Unpacking the Digital Shelf

Over a year ago, the DSI and Salsify launched a Digital Shelf Maturity curve - a framework for brands to understand the stages they will pass through on the marathon towards maximum digital shelf efficiency and performance. For it is truly a marathon, not just a sprint. As part of that Maturity Curve, Salsify also developed an assessment brand leaders could take to determine their place on the curve and how they might get to the next stage. Salsify now has a year of the data from the hundreds of assessments that have been taken, and the creator of the Maturity Curve, Cara Wood, joins the podcast to outline the maturity curve journey stories that the numbers bring to life.

Some leaders in ecommerce were able to see the storm clouds gathering over advertising-driven performance marketing, and invest strategically to test and grow new muscles for attracting and keeping customers. Joe Fisch, CEO of Wine Access, and his team saw those shifts coming, and have expanded the ways in which they reach new customers, and how they invest in content and superior customer service to keep them and grow their value over time. It’s an interesting road map for any brand looking to diversify their acquisition and loyalty strategy.

Fashion is one of the categories that has undergone the most massive shift in terms of how retail buyers and brand sellers interact. The rise of fast fashion, the mummification of trade shows during the pandemic, changing consumer expectations and demands: all these trends in an economically challenging environment mean that buyers and sellers must collaborate faster and more transparently than ever before to drive the growth and competitiveness they need to thrive. Kristen Savilia, from her time as a buyer at Macys to CEO of Virtual Showroom and Wholesale Management Platform JOOR has spent her career transforming how fashion makes its way to market to drive the success of both brand and retailer. She joined the podcast to detail the recent innovations from the digital transformation of fashion wholesaling.

With 90% of all Target’s digital sales being fulfilled by the local store, the retail media opportunity with Target is one that needs to be worked both at the national level and the local level, down to each individual store and the surrounding set of consumers. In this episode, we take a deep dive on how to best plan and execute a winning strategy at Target with David Glaza, Founder & CEO of Retail Media Agency DIGITS.

Two trends in ecommerce are eliding to create a new, or renewed channel for acquisition and cross-sell. One, the increasing CPAs of digital ads makes that channel more expensive and less performant. Second, many retailers have begun or boosted their direct channels and have gathered strong 1st party data on their consumers. As a result, it is our old friend direct mail, in a shiny new technology-driven suit, that is providing strong results, nimble and precise targeting, at a reasonable cost. Dave Fink, Co-founder and CEO of Postie, joined the podcast to explain how.

To drive maximum growth, both in-store and online teams need to bridge the gap between the digital shelf and the physical shelf. That starts with a shared vocabulary on the tactics for success in each channel and across the channels. There is more in common than we think. This is podcast rebroadcast of a recent DSI webinar featuring 4 commerce experts who worked with Lauren Livak, Director of the Digital Shelf Institute on a report entitled Digital Decoded: How To Drive Omnichannel Growth by Understanding Each Commerce Touch Point. Listen as Lauren unpacks the key takeaways with Jennifer Angelus, Director, Digital Shelf and Capabilities, Danone North America, Matt Fantazier, Director, Digital Experience, Johnson & Johnson, and Dean McElwee, Director of International Ecommerce Strategy at Stanley Black & Decker.

For brands looking for growth, an obvious opportunity is expanding to new markets. But each market comes with its challenges, costs, and requirements for process and organizational transformation. This is definitely true of the countries that make up the EMEA market. Jérôme de Guigné, Founder and CEO, of ecommerce agency e-Comas, joined the podcast to share his deep experience working with brands large and small to establish profitable and sustainable eCommerce strategies in EMEA.

After 7 years creating the Digital Commerce practice at IDC, Jordan Jewell has taken his analyst mindset to commerce platform provider VTEX, where he is applying his analytical brain to the future of commerce, and the paths to get there. Jordan joined the podcast to walk us through the path from analyst firm to vendor, and the trends and opportunities he is seeing to increasingly monetize every pixel on the digital shelf.

One of the most challenging, exciting, and career igniting skills that come from being digital shelf leaders is the ability to drive the organizational changes necessary to propel growth across the business. It takes a very specific mindset, and that is what we are doing to focus on today. This is a podcast presentation of a Digital Shelf Playbook series webinar from August of 2021, we share it today because its strategies and tips feel as urgent and important as we head into yet another period of rapid business challenges and adjustments. Our guests are two experts who are deeply experienced in leadership in ecommerce and driving digital change. We have Lauren Leevak, who ran North American Digital shelf strategy at Johnson and Johnson and is now the Director of the DSI and the brains behind the entire Digital Shelf Playbook series. Also, we are so grateful to have longtime DSI collaborator Bob Land, then VP of Consumer Experience at Dorel Juvenile and now General Manager of Berlin Brands Group USA, to share his journey driving commerce transformation at Dorel.

What makes us so darn special from every other species on earth, and what do we do about it? According to author and technologist Byron Reese, in his new book Stories, Dice, and Rocks, it is our ability to imagine the future and recall the past, and, by sharing that knowledge at an unprecedented scale to actually shape our future. Including in commerce. This is a fascinating conversation with a brilliant man with an optimistic view of humanity, backed up by data.