Up Next In Commerce

Within the last five years, outdoor gear company Sherper’s has gone from less than one percent of its business revenue coming from ecommerce to now having a 50/50 split between in-store and online. And for this fourth-generation family business, that move to online has been both challenging and rewarding.As an old-school mom and pop business, Sherper’s has always prided itself on building personal relationships with customers and providing a level of customer service you won’t find with the big guys or digitally-native companies. So finding a way to create a digital experience that allowed Sherper’s to scale its operation yet maintain a personal touch was a top priority for the company. Leading the way in that journey is Nathan Scherper, the President of Sherper’s, who has come a long way from those days of scrubbing toilets for the family business when he was just 12 years old.On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Nathan takes us behind the scenes of how Sherper’s built out its ecommerce platform, what its competitive edge is over the Amazons and Walmarts of the world, and how the Sherper’s online platform performed when the pandemic forced more people than ever before online and in search of outdoor goods to cure their cabin fever. Plus, Nathan provides some insights into what it takes to keep a family business running for multiple generations, and why hiring talent is less about skills and more about personality. Enjoy this episode!    Main Takeaways:Hire The Person, Not The Resume: Personality matters and should be a driving force in your hiring process. Most people can be trained to do a job, so the key thing you have to do is identify the person you want to hire and understand their current skill set. Then, gauge what they are willing and able to do for the company and train them to do what makes sense.Compete Where You Can Win: It’s tempting to go all-in on paid advertising to try to compete with the big guys. But if you’re a smaller company or start-up, there’s no way that your budgets will be able to match those of the giants. Your investment is better spent elsewhere, like finding a niche influencer who can form an actual connection with your customers. So find where you get the most bang for your buck.Pent Up Demand: Many people believe that as the world opens back up, the desire to get out and shop is going to lead to a boom for retail, particularly small businesses. Customers have learned that they can buy necessities from the big guys online, so the weekend outings are more likely to be to local shops and restaurants and will lean more toward impulse buying.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce--- 

Most people would think that a company in the Fortune 500 wouldn’t have much work to do to stay on top and compete against scrappy start-ups. But in the world of ecommerce, companies large, small, and in between are all on somewhat level playing fields, and oftentimes, the bigger, legacy companies are running behind the younger brands. For Stanley Black & Decker, this was the case when it came to the company’s ecommerce business, which is why SBD announced a goal to double its online sales in order to re-establish itself as a leader in all areas. Katherine Bahamonde Monasebian  is the President and GM North America Commerce for Stanley Black & Decker, and she has been leading that charge since joining the company in early 2020. Katherine entered the world of  retail, having cut her teeth at places such as Lululemon, Barney’s, and Juicy Couture, but she’s always loved a challenge, and going from the hardest-hit industry in the pandemic (apparel) to the top-performing vertical (DIY and home improvement goods), was one of the biggest career shifts she had ever made. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Katherine explains why she made the decision to role up her sleeves and join Stanley Black & Decker, and how she has grabbed the company’s lofty ecommerce goals by the horns and got to work. Katherine discusses what it takes for a large company to experiment with new platforms, and how she measures ROI and attribution to assess risk, and she looks into the crystal ball to predict how ecommerce will continue to change, especially in terms of B2B innovations. Plus, we have a really meaningful conversation about how women are being brought into the fold at Stanley Black & Decker and elsewhere, and she explains why it’s so important for a company to practice what it preaches when it comes to its values. Enjoy this episode!Main Takeaways:Higher Stakes: Larger companies have a lot to lose if they make a misstep, and as such, they have to be a bit more cautious with the risks they take. But they still have to break out of their shells and explore all of the options, trends, and channels that are dominating the ecommerce space. To toe that line, looking at the data and the ROI of any experiment is the best way forward.Knocking on the Door: Since early 2020, the ecommerce industry has seen massive growth and acceleration, but the jury is still out on how much of the shift online will stick. Most experts believe that at the very least, digital platforms will be the “front door” for customers to discover and learn about brands and products.Trickle Down: Everything has to start at the top — from company values to operations to business goals and expectations, the leaders of the organization have to set the tone. If they do, and they practice what they preach when it comes to things like gender parity, diversity and inclusion, KPIs, work expectations, etc., talented people will be more inclined to join your organization, and they are more likely to stay for a long time as well.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce--- 

In the wild world of ecommerce, the status quo is always changing. New companies enter the market to disrupt the norms. Legacy brands pivot to get a piece of the pie. Successful niche businesses get acquired left and right. With so much happening all at once, it takes a lot of work for brands to not only keep up but to get out ahead and win.Andrea Leigh and Melissa Burdick have made it their mission to stay on top of everything that’s happening and use their knowledge to help companies large and small make an impact in the market. Andrea, who you may remember from a previous episode where she discussed how to win on Amazon and the death of the category, is the VP of Strategy and Insights for Ideoclick, and Melissa is the Co-founder and CEO of Pacvue, a company that helps advertisers scale on big ecommerce platforms like Amazon, Walmart, and Instacart. A few customers of theirs include Unilever, Duracell, and Johnson & Johnson.These ladies each spent 10 years at Amazon “back when ecommerce wasn’t cool,” as Melissa says. Today, at their current companies, they work with disruptors and major brands alike as they come to realize that ecommerce is not just a fad, but the way of the future. And that’s why I was so thrilled to invite them on this roundtable episode to talk about all the trends they’ve been seeing recently, and to get their take on where things are headed. How are major brands moving to digital? Why are companies investing more in shorter product life cycles? What is the future of dropshipping and ad platforms? I wanted to know, and they delivered the goods. So sit back and enjoy! Main Takeaways:David vs. Goliath: In the world of ecommerce, it often boils down to small, niche brands competing against the bigger companies with a long history and much bigger budgets. In order to compete, small brands are forced to think differently, be more hyper-focused on product and customer feedback, and be intensely in tune with the ROI of any ad spend.Shorten That Lifecycle: Brands today are finding out the importance of being nimble and developing shorter product life cycles. When the unexpected happens, markets shift, or industry standards change, having a product already in process of a nine-month cycle puts you at a disadvantage to other brands that can pivot and change course quicker. Having a pulse on what consumers want, gathering data, and digging into feedback can help with the acceleration process.Show Me The Money!: In the past, measuring the ROI of advertising was a bit more challenging. Now, with the amount of data that you get from digital campaigns, measuring the return on investment of an ad campaign is much easier to track because you can correlate clicks and track customer journeys from ads. And with the number of new platforms that are constantly popping up, there is a bit of a new retail explosion that brands can take advantage of and track in unique ways. And today, regardless of the platform — new or old — brands will not advertise at all unless they can get a full view of the data and metrics from the ad platforms they work with.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce--- 

Mini malls, shopping centers, and large department stores all still exist and remain popular despite their digital counterparts But online marketplaces are where more and more brands are gathering to not just sell goods, but to get a better 360 view of their customers, and gain access to sell products from other big name brands that fit their marketplace niche. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, I explored that idea a bit more with Jason Wyatt, the Executive Chairman at Marketplacer, a business dedicated to creating marketplaces. We dove into the various ways that Jason has seen marketplaces evolve, especially in recent years. Plus, Jason talked about some of the incredible innovation that he’s seen take place  thanks to marketplaces — including the birth of Providoor, an Australian marketplace for restaurants that was built as a reaction to COVID-19 and reached a $100 million run rate within 12 weeks. We talked about how the marketplace connections made that possible, and also how the B2B landscape can be revolutionized thanks to marketplaces. Enjoy this episode!Main Takeaways:Getting The Bigger Picture: By creating a marketplace, businesses can get a much deeper picture into the attributes of their customers, while also gaining access to inventory and products to sell from big name brands. The key to success? Curation.We Have A Connection: One of the greatest advantages of a marketplace are the connections that can be formed within them. Especially from a B2B perspective, because for so long those buyers have been left out of the ecommerce equation. They desire the same level of connection and ease that those in B2C have come to expect though, and marketplaces have provided a way to create community and engagement that has made B2B selling and buying much easier.Long Live Loyalty: Big brands have long tapped into loyalty programs as a way to earn customer trust and keep them coming back. By expanding point systems to usage within a marketplace, brands are now becoming even more trustworthy and respected in the eyes of consumers, who can all of a sudden get more bang for their buck. Additionally, the rise of wide-ranging marketplace loyalty strategies will likely become a new way for retailers to attract customers to newer marketplaces.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce--- 

Lindsay McCormick knows a thing or two about pivoting. After all, she went from planning to live in a van and travel around the country selling her sustainable toothpaste bits to launching a transformative and still-growing company that has taken the internet by storm and has left the big brands shaking in their boots. Bite Toothpaste Bits was the company Lindsay never meant to start, but a viral video helped launch her full-time into the world of ecommerce after she went from 6,000-lifetime sales to 200,000 in a single week. Needless to say she could no longer manufacture everything from her living room, and instead was thrown into the deep end trying to find production and shipping partners that could not only make her very specific products, but do so in a sustainable way that stayed true to Bite’s ultimate mission. There were challenges around every corner, but Lindsay navigated through them all, and on today’s episode, she shares that rollercoaster ride of a story . Plus, she explained why she thinks it’s so important to keep content creation in-house, the reason she’s always testing new channels and leaning into video content — I mean, it is what launched her company — and she reveals why she’s not scared at all about the big-name manufacturers making copy-cat products, in fact, she’s excited about it. Hear all that and more on this episode!Main Takeaways:Don’t Fight The Fog: Breaking into new channels means divorcing yourself from KPIs and metrics and walking into foggy and unknown territory. Embrace that journey because not only will you eventually be able to measure success, the opportunity cost of not taking the risk is too costly not to try.Pay It Forward: Going viral comes with its pros and cons. While the huge boost in sales is a dream come true, fulfilling orders becomes a major problem that has to be solved quickly or you risk losing all of your new customers. As a sustainable business and a small business at that, Bite fought many battles to find manufacturers and fulfillment centers to partner with that met all their needs and price points. As Bite has gotten bigger and found the right partners, the company has also outfitted those partners with some of the tools that they can use to help support and grow other small businesses.Teach Me Your Ways: Educating consumers is one of the most important things an ecommerce site needs to do, especially when the product offered is something that requires a change in habit and/or expectations. Customers who take the time to learn will be more likely to repeat orders, and they will also be more likely to be understanding of things like extended shipping times.Make Em Sweat: It can be intimidating to go up against giants in an industry, but showing even a little bit of success in grabbing market share is something that will leave those big guys feeling pressure to make a change. Not only should that be encouraging to you as a disruptor, but in the world of sustainability, when the big guys start making changes, the small impact of a disruptor grows exponentially.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce--- 

One of the hardest things to do in ecommerce is creating an online experience that truly showcases every aspect of a product. This is especially true in the world of luxury goods, where allowing customers to touch, feel and admire the craftsmanship of a product. And at the same time they are expecting an indulgent in-store experience which is tantamount to the story of the brand. Just the in-store experience can serve as the main selling point and create word of mouth like no other.  Throughout his career at places like Brunello Cucinelli and Boggi Milano, Fedele Sforza has had to meet that challenge head-on and figure out a way to create a luxury ecommerce experience that matches and works in tandem with the luxury in-store experience. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Fedele tells us exactly how he’s been able to do just that, and he explains why ecommerce leaders have to be evangelists within a traditionally retail-based environment. Plus, he details how to use data and technology as a window into the needs of your different customers, which you can then leverage to create personalized shopping experiences across channels. Enjoy this episode!Main Takeaways:Showcasing Luxury: The in-store experience is a much easier place to showcase luxury items and create a one-of-a-kind, high-end shopping experience. Online, there are fewer ways to showcase craftsmanship or cater to a consumer. But it’s not impossible, and it should be a priority to create a personalized and extravagant experience online that can match or work in tandem with what happens in-store.Friends, Not Enemies: When a company begins to prioritize and invest in ecommerce, often the retail side of the business sees that as a threat. An ecommerce leader’s job is to be an evangelist and show the ways that both retail and ecommerce can work together, share data, and create experiences that cater to customers in a more personalized way. If that collaboration happens, not only will customers have a better experience, but the business will see a boost on the bottom line because sales are being optimized across all channels.Curating Connections: Rather than making a list of channels in which you have to market, start to think about finding ways to form connections and create experiences with customers in the places where they want them. Not everyone is in the headspace to buy something when they are scrolling through Instagram, but they might be interested in purchasing something when they are at an event with friends. You have to find ways to connect with people in all places and in unique ways so that you are top of mind whenever they are actually ready to purchase.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce--- 

No digital transformation is the same, but when a massive B2B organization embarks on that journey, you better believe that there will be a lot of lessons learned that can be applied to any other company. That’s why we wanted to talk to former Chief Digital Officer at Univar Solutions, Ian Gresham, who led the digital transformation and ecommerce implementation at this $9 billion multinational industrial distribution business. Look around at the things around you, make up, dish soap, skincare, solvents for your car. Univar probably has a part to play in that. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Ian tells us about the experience of bringing a massive organization into the world of digital commerce, and he reveals some of the biggest learnings from the experience that he is using now as an executive advisor to multiple businesses. For example, how should ecommerce leaders frame the building of a platform to get buy-in from the top down, and what kind of strategies should you implement to drive adoption of your platform? Interestingly, it’s a combination of moving fast but also taking it slow — tune in to learn what that means in practice. Plus, Ian shares more tips and discusses some of the insider details on the projects he’s currently working on. Enjoy! Main Takeaways:If You Build It, They.. May Not Come: When going through a digital transformation, many companies fall into the trap of believing that if they simply build and launch an ecommerce website, their customers will flock to it. In reality — and especially in the B2B space – there is an education and adoption phase that needs to happen to actually make an ecommerce site successful.M-V-P!: It’s wise to take an MVP approach to building an ecommerce platform because it forces you to focus on one specific feature that you can provide that solves a problem for a customer reliably well over and over. By offering that one solution, you can drive faster adoption of the platform because you are not overwhelming customers with a multitude of features, some of which they don’t want or need. New features can come down the road, but adoption needs to come first. And the entire organization needs to be on the same page that building a platform is an ongoing process with no set start and end date because there will always be new things to add or improve.It’s About The Journey: In businesses that rely on face-to-face interactions, the omnichannel experience is becoming more important than ever. To digitize some of the interactions and drive the adoption of more online tools, you have to start from the bottom up and understand every kind of customer and customer journey that exists within your business. From there, you can start reallocating headcount to digitize certain processes and send other resources to handle high-value customer interactions so that you know you are investing in the parts of the customer journey that are most in need.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce--- 

Let’s be real, talking about sex makes people uncomfortable. But it shouldn’t! And that’s one of the driving principles behind Maude, a modern sexual wellness brand that is disrupting a taboo industry and making sexual health more a part of the overall health and wellness conversation. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, I chatted with the founder of Maude, Éva Goicochea about how she built her company with a combination of excellent content, a growing and vibrant community, and a go-to-market strategy with patience and empathy top-of-mind. Éva also gave us some insight into the lessons she’s learned from bringing Maude into the retail market, and how she goes about assessing customer acquisition and community engagement. Enjoy this episode!Main Takeaways:Getting To Market: Ideate quickly, go to market strategically. Get to know who your customers are, what they want, and what problems they need solved before pushing a product to market. Not only do you need to take into account what your customers want, you also need to consider the associated logistics and cost that product will have to your business. You have to decide if your company is the one that should be creating it and whether the market size is big enough to jump through whatever hoops there are to actually bring that product to life.Content is King: Obviously, businesses want to sell goods on their websites. But it may actually be a better strategy to build a site that is less transactional and more content-driven and educational. In doing so, you can attract a casual audience, who are more likely to turn into buyers when they are already on your site.Bidding Wars: When wholesaling or working with retailers, a unique problem arises if those retailers try to outbid your brand for keywords and search terms in order to win more customers. Whether or not to fight to win those bidding wars comes down to assessing the value of the customer acquisition method. Is the customer more valuable as a native buyer or do you get the same or more value by having your wholesale partner see success selling your product?For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce--- 

The Beatles told us that All You Need Is Love. Howard Tiersky says the same thing — but he’s talking about brands, not the whole of human existence. Howard is the CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, which has helped brands such as Mattel, Barnes & Noble Education, Mall of America, NBC, Avis-Budget, and more transform to compete and win in a new digital world — and they succeed by getting customers to love the brands and everything they offer. Whether you’re a shiny new ecommerce start-up or a legacy brand with decades of history behind you, getting a consumer to actually love you is a multi-step process that is getting harder and harder as the digital landscape evolves. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, we dig into what the pyramid of brand love looks like and how companies should be working to climb their way to the top. Plus, he reveals the biggest mistake he sees companies making that causes potential customers to shop elsewhere, and he gives some strategies to rectify that situation and improve your bottom line. Enjoy!Main Takeaways:The Switching Cost is Zero: On the internet, it’s easy for a customer to move from one brand to another and it costs them nothing to do so. That means a brand’s first duty is to explain very quickly and clearly that it can and will solve a consumer’s problem. This is the area where most brands fail because they don’t have clear, simple messaging or content that tells their story and delivers their value prop instantly.Keep It Simple: Doing customer research is the best and easiest way to find the kinks in your website and processes. Setting up a simple focus group to watch how customers are using your site to see where their pain points are or where they are getting stuck can reveal the most basic and easy-to-solve problems that could increase your bottom line.Pyramid of Love: Creating a brand that people truly love is a challenge that has to be tackled in stages. There are specific levels of customer affection that you need to build up and that eventually culminates in love. But reaching those levels takes work and requires a brand to take specific actions. What are the levels and how do you reach them? Tune in to find out.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce--- 

Brands are facing fierce competition in this ever-evolving ecommerce landscape. More often than not, shoppers do a general product search on Google or Amazon, where hundreds, if not thousands, of brands fight for the sale. It’s a hard arena to win in, and every company is trying to find shortcuts and strategies to give them an edge.You’ve probably seen some of those strategies — for example, the products with a bunch of random SEO words jammed into the title so that the item appears higher in search. There are plenty more wacky Amazon tricks of the trade that brands have tried. Goal Zero is one of those brands trying to figure out the secret sauce but approaching it in a much different manner. Patrick Keller, Head of Marketing and Ecommerce at Goal Zero, may have finally solved the mystery — but the answer is not what you might be expecting.On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Patrick tells us that there are a few key strategies to unlocking more conversions on Amazon, and how they view authenticity and increasing brand awareness.TLDR: it takes great messaging, some big bets, and a lot of long-term thinking. Oh, and some pretty cool products, too. Hear all the details on this episode! Main Takeaways:Always Be Iterating: Producing marketing material is not a cut-and-dry process. Define your target market, set KPIs, and establish a timeline, then create a system that lends itself to AB testing and iteration. Don’t be afraid to create assets and then break them into pieces to test in different ways. You’ll learn more about your customers and the market in general that way, which you can then expand on when you embark on larger campaigns.Dream Big: Taking bigger advertising risks with a long tail is often a good way to get more bang for your buck. By investing in large-scale projects with a cinematic quality, you have more of a chance to use that content for much longer and build brand awareness with a larger audience that might miss a one-off campaign.Consider This: Figuring out a way to bypass the consideration phase on Amazon is one of the big challenges facing brands today. Because of the amount of options Amazon shoppers are presented with, companies that might have converted easily on their own site are losing out on Amazon. Whether through influencers or targeted campaigns, building brand awareness and loyalty is one of the methods brands are using to start bypassing that consideration phase and actually convert more.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---