Future Commerce

Phillip and Brian sit down with Kiri Masters to talk about how the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is affecting the world of DTC. Main Takeaways: Kiri Masters, the Founder of Bobsled Marketing and author of Amazon for CMOs, joins Briand and Phillp in this week's episode. How is eCommerce being affected by Amazon restrictions on nonessential products? The world has entered an unprecedented period of social distancing, and brands are dealing with this in different ways. Brands are stepping up in comforting and creative ways to protect their customers and boost morale during these trying times. Growth Amongst the Chaos: The Steadfast Power of Amazon: Phillip has some fascinating insights by watching booming categories amongst the brands that he manages through Something Digital. Seemingly every day, there are new records for brands in the Health & Wellness space. Kiri sees significant performance in Health & Personal Care, CPG and Grocery, Beauty, and specific areas of apparel. Aside from a decrease in non-critical purchases, Amazon is not going anywhere anytime soon, even amidst a pandemic. Guaranteeing the Essentials: Dealing with Emergency Prioritization: There's an interesting dichotomy between the increase in online shopping and a wariness to spend money due to wavering job security. There is a restriction on items in nonessential categories that is stopping companies centered in these categories from shipping their goods into Amazon. Essential categories include Pet, Baby, Food, Industrial & Scientific, and Health & Personal care. Some brands cannot get their product shipments out to carriers and are being blocked by the Amazon restrictions. To keep up with demand, Amazon is reportedly adding 100,000 jobs to deal with a surge in online shopping. The Illusion of Choice: What's Actually There?: Brian has noticed that there has never been a period with fewer options on Amazon than right now. Amazon pain points traditionally felt by larger brands are proving themselves to be precisely what keeps the system working and full of inventory in times like this. Would an Amazon version of Uber surge-pricing have prevented some of the hoarding that has happened around the world? As the supply chain has been massively impacted as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, brands have had to choose between maintaining prices and selling out of product or raising prices to ensure supply over the next three months, The Truth of Price Gouging: Not All is Black or White: When it's in the consumer's favor, everyone is on board with price discounts to move excess product, but should the opposite also be true? We need to hold brands and Amazon accountable if there is legitimate price gouging happening; still, we can't forget that businesses need to make adjustments to stay in business and keep employing their staff. In the not so distant future when price elasticity becomes widely available due to technology advances in brick and mortar locations, we will be able to meet the demand for products in times of emergency. While price elasticity is present in some things (like gas), we are not used to seeing the influx of price when it comes to basic needs. The Next Few Days: Predictions for the Very Near Future: Kiri predicts that if you are in a category that Amazon has deemed nonessential, then every minute of the Amazon restriction counts towards the longevity of your business. "If you are in an essential category, this is the time to evaluate each channel, think about where the demand is coming from, and analyze the supply chains that get your product into each of those channels." You also need to decide what course of action to take to keep the lights on for your business, and this choice might be a difficult one. What are some steps you can take right now to protect the longevity of your business? A Call for Unity: The Rose Garden: Recently, President Trump invited the CEOs of major retailers to showcase a plan on how the government was partnering with the private sector to combat the virus. Essentially, large retailers are guaranteeing not only essentials will be stocked within brick and mortar locations across the nation, but that these locations would also be locations for other virus-related services. Jeff Bezos was interestingly absent from this panel. There is a tremendous amount of power in brick and mortar in moments like this, and even Amazon cannot provide essentials at scale when compared to brick and mortar in times of crisis. Looking Locally: The Effects on Communities: Local establishments such as bars, salons, and restaurants, are shut down across the globe, not all of these businesses may survive this period of quarantine. How will our communities be affected by the virus once the initial panic and quarantine have passed? Brands need to consider how they will support their local communities post-pandemic Will new work-from-home policies and adjusted methods of social interactions prove to be beneficial for our society? Brian published an article for Insiders this week that talks about the opportunity for DTC brands in small towns, and why it's important to support local businesses now more than ever. We are at peak distraction levels currently regarding the abrupt changes to our lives, but things will calm down, and we will get into the grooves of this new way of life. Keeping It Positives: Brands That Are Doing Things Right: Phillip asks Kiri if she has had any recent experiences with brands that have not been tapping into the zeitgeist of the virus and are doing notable things. Kiri is currently in Colombia in South America and recently received an email from the CEO of Rappi (a grocery delivery service) that detailed the logistical changes that have occurred since the virus began its spread. This explanation of what the company is doing to ensure safety from the CEO of the company was comforting for Kiri. Something brands should consider, is reaching out to their active customer base to show what you are doing to protect them and to manage expectations within the virus climate. To help people escape the self-quarantine madness: Sexual Wellness company Unbound Babes created an epic collaborative and self-regulating Google Sheet of references, activities, and content for people to reference during these times of social distancing. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Amazon Uber Rappi Unbound Babes As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some actions you can take right now to protect your brand during these uncertain times? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at info@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!

Main Takeaways: Phillip and Brian are joined today by research guru, Rachel Swanson, founder of Method + Mode which gives bespoke insights for brand growth. First, Brain and Phillip give a COVID-19 update. The trio review Rachel’s work on Future Commerce’s Vision 2020 Report and reflect on the process of the research and give their own insights to the findings. Rachel makes data come alive and creates a story from the data she gathers. The three discuss the cyclical nature of retail and how DTC brands are evolving and how they think brands will continue to evolve in the future. And they throw in a few hot takes, just for the fun of it. COVID-19 Update from Future Commerce We were off message with our episode last week when we published our episode talking about Ingrid speaking at Shoptalk 2020 which then got canceled. Brian lives in the Seattle area. There are no gatherings of more than 250 people allowed, even with religious gatherings. Businesses in the Seattle areas are struggling with the lack of interaction. An interesting statistic, a lot of DTC toilet paper companies are having a very high amount of traffic on their sites. Who Gives a Crap, Bippy, and No. 2 are all out of stock. There’s an interesting development in how technology can aid in this environment. We’ve seen a big step up in corporate responsibility in response to the virus. We’re no longer a manufacturing-driven economy, we’re a services-driven economy and the service industry’s suffering will impact the entire global economy. Storefronts selling services JUST overtook storefronts selling goods, which makes the impact of COVID-19 even more unfortunate. What is Method + Mode? Rachel is a market researcher & brand strategist, focusing on leveraging custom research to inform business executives and decisions. Rachel has a heavy background in media, fashion, and beauty. Method + Mode creates a custom research plan to help their clients get the research they need. Bespoke insights for brand growth. Making the Data Come Alive Originally, Future Commerce worked with Method + Mode to do some audience research Most recently, Rachel worked with Future Commerce on our Vision 2020 Report. Rachel doesn’t do academic research. She works with existing hypotheses, business objectives, and consumer reality. The key is to triangulate the three into succinct research that services the objectives of the business. Rachel’s approach is to lay a foundation towards the hypotheses and then to validate or disprove those hypotheses. Asking non-binary questions in a way that requires a response is a great way to get a sense of broader themes. More people have a better understanding of why they won’t do something, rather than why the will do something, so Rachel often asks why people won’t do something in creating her surveys. Writing a good survey is a skill that requires a lot of practice. Gaining Insights from your Data In your surveys, you always want to throw in some issues that will help disprove some of your biases. Rachel includes multiple ways of exploring important objectives to create consistency in answers. When understanding benchmarks, the Vision 2020 report wanted to go as broad as possible. Hot Takes on Amazon Amazon is not a retailer anymore, it’s a utility. We’ve crossed into a threshold where the consumer isn’t fully cognizant of where they’re receiving their content from. Phillip calls this “Primenesia” This Amazon utility is enabling a lifestyle that is impossible to match by other retailers and content providers at the same level. Apple is attempting to step into the content space now. Rachel compares Amazon’s structure and function to almost being like a Verizon now. Brian’s gut instinct was to check a knife set he found at Macy’s on Amazon. He bought the set from Amazon, even though it was the same price. Why? He knew what to expect, and could easily purchase it from Amazon. Back to content, Amazon makes it so simple to stream content through the prime video app. At this point, they’re controlling the content. On the Vision 2020 report, the number 3 cited reason for having Amazon Prime was for video content. In 20 months, Prime added 35% to Prime Membership by going global with Prime. Sustainability is coming to the forefront of consumer consciousness, and there might be a growing distaste for how Amazon operates. Brian thinks that although Amazon is the Verizon of the world, there’s going to be a T-Mobile. Brian would rather pick Amazon than Target, but someday, he might pick say, a Walmart. Enough About Amazon… The Broader eCommerce Landscape Retail is cyclical. We’re starting to see a swing back to brick & mortar shops. Rachel thinks DTC as a mechanism is great branding, but there’s always been DTC. Example, the Sears catalog. Social media has helped DTC brands tremendously. Globalization has helped the ability for DTC, fueled by social to grow Showfields is basically a department store. Could Barney’s have saved themselves if they had been more futuristic and partnered with emerging brands on social? DTC is giving female founders a good opportunity. If you equate DTC with a local shop, a lot of them are actually owned by women. For example, florists, beauty shops, gift shops, boutiques, etc. Women do the majority of purchasing, therefore have more of the purchasing power. There’s a connection and tactile component of retail that people said would go away but it never has, it’s just morphed. Is DTC a misnomer? DTC is a way of starting but it’s doubtful the successful brands will stay purely digital forever. How Accurate Was Our Survey? Phillip asks Rachel if we were off the mark compared to Retail Dive’s research that says 40% of consumers have shopped DTC, whereas ours only said 30%. Rachel responds that she was encouraged by their reportings. She doesn’t know their methodology, but their methods and definitions and sampling could be different than ours. Ultimately, we were on target with another national poll that Rachel compared our insights to. Phillip reiterates that we’re #MoreThanAPodcast. We want to be more open and transparent about how we make predictions and give insights. Hot Takes Lightning Round Rachel: Sustainability is such a “catch-all” phrase. It sounds great in theory but there’s too many forms of sustainability. We need a clarification of what that actually means for the brand. There’s still a big chasm between those who are thrifting for need and those who are thrifting for presentation. Brian: Sustainability is not convenient. Nordstrom is creating credibility by creating a resale market, called See You Tomorrow. Find Rachel at Methodandmode.co Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Who Gives a Crap Bippy No. 2 Amazon Apple Verizon Macy’s T-Mobile Target Walmart Sears Showfields Barney’s Wraby Parker Sephora Ulta Glossier Rodan + Fields Retail Dive 2PM Nordstrom As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are your thoughts on the shift towards profitability for direct to consumer brands? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at hello@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!

Hey, Phillip from Future Commerce here. I'm so glad you're listening. I want to tell you a little bit about what makes future commerce so special and different than every other e-commerce podcast on the market today. The first thing is that we believe that commerce connects people. This is all about people. Commerce is what brings people of disparate backgrounds and races and creeds together. No matter what you believe or who you are or where you come from. If I have something you need, or you have something I need, commerce is what can connect us. I also believe that entrepreneurship is the leg up in society to provide vertical mobility for people to be able to grow something of their own. Nobody can tell you that you're not allowed to start a business in America. The American Free Enterprise System allows anybody, no matter who you are or where you come from to be successful. If you create something of your own, a product or a good or some sort of a service can connect you with a customer and that is powerful. And that means that brands can change the world. We really believe that brands have the ability to shape the future. The future of eCommerce is what you make of it, and you can shape that future. And future commerce is helping brands to manifest vision and create goals that lead to those impacts to have an impact on the future for their customers and for the world around them. With our podcasts, and through our weekly newsletter, we are helping to elevate brands who are using their most powerful tool, and that is commerce to bring about the change they wish to see in the world. We come out every single Friday at 7:00 AM we have bonus episodes that drop one or two times a month, and our weekly newsletter called insiders drops every single Wednesday at 2:00 PM we want you to get involved and help join us. Forget trying to predict the future shaped the future. Subscribe to Future Commerce. Right now.

Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are joined in today's episode by guest host extraordinaire, Ingrid Cordy, the Vice President of Global E-Commerce and Consumer Experience at e.l.f. Cosmetics. The direct to consumer industry is taking a shift towards profitability, and significant changes are happening to accompany it. Why are smaller companies expected to innovate and scale entire categories? Larger and more established brands are no longer the most relevant in the spaces that they helped define. Future Commerce at Shoptalk: What Are the Details?: *Disclaimer: **Shoptalk was rescheduled for September 14-17 due to concerns regarding the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. * Ingrid will be speaking at Shoptalk regarding technologies within omnichannel, and she will also be doing a Future Commerce recording. There is a whole crew of amazing women that will be presenting at Shoptalk on behalf of Future Commerce. What are some topics that you hope will be covered at Shoptalk? The Profitability Shift: The End of an Era?: Recently, it was announced that founder Ty Haney is stepping down from her role as CEO at Outdoor Voices. Despite getting their name out there and establishing themselves as a leader in the athleisure space, the company was losing two million dollars a month. With as much innovation and inspiration that has been shown by direct to consumer brands, we are going to start seeing people expecting profits. You can do a lot of things right (like Outdoor Voices) and still have trouble reaching profitability. Do customers only want to live their lives with products in their periphery, and have the recent trends of content channels and customer experience just been fads? A Shift In Perspective: Ego Shifts Over Time: Is it egocentric to think that your brand is changing the world and bringing people together? The concept of luxury and the aspirational point of view that comes with it has changed from living the lifestyle of your dreams to thinking that we are saving the world and acting differently. There is a bit of delusion in both of these viewpoints, but that delusion is necessary because we need to aspire to something. There is a lot of pressure on a brand when you are venture-backed to grow at an exponential rate that might not be best for the brand as a whole. Real-Life Comparisons: Comparing and Contrasting: Every single thing that is driving the economy stems from our current unchecked spending culture. For comparison, what is it that lululemon is doing that Outdoor Voices is not when it comes to being profitable? In the case of Amazon, they invested in infrastructure in their growth stages that allowed their business to run better as opposed to high spending in regards to its content production. Private Equity knows to build businesses that have profitability while still considering growth and scale. Has the era of retail owning fashion and apparel companies come to an end? Brandless is ceasing operations after less than three years in business. Looking Back to Look Ahead: Predicting Trends from the Future Commerce Report: Smart growth is the most significant trend for 2020, as predicted by the Future Commerce Vision Report. You need a sustainable story not just in terms of the environment, but sustainable in terms of your business metrics and goals. Why do we have expectations of smaller companies to innovate and scale categories so quickly? Do consumers not care about brand anymore because we have gotten too good at copycatting? Sifting Through the Gloom: It's Not All Bad: There are still brands out there that are growing smart and profitable direct to consumer businesses like Frank & Eileen. Phillip harkens back to the optimism a year ago around direct to consumer businesses that wasn't just about consumerism. The new creative and innovative brands are going to have a 2-3 year reign in a cycle that will eventually be replaced by larger players that can copy the best practices of those innovative smaller brands. Building good brands takes time, and you can't always expect to take over the world with your business ventures. Major Changes Across the Board: The Balance of Power is Shifting: The environment and the fashion style that Gap created is now the trend, and they are no longer the biggest player in their style. Pier 1 just filed for bankruptcy in a time when they could be making a big splash and make their brand even more prevalent in the current climate. The free-wheeling nature of getting funding is going to be disrupted because investors are going to be taking more time and putting more effort into what they are investing in. There is a lot of money out there to be invested, and there is almost a desperation to spend these funds that results in riskier investments. Outside Opposition: Government Interference: The FTC sued to block the acquisition of Harry's by Schick, but they approved the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint. What were the reasons behind this blocking? There was finally a success story of a hugely successful direct to consumer brand being acquired and yet the deal was blocked by the government. Why does the FTC approve some mergers that seem to be more egregious from an antitrust perspective? Going Out on a Positive Note: Ridiculous Collabs: Supreme did a collaboration with Oreo that seems like it is right out of an SNL skit. To round out the odd collaborations, Disney collaborated with Gucci, and even weirder, KFC did a collab with Crocs... What are your thoughts on these interesting collaborations? McDonald's also now has a swag store. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Outdoor Voices lululemon Amazon Brandless Frank & Eileen Gap Harry's Supreme Disney Gucci KFC Crocs Mcdonald's As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are your thoughts on the shift towards profitability for direct to consumer brands? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at hello@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!

Main Takeaways: In the final episode of this season of Step by Step, Brian and Phillip are joined by Dan Nephew, the Director of System Operations at Lovepop. Lovepop offers robust customization options for its products and needs a rich tech stack to manage the fulfillment of such unique orders. How can you best use data to inform your business decisions and what technology can aid in your decision making? There is no single, silver-bullet application that will handle all your tech requirements, so invest in applications that are flexible and can grow along with your business. What is Lovepop?: A Quick Introduction: Lovepop started about five years ago with a mission of creating one billion magical moments. These magical moments are achieved through a laser-cut version of kirigami, an art form that was discovered by Artpop founders Wombi Rose and John Wise on a Harvard Business School trip to Vietnam. Every month, Lovepop comes out with new designs and new products. Dan started at Lovepop as a consultant, and he fell in love with the company and joined full time about a year ago. Before Lovepop, Dan was an industrial engineer for big companies, and his expertise was helping a business scale without scaling the size of the business. The Current Lovepop Sales Strategy: A Glimpse Behind the Curtain: Lovepop started with a small retail venture, quickly turned to online sales, and now online is by far the most significant segment of what Lovepop sells. There are very few players in the industry that can do what Lovepop can do when it comes to personalized creations that are designed online. There is a growing retail footprint that started in the North East, and Lovepop even has a licensing deal with Disney. Lovepop is now starting to figure out how to spread magical moments amongst other providers through strategic partnerships that will carry their same message. Creating Magical Moments: The Lovepop Tech Stack: On the frontend, Lovepop uses Shopify as its eCommerce platform, but it does not provide all of the customizations that Lovepop needs. Once the customer places the order, the data is sent to Brightpearl, Lovepop's inventory and order management system. Lovepop has several different fulfillment options depending on the order, and Lovepop can turn an order around in less than a day. All of the product that is sourced by Lovepop is sourced from an owned subsidiary in Vietnam. Lovepop's design team is located in the United States, and they use a mix of non-software and software solutions from Adobe. A Modern Balancing Act: Combining Art and Engineering: There is not a single silver bullet piece of software that solves all of a business's operational and logistics needs, so a wide array of solutions are required to be successful in today's eCommerce climate. Lovepop has several analytics tools (some they built themselves) that they use for forecasting, EDI (electronic data interchange) solutions that bridge disparate systems, and several financial systems, to name a few. For their homegrown systems, Lovepop has designed forecasting and planning systems, routing logic, order placement, and various scheduling automations. What systems can you brand design in-house that would fit your business than out of the box solutions? Addressing Variation: Tackling Seasonality: Due to the seasonal nature of Lovepop's busy periods, systems put in place before a business spike are huge assets when it comes to handling larger amounts of orders. What types of systems can you use to address seasonality and prepare for unexpected order spikes? There is a difference between systems that Lovepop buys and those that they build. Lovepop is more apt to build systems in-house because they customization options that they offer to their customers require some heavy lifting on the back end. Diving Into Data: Harnessing the Power of Analytics: Analytics are traditionally siloed into whatever platform they are based on, so finding ways to merge these data sets is a challenge. There are two types of data: decision-making data and problem-solving data, and core systems usually deal with problem-solving data. Decision-making data is handled by data scientists and data engineers and put into an engine that fuels the directions and decisions of the company. There is software that facilitates decision modeling that aids data scientists in their analyses, and it is the operations side that handles how to get this data to their data science team. Data integrations have to be timely and be able to facilitate large amounts of robust data to be efficient. What software can aid in data modeling and helping your business make informed decisions? Current Technology Challenges: What's Troubling Lovepop? The biggest technology challenge that Lovepop faces right now is finding a way to integrate its retail operations and its eCommerce operations from an omnichannel experience. How can you make the eCommerce experience better for the customer? Lovepop is also trying to find technology that will allow their site to show real-time store inventory for customers to know where to find products in-store. These troubles are the same for any size company, and the process of choosing technology is very similar. Making the Decision: Factors for Selecting Your Technology: Resource availability and capital are usually the two most influential factors to consider when choosing software for your tech stack. Deciphering whether or not you have the resources to do something can determine whether you buy the technology outright or come up with your solution. Sometimes there are outside business factors that can accelerate the decision-making process. As a team, helping each other weigh each other's priorities is a very effective way to make the most informed decision about tech stack purchases. Being nimble lets you make better decisions. Looking to the Future: What's On the Horizon?: Over the past five years, there has been dramatic change across all business technologies, but how do you know what technologies can make a sound investment five years down the road? The ease and openness of an application in terms of its ability to integrate with others is an excellent indicator of future growth. Applications that are closed off to outside integration will not be able to advance as fast as its competitors. Be ready to invest in software that allows you to have the flexibility and the freedom to grow with your business. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Lovepop Shopify Adobe As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some ways you can leverage the data you already have in new ways? How can you connect your disparate data systems to inform your business decisions? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at info@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Main Takeaways: Grant Van Kirk, the Head of Finance at ROKA, joins Brian and Phillip in this episode of Step by Step. A single, all-encompassing tech solution is not always the best choice for your business and diversifying your tech stack can minimize integration demands. How do you decide when it is time to add a piece of software to your tech stack? Fulfillment expectations are higher than ever, but streamlining your operations can meet these demands and boost customer lifetime value. The ROKA Story: A Quick Overview: ROKA started in 2013 when two former Stanford swimmers entered a triathlon to get back into shape but were disappointed with the options of gear available to them. They invented a wetsuit that didn't feel or perform like a traditional wetsuit and quickly became a staple in the triathlon community. The brand has expanded beyond just being triathlon gear and is now available for a large spectrum of sports. Triathalon gear is typically expensive so the average customer tends to be older and more affluent than other fitness consumers. Some Background on Grant: The Journey So Far: Grant started out as a tax CPA and after a while decided that he wanted more from his career. He then went into the real estate industry in Dallas but had no company growth potential at his company, so he wanted to find somewhere that would allow him to grow and present him with more professional challenges. His search eventually led him to find ROKA where he was attracted to the infinite professional runway that came with the young, growing brand. Going beyond the responsibilities of a typical Head of Finance, Grant is additionally very involved with the operations side of ROKA. An Evolving Position: Changing With the Times: How are senior finance roles evolving in the realm of retail? It is important to not only be an expert in what your position is but also to be knowledgeable about other positions within your company. You won't be able to fully understand if your financials are correct unless you understand all of the systems that are supporting them. From day one, Grant had to make sure that he was heavily involved in operations and logistics to make sure that the finances where correct and to be able to identify areas in which the company wasn't spending enough or could increase its expenditures. Decoding the Attribution Model: From a Financial Perspective: Different platforms will highlight different numbers to present brands with the most positive spin on attribution costs. How do you translate different attribution data across disparate platforms? Aggregating your data across platforms for comparison will allow you to correctly assess if a marketing tool is effective. Once you have attracted customers to your site, the next steps are equally important to convert those visitors into customers. Looking Under the Hood: Breaking Down ROKA's Tech Stack: For its eCommerce platform, ROKA is currently running on Shopify Plus and pretty much everything that the consumer sees is also run through the platform. To accommodate more features, ROKA is also using several custom modules such as a module that allows customers to design their own sunglasses. After the purchase, all data is fed through ROKA's ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Brightpearl and from there is sent to one of three 3PLs (third party logistics) that ROKA divides its orders between. For international orders, ROKA uses Shopify to provide local currency sales, but this can be a big headache because of how much manual effort is required to keep things updated. Scaling With Growth: Selecting the Right ERP for Your Business: ROKA started with Quickbooks for its initial ERP, quickly jumped to NetSuite, and finally settled on Brightpearl because it is a retail-specific ERP. Brightpearl is the source of truth when it comes to data collection for ROKA. ROKA has adopted the stance of not trying to have one package that does everything but rather relies on individual software options that are the best in their category for various operations. Spending the time customizing an all-in-one solution can be better spent on other aspects of your business when separate software already performs at optimum levels with less customization. Potential Challenges of a Diversified Tech Stack: Trials and Solutions: One of the potential challenges of using several software solutions when building a tech stack is the inevitable task of integration. ROKA has two rules when it comes to integration: 1. Don't integrate if you do not have to. 2. Your ERP has to be your source of truth. After a customer makes a purchase, the information goes straight to the ERP for processing and that customer is also enrolled in the follow-up process. ROKA uses about 10-15 pieces of software in its tech stack. What are some best practices for automating your operations post-purchase? Digging Deeper: Other Parts of the Tech Stack: How do you know when to add a piece of software to your tech stack? Due to customers being shocked about duty charges, ROKA had to implement a way to get cash upfront on purchases to not take a total loss when the package was not returned. One of Shopify's pain points is managing exchanges and returns, so granting your customers the ease of returning products is a powerful way to boost customer lifetime value, which ROKA manages to do using Loop Returns. Tools can not only serve the purpose they're built for but can also boost your customer acquisition by giving your consumers a positive experience. Looking Ahead: Identifying Opportunites: Grant highlights that there is an area for improvement in the software that ROKA's customer experience team has to use. The nature of returns and customer experience are two parts of the same coin, so in contrast to the rest of their tech stack, the customer experience software could be consolidated. Customer experience is a difficult job that presents unique challenges separate from the rest of the tech stack. What are some ways that you could improve your tech stack to benefit your customer experience team? Raised fulfillment expectations set by Amazon are making it more difficult to meet the demands of consumers. Spreading Thing: So Many Channels, So Little Time: There are different channels that consumers visit first when it comes to discovery, purchase, or entertainment, so how do you diversify your marketing strategies for such different platforms? Most people go to Amazon first when it's time to shop so if you are not at the top of Amazon's search, it is going to be hard to get there. You need to have a social presence and there is a lot of pressure to not just be on social, but have many more touchpoints for your brand. Amazon intentionally makes it difficult to track customers, so it's hard to see what is actually your customer that is just purchasing through Amazon. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: ROKA Shopify Plus Brightpearl Quickbooks NetSuite Amazon As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some ways that you can improve your tech stack by diversifying the tools that you are currently using? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at info@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are joined in this episode of Step by Step by Alida Sholl, the Director of Operations at Rep Fitness. Rep has tackled the unique challenges of setting up a warehouse for larger than average products and has perfected processes to handle these items. What are some tools that your brand can leverage to better your customers' post-purchase experience? Arming your customers with knowledge and guiding them through the purchase process not only builds their trust of your brand but encourages them to be repeat customers. A Little Bit About Rep Fitness: And A Little Bit About Alida: Rep Fitness is a complete fitness supplier that sells anything from pull-up bands to high-end power racks and all the weights that come along with that. Alida started with Rep Fitness about two and a half years ago when she found out about the local equipment company when she moved to Denver; she reached out to see if they needed any help, and Rep Fitness just happened to have a position that was a fit. Without a background in eCommerce, Alida started her career in manufacturing with a focus on process engineering. Rep Fitness was preparing to move into a new warehouse, a task for which Alida was uniquely qualified. Larger Than the Average Product: Warehouse Setup Challenges: With products that are larger than average, what are some of the specific challenges when it comes to setting up a warehouse? With items that require a lot of space, Rep Fitness relies on palette racking and a large floor stack area to meet its warehouse space requirements. Rep Fitness sorts and labels everything in the dock area, so they also need a dock area that is larger than average to accommodate those needs. When boxes can weigh up to 100 pounds, it is best to avoid any extra touches and make the shipping process as simple as possible. Diving Deeper: Who Is the Rep Fitness Customer?: The idea of a home gym does not have to be a big garage, so ideally, anyone can be a rep fitness customer. The majority of Rep's customers are somewhere between the ages of 25 and 44, typically married, own a home, and a lot of them are parents. Giving people the option to regain their freedom and live active and healthy lives without being tied to an external gym is one of Rep's goals. It is becoming much more common to be fit and lead a healthy life, which Rep is allowing parents to demonstrate for their children and lead by example. Putting the Gears in Motion: What Happens Post-Purchase? Rep has a fantastic customer service and sales team that all personally know the equipment to give customers the best experience possible when purchasing. Having a real human touch and a sales and service team that go above and beyond to make genuine connections with customers makes those customers feel welcomed to the Rep family. Rep Fitness will soon be launching chat on its website that will enable customers to get their questions answered on the spot and eliminate the need to leave the site. Already using Help Scout for all of their email requirements, it was a natural choice for Rep Fitness to choose to implement Help Scout's chat capabilities. Bringing Them Back: Capturing Trends: Most home gym owners will say that their home gym is never done, so they are always looking for new equipment to add. Consistently creating new products that are items that everyone needs to have is a great way to ensure repeat business. Customers like trendy things even in a space where there are tried and true methods along with more traditional clear paths to success. When you are in a community-centric space, if members are using a particular product, then others in the community are more willing to want that product. How To Earn Return Customers: Trials and Challenges: Digitally marketing can play a significant role in capturing repeat business. Remarketing email campaigns can be sent to customers that have not engaged with your content or made a purchase for a while. There is a vast online community in the home gym space, and amongst that community are bloggers that are regularly reviewing products and boosting product awareness. Rep keeps their product line broad so that customers can return and complete their home gym and supplement their fitness journeys with other Rep products. Leveraging Social Proof: Harnessing Customer Created Content: Rep has used Yotpo for all of the reviews on its site for a long time and has just recently started using Yotpo's digital marketing suite. Yotpo's digital marketing suite allows Rep to pull in content from social media and display it on the homepage and product pages. Customers want to see not only the studio images of products but also what that product looks likes in the homes of consumers like themselves. Rep likes highlighting their customers, and the best influencers are customers that posting things about your brand, unprompted, that others can believe and trust. Designing the Customer Journey: Deciding Where Your Customers Go: Rep's site does not follow a cookie-cutter eCommerce model and takes its customers on a tailored purchase journey when buying products. How do you decide what the best path to purchase will be for your customers? There are two very different types of shoppers that Rep caters to along the path to purchase: those who like premade packages of products, and those who want to customize what they are buying. Guided selling that empowers customers to find the options that they need gives them precisely what they want and makes your customers happy. Post-purchase is often determined by upfront education and guidance. What's Next for Rep Fitness: A Look at the Roadmap: Rep is starting to dig into data and to find ways to track and leverage the data they collect in more effective ways. Using Brightpearl, along with other analytics tools, will inform rep and guide them to make better decisions when it comes to reaching their customers. Rep is retroactively going through all of their processes to make sure they are capturing actionable data. Another goal is to get a full handle on return rates by finding better ways to track return information and finding ways to minimize returns. Rep will also be migrating their website to a new platform, which will allow them to dig into how the site functions. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Rep Fitness Help Scout Yotpo Brightpearl As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some ways that you can improve the path to purchase for your customers, and what information can you give them to educate them around your products? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at info@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are joined in today's episode by Andy Zuro, the President at ZLINE Kitchen and Bath. ZLINE has grown over the years to be a brand focused on innovation and providing customers with unique products that they cannot get anywhere else. With so many channels available today in which to acquire and convert customers, how do you know where to focus your efforts to get the most substantial returns? How do you decide what tools to add to your technology stack? What is ZLINE?: A 15-Year History: About 15 years ago, Andy started ZLINE in Columbus, Ohio, around the time when he was building his own home. During the process of selecting appliances, Andy was shocked by how expensive some of the appliances were and knew that there had to be a better way. On a trip overseas, Andy scoped out some factories and started manufacturing a basic ventilation line. Over the years, Andy saw where peoples' were when it came to kitchen remodeling and expanded to cover the entire line of items necessary when completing your kitchen. Who Shops at ZLINE?: A Customer Breakdown: The customer path has evolved over the years but started at identifying with customers who had price-driven shopping and saving money in mind. As ZLINE found there was a demand for specific aesthetic options of products, they expanded their options and innovated for people who were looking for more customized options. ZLINE started as a direct-to-consumer brand, and its low prices in comparison to large brands in the space are what grew their customer base. As the ZLINE brand has grown, the direct-to-consumer portion of the business is still there, and they don't distinguish between their sales or sales made through a partner. Shifting Strategies: From Value to Innovation: Andy has always wanted to be innovative and do things that no other brand has done before. With the push for innovation and allowing customers to customize their purchases, the SKU count starts to get very high. Variety brings brand value back to the ZLINE name and shows its customers that the brand is trying to do something unique and not just be a cookie-cutter company. Acquiring and obtaining customers is attributed to ZLINE's product innovations and by differentiated itself from competitors in the space. Differentiating from Competitors: Marketing Necessities: Galen Bradford, the CMO at ZLine, joins in to give some more details on the marketing effort. Having a great and unique product is critical from a marketing perspective because it makes your job of promoting your product much more straightforward. ZLINE has noticed a unique avenue of storytelling that they have discovered through Pinterest marketing. What is the feeling the customer feels when they interact with your brand? Once ZLINE established an online presence, they were then able to put their product in big box stores like Home Depot, Lowe's, and Best Buy. If you have the best product and the best content, then you are going to have the best brand. Growing From Zero: Challenges Along the Way: As you become more segmented in your channel strategy, how does that change you as a business? ZLINE doesn't differentiate between its channels when it comes to gauging for success, but there are different operational requirements per channel. Fundamentally, a brand should be asking what value add they are bringing to the table when it comes to delivering your product to a customer or a retailer. A lot of big-box retailers are always looking to expand their offerings, so finding your unique value add can help you get your foot in the door. A Channel Breakdown: Where is ZLINE Selling Its Products?: On the direct-to-consumer side, ZLINE is using Google Shopping, PPC, and social media advertising to reach its customers directly. The direct-to-consumer strategy is a mix of old school paper advertisements and then more modern targeted digital advertising. PPC has become exponentially more expensive in recent years, and when a channel no longer proves to be cost-effective, then people begin to search elsewhere for channels that are a better value. Consumers change their shopping habits, so you have to be prepared to change your channel strategies to go where customers are. The eCommerce Marketing Toolkit: How To Exceed In Today's Saturated Market: From a PPC standpoint, SEMrush allows you detailed online visibility of how your customers are interacting with your site. ZLINE is pushing YouTube and Pinterest when it comes to getting their content in front of the right consumers to reach their ideal prospective customers. Director of Content Development Drew Pearson joins in to point out the value of data and how it allows you to identify new customer segments. What can you do to make your content more relevant? Understanding the Google Ads environment is an essential first step to knowing your best PPC strategies. How to Convert Customers: Going Past the Traffic: There is a whole separate set of tools available to you to get a customer you have brought to your site to convert and make a purchase. Adding reviews has been one of the things that has generated the most conversions for ZLINE, and some companies that do this are Trustpilot and Bazaarvoice. Creating legitimacy for your brand is imperative, and any tools that you can find that do this can prove its value when it comes to boosting conversions. What are some ways you can boost your brand's legitimacy? Choosing Your Toolkit: Supporting New Technologies: There is no use in having an excellent toolkit unless you have a brand that resonates with the customer. Your brand needs to be able to support any channel that you add, and if it can't, then you shouldn't purchase a piece of software that implements that channel. Technology additions can be a powerful boon to your brand, but there are questions you need to answer before making the leap and purchasing them. It's not just about what a tool can do but more about how it affects your organization and growth. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: ZLINE Pinterest Home Depot Lowe's Best Buy SEMrush YouTube Trustpilot Bazaarvoice As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What is a channel that you currently do not use to acquire or convert customers, and what are some tools you could employ to make use of that channel? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at info@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

In the first episode of Season 2 of Step by Step, Scott Hill, SVP of Product at Brightpearl is on the show to talk about Brightpearl, the technology ecosystem, and how this season of Step by Step is going to teach our audience how to build an eCommerce Tech Stack! Main Takeaways: Scott Hill, the SVP of Product at Brightpearl, joins Phillip and Brian in this episode of Step by Step. What are some of the topics that will be covered in this season of Step By Step? Brightpearl empowers retailers by automating all of their back-office operations and allowing them to focus on growth rather than problem-solving? Where do you start when it comes to building your technology stack? What is Brightpearl?: A Brief Rundown: Brightpearl is a retail operations platform that helps retail brands, retailers, and wholesalers automate all of their back-office operations. Essentially, Brightpearl takes over everything after the consumer presses the buy button. Once the order has been made, Brightpearl takes care of order management, inventory management, integrated financials, and workflow automation. Brightpearl creates excellent efficiencies for its customers do they can focus on growth and not worry about the logistics of operations. Scott's Story: The Journey So Far: Scott has been with Brightpearl for about seven years and is in charge of all product management within the company. Some of his responsibilities are taking the product to market, working with customers and partners, and figuring out how to build and what to build. His first position at Brightpearl was a very brief stint in technical support, but he moved very quickly to pre-sales (but he was always going after product). Before starting at Brightpearl, Scott was academically looking into computer game design and found that product design was mostly game design (but with fewer aliens). The Reason Behind It All: Why Is Brightpearl Behind this Step By Step Season?: Brightpearl is focused on the technology ecosystem and wants to work with and highlight the other technologies that its customers might want to use for all of the activities that Brightpearl doesn't cover. Brightpearl has found a common theme in the fact that technology is essential to the success of a business. Still, even the most technologically savvy merchants don't know how to navigate the complex world of the technology market. There is so much innovation happening, so how do mid-market merchants navigate through the market? It's challenging to run a business today because of just how many technological factors and channels need to be considered when setting up your technology stack. Goals for the Series: What Can You Expect to Take Away?: The hope is that this series will equip people with the knowledge of how to navigate their way through the market. This is not a vendor recommendation series but rather an agnostic overview of the experience that likeminded retailers go through when trying to grow their business. The series will also be a great starting point for retailers and brands to be able to go off and do their research to find what works for them. This series is the first part of Brightpearl's project, which will then lead to the launch of a new study of mid-market merchants in the United States. High-Level Topics: A Sneak Peek at What's To Come: Selecting what to sell and product sourcing can be considered where the story starts as it is choosing the right product and finding ways to grow efficiently. Different seller profiles have different motivations, and finding a way to differentiate amongst your competitors is another topic that will be covered. Collaborations are a new way to introduce new products in a low-risk way by partnering with other brands to diversify their product portfolio. When is the return not worth the risk when expanding your product offerings? Winning the Content Game: Diversifying Your Portfolio for Niche Audiences: Content adds to the value of your product and differentiating it, which then benefits your assortment. There are a lot of things happening right now that are focused on creating an audience first and then selling products to that established audience. Bloggers are turning into billion-dollar retail powerhouses, and we are now at a point where anyone who can amass an audience around a niche topic can create a brand. If you have the right tools, you can stay lean in your operations and be very successful. The Ins and Outs of Order Fulfillment: The Brightpearl Process: The two main reasons why this portion of your business is so essential are efficiency and increasing customer lifetime value. The more efficient someone is at managing and shipping their orders then the less money they will have to spend on inefficiencies. With the cost of acquisition going up, there has been more focus on increasing customer lifetime value. Merchants need to make sure they deliver on their promises, and you need to be equipped on the backend to live up to your word. Diving Deeper: More On Customer Acquisition: The main challenge regarding acquisition is its cost, which is only going to keep rising in the future. Once traffic hits an eCommerce site, then your customer acquisition strategy needs to be spot on to most efficiently acquire your customers. Everything should be built to increase the order value and basket size through branding and messaging with zero friction. This is the main topic in the series where there is the most saturation, so how do you figure out what is going to deliver a return? The Power of Data: A Crucial Part to Any Business: Everyone wants to know how well they're doing, so they need support to prove that their decisions are lucrative. Data allows brands to understand what they need to ask themselves and what questions they are answering with the data they collect. Knowing what you should not be doing is just as important as knowing what is working. A significant problem that merchants see is the overall completeness of the data they have. The Post-Purchase Process: Increasing Customer Lifetime Value: It costs about five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to earn repeat business from an existing customer. Most brands focus on customer acquisition, but the focus should primarily be shifted to customer retention. Technology is saturated on the front end when it comes to acquiring but tends to be less saturated when it comes to winning the repeat purchase. How do you execute such a positive experience for a customer that you then get them to purchase four more times? Support has become the new sales when it comes to customer retention. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Brightpearl As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What is a step you can take today to improve the knowledge regarding your technology stack? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at info@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!

Main Takeaways: Brian and Phillip are joined in today's episode by Sandra Capponi, the co-founder of Good On You. Good On You is a brand rating system that evaluates brands in the fashion industry based on their impact against material, social, and environmental issues. How does Good On You quantify a brand's impact against various sustainability and social criteria? Every choice we make as consumers can have a positive effect on the future, so arm yourself with the knowledge of what brands are fostering positive change. What is Good On You?: The Purpose Behind the Movement: Good On You is all about empowering people to know the impact of brands and to buy better. Good On You has been around since 2015 when they launched an app in Australia that helped people make educated and ethical shopping decisions. Users can use Good On You to research how their favorite fashion brands are impacting on the issues they care about. Information, guides, and tips are also available for users to drive change toward a more sustainable future. Good Under the Hood: What Happens Behind the Scenes at Good on You: At its core, Good On You is a brand rating system with technology that aggregates publicly available brand data that assesses a brand's impact against material, social, and environmental issues in fashion. An increasing number of shoppers are becoming aware of the issues in the world and want to use their influence positive change. It's hard to know which third-party certifications are real, and Good On You provides a credible source of information that solves just that. Making informed decisions usually takes a ton of work from consumers, but Good On You takes the effort out of making meaningful and impactful choices. The Criteria for Change: Quantifying Social Good: How are the criteria for Good on You defined, and what are some things that make a brand score well in the Good On You rankings? There are hundreds of certifications in fashion alone, and Good On You navigates all of this to pull out the most relevant rankings. Public data holds brands accountable, and consumers have the right to know how brands are impacting the issues that people care about. There are over 60 sustainability indicators that are fueled by hundreds of data points that measure impact. The three significant factors are a brand's impact on the environment, a brand's impact on people, and finally, a brand's impact on animals. A Force of Constant Change: Ever-Evolving Criteria: As new information on a brand's human impact comes to light, does the criteria evolve? Good On You balances new information with internal expertise that continually scours what is happening in the industry and has a deep understanding of best practices. There is also a formal consultation process where Good On You actively engages with leading experts on specific issues. The Good On You ranking is an accurate representation of what experts in the industry say are best practices. Sandra's Story: Some More Personal Background: Hailing from Melbourne, Sandra has been concerned about the future for a long time, and she has always remained hopeful that there is a role that we can all play in bettering the future. She worked for many years in supply chain management, where she became particularly interested in sustainability issues and eventually corporate responsibility. Sandra noticed that there was a significant opportunity to use business as a force for good and, in particular, leverage and shift the flow of capital toward creating positive change. She met her co-founder Gordon Renouf who had done interesting research on consumer change. They saw a merger between their goals and Good On You was founded on their like-minded approach to change. Some Brands For Reference: Who's Doing Well?: There is no silver bullet to supply chain transparency and sustainability, so no brand has done things perfectly yet. Some brands have built themselves from the ground up with these issues front and center like People Tree, Veja, Reformation, and Armed Angels to name a few. There's also an exciting trend around recycling that is present among high fashion brands. Improving the relationship people have to their clothes and to their favorite brands also comes along with backing positive change. Establishing Consumer Trust: Celebrity Support Boons: Last year, Emma Watson publicly spoke out in favor of Good On You and praised its efforts to promote positive change. There has always been a group of people that are highly engaged in ethics that have tried to push social change. Campaigns like Fashion Revolution have sparked a yearly movement for consumers to question brands on where their clothes come from. Celebrities, along with organizations like Good On You are empowering people to use their influence to push for social and environmental change. Striving For Betterment: Helping Brands Seeking Positive Change: How can a brand set out to meet customers' expectations of social and environmental change? Good On You gets approached by brands all the time that want to get on the platform to connect with a sustainability-focused audience. At the other end of the spectrum, Good On You is approached by mainstream brands that are realizing the power of the Good On You Community and want to change to address new consumer values. How does Good On You educate brands and foster a strong community that is steering significant changes in the fashion industry? Growing Good On You: Plans for Spreading the Word: Content marketing has always been and will continue to be a focus for Good On You. They have been able to leverage that content and naturally grow by attracting people that are searching for ratings and information that Good On You's content provides. Social media (especially Instagram) is where the community is conversing and is a great place to nurture those relationships. Partnerships with brands that share a similar mission will always be crucial in expanding. How Can You Get Involved?: Taking Things Further: There are people around the world that are concerned about the future and services like Good On You are perfect tools for us to arm ourselves with knowledge on how to make positive change. Start by checking out the Good On You App, where you can find thousands of brand ratings and make more informed choices. There are also tips and guides plus tons more information on the Good On You website. Join the conversation and stop and recognize that our individual choices matter, and every step we take has an impact over time and creates change. Brands Mentioned in this Episode: Good On You People Tree Veja Reformation Armed Angels Fashion Revolution As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some changes you could make today that will better align your brand with a more sustainable model? Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at info@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.