Unpacking the Digital Shelf

Building and growing a middle market manufacturer and retail company is a challenge not for the faint of heart. But entrepreneurial passion and grit matched with operational expertise can lead to outstanding differentiation and growth. That’s the investment thesis of MidOcean partners, a private equity firm focused on transformative growth opportunities in middle-market consumer and business services companies.  Eric Roth, Managing Director at MidOcean Partners, joined Rob and Peter to talk through private equity investing in a time of disruption, and the fascinating investment opportunities in the Davids vs. Goliaths battle. 

Preparing content for the digital shelf, or in truth, all the digital shelves, is a process, organizational, and technical challenge. Not for the faint of heart. This is a podcast presentation of a recent Digital Shelf Playbook series webinar, featuring two experts who are deeply experienced in driving this process across multiple organizations. Lauren Livak, who ran North American Digital shelf strategy at Johnson and Johnson and is now the Director of the Digital Shelf Institute and Barbara Jenny-Wilson, Director of Digital Content Programs at Coty. Peter is on board as emcee.

In ecommerce, industry trends are really just the sum total of individual consumer behaviors. Rob and Peter take a look at trends in how  DTC and consumer shopping experiences evolved during the pandemic, and how those shifts impact acquisition, loyalty, and  who decides what your brand is. Plus, the world's cutest puppy is identified.

Until our robot overlords take over, winning on the digital shelf requires the right team of people. What is the mix of hard and soft skills that team members need to have to deliver and thrive in a rapidly changing and critical sector of the business? Lauren Livak, who ran North American Digital shelf strategy at Johnson and Johnson and is now Director of the Digital Shelf Institute, teamed up with Sheri Stoller, Director of Ecommerce at Trilliant Food and Nutrition in a recent Digital Shelf Playbook series webinar to answer this question and many more. It’s such a great conversation, we wanted to share it with our podcast audience as well.

Anyone in on the early days of ecommerce knows the name One Click Retail. They created the seminal platform for ecommerce measurement, sales analytics and search optimization, one that was acquired by Edge by Ascential in 2016. Nathan Rigby and his founding partner have teamed up again to raise the bar on ecommerce analytics and data-driven decision making with their new company, Analytic Index. Nathan joined Rob and Peter to talk about private brands, retailer ad platforms, the new science of search optimization, and, surprisingly, almond flour.

There is no question that our future will continue to be one of disruption. Either acute disruption, like COVID, or chronic disruption, like the emergence of digital technologies across industries and use cases. So the question isn’t a matter of will there be disruption, but what do leaders do in response? Business Professor Gerald Kane of Boston University, along with his co-authors, found themselves in the middle of a pandemic conducting deep research through hundreds of interviews with executives that resulted in new scholarship around thriving through disruption. The book is the Transformation Myth, and Professor Kane sat down with Peter to discuss it.

In a business dictated by an algorithm, designing a fluid, flexible process to get products ready for ecommerce and built out with content is essential.  Lauren Livak, who ran North American Digital shelf strategy at Johnson and Johnson and is now Director of the Digital Shelf Institute, has embarked on a ten episode series of webinars with new research and executive conversations. The content is so foundational to any leader plotting their digital shelf strategy, that we will be presenting it here in podcast format as well. Today’s episode focuses on the necessary elements of a winning digital shelf process and features Lauren, Peter, and Lizbeth James, eBusiness Director at Nestlé.

The local brands called out in this episode were SCVA and Caring Kind. Cann was the national beverage brand.

The journey to winning on the digital shelf can not be made in weeks, or months, but years. To manage expectations, the right outcomes, and your sanity, it is vital to understand where you and your company are on that journey, and what the right next steps are to  move along a maturity curve towards operational and performance excellence. Experts from Salsify and the DSI teamed up to articulate a Digital Shelf Maturity Curve, and they presented it in a recent webinar. The content is so foundational to any leader plotting their digital shelf strategy, that we wanted to present it here in podcast format. Here with Peter are Joe Gaudreau, head of the Commerce Strategy Team at Salsify, and Lauren Livak, Director of the Digital Shelf Institute. 

Thrasio often gets lumped into the  “Amazon seller aggregator” category. But when you talk to them, that’s just the how. Here’s their mission:”to be the most impactful consumer products company of the next century.” A key part of achieving that mission is creating  and expanding thousands of global brands at scale. The man in charge of  that part of the  mission  is Arturo Aranda, who brings his experience leading creative at BBDO, Facebook, MRM/McCann, working with some of the biggest brands in the world. Rob and Peter dug into what it takes to do brand building at the scale and speed of a Thrasio, and what it means to the company’s overall mission.