Jason & Scot Show

Hosted ByJason Goldberg & Scot Wingo

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.

The Jason & Scot Show | EP378 – The Amazon Briefing, Pt 2

Jason & Scot Show
Jason & Scot Show
The Jason & Scot Show | EP378 - The Amazon Briefing, Pt 2
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The second half of the briefing starts with the experience layer that holds Amazon’s grocery push together, including the new green grocery interface and the end of the three-cart problem. From there it’s Prime at 21 years old and why Amazon would rather it never became a profit center, a walk through the Prime Air drone factory, and where Alexa+ and AFS go next. It closes on the scenario that should worry every retailer, which is a shopper who asks ChatGPT first and never opens Amazon at all.

Correction: we credit Prime with a DoorDash Plus membership. The Prime restaurant delivery benefit is Grubhub+.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of ReFiBuy.AI 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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Welcome to the Jason and scot Show, your source for the latest news and trends

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in the e-commerce industry.

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Featuring host Jason Retail Geek Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer of

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Publicis, and scot Wingo, co-founder and CEO of ReFiBuy.

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Here are Jason and scot.

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Hey everybody, it is scot from the Jason and scot Show.

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So we split this deep dive into Amazon Grocery into two parts.

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Hopefully, if you haven’t heard part one, you may want to go back and check

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that out because this part is going to be part two and we pick up the conversation.

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This was recorded live in Seattle after a multi-day session with Amazon top

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executives talking about grocery, Amazon Prime, Alexa Plus, and their new drone

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program through Amazon Primeware.

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Continuing on from part one, here in part two, we’re going to cover why is Prime

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Amazon’s ultimate moat?

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Why are drones not only cool, but the real story is the AI behind the drone?

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Amazon versus ChatVT, which is the new commerce war. And who owns your live

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context wins the grocery shelf.

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Hope you enjoyed part two. We’ll be back to you in our next episodes.

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We’re going to be coming to you from the retail club show in Huntington Beach,

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September 22nd to 24th. We’re going to be recording a lot of podcasts there.

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So there will be a little bit of a gap between now and then.

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But don’t panic. more awesome Jason and scot content is coming your way.

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And we’re going to be doing some live streaming.

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More on that at the Jason and scot website as we get that all planned out.

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Thanks for listening to this two-parter. Hope you enjoyed it.

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Great time to leave us a five-star review.

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Yeah, so in my mind, there’s this graphic where you’ve got your three columns

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and that’s selection, value, and speed of delivery. And that’s like the core.

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And then the little icing on top of that cake, maybe we’ll use a Jensen Wong.

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That’s the three-layer cake.

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The layer on top of that cake, the icing, is the customer experience.

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So I got to have dinner next to the lady that does customer experience,

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and she was amazing. So they went through, when she came on the job.

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She went through thousands of customer anecdotes.

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And this reminded me of a a bezos quote where he said you know.

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He would famously people could email jeff right and they would they would you

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know and he got a lot of emails with them yeah yeah and jeff and him

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but there was an assistant and all but he would go through a lot of that he

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wouldn’t answer all of them his assistants would but he would read most of them and what he found was,

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in something the scale of Amazon, most of these anecdotes are not anecdotal.

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So the conventional wisdom is if one customer has a weird situation,

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just ignore it. It’s not a big deal.

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But what we find is when you’re at the scale of hundreds of millions,

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hundreds of billions, and Lord knows how many transactions, someone,

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Jason has a bad experience in Chicago. Well, that could be 500 people or a thousand people.

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And a lot of people just don’t complain.

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So in that spirit, she’s gone through these very anecdotal things and looked

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at all of them, tried to categorize them and then started to beat them back.

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One of the biggest ones, and this came up with a lot of the folks we know,

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is there was this massive confusion of you had your Whole Foods over here,

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which is kind of like pretty easy to understand.

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It’s like its own store, but frequently this would always get me,

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you’d be buying your like dog treats and you’d say, Oh, I want to get my cart

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size over 25 or whatever it is to get the, you know, not pay the 299 to get

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the free, the faster delivery.

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And then you throw, you know, something in there, like some granola,

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and suddenly it starts another cart.

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So now you’ve got three carts, you get your whole foods, your general merchandise,

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and then some grocery things and some others.

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So they’ve actually done a really good job of solving that two ways.

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They’ve, they’ve kind of put more selection across.

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And to your point, perishables is one of the things that would trigger that.

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But even non-perishable things for me would.

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And then they’ve created a new customer UI, a part of the customer experience,

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which is a very green, so it’s color-coded Amazon version.

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And whenever you, it’s very easy to find an app. The search experience highlights these things.

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Whenever you throw one of those things in, they kind of put you into that.

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You know, like, let’s say I started with my granola first or a banana first,

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or even something cold chain.

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It’s going to now put me into that, you know, that set of inventory,

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basically that’s in that SSD facility or closer type thing.

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Yeah what do you any other customer experience things you want to yeah i do

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think customer experience is super important and remember the scope of customer

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experience is super broad here right like because customer experience is both,

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how the mobile app works right and i think most of the examples you were talking

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about are the the website and the mobile app super important the customer experience

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of how the delivery happens yeah the whole thing is super important and the

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packaging, and is your bread crushed?

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And so I absolutely think user experience.

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Can win or lose an individual shopping occasion for a consumer here.

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So I get your metaphor of it’s on top of the cake, but I would argue it is.

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I just want to point out it’s super important. I think the woman you had dinner

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with was Ling, right? Was that the Ling saying?

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And I think one of the interesting things is often you go, oh,

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we’re going to either take this approach or this approach.

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And I think what Amazon has actually gone with is a choose your own adventure, right?

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So you can either say, hey, I want to shop in everything store with the complete

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assortment of all the perishables and the everything things all in one cart.

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And I just want to mash it all together, right? And there’s reasons that’s convenient and helpful.

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And it’s an easier model to understand. It’s an easier paradigm.

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The downside is when you type chicken in the search engine, you’re going to

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get fried chicken and you’re going to get chicken coops, right?

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And so if that’s the best use case for you, Amazon lets you do that.

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But this new experience is if you know you’re really just focused on food right

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now and just want to solve your food problem, you can drill down to a scoped

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shopping experience, a constrained shopping experience

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that’s just focused on grocery, right?

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So the interface changes from orange to green.

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And now when you type chicken in the search engine, you’re only going to see

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edible chicken options, right?

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And so there’s a bunch of UX things that can be more tailored to you because

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they know you’re grocery shopping. And so you may, you know,

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sometimes be shopping for apparel and just want to throw in one food item that

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you know you need. And you might use the everything UI.

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And other times you might be building a list for a dinner party and want to

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really be constrained to food.

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And you might use the grocery UI. And so it’s kind of cool that they’ve tried

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to let you seamlessly go back and forth and have a shared cart between those two different UI’s.

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Yeah i’m gonna keep going my metaphor in a bit even though you’re not i mean

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add more deliciousness to the cake what are we doing before i go on anything

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you want to miss want to say about grocery,

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i think that again you we you touched on private label i think that’s,

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super important i think economic circumstances right now and changing customer

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preferences are making it super important private label used to just mean cheaper

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versions of the same stuff you’re used to buying and trading down,

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today all these grocers make their own versions of products and they all have

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a huge brand love and loyalty for their own unique versions and a lot of them

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are using data to fill holes in the selection yeah and again if i have way more

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customer intimacy than the traditional

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man national manufacturers did so they get to,

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like formulate these these products based on customer insight and data and so

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i think amazon whole foods are leaning in into that as much as everyone,

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and there’s no stigma attached to it, right?

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Like there’s, there are own brands now that are premium. They’re not the opening

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price points always. Right. And so, so I think that’s a.

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Another interesting part of the GLP one. And then again, the fact that such

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a large percentage of the population is experimenting with or on GLP ones.

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And it just causes a wholesale reconsideration. So whatever your old food choices

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might have been and your old providers might have been, you’re going to reconsider them.

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So it’s kind of like these retailers get a new bite at all the customers they

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couldn’t win before. Great.

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They have to defend all their existing customers that everyone else is trying

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to poach. Not so great. It’s another disruption. Yeah.

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This is a good time to, as we transition to another topic, to talk about the

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Doug Harrington podcast.

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Yeah. So Doug is on the S team at Walmart. He reports to Andy Jassy.

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He has an overall responsibility for the retail business. So the best,

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coolest, most important business at Amazon.

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I’m sure the AWS guys would agree. I may have some personal thoughts.

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So Doug has started a podcast. so far he’s only interviewed other amazonians

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on his podcast which i think is the main intent it’s called think and be curious

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is that right learn and be curious learn and be curious which is,

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amazon tenant tenant to always be curious and so he’s interviewing these amazonians

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and talking about their backstory and what they’ve done and,

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i’d say they’ve all been interesting i’ll give you these cool insights into

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into the amazon culture and.

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Matriculation so we highly I recommend that we’ll put it in the show notes. Yeah.

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Check out that podcast, it’s really well done. We zoom out a little bit.

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So grocery is a big wedge in the pie of Amazon. Now I’m moving from cakes to

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pies. This podcast is making me hungry.

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The circle that surrounds all that is Prime. Yeah.

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So this briefing was called Amazon Prime and Grocery. So we spent a lot,

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almost a whole day talking about Prime.

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So just to kind of tee that up, Prime is now 21 years old and it’s live in 27

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countries. It can drink. Yep, it can drink. It can now have a beer.

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They’ve, you know, they’re really driving a lot of, it’s a membership type program.

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And they’re, you know, they’ve always been the everything store and it’s kind

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of like the everything membership.

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You can kind of sense that they’re kind of, I think they’ve got so many Prime

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users now that there’s kind of like a, at some point everyone on the planet

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is Prime. That’s not where they are.

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But, you know, I think they’re thinking a lot more. This is in the quarterly

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data they release about the frequency of use and the value people get from Prime.

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Another famous Bezos quotes is you should be it should add so much value.

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It’d be you’d be fiscally irresponsible not to take Prime. Like how do we make

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it that that much of a value?

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The you know, this this kind of cuts into the success of grocery,

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because if you’re on Prime, the whole grocery experience just as you know amazingly elevated,

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there a lot of their health offerings which is like another wedge on this thing

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is you know also part of that,

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we’re going to talk a minute about both Alexa plus the devices it’s good we’re

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in a room that doesn’t have any of our usual devices yeah we can save this and

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create a spot don’t listen to this on your speakers put on put on their pods

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from this point where because we’re going to say that you were allowed,

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another Another handy thing is I always, you know, I prefer Rufus because Amazon

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for shopping is such a long phrase, but they call it AFS.

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So I’m going to start using that now. So that’s actually a lot less words, especially typing was.

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So we did have a section on that. So the, you know.

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There is an analyst, he’s a friend of the show, Doug Anmuth at JPMorgan.

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And he does this exercise where he picks apart Prime and he looks at every one

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of the little pieces offered in there.

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So, for example, a lot of people don’t realize it, but with Prime,

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you get obviously the video and he comps that to like maybe a Netflix.

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Then you get DoorDash Plus, right? So that’s a known value and so on.

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So he adds all this up and he basically says, look, Amazon Prime has a,

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it would cost you $1,430 to go buy this. And the current price is $139.

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Another thing, speaking of value, is Amazon launched at $99 a year and now it’s

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$139. Now there’s a monthly that’s more, but if you get the annual,

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you get the, what’s it, 10%? Yeah, exactly.

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It’s $14.99 a month if you go monthly. Yeah.

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So that’s pretty amazing too that they’ve held the line on that.

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It’s not quite the Costco hot dog, but they’re, they’re, they’re holding it.

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Yeah. I think they’ve only changed the price twice in the 21 years.

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Now, Doug, he has, I think he’s every time he does this analysis,

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I think it’s every six months he does it.

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He then says they should raise the price and he does like a big calculation

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of how much money would fall out of the sky if they did that.

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But I get the sense that, you know, they didn’t announce anything to us.

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There aren’t any open price increases or anything I’m aware of.

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Yeah. I think, I think they’ve made a lot of moves. the monthly was introduced,

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I believe, so they could go down market because I think if you look at the bucket

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of people that aren’t in Prime, it is the lower income folks.

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So I think that’s the opposite.

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I almost counter it would look the Lord if they could. I don’t think they want

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Prime to be more profitable as a subscription.

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So I got, I’ve no inside information, but I don’t think they want the success

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story to be, look at all this prime revenue we’re generating. Right.

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Prime is very annoying to me because I feel like at this point,

00:13:54.130 –> 00:13:59.140
it’s inarguably the most successful customer affinity program in the history of the world, right?

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Everyone thought they were crazy when they were doing it. They’re like,

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you’re going to be killed on shipping.

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People are going to eat so much shipping. You iterated all the benefits.

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You didn’t even iterate the marquee benefit, free fashion thing.

00:14:10.390 –> 00:14:13.210
Yeah, free fashion. Which, by the way, the definition of fast,

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the price has only changed twice in 21 years.

00:14:16.260 –> 00:14:19.360
The definition of fast has changed a lot in 21 years.

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I mean, we’ve gone from two days being a service promise that no one in the

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industry can match to now they’re at 30 minutes, right? So it’s just crazy.

00:14:30.400 –> 00:14:38.030
Yeah, I think such a large swath of America is members. I think a lot of people

00:14:38.030 –> 00:14:42.130
with very constrained budgets are still prime members.

00:14:42.400 –> 00:14:47.900
I think what Amazon wants to do is make that program so important to your life

00:14:47.900 –> 00:14:50.190
that you just give them way more of your wallet share.

00:14:50.990 –> 00:14:54.710
I think that’s how they measure the benefit of prime. I don’t think they want

00:14:54.710 –> 00:15:00.470
to talk about the revenue from prime subscriptions, particularly being important.

00:15:00.470 –> 00:15:05.740
Like it’s a data collection tool. Like all the prime shoppers are known.

00:15:05.740 –> 00:15:09.490
And so then they get to sell better, more targeted ads that are more effective

00:15:09.780 –> 00:15:11.520
and more appreciated by customers.

00:15:11.900 –> 00:15:16.010
And they get better data to help you with returning orders and top-up.

00:15:16.270 –> 00:15:20.470
There’s so many synergies to you being in the prime ecosystem.

00:15:21.060 –> 00:15:25.250
I think what they want more than anyone is everyone to be in a prime ecosystem

00:15:25.250 –> 00:15:28.170
and everyone to use more of their benefits.

00:15:28.270 –> 00:15:33.050
Right? And so I bet you, I don’t know, I’ll bet you most of the executives there

00:15:33.050 –> 00:15:39.550
are a lot more focused on how do I jump them from benefit to benefit than how do I raise the price?

00:15:40.220 –> 00:15:43.630
I think they like that there’s skin in the game. I think one of the strengths

00:15:43.630 –> 00:15:47.130
is that it’s not a free membership. And like people, when they pay that money,

00:15:47.130 –> 00:15:51.960
they feel like I want to get maximum benefit out of that. So I want to use them for everything.

00:15:52.400 –> 00:15:58.300
And so I do think the one place where price gets tricky is new customer acquisition.

00:15:59.510 –> 00:16:01.650
That all the easy customers they’ve already signed up.

00:16:02.280 –> 00:16:07.120
And so now the customers that haven’t signed up have some rational or irrational

00:16:07.120 –> 00:16:08.800
resistance to signing up.

00:16:09.160 –> 00:16:12.670
And I think they feel like there’s so many benefits that if you signed up and

00:16:12.670 –> 00:16:16.710
tried it, you’d like it, right? So I suspect they’d like to figure out a lot

00:16:16.710 –> 00:16:19.810
of clever ways to make it really affordable in their tribe prime.

00:16:20.700 –> 00:16:25.510
If you’re not, but I, I don’t think like I all deference to the,

00:16:25.840 –> 00:16:30.720
the analysts. I don’t think they want to make that the new popular revenue stream at Amazon.

00:16:31.090 –> 00:16:34.730
I think they have, they’ve put so much in there that the average consumer doesn’t

00:16:34.730 –> 00:16:36.110
realize when all is available.

00:16:36.890 –> 00:16:41.090
This is a trick. It’s funny. There’s this economist in Chicago that,

00:16:41.570 –> 00:16:45.740
I love John West, and he did this study called the less is more where like,

00:16:45.740 –> 00:16:50.610
sometimes you can put so much in a bundle that people undervalued the bundle,

00:16:50.610 –> 00:16:52.950
that like when you add more to it, they make it less valuable.

00:16:53.470 –> 00:16:57.130
I don’t know that that’s necessarily the case with Prime at this point,

00:16:57.500 –> 00:17:03.550
but I would say it is crazy. Like if I sat down 21 years ago and said,

00:17:03.790 –> 00:17:04.970
Hey, here’s what we’re thinking.

00:17:05.500 –> 00:17:13.650
Free fast shipping and our own unique Lord of the Rings movie and a free telemedicine with a doctor.

00:17:15.160 –> 00:17:18.330
You would have said I was high and you, you’d have likely been right.

00:17:18.330 –> 00:17:23.150
Right. And yet they somehow have bundled all these things into an offering and

00:17:23.150 –> 00:17:26.109
made people love it with, so props to them.

00:17:26.369 –> 00:17:30.280
The reason I hate it is because I feel like it’s, it’s unquestionably their

00:17:30.280 –> 00:17:35.500
most intringent competitive advantage versus every other merchant in the world.

00:17:36.390 –> 00:17:41.630
Yeah. Yeah. So we, we had, you know, we, we had some sessions about prime video,

00:17:41.630 –> 00:17:45.190
which was interesting, not really kind of quarter audience. I asked some very

00:17:45.190 –> 00:17:50.349
important questions about some editorial decisions in a specific booth.

00:17:50.570 –> 00:17:53.240
Yeah. In Lord of the Rings. We’ve got a couple eye rolls on them.

00:17:53.240 –> 00:17:56.720
Yeah, I did not get satisfactory answers, if we’re being honest.

00:17:58.970 –> 00:18:01.800
So one of the most exciting things is we got to go on a bus,

00:18:01.800 –> 00:18:06.250
and we’ll put some pictures in the show notes here on social media.

00:18:06.550 –> 00:18:09.910
And we went to an Amazon Prime Air facility.

00:18:10.550 –> 00:18:15.980
If you’re not familiar with the Amazon Prime Air, this was not airplanes. This was drones.

00:18:16.780 –> 00:18:26.119
Jason and I famously, NRF 2014, 2015, got a drone into the big show.

00:18:26.390 –> 00:18:29.050
We could not fly it, but we had a drone there.

00:18:29.369 –> 00:18:32.590
Oh, and then we had the guys that did that early, early delivery drone.

00:18:32.590 –> 00:18:35.790
They actually had a big one. We had our little ones, but he had a big one too.

00:18:35.980 –> 00:18:39.890
So we were showing people. We had our 3D thing. I think we had our AR VR,

00:18:40.580 –> 00:18:45.040
we had our drones, and then I think we talked about, I think you had an Alexa speaker too.

00:18:45.440 –> 00:18:48.609
So I think what you’re gonna say is we were early drone-thin boys.

00:18:48.609 –> 00:18:52.580
We were always ahead of the curve. That’s what you get here at the Jason The Sky Show.

00:18:53.140 –> 00:18:55.040
You get to look 10 years into the future.

00:18:55.869 –> 00:18:59.190
So this was really fast. So number one, they had a museum.

00:18:59.570 –> 00:19:02.510
That’s where we were able to take pictures. But number two, we got to tour the

00:19:02.510 –> 00:19:05.369
manufacturing facility that we were not able to take pictures of.

00:19:06.090 –> 00:19:08.640
They’re making the drums there. They invented their own drum.

00:19:08.640 –> 00:19:11.190
This is not an off-the-shelf thing or a commercial thing.

00:19:11.570 –> 00:19:16.570
Yeah. Yeah. And there’s been four or five versions. Everyone remembers the 60

00:19:16.570 –> 00:19:20.470
Minutes big reveal where they, you know, the nice little poor Black Friday.

00:19:20.470 –> 00:19:23.420
I think coincidentally it was on April Fool’s. Yes.

00:19:23.710 –> 00:19:27.000
Jeff shows up on 60 minutes and he’s like, we’re going to unveil our next.

00:19:27.050 –> 00:19:28.470
I actually remember it being Black Friday.

00:19:29.020 –> 00:19:32.320
No. I thought it was like the night before Black Friday. I’m pretty sure it

00:19:32.320 –> 00:19:36.280
was on April 1st. I usually have a better memory. And we’re all curious what

00:19:36.280 –> 00:19:39.830
this big announcement is going to be and what new service or product they’re offering.

00:19:40.210 –> 00:19:44.470
And he announced that we’re going to start delivering products via drone,

00:19:44.910 –> 00:19:49.050
which at the time sounded utterly absurd. Yeah.

00:19:49.380 –> 00:19:51.780
And I remember there was like a big thing covered and he revealed it.

00:19:52.020 –> 00:19:55.109
And we all thought, we’re like, what is it, a new Alexa? And it was like a drone

00:19:55.109 –> 00:19:56.609
and no one had guessed a drone. Yeah.

00:19:56.950 –> 00:20:00.590
So, yeah, not on anybody’s bingo card. Super fanboy moment.

00:20:00.630 –> 00:20:07.950
When we go to the Prime Air factory in the museum, they have that V1 drone that

00:20:07.950 –> 00:20:10.190
Jeff unveiled. An OG. Yeah.

00:20:10.970 –> 00:20:14.760
Quite a bit smaller than the actual in-service drones. It was in glass.

00:20:14.760 –> 00:20:16.250
So Jason couldn’t hug it. He tried.

00:20:16.460 –> 00:20:19.530
No touching the drone. Yeah. That one, he touched a lot of those.

00:20:19.530 –> 00:20:21.290
Until security. Yeah. It’s a Q1.

00:20:21.900 –> 00:20:27.250
If you get a delivery by drone, there’s a good chance I touch the drone that touched your skin.

00:20:29.270 –> 00:20:37.090
You’re welcome. So today’s drone is big. It’s probably what? Like six feet circular?

00:20:37.670 –> 00:20:40.220
Yeah, about that five to six feet.

00:20:41.010 –> 00:20:43.859
And it has very big props. You do not want to get around this fucking…

00:20:43.859 –> 00:20:47.790
And six of them, not four. Yes, it’s a…

00:20:51.390 –> 00:20:56.130
I defer to your geometry. It is big. It can carry.

00:20:56.340 –> 00:20:59.980
It drops the payload, which I thought was interesting. Some of them will land

00:20:59.980 –> 00:21:04.770
and spit it out. Some of them will drop it a safe distance and then others will do a tether.

00:21:05.119 –> 00:21:07.280
So they’re currently in a drop kind of mode.

00:21:08.240 –> 00:21:11.830
And yeah, so that was really interesting. Let’s see, I had some more stats.

00:21:12.480 –> 00:21:18.109
It was very timely because the day we were there, they actually announced a

00:21:18.109 –> 00:21:19.930
bunch of things. So let’s talk a little bit about that.

00:21:20.940 –> 00:21:28.240
So on August 19th, which was today, they announced that they’re expanding air

00:21:28.240 –> 00:21:31.960
from, let’s see, it was in how many cities?

00:21:31.960 –> 00:21:34.060
We know it’s going to 500 cities. How long ago it was in 11?

00:21:34.060 –> 00:21:37.030
11 cities. That’s right. 11 cities and 10 metros.

00:21:37.410 –> 00:21:42.970
11 sites, 10 metros. Now it’s going to 500 cities by the end of 2026.

00:21:43.490 –> 00:21:47.859
By my math, that’s a 50X increase. That’s a lot. Yeah, that is a lot.

00:21:48.880 –> 00:21:53.130
This is another area where they’re in a bit of a race with Walmart.

00:21:53.130 –> 00:21:58.260
Yeah. So Walmart’s are called wing does that’s Google’s. Yeah.

00:21:59.310 –> 00:22:03.440
Go to Amazon Air, Walmart. Walmart has a couple paths to drone.

00:22:03.440 –> 00:22:07.900
They have some partnerships for drones, and then they also have their own drone

00:22:07.900 –> 00:22:10.270
program. And it’s pretty proudly deployed now as well.

00:22:10.500 –> 00:22:13.950
Yeah. And I think a lot of theirs, I’ve seen demos of theirs,

00:22:13.950 –> 00:22:15.060
and they’re at a store, right?

00:22:15.530 –> 00:22:18.390
Most of the ones that I’m aware of, the paddocks they call them,

00:22:18.390 –> 00:22:22.570
are in the back of a store. So they take inventory from that store.

00:22:22.970 –> 00:22:28.140
I’m not completely privy to all of Walmart’s drone plans, So it’s totally possible they have,

00:22:28.630 –> 00:22:32.390
some kind of dedicated FC attached to one, but then they have essentially a

00:22:32.390 –> 00:22:38.770
drone airport operating behind this door and they go grab the Advil from the shelf,

00:22:39.330 –> 00:22:42.060
and launch it to your backyard. Yeah, that’s pretty well.

00:22:42.369 –> 00:22:46.869
Today, there’s 11 sites are, the 10 metros are Phoenix, Tampa,

00:22:47.210 –> 00:22:52.950
Kansas City, Omaha, Baton Rouge, Detroit, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio,

00:22:52.950 –> 00:22:56.530
and Waco. A lot of Texas because anything goes in Texas. Yeah.

00:22:56.920 –> 00:23:00.910
I think one of the many factors that influences where they do these drug things

00:23:00.910 –> 00:23:06.190
is where they can get regulatory approval and I’m assuming that nobody’s easy,

00:23:06.190 –> 00:23:10.540
but I’m assuming Texas is somewhat more, more friendly than some other states.

00:23:10.540 –> 00:23:12.920
Some of the ones coming up. Are you sitting down Jason? I am.

00:23:12.920 –> 00:23:16.440
Syracuse, Cleveland, Boise, Atlanta.

00:23:17.150 –> 00:23:21.280
And Chicago, you could be receiving a drone package soon.

00:23:22.070 –> 00:23:25.250
I got to be honest. I’m trying not to get very excited about that because I

00:23:25.250 –> 00:23:28.280
would love to get some drone deliveries to my home.

00:23:28.520 –> 00:23:31.710
I have spoofed them. I have big videos of me getting drone deliveries.

00:23:32.420 –> 00:23:37.890
But I kind of suspect that they’re going to be focused on more suburban parts

00:23:37.890 –> 00:23:43.250
of Chicago. You need a little bit of most of the way these drone services work

00:23:43.250 –> 00:23:46.900
is you designate a place where you want the drone to deliver your packages.

00:23:47.220 –> 00:23:49.730
And you need a certain amount of open space.

00:23:50.119 –> 00:23:55.460
And in downtown Chicago, where I live, you don’t have a two acre lot there.

00:23:55.670 –> 00:24:00.030
Well, you don’t need that much space, but you, I think it’s likely too tight.

00:24:00.030 –> 00:24:03.020
I think that the main use case for these drones, they’re quite fast.

00:24:03.020 –> 00:24:07.240
They’re as fast or faster than cars. And they, you know, get to go direct and

00:24:07.240 –> 00:24:08.440
don’t have to fly around traffic.

00:24:09.090 –> 00:24:16.030
So I think it’s a fast, efficient way to get to a slightly less dense home.

00:24:16.590 –> 00:24:19.650
So I have a feeling the trucks are going to be more efficient in the super dense

00:24:19.650 –> 00:24:23.760
neighborhoods where I live. So I think you’re going to likely get some drone delivery equipment.

00:24:24.410 –> 00:24:27.290
If they figure out how to navigate your various pools. Yes.

00:24:27.460 –> 00:24:32.470
Before I get thrown. Don’t want it to go in the side pools and up from the lower. No, no.

00:24:32.810 –> 00:24:36.770
Or the plunge tub or the ice bath or whatever. Yeah.

00:24:37.220 –> 00:24:42.310
So some more facts about these. It’s free if you spend over $50.

00:24:42.310 –> 00:24:47.359
It’s usually on average 30 minutes, but it can’t be as long as 60 minutes from when you check out.

00:24:47.830 –> 00:24:52.440
It has to be five pounds or under and fit in a shoebox type size.

00:24:52.580 –> 00:24:58.530
It is a very specific package that the Payload Bay is designed for that we get to see.

00:24:58.960 –> 00:25:02.830
This covers 60% of your most frequently purchased items, groceries,

00:25:02.830 –> 00:25:06.560
electronics, cosmetics, medications. In the little museum, they had a list of

00:25:06.960 –> 00:25:09.700
a table full of things people have ordered from Drone.

00:25:10.060 –> 00:25:11.849
My favorite was a giant bag of nerds.

00:25:12.290 –> 00:25:15.130
I thought that was like… That would be high on my list. Someone was having

00:25:15.130 –> 00:25:20.510
a nerd crisis and they got them. They airdropped in some nerds right there. Right, yeah.

00:25:20.740 –> 00:25:24.070
That kid might have flunked out of school if he had taken time off and gone

00:25:24.070 –> 00:25:27.390
to the store and bought the Nerds. But he may be in Harvard right now because

00:25:27.650 –> 00:25:32.010
he kept studying while the Nerds came to him. They’re targeting a million deliveries

00:25:32.010 –> 00:25:33.970
for this year as part of the scale up.

00:25:34.500 –> 00:25:38.290
And this was interesting. So this is another one of these things that they’ve

00:25:38.290 –> 00:25:41.030
been chilling away at for a long time and are starting to scale.

00:25:41.380 –> 00:25:45.580
They started drones 13 years ago. So I guess it was 2013 was the 60 minutes.

00:25:46.450 –> 00:25:50.920
And you know now they are they seem to be getting pretty serious we were in

00:25:50.920 –> 00:25:54.160
the manufacturing facility and there were lots of drones being made it was not

00:25:54.160 –> 00:25:58.770
a i could tell that there was not a this was not a casual let’s let’s build

00:25:58.770 –> 00:26:01.000
one at a time kind of a situation yeah

00:26:01.390 –> 00:26:05.470
intellectually that was super cool like i think you and i just enjoy the idea

00:26:05.470 –> 00:26:09.620
of drones and i have to say i’ve had the privilege of being at a both a walmart

00:26:09.620 –> 00:26:11.380
and an amazon paddock when they were,

00:26:11.840 –> 00:26:14.340
functioning so we were at the place where they’re making the drums.

00:26:14.470 –> 00:26:18.620
I’ve been to places where they’re launching the drums. We get to see one kind

00:26:18.620 –> 00:26:21.650
of go through a test. Yeah. Which was neat. I think it.

00:26:22.760 –> 00:26:25.810
Struck me more than I expected, right? Because we always, we’ve been talking

00:26:25.810 –> 00:26:28.900
about this in the abstract and it was the silly idea that, oh yeah,

00:26:28.900 –> 00:26:32.490
it’s going to fly a package over your house and drop it and ha ha ha.

00:26:32.950 –> 00:26:36.710
But when you actually see these things running at scale, which they are now,

00:26:37.050 –> 00:26:41.280
and delivering like meaningful amount of packages and people just using them

00:26:41.280 –> 00:26:42.630
as part of their everyday life,

00:26:42.770 –> 00:26:46.820
like it’s like, oh my God, all this stuff we’re talking about is real.

00:26:46.970 –> 00:26:49.220
Like it was weird.

00:26:49.540 –> 00:26:54.180
That being said, I don’t think drone delivery is going to be a game changer for anyone.

00:26:54.180 –> 00:27:01.430
I think it adds to the scope of delivery options that Amazon has available.

00:27:01.430 –> 00:27:05.490
And now you put something in that cart and you go, what service level do you

00:27:05.490 –> 00:27:08.940
want? Do you want 30 minute now? Do you want one hour drone?

00:27:08.940 –> 00:27:11.140
Do you want one hour rush? Do you want three hour rush?

00:27:11.770 –> 00:27:15.150
All these choices are going to be the right choice for certain customers and

00:27:15.150 –> 00:27:18.280
certain use cases. And so I can see the value.

00:27:18.850 –> 00:27:26.500
I don’t necessarily think drones are going to unlock like giant at scale sales

00:27:26.500 –> 00:27:32.940
opportunity that none of the other delivery mechanisms that Amazon has don’t also attack.

00:27:32.940 –> 00:27:38.350
So to me, unlike some of these other things, which I do think Everyday Essentials

00:27:38.350 –> 00:27:43.610
and the Perishables is game changing and the lock-in of Prime is game changing, I don’t think.

00:27:45.090 –> 00:27:51.810
The drones is cooler technology, but I suspect when we look back from our retirement,

00:27:52.790 –> 00:27:55.740
we’re not going to talk about how that completely changed how everyone shopped.

00:27:56.010 –> 00:28:00.430
Yeah, so that was my favorite session. My second favorite. Any more on the drones? No.

00:28:01.230 –> 00:28:03.030
My second favorite section.

00:28:04.050 –> 00:28:07.990
You probably put grocery in aggregate as yours. Just because I like to eat?

00:28:08.150 –> 00:28:09.950
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:28:10.270 –> 00:28:14.030
It did make us hungry, hearing all these delicious grocery tales.

00:28:14.920 –> 00:28:17.580
And I’ve got this strange craving for rotisserie chicken milk.

00:28:21.960 –> 00:28:27.540
My second favorite was, it was combined, it was Alexa Plus and AFS,

00:28:27.540 –> 00:28:29.100
which is previously known as Rufus.

00:28:29.480 –> 00:28:33.690
So, as listeners know, we’ve talked about this, but just to recap,

00:28:33.690 –> 00:28:39.980
in May, they took Rufus and Alexa Plus, which is the device operating system

00:28:39.980 –> 00:28:42.770
or system. They merged them into one.

00:28:43.120 –> 00:28:45.550
That’s still kind of an ongoing thing, but they’re getting there.

00:28:45.930 –> 00:28:50.540
And, you know, it was really interesting. So we got to, it was a joint session,

00:28:50.750 –> 00:28:54.620
which is probably, as your AI agenda conference for Maximalist,

00:28:54.620 –> 00:28:56.760
I wish we’d talk a lot more.

00:28:56.760 –> 00:29:00.330
But I had talked to Rajiv previously, so I’ve gotten a fair amount of that.

00:29:00.330 –> 00:29:02.960
But it would be good to talk more about that. But it was sprinkled in.

00:29:02.960 –> 00:29:05.860
Everyone talks about it because it, like, cuts across the customer experience.

00:29:06.390 –> 00:29:09.440
But this was mostly about the device kind of stuff.

00:29:10.090 –> 00:29:14.940
And we talked a lot about Alexa plus and we’ve previously in the Q2 results,

00:29:14.940 –> 00:29:20.940
we talked about how, what was it like 20% if you used Alexa plus you were 20%

00:29:20.940 –> 00:29:22.710
more likely to sign up for prime or something.

00:29:23.030 –> 00:29:26.040
I think there’s a bigger number than that. Yeah, 25, 30, something like that.

00:29:26.940 –> 00:29:32.540
So that was interesting. They’ve had over 350 million consumers use Alexa for

00:29:32.540 –> 00:29:38.480
shopping in the AFS in the last 12 months. So that was a metric that’s been up to 5x.

00:29:39.330 –> 00:29:43.890
So that’s actually, you could argue big growth off a small number,

00:29:43.890 –> 00:29:45.660
but 350 million is not a small number.

00:29:46.770 –> 00:29:51.330
Oh, here it is. Alexa Plus users sign up for Prime at a 25% higher rate.

00:29:51.330 –> 00:29:52.600
That was the metric I could remember.

00:29:53.020 –> 00:29:58.770
There’s 600 million active Alexa endpoints. That’s the devices out there.

00:29:59.400 –> 00:30:03.860
I imagine not all of them are on prime. They probably got the cool speaker.

00:30:03.860 –> 00:30:08.000
So that’s an opportunity as they get smarter, you can see people saying,

00:30:08.990 –> 00:30:13.880
oh wow, I really wish I had prime because I want to do the music piece or order

00:30:13.880 –> 00:30:16.330
from it. Or there’s a lot of things kind of tied in there.

00:30:17.590 –> 00:30:22.270
Let’s see what else was there. They’ve moved a lot of the integrations.

00:30:22.270 –> 00:30:24.950
It seemed like they were all bespoke. Like, you know, how you can have like,

00:30:25.980 –> 00:30:30.340
Spotify door. There’s a lot of things that you can integrate onto your Alexa.

00:30:30.340 –> 00:30:34.520
It seemed like those were all kind of a hot mess before, like very individually

00:30:34.520 –> 00:30:36.240
done is private ways hit.

00:30:36.570 –> 00:30:40.080
It was a pretty long in the tooth platform. So some of those integrations are,

00:30:40.520 –> 00:30:44.700
yeah, sure. Like I see tech debt. Yeah. And for better and worse,

00:30:44.700 –> 00:30:48.780
I feel like they’ve tried not to break any of the old things that people already had. Yeah.

00:30:49.860 –> 00:30:54.250
So all that’s based on MCP now, which is pretty cool. So that maybe someday

00:30:54.250 –> 00:30:57.110
you’ll be able to kind of like make it easier to add your own skills to Alexa.

00:30:57.450 –> 00:31:00.470
I’ve never tried that. It seems like- Or at least you should be able to buy

00:31:00.470 –> 00:31:01.760
a kit with your own Alexa skills.

00:31:01.760 –> 00:31:04.780
Yeah. They talked a little bit about auto buy and some of the trends are seeing

00:31:04.780 –> 00:31:08.580
that that’s where you can kind of tell Alexa, either the speaker or AFS,

00:31:08.580 –> 00:31:12.150
and you can say, Hey, if this Nintendo comes back in stock and the price is

00:31:12.150 –> 00:31:14.210
under that, I want you to go ahead and buy that for me.

00:31:14.670 –> 00:31:18.560
That’s pretty cool. And then they talked about some of the new personalities

00:31:18.560 –> 00:31:22.120
are really engaging with people that you can put onto your Alexa plus device.

00:31:22.120 –> 00:31:26.550
Yeah. I actually use that because I have made my Alexa devices more curt.

00:31:26.930 –> 00:31:29.680
Do you go, so you’re brief, you don’t do laid back or sassy.

00:31:30.080 –> 00:31:35.340
I had you as a sassy guy. Yeah. I think sassy is fun once and this wasn’t personality,

00:31:35.340 –> 00:31:38.060
but it used to be a lot of celebrity voices. So I had like Samuel L.

00:31:38.060 –> 00:31:39.700
Jackson cursing at me for a little while.

00:31:41.490 –> 00:31:45.760
Yeah, I just go for Kurt because it’s, it’s an important part of my home ecosystem.

00:31:45.760 –> 00:31:49.520
We use them for quite a bit of home automation and turning on and off lights.

00:31:50.090 –> 00:31:53.310
And yet you just want that to be as snappy and short as possible.

00:31:53.310 –> 00:31:55.910
You don’t want it to cuss at you every single time. No, I don’t want to have

00:31:55.910 –> 00:31:57.910
a long sentence. I just want the lights to turn on.

00:31:59.380 –> 00:32:02.480
What did you have a takeaway wise from the Alexa conversation?

00:32:02.480 –> 00:32:06.560
Yeah. There’s a bunch of people working on it. It’s a tricky conversation on

00:32:06.560 –> 00:32:12.300
Amazon because I feel like AFS is both a horizontal thing. It wasn’t like,

00:32:12.300 –> 00:32:15.390
oh, the only time we talked about AFS is when the AFS guy was there.

00:32:15.800 –> 00:32:19.980
Like it came up in every other conversation, right? And so it very clearly,

00:32:20.650 –> 00:32:24.550
they’re all thinking about how AFS makes their thing better,

00:32:25.090 –> 00:32:26.700
how it’s going to make grocery better.

00:32:26.700 –> 00:32:31.870
The UX person talked a lot about AFS’s role in grocery.

00:32:32.970 –> 00:32:35.130
Yeah, it’s a benefit of Prime, right?

00:32:35.490 –> 00:32:38.820
You get this premium version of the experience of your Prime member.

00:32:39.530 –> 00:32:45.790
And it’s this vertical thing, it’s this new capability that unlocks things at Amazon.

00:32:45.790 –> 00:32:51.850
So it’s kind of tricky to talk about as a thing in my, I do have a little bit

00:32:51.850 –> 00:32:57.080
of a love hate relationship with it at the moment, because I think it’s gotten better.

00:32:57.080 –> 00:33:03.390
I think the vertical agent on the shopping pages is getting incrementally better,

00:33:03.870 –> 00:33:05.650
and adding more capabilities.

00:33:06.820 –> 00:33:13.300
I see what’s possible and I’m eager for them to get to what’s possible.

00:33:13.560 –> 00:33:19.650
And so I’m a little impatient with the progress versus what’s possible.

00:33:19.930 –> 00:33:27.810
But my big takeaway for AFS is AFS this year is what talking about Everyday

00:33:27.810 –> 00:33:29.080
Essentials was last year.

00:33:29.410 –> 00:33:32.050
It was something they had done a bunch of foundational work on,

00:33:32.460 –> 00:33:36.300
but it hadn’t really changed the world at Amazon yet. And Andy Jesse wasn’t

00:33:36.300 –> 00:33:37.890
talking about it in the earnings calls.

00:33:38.140 –> 00:33:41.520
So fast forward a year, they delivered on all that hard work.

00:33:41.520 –> 00:33:45.100
And now it’s a super important thing on the earnings calls.

00:33:45.490 –> 00:33:49.680
And it won’t surprise me in the slightest if a year from now,

00:33:50.510 –> 00:33:55.590
Andy’s talking about how AFS is the most important customer experience thing,

00:33:56.070 –> 00:34:00.230
they’ve added at Amazon and all these cool new proof points.

00:34:00.570 –> 00:34:06.740
Yeah. But it seems like the risk to Amazon is so, so, you know,

00:34:07.300 –> 00:34:10.469
we’ve spent several days, we kind of had our quarterly thing and then we’ve

00:34:10.469 –> 00:34:13.350
had several days steeped in it and then you come away and you’re like,

00:34:13.489 –> 00:34:14.650
they’re going to rule the world, right?

00:34:14.650 –> 00:34:18.830
But obviously they’re not, they’re the number two grocer, right? They’re not number one.

00:34:19.110 –> 00:34:23.650
They’ve, yeah, they’re constantly battling it out on all fronts.

00:34:24.840 –> 00:34:27.960
I think it’s interesting from my attempt to commerce world, you know,

00:34:28.080 –> 00:34:33.040
I think, I think Gemini, Google has had their eye on what Amazon is doing for a while.

00:34:33.040 –> 00:34:36.140
And I’d worry a lot about Amazon if I was Google, because there’s a whole thing

00:34:36.140 –> 00:34:39.050
about ads we haven’t talked about that was not part of our program.

00:34:39.050 –> 00:34:43.670
But, you know, that, that is either TAM reduction for Google or,

00:34:43.840 –> 00:34:47.800
you know, pure taking of share from their, their, their ad business.

00:34:48.770 –> 00:34:52.250
And so, so I think they have kind of have this approach. This is me.

00:34:52.250 –> 00:34:55.890
This is not them saying this. This is just me speculating. And then I think

00:34:56.190 –> 00:34:59.610
Chet Petit has seen this opportunity to kind of come in out of,

00:34:59.610 –> 00:35:02.890
Sam Altman’s actually said it pretty bluntly, that, you know,

00:35:02.890 –> 00:35:05.370
he’s kind of like, he kind of joked and said, your margin’s my opportunity.

00:35:05.370 –> 00:35:09.239
I’m kind of like back at, you know, two can play that game kind of thing.

00:35:09.410 –> 00:35:15.310
I think they see themselves, the AI folks see themselves being super horizontal.

00:35:15.310 –> 00:35:19.930
So if I can become, and I see this with my kids, especially my 19-year-old,

00:35:20.350 –> 00:35:24.270
she spends so much time talking to Chad, it gets the entry point at the shopping.

00:35:24.500 –> 00:35:26.480
Piece before Amazon does. Right.

00:35:27.110 –> 00:35:32.140
And that could almost like jump prime in a weird way, because it’s like,

00:35:32.770 –> 00:35:37.530
well, I was just talking to chat to you about my, my skin thing that’s going

00:35:37.530 –> 00:35:39.699
on. And it really recommended this.

00:35:40.400 –> 00:35:43.840
It’s so convenient just to order it right that second and not even checking it was on.

00:35:44.620 –> 00:35:49.030
So I think by having these conversations about non shopping related things,

00:35:49.030 –> 00:35:53.380
non grocery related things, you know, even, even meals and recipes is getting

00:35:53.380 –> 00:35:56.180
in front of grocery, which I think is a little risk to Amazon,

00:35:56.820 –> 00:36:00.260
because if you, yeah, you, you, you can’t really.

00:36:01.120 –> 00:36:04.120
I haven’t tried in like the last 30 days, but last time I’ve tried Rufus is

00:36:04.120 –> 00:36:07.360
not really helping you with much on, on recipes. It’s just kind of,

00:36:07.360 –> 00:36:10.060
it’ll send you over to like some other site and then that’s kind of it.

00:36:10.830 –> 00:36:13.989
Whereas the other guys are like doing really good jobs of building the whole

00:36:13.989 –> 00:36:17.630
cart for you and trying to get you like, again, so what do you,

00:36:17.630 –> 00:36:20.980
what do you think about that? Is there a real attack vector there?

00:36:21.880 –> 00:36:25.199
I do. I think there’s, there’s more spotless. You anticipate Amazon.

00:36:25.520 –> 00:36:28.440
They’re, they’re very smart. They must see it. If you and I see it, they see it.

00:36:28.820 –> 00:36:32.460
Are they going to do it too? and try to like go wide with AFS? Yeah. I,

00:36:34.550 –> 00:36:40.010
mean, so A, I don’t know. I feel like this is so early.

00:36:40.340 –> 00:36:45.760
Like I don’t even care who’s winning right now, right? Because I feel like the

00:36:45.760 –> 00:36:50.350
race is going to change positions multiple times. It’s not an indicator of future

00:36:50.350 –> 00:36:52.699
success. No, before it all settles down.

00:36:53.180 –> 00:36:58.080
I will just remind everyone, challengers come up and do disrupt like seemingly.

00:36:59.160 –> 00:37:04.070
Undisruptible incumbents all the time right and just in our commerce space i go

00:37:04.420 –> 00:37:08.739
instacart wasn’t relevant they became pretty relevant in digital grocery

00:37:09.040 –> 00:37:15.199
timu wasn’t relevant they became super relevant sheen you know has had way more

00:37:15.199 –> 00:37:21.120
apparel progress than anyone ever thought and tiktok shop is like arguably the most disruptive

00:37:21.500 –> 00:37:23.500
thing out there in our whole space.

00:37:23.500 –> 00:37:27.620
What not over here doing video collectibles just raised some of the money.

00:37:27.620 –> 00:37:30.340
Their GMOs off to the rest of TikTok shops.

00:37:30.840 –> 00:37:34.300
So often they’re AMs, by the way. They don’t, like Walmart and Amazon are still

00:37:34.300 –> 00:37:36.140
doing pretty good in spite of all those things.

00:37:36.500 –> 00:37:40.440
But nobody’s entitled to their position forever, right?

00:37:40.440 –> 00:37:45.699
And so it won’t, I am very convinced that all of this agentic is going to create

00:37:45.699 –> 00:37:51.210
some new Google-sized players in the space. Like, will Google be one of them?

00:37:51.210 –> 00:37:53.040
I think they have every opportunity.

00:37:53.660 –> 00:37:59.600
I don’t know who wins or loses, but I do think there’s going to be major reconsiderations.

00:37:59.600 –> 00:38:02.210
Right. And I, today, like a simple thing, but like.

00:38:03.020 –> 00:38:07.170
The company that has most of your purchase history has a huge advantage for

00:38:07.170 –> 00:38:08.630
personalization, right?

00:38:08.630 –> 00:38:13.239
And so, like, one of the advantages of Prime is you spend more of your wallet

00:38:13.239 –> 00:38:16.739
there because you want to get benefit out of Prime, and then they get more purchase

00:38:16.739 –> 00:38:20.180
history, and then they can do suggestive selling better than everyone else.

00:38:20.800 –> 00:38:26.310
I’m pretty convinced, in the long run, the company that has the most of my life

00:38:26.310 –> 00:38:30.719
context is going to be even more valuable than just my purchase history, right?

00:38:30.719 –> 00:38:35.140
So I want to buy some, I want to see some recipes and then buy the food for

00:38:35.140 –> 00:38:38.210
those recipes that meet my exact health goals.

00:38:38.680 –> 00:38:41.850
And I don’t want to have to restate all my health goals. So if you already know

00:38:41.850 –> 00:38:46.750
my health goals and you can do all this other stuff well enough, you’re going to win.

00:38:46.900 –> 00:38:52.390
And so we, we talk a lot about horizontal agents like Google and ChatGVT having

00:38:52.390 –> 00:38:57.670
a lot of broad context for users and that’s going to be their competitive advantage.

00:38:58.190 –> 00:39:06.790
And the onsite retail owned agents that we call vertical agents, like AFS and Sparky.

00:39:07.890 –> 00:39:11.030
They’re going to have different advantages. They know more of our commerce purchase.

00:39:11.030 –> 00:39:14.730
They know all, you know, and so it’s really going to be which one can overcome

00:39:14.730 –> 00:39:17.320
their deficiencies the best.

00:39:17.320 –> 00:39:23.170
Right. And I do think one possible play if you’re Amazon is I don’t just want

00:39:23.170 –> 00:39:27.670
to be a vertical agent. I do want to be a horizontal agent. And how many devices

00:39:27.670 –> 00:39:30.650
did you say Amazon has out there? And by the way, 600 million.

00:39:30.989 –> 00:39:37.570
It could be more active because what if it’s also all the fire TVs and all of the, what are they?

00:39:37.969 –> 00:39:44.280
But you could imagine them having a big surface for a horizontal agent and at

00:39:44.280 –> 00:39:45.920
the very least competing in

00:39:45.920 –> 00:39:52.300
that space. So it won’t surprise me to see them run that kind of a play.

00:39:52.420 –> 00:39:57.040
Oh, and since we last recorded the quarterly results, information leaked from

00:39:57.040 –> 00:40:00.750
Bloomberg about this device that OpenAI has worked with. I was going to say,

00:40:00.750 –> 00:40:03.210
and we all thought it was going to be some kind of wearable,

00:40:03.210 –> 00:40:06.449
and it’s now sounding more like… A donut. It’s a donut.

00:40:06.870 –> 00:40:11.960
It’s a home or substance but a donut that essentially is a direct competitor to an echo yeah

00:40:12.280 –> 00:40:15.500
and it’s battery powered so it doesn’t have to be plugged in

00:40:15.810 –> 00:40:18.860
and it has some kind of movement to it so a lot of people think it’s going to

00:40:18.860 –> 00:40:23.360
have a little face or some kind of expressions yeah so it’s going to be interesting

00:40:23.360 –> 00:40:26.320
to see when the device comes out what’s happening there yeah

00:40:26.600 –> 00:40:30.180
and apple’s taking it seriously because they’re suing the dude that left and

00:40:30.180 –> 00:40:31.370
yeah this kind of stuff and there

00:40:31.370 –> 00:40:34.180
are lots of interesting things that are happening in the glasses but i

00:40:34.540 –> 00:40:38.020
i think there’s like so much opportunity for innovation and stuff here.

00:40:38.020 –> 00:40:43.199
I’m excited to see where all this goes. I’m definitely not going to embarrass

00:40:43.199 –> 00:40:46.420
myself by picking any, any definitive winners and losers.

00:40:46.420 –> 00:40:50.360
Cause I think this is a, the very early innings of a race that a lot of people

00:40:50.360 –> 00:40:55.130
are going to invest a lot of resources and unimaginable resources in,

00:40:55.130 –> 00:40:59.050
in winning, but I think the consumer is going to win. I think like.

00:41:00.070 –> 00:41:05.290
That I’m going to be getting how much less friction there is in a lot of these

00:41:05.290 –> 00:41:10.300
commerce experiences down the road as a result of all these new technologies.

00:41:10.300 –> 00:41:16.770
There’s lots of silly hoops. We have all mindlessly accepted jumping through,

00:41:17.230 –> 00:41:18.400
that are going to go away.

00:41:18.800 –> 00:41:20.900
Anything else before we call it a day?

00:41:21.460 –> 00:41:24.489
No, no. I think this might’ve been a record for our longest podcast.

00:41:24.550 –> 00:41:28.050
We’re going to split this into two episodes. Tomorrow. Yep. And.

00:41:28.800 –> 00:41:32.270
We’re actually going to be together again at Retail Club. So make sure you come

00:41:32.270 –> 00:41:36.850
to Retail Club. I believe you can now, bookings are open for our session.

00:41:37.010 –> 00:41:40.180
There’s a very limited number of seats in our quote-unquote tent,

00:41:40.180 –> 00:41:41.330
which I think is actually a tent.

00:41:41.860 –> 00:41:45.500
So Jason and I are going to be talking about really whatever you want to talk

00:41:45.500 –> 00:41:48.380
about. Yeah, so bring your sleeping bags. Yeah, it’s going to be,

00:41:48.680 –> 00:41:51.480
I think we signed up for a six-hour session. So that’s going to be great.

00:41:51.480 –> 00:41:54.780
But we’ll be doing lots of little sessions. We’re going to do some live pods.

00:41:55.210 –> 00:41:59.510
If anyone out there is at a retailer and wants to come on the pod,

00:41:59.510 –> 00:42:02.780
reach out. We would love to either Jason and I through LinkedIn is probably

00:42:02.780 –> 00:42:06.590
the easiest or email contact. Or our fancy new podcast website.

00:42:06.730 –> 00:42:11.989
Yeah, yeah. Go to the Jason and scot show, jasonscott.com and you can submit

00:42:11.989 –> 00:42:14.570
to there and reach out through the form on that site.

00:42:14.960 –> 00:42:18.520
So we look forward to seeing everyone at Retail Club. Yeah, I’m going to throw

00:42:18.520 –> 00:42:20.140
one other plea in there though.

00:42:20.140 –> 00:42:24.070
If you’re enjoying all this new content and maybe you’re enjoying the new video

00:42:24.070 –> 00:42:27.810
format, that’s a perfect reason to leave us this review.

00:42:27.810 –> 00:42:33.690
Because more than ever, I need reviews. I need the podcast to feel like a success.

00:42:33.690 –> 00:42:37.870
Because now that scot and I are traveling together a lot, I’m desperate to

00:42:37.870 –> 00:42:42.620
move beyond our room sharing policy. So I’m hoping if we get enough good reviews,

00:42:42.900 –> 00:42:47.380
we’ll be able to start having our own rooms, which I have. Jason stores like a chainsaw.

00:42:48.640 –> 00:42:52.190
I wasn’t going to go there. But trust me, it’s in everyone’s best interest that

00:42:52.190 –> 00:42:53.120
scot and I have in our rooms.

00:42:53.820 –> 00:42:59.390
So hopefully that’s an impetus for leaving a review. And until next time, happy commercing.

00:42:59.880 –> 00:43:04.260
You’ve been listening to The Jason and scot Show. For all the latest news and

00:43:04.260 –> 00:43:11.300
trends on e-commerce and shopper marketing, subscribe to us on iTunes or visit jasonandscot.com.