Unpacking the Digital Shelf

In February of 2021, we welcomed to the podcast Gireesh Sahukar, VP of Digital at bakery ingredient manufacturer Dawn Foods to talk about their investment in delivering a best-in-class digital experience for its customers. Well, now he is back with the receipts of the fruits of that investment, particularly as we continue to navigate through a challenging economic and supply chain environment. Dawn Foods’ strategy of the people, process, and tech to transform their entire business to serve a new set of digital-first customers is inspiring.

Amazon - it's a jungle out there for sellers, particularly in these times of economic and supply chain headwinds. Jason Boyce, Founder & CEO of Avenue7Media has spent his entire career driving success on Amazon, as early as 2003 with his own brand, and now for a wide range of Amazon sellers through his digital marketing agency and his book The Amazon Jungle. Jason joined the podcast to offer up to the minute advice for the strategies brands need to not only weather the storms ahead but take advantage of the opportunities for growth that uncertain times can offer.

Every brand is looking for the most efficient ways to grow sales and compress operating expenses and in this environment of rising digital acquisition costs, it is brick and mortar that is rising back to the top of the strategy conversation - but the economics and efficiencies must be right for a brand to test and learn and scale that strategy . Amish Tolia is co-founder and co-CEO of Leap, a platform that helps brands launch and operate retail stores to grow their brand with less risk. He joins the podcast to talk about this new vision for scalable, data-driven retail performance.

What’s the old adage? You can’t manage what you don’t measure. And defining the right KPIs to measure and optimize the business value you are driving on the digital shelf has long been a moving target. But there is now enough experience and best practices developing out there to really build a solid discipline around it. This is a podcast audio version of a webinar featuring of course Lauren Livak, Director of the Digital Shelf Institute and driving force behind the playbook, and our special guest, Whitney Young, Director of Ecommerce at Energizer to discuss the critical KPIs of the digital shelf and why it’s imperative to measure your successes in your ecommerce strategy.

In these challenging times, brands are looking for opportunities for growth and experimentation with rapid feedback. Its possible for some that international expansion could be part of that growth plan, and that’s why we tapped into the experienced brain of Daniel Roberts, once founder of Australian product content solutions provider SKUvantage, now part of Salsify. Dan brings a decade of experience in the retail, brand, and consumer markets in Australia and New Zealand to outline the opportunities in the market and how to best take advantage of them.

To create wisdom from accumulated numbers and knowledge. That is the mission of adaptive analytics provider Analytic Partners ROI Genome project, an ongoing series of intelligence into trends, truths, and myths in marketing published by adaptive analytics provider Analytic Partners. Their Mike Menkes, Senior Vice President, joined the podcast to walk us through the insights you should know to drive short term and long-term performance.

For many innovators in digital commerce, the dream is building a brand from scratch that grows to a scale where some larger company wants to pay a LOT of money for it. Then, you buy an island. These days the path to that dream is a bit more rocky and more complex, but with the right fundamentals in place, a vibrant DTC brand can still drive a lot of value. Like in Coca Cola’s 5.6 billion dollar acquisition of BodyArmor sports drinks late in 2021. Ryan Lewendon, Partner at law firm Giannuzzi LewENdon LLC, helped negotiate that deal but also worked with body armor and tons of other D2C companies throughout their lifecycle. Ryan joined Rob and Peter to lay out the necessary elements for a DTC growth path that will return maximum, and lasting, value.

Everyone in ecommerce and digital knows that the competition for experienced talent is intense. Lauren Stiebing, Founder and CEO of LS International, specializes in recruitment for consumer goods companies and retailers. She brings her wealth of experience in what it takes to find and win a candidate, best practices that can apply across categories. Special note: Listen to the end, for details on how to download a quick reference guide from Lauren and the DSI on questions to ask yourself as you are recruiting digital talent.

We live in the most interesting times - with both the blessings and the curses that come with that. In retail and commerce today, that means processing all the noise of short term inputs against longer trends and core truths and deciding what investments to make and roads to take. Tom Goodwin, a retail consultant, author, speaker and asker of the annoyingly perceptive question, brings his latest views on the interesting times we live in, the opportunities that await, and the importance of often choosing the simplest path as the most meaningfully consequential.

“We like the operational headache.” This quote from the conversation with Mehtab Bhogal, Cofounder of Karta Ventures, perfectly describes the grit and expertise it takes to make a living rescuing and reinvigorating distressed DTC businesses. Mehtab shared his turnaround process, how he evaluates opportunities, and his perspective on the current and future environment for DTC success as headwinds continue.