:35:32.680 –> 00:35:44.577
So so Walmart has those kind of 3 what they now brand super agents and that’s I think another good way to think about it is it’s less about the job to be done for each 1 of those and more the constituent that uses it.

00:35:44.644 –> 00:35:53.543
Yeah and I also spend a lot of time talking to retailers about theology so so Amazon has taken the theology that they are going to be

00:35:53.507 –> 00:35:59.582
they’re not going to let agents in the front door and they’re they’re going to let they’re going to have their own agents that can go out so they have,

00:35:59.606 –> 00:36:05.687
Rufus which is an answer engine for for you know kind of a better search engine they won’t use that word but I think it is,

00:36:05.928 –> 00:36:19.658
and then they then they have buy for me where a brand can now not be selling on Amazon right now they’re mostly what I would call hybrid mode they have some 1 P they don’t want to do 3 p so it’s a way to kind of like augment 3 p with a off-site,

00:36:19.917 –> 00:36:22.422
urgent to check out type thing that’s in,

00:36:22.633 –> 00:36:34.326
an experimental phase
but they do not they block chatgpt and all the other engines from crawling whereas a Walmart has more of an open door policy where they want to embrace all the agents so it’s really it’s gonna be interesting to see.

00:36:35.288 –> 00:36:44.181
Which of those Works um and if you’re if you’re 1 of the top big guys you can make those decisions I would argue
I mean you you know do what you want but,

00:36:44.470 –> 00:36:54.469
if you’re smaller you should be embracing these things because you know the in my experience do these waves of we’ve been at this a long time the brains and retailers that embrace,

00:36:54.613 –> 00:37:05.063
these big waves of change marketplaces mobile
Tik Tok shop
and things of that nature they tend to build an edge,

00:37:05.201 –> 00:37:11.294
get in front and they start to they get the a lot of the learnings are sequential and not easily caught up,

00:37:11.415 –> 00:37:24.688
on or there’s a network effect like building influencers and people that are you know want to be affiliated with your brand earlier versus if you’re the 50th beauty company you’re you’re going to miss out on,

00:37:24.821 –> 00:37:26.810
so those types of things so yeah we’ll see.

00:37:26.510 –> 00:37:39.002
I I often I call that the Frenemy meeting like we have a lot of these meetings like are these these agents hitting our site our friends our enemies or Frenemy and what are we going to do about it I certainly agree with you if you don’t have a lot of Leverage,

00:37:39.339 –> 00:37:50.912
you should be participating in as many of these things as you can I do have some empathy it’s easy for me to look at Amazon and go oh that’s a mistake to to lock the door,

00:37:51.519 –> 00:37:57.035
they they have the world’s largest product catalog they have a billion items in it and if.

00:37:56.735 –> 00:38:06.992
And all the reviews I think the I think the reviews are really what they’re trying to guard they they don’t want to just be Reddit they don’t want to be like a you know a repository for a chat gbt to pull reviews.

00:38:06.830 –> 00:38:10.189
Yeah and this probably doesn’t surprise anyone but like you know,

00:38:10.466 –> 00:38:17.544
everybody’s doing studies right now to see what what kind of things the the robots prefer at the moment my company,

00:38:17.935 –> 00:38:32.771
watches a lot of digital shelves uh so we have a lot of digital shelf data from Walmart and Target and and Kroger and so they they actually looked at what Rufus and Sparky in particular preference and I think surprising No 1,

00:38:33.036 –> 00:38:45.318
reviews are amongst the the most influential attributes on that page and number of reviews like like the the Sparky products are almost universally,

00:38:45.697 –> 00:38:49.302
products that have over 4 stars and have over 4,000 reviews.

00:38:49.459 –> 00:38:57.010
Absolutely yeah
cool what other uh any other topics you want to talk about before we go grab some food.

00:38:56.766 –> 00:39:04.337
Oh when you throw out like I I there’s a bunch of topics I would have wanted to talk about but now when I’m comparing them to grabbing food uh,

00:39:04.686 –> 00:39:14.877
they they seem wildly less less interesting i i 2 more things on AI and then maybe we’ll we’ll wrap up with a a typical length show for us the.

00:39:15.598 –> 00:39:18.831
New chat gbt instant checkout,

00:39:19.150 –> 00:39:33.012
so obviously like you you kind of already showed your hand a little bit if you’re a small company like you probably would want to add that feed and see what what happens when your product starts showing up in in openai prompts and

00:39:32.952 –> 00:39:35.380
see if you can sell anything
the,

00:39:35.560 –> 00:39:48.642
and I I’ve I’ve read what you have wrote about it I’ve been equally interested this this implementation at the moment it’s got some strengths and weaknesses but 1 very clever thing is they are not the seller of record,

00:39:48.750 –> 00:39:55.961
um which I think a lot of us were curious to see is
would open AI try to be the seller of record which has a lot of,

00:39:56.334 –> 00:40:05.269
positive and negative implications Amazon is a Marketplace that is the seller of record so they jump through a lot of technical Hoops to make sure that they’re not the seller of record,

00:40:05.714 –> 00:40:13.303
so if you’re a direct to Consumer brand if you have your own fulfillment if you already are a seller of record somewhere,

00:40:13.544 –> 00:40:23.140
the threshold for you the barrier of entry for you to add chat gb2 t as a new customer acquisition channel is very low,

00:40:23.375 –> 00:40:31.564
and so in most cases I would say oh man you should definitely try that there’s very little to lose
but there are a bunch of wholesalers,

00:40:32.070 –> 00:40:42.014
that sell other people’s stuff
and I’m kind of curious because I work with a bunch of those and they’re all asking me what they should do so what would you do.

00:40:41.714 –> 00:40:48.095
So so the good news is the way they’ve implemented this is unlike traditional Marketplace Integrations,

00:40:48.276 –> 00:40:58.167
where it’s the whole enchilada or nothing you can’t just list on Amazon and get traffic you have to list and sell on Amazon same with eBay same with the market the.

00:40:57.867 –> 00:41:00.180
With sell and buy an ad by the way but yeah.

00:40:59.880 –> 00:41:03.196
Well now it’s by an ad and we really would like you to use our fulfillment,

00:41:03.329 –> 00:41:15.106
yep so so like the stack has gotten deeper and the economics have gotten you know more in favor of the marketplace many times for but you know the customer experience has gotten better and and correlation with that the

00:41:15.005 –> 00:41:19.481
what’s interesting about this is if you want to do the checkout you have to do the feed and the checkout integration

00:41:19.427 –> 00:41:31.793
however you can just do the feed so you can kind of tiptoe into this so everyone’s already tiptoeing in so these spiders are their crawlers are hitting your website even if you’re a wholesaler and you’re not selling direct and

00:41:31.716 –> 00:41:38.644
you know so even without the feed you can some people just block that so that’s that’s a choice I I wouldn’t recommend that but you know,

00:41:38.764 –> 00:41:44.833
I’ve talked to a lot of people where their legal department is just kind of early on said or their it department where they’ve said

00:41:44.804 –> 00:41:59.051
anything that looks like a robot we block because we don’t want distributed distributed denial of services attacks and we could we could spend a lot of time talking about that but but that’s you you need a more nuanced approach because these things identify themselves and you can white list them and yep so if that is a worry there’s.

00:41:58.751 –> 00:42:02.410
And when you are almost certainly have already whitelisted is called Google.

00:42:02.194 –> 00:42:08.533
Yeah googlebot yes so it it’s kind of like would you block googlebot and and I would say that to the lawyers too because your catalog.

00:42:08.233 –> 00:42:11.610
Alibaba in China does for example and it worked for them.

00:42:11.754 –> 00:42:15.437
I think all of China blocks the Google bot and the great fire 1.

00:42:13.401 –> 00:42:22.414
Yeah well I meant the Alibaba blocks the Chinese version of Google uh bowed out like so literally you can’t do a search on the on a universal search engine.

00:42:22.114 –> 00:42:28.645
In the early days of Amazon they blocked um that as well and they’ve actually had this on again off again with Google shopping because,

00:42:29.102 –> 00:42:40.741
they’re they’re very well aware that Google shopping feeds are getting consumed by Gemini so so there there are these things are already training on this dude this so so the lawyers think they’re going to protect this product data it’s already out there so 100%

00:42:40.664 –> 00:42:46.066
it’s our it’s already in everything so you’re protecting something the horses are out of the barn and they’re running around crazy

00:42:45.916 –> 00:42:58.414
but anyway so so that’s that’s kind of interesting so so number 1 you can even do things on your site to optimize that and and we can help with that kind of thing and so it’s in metadata and and the piece that’s missing,

00:42:58.583 –> 00:43:07.181
and this is in the feed specification is context so we have we have an industry has have optimized towards search which is very keyword based and

00:43:07.134 –> 00:43:14.092
SEO is this Nuance Art and Science where you want to have the right keywords but you don’t want to keywords bam and you get punished if you don’t like

00:43:13.996 –> 00:43:25.972
kind of down the Fairway on this thing so so the way people have bought online is widely influenced by search engines historically so therefore our PDP is kind of like start they’re very

00:43:25.888 –> 00:43:35.803
concise and they tend to be keyword dense but not repetitive for this very the overlap of SEO and human optimization is the VIN diagram is almost overlap 100%

00:43:35.755 –> 00:43:44.900
Jai and a lot of people use this Geo I won’t use that but you know it these llms crave way more content.

00:43:45.099 –> 00:43:54.190
But inside that content they just don’t want a bunch of extra stuff they they do like that they want context and because if you if you,

00:43:54.329 –> 00:44:01.672
you know if you’ve used these engines you’re in this conversation and you’re typically starting way up even maybe above top of funnel where you’re kind of like,

00:44:01.786 –> 00:44:12.488
hey it looks like you’re going to Las Vegas it’s hot there do you want a short sleeve t-shirt and you know so so you kind of walk through the these use cases of where are you going

00:44:12.326 –> 00:44:20.480
what are you in the beauty category there’s these scent profiles people have color profiles and because it has memory once you tell it any of this stuff it remembers it forever,

00:44:20.541 –> 00:44:29.914
so it it has it has more context about the buyer across Merchant than we’ve ever seen even intrum Merchant I don’t think you know maybe chewy knows more about your dog than chat does

00:44:29.789 –> 00:44:41.422
today but in the future it will actually you know you know more about that anyway so so you have to you can actually do that even without being in this feedback the feedback makes it easier because the problem is what we’re finding is

00:44:41.332 –> 00:44:50.207
this is the first time we’ve had all this content that is important but you don’t really probably want on your PDP you know the consumer doesn’t want to have to slug through all this like 80 pages.

00:44:49.907 –> 00:44:51.595
Yeah the signal and the noise becomes.

00:44:51.295 –> 00:45:06.041
So it’s been a little tricky talking to some of our customers are like well where do I put this we’re we’re fine being the repository for that but a lot of them like want to put it in the pin but the PIN can’t handle it all and all this kind of stuff so so it is this feedback is a nice way to basically fire hose it in

00:45:05.903 –> 00:45:11.864
and control what goes there and when because the crawler you can’t you don’t have to wait and sit wait for it to come back.

00:45:11.582 –> 00:45:12.741
And it has a structure.

00:45:12.441 –> 00:45:21.857
Yes and it has a really nice structure that’s important because a lot of people may think oh it’s just a feed and if you’re already doing a Google feed do 1 of these it is a very different feed it’s kind of like.

00:45:21.557 –> 00:45:22.614
Or at least it should be.

00:45:22.314 –> 00:45:24.693
Oh yeah it’s like you mentioned Cobalt earlier it’s like

00:45:24.597 –> 00:45:39.199
COBOL and python they’re they’re you know 1 is like super old generation and this 1 is not a you could certainly do that it’s actually going to probably hurt you because you need to use the extra capabilities of this new feed to give a lot of this contextual information,

00:45:39.199 –> 00:45:46.524
but but it is nice because you don’t have to kind of go both feet in or or you know cannonball in by doing the checkout

00:45:46.374 –> 00:45:57.797
I would definitely recommend everyone do this feed if you don’t have a policy of blocking all the all the things even if you block them this is a way to go your team and say what if there’s a way for me to give them a direct feed and not have to unblock

00:45:57.767 –> 00:46:04.719
I don’t know about that my my sense is that will work I haven’t actually tried that specific situation because I you know I

00:46:04.630 –> 00:46:11.798
if you everything I’ve read it it the feed augments and kind of like at enhances the things that the crawler has found so we’ll we’ll see how that works out.

00:46:11.498 –> 00:46:14.875
Okay and so then my my last question on this thing,

00:46:15.170 –> 00:46:24.513
the I’m excited that they launched it I think there’s some cleverness in the implementation that was a pleasant surprise to me
they also,

00:46:24.808 –> 00:46:31.207
to me it appears repeated a lot of the mistakes that you and I have seen
since frugal,

00:46:31.779 –> 00:46:35.720
right so so at the moment it’s a 1,

00:46:36.418 –> 00:46:51.133
there’s a very small subset of all merchandise sold in the world that’s economical to sell as a single SKU right so so limiting and problematic like obviously like I think we all expect that’s going to yeah yeah it’s going to expand.

00:46:48.790 –> 00:46:51.452
Playing cards.

00:46:53.027 –> 00:47:01.974
But there are all these other edge cases that turns out you have to support in order to be a robust successful platform right and so people want to,

00:47:01.974 –> 00:47:11.282
multiple tender types and they want gift cards and promo fields and all of these things but 1 that’s super important is when I’ll get it,

00:47:11.577 –> 00:47:17.441
right so we’re at grocery shop they’re talking about food use cases here people usually aren’t,

00:47:17.754 –> 00:47:24.844
shopping for food that they’re not planning on consuming for a month so they want to know when they order it when it’s going to arrive,

00:47:25.133 –> 00:47:35.312
not how many days is UPS going to take to give it to you once you give it to UPS at an undisclosed period of time and so like these are the kinds of,

00:47:35.613 –> 00:47:40.017
rough customer experience is that everyone always launches the first time they launched

00:47:39.922 –> 00:47:53.087
Facebook Commerce the first time they launched Instagram Commerce Pinterest Commerce 8 of the efforts at Google Converse like have all made these same mistakes and there’s a fair amount of them in this first generation,

00:47:53.694 –> 00:47:55.088
effort from.

00:47:54.866 –> 00:47:56.855
Yeah I I would say

00:47:56.795 –> 00:48:08.284
they’re kind of in the middle so you’ve kind of given a binary thing but you know so the early days of so Twitter I I’ve been to all these because the first thing they do is call us at Channel advisor and we would say here’s how you’re going to do this right number 1

00:48:08.134 –> 00:48:14.816
yes you need an inventory feed but at checkout you need to check it and and they’d be like why are you doing that you just gave us inventory feed and we’d say well

00:48:14.696 –> 00:48:23.030
chopping is a dynamic thing and it changes in their stores and all this kind of stuff and they would never do that so so the out of stocks were like 70% on these,

00:48:23.067 –> 00:48:30.235
to their credit chat GPD does have a web hook that as you go through this flow comes back and says is this widgets on stock so that’s nice so they

00:48:30.049 –> 00:48:45.750
that’s 1 that they’ve they’ve definitely identified the other 1 they’ve done is instead of having to do some really Arcane upload a sales tax Matrix this too simple and not down to the locality and then some shipping thing like as a FedEx table some developer found and says just use this FedEx table

00:48:45.745 –> 00:48:53.724
they’ve all done this it actually has web hooks for those pieces so it actually when it when you get into the shipping phase it will it will give you a

00:48:53.587 –> 00:49:01.290
it’s not as precise as Amazon or or you know a on-site experience but it’s a little bit better than than than than I think you would expect.

00:49:01.897 –> 00:49:09.618
But you know there’s no tracking information to retailer pings you on that but I think that trade-off for retailers actually

00:49:09.571 –> 00:49:17.719
and all those other experiments The Merchant of record was the marketplace and I think this is a game-changer because it sends this really interesting signal,

00:49:17.719 –> 00:49:27.069
that they’re going to be way more friendly now I may be wrong like we’ve all had this remember Facebook was going to be friendly and gave you this page and then like oh you’re gonna have to pay for everything you just did all right so this could change

00:49:26.961 –> 00:49:30.121
but but Merchants records very powerful because,

00:49:30.338 –> 00:49:37.855
Amazon and every other Marketplace basically says we’re renting you our customer and in fact if you Market to them if you Market to the customer at Amazon they will.

00:49:37.555 –> 00:49:40.211
That’s out of our terms and conditions we’re going to put you in the penalty.

00:49:39.911 –> 00:49:47.860
That is not a 3 strike thing that is a you know it’s not a speed bump 1 strike you were off I’ve seen hundred million dollar retailers.

00:49:47.560 –> 00:49:51.129
Their whole industry is dedicated to just getting you out of that penalty box.

00:49:50.829 –> 00:49:55.780
Yes there are and yeah so so this is they’re basically saying

00:49:55.588 –> 00:50:09.264
this is your customer you’re acquiring we’re just going to make it easier for them to check out and then they’re your customer if you want to remarket to them if you want to add them to the Loyalty program if you want to get them to opt in follow all the rules and all that jazz so so I think that’s exciting and I think there’s going to be a lot of

00:50:09.175 –> 00:50:16.079
Merchants that get really energized by that as soon as they kind of get their head around it because you and I you know I probably know,

00:50:16.860 –> 00:50:20.303
hundreds if not thousands of Amazon sellers many of them

00:50:20.153 –> 00:50:33.295
got kicked off for you know these very minor infractions and things like mixed inventory that weren’t their fault but you can never find it the Amazon machine just rolled over them that that would love to have a channel that was more emergent from me so so I I think,

00:50:33.337 –> 00:50:42.555
yes it needs a lot of improvements yes the other thing I I’m excited about is by partnering with stripe guess what Stripes really good at all those things you just mentioned you know

00:50:42.501 –> 00:50:44.844
multiple currencies loyal

00:50:44.743 –> 00:50:53.257
you know I don’t know where stripe is on the spectrum of Loy loyalty but I I have a feeling they could get their head around it by partnering with someone that is that good at this stuff the can certainly do a cart

00:50:53.155 –> 00:50:59.951
like they have all these cart Technologies so so I think we’re going to see this by next holiday I think it’s going to address a lot of the things you said.

00:51:00.546 –> 00:51:05.461
Yeah I think it’s going to be interesting and again it’s it’s a first offer so um.

00:51:05.185 –> 00:51:09.836
The thing they did that was smart is all those other efforts were kind of engineering driven,

00:51:09.902 –> 00:51:23.759
and a lot of them died too because the other the other limiter they put them on was like all the Google ones they’re like yes we’re really excited about this I was like oh great what surfaces is going to be on and they’d be like it’s going to be on a 10% exposure I was like well that’s a lot at Google,

00:51:23.886 –> 00:51:29.251
on on the latest Android app and you’re just like okay not many people get the latest,

00:51:29.378 –> 00:51:34.972
Google Android so so by that point you’re like a percent of a percent of a percent of a percent and you have like and then.

00:51:34.672 –> 00:51:36.023
It’s innovator’s dilemma they don’t.

00:51:35.723 –> 00:51:38.764
And then they close at 60 days later and I’m like why they’re like No 1 used to

00:51:38.704 –> 00:51:52.200
you know just wasn’t material enough and you can tell the add part of the business is the innovator’s Dilemma set this thing you know someone higher up set it was some engineer did a 10% project and thought it would be good for users and someone did the math and said this doesn’t,

00:51:52.242 –> 00:51:57.398
work this will cannibalize ads kill it so they they kind of killed it through the the corporate,

00:51:57.536 –> 00:52:06.231
you know thing of like okay we’ll do a test just like make sure it’s on 5% of Android on a Tuesday with if it if it’s a full moon and yeah that kind of thing.

00:52:12.217 –> 00:52:22.287
Yeah we we will probably talk about it more here because it does cut across our world and it’s going to be interesting to see how Amazon and the bigger picture reacts to this but I have a podcast retail gentic where we focus on this,

00:52:22.414 –> 00:52:28.555
that doesn’t have to align with your travel schedule which makes it a little bit easier to be more frequent.

00:52:27.552 –> 00:52:33.116
Yes yes people are telling me that they they like the the collection of hosts much better on that other podcast.

00:52:32.816 –> 00:52:42.526
Yep so 50% less host but the frequency is higher so.

00:52:37.076 –> 00:52:47.634
Yeah twice the insight for half the hosts that’s hurtful but you know it is what it is uh well awesome Scott it’s been so fun to do a show in person with you again.

00:52:47.334 –> 00:52:58.378
Yeah it’s fun to hang out with you I always I remember but it always surprises me how much a Starbucks you drink so it’s been fun to get have such a aggressive Starbucks buddy.

00:52:58.456 –> 00:53:01.068
Hi I am here to enable your bad habits.

00:53:00.956 –> 00:53:02.127
Thanks I appreciate that.

00:53:02.208 –> 00:53:11.273
Yeah and thanks everyone for for listening look for our next episode probably coming sooner than you expect and spoiler alert we might have recorded more than 1 episode.

00:53:10.973 –> 00:53:14.518
Oh you let the cat out of the back so a reward for lasting this long.

00:53:14.386 –> 00:53:18.514
Exactly and until next time happy Commerce.