Up Next In Commerce

When it comes to decisions brand leaders have to make, choosing the typeface that will live across your website and on all of your products is a pretty big one. Customers are going to see and interact with your copy throughout the life of your brand — and making a change to your design style will cause a ripple effect with lasting impacts.  Monotype is the largest company that is dedicated to typefaces. According to Jonathan Zsittnik, the Vice President of Commerce Channels at Monotype, the company has the world's largest library of typefaces, and thousands of type families, many of which are the backbone of key brands.  On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Jonathan explains the intricacies that go into running and selling that massive inventory of fonts. Plus, he dives into the importance of choosing and properly licensing a font style and how it can impact a brand. Main Takeaways:   Would You Like To Update? — A brand is a living, breathing thing, and needs to change with the times. But updating a brand’s typeface may require more careful thought and planning than some may anticipate. How do you pick or create a typeface that works for both mobile and desktop, speaks to your brand’s identity, works in multiple languages, and meets different users' needs? Tune in to find out! It All Adds Up —  The Ecommerce experience does not begin and end with a customer putting an item in a cart and then completing a transaction. That experience needs to carry on after the purchase has occurred, because in order to turn a one-time purchase into a repeat customer, brands need to stay top of mind for their customers. Every part of your brand — including the typeface you choose — makes up the Ecommerce experience and should be taken into consideration. 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 --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. I'm your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder of mission.org. Today on the show, we have Jonathan Zitnik the Vice President of commerce channels at Monotype. How's it going, Jonathan? Jonathan: Very good. Thanks so much for having me, Stephanie. Stephanie: Yeah, thanks for coming on. We were just mentioning that today's a special day. It's your 19th anniversary. And how lucky are we to have you on the show? Jonathan: Oh, man. It's crazy to have been here so long, but I've enjoyed the ride. And what better way to kind of celebrate that anniversary by talking about Monotype and all the things that I've done and see coming, than being here with you today. So thanks for having me. Stephanie: Yeah, it's going to be really fun. I think you're the first person we've had on the show that's been somewhere this long. So I think it'll be a really good conversation where you've actually been able to see a company evolve, and grow, and change. So I'm excited to dive into it. Jonathan: Awesome. Stephanie: I was hoping we can first start at Monotype. So I was reading a bit about it. But then I saw that you employ, I think it was somewhere around like 700 people and had really high revenue numbers. And I was wondering, what do you guys actually do? What is Monotype? And how do I think about the company? Jonathan: Sure. So I think probably your audience is largely not familiar with Monotype, but would recognize many of our flagship products. So if you've ever worked with the fonts Helvetica, Arial or Times New Roman, then you've worked with some of our key offerings. Monotype is the largest company that's dedicated to type. And we have the world's largest library of typefaces, where you'll find thousands of type families, many of which are the backbone of key brands. So the list of typefaces goes on quite a bit that that brands rely on every day. Stephanie: That's awesome. So are you guys purely a typeface design company or do you do other things as well? Jonathan: So type is really at the core of what we do, but we do have some other supporting businesses that all relate to helping brands express themselves and make sure that their digital expression is on point and translates across their various mediums that they communicate over. Stephanie: Very cool. So when I'm thinking about fonts, I guess maybe I'm a newbie when it's coming, or when I'm thinking about fonts, but oftentimes, I'll maybe go and look for free fonts or trying to see like what's out there. So how does Monotype make money and monetize these fonts? Jonathan: Sure. So the majority of our revenue comes from creative professionals that are working with type and those creative professionals could be internal, so working on behalf of the brands, at the brands, at those enterprises, or working at agencies, or even individual creative professionals that are in freeline design spaces. So we're really supporting the creative space and these are the people that know about type, care about type and know how to leverage it within their design projects. And understand that it can really be the backbone of a brand. So these are the people that are willing to spend the value in a typeface. Stephanie: Awesome. And I saw I think you guys developed some fonts I know like Times New Roman, huh, that's a favorite. Is that you guys who created that one? Jonathan: It is, that was a custom typeface at the turn of the century for the London Times. And so it's gone through many, many iterations over the years to catch up with digital times to make the progression that the type has gone from over the years from metal type through phototype and now it's a digital type. Stephanie: That's cool. So how do we think about types transforming over time? Like, what are the levers that make you guys want to change a font, or typeface, or edit it, or make a new one? Like, how are you staying on top of these trends and actually deciding like, "Ah, this would be a new way to maybe shift the fonts or create something new or even transition an old font into something more relevant." Jonathan: Yeah, that's a great question. A lot of our successful typeface releases come from either new opportunities based on the way that type needs to be used or updates to existing typefaces to make sure that they're catching up with the digital needs of today, right? So take Helvetica as an example. Last year we released Helvetica Now, and it was an update for Helvetica, which cleaned up some of the idiosyncrasies that had caught up with the typeface over the years and make sure that it has all the necessary characters that are used today, some adjustments so that the type looks great on screens versus some of the way the characters were drawn originally, and which didn't translate as well. Jonathan: So those types of updates are really common. And as I said, previously, when you're thinking about a new typeface, you want to think about the challenges that designers are having today and make sure that you're designing it for those needs. Stephanie: So what are some of those challenges, if a brand is thinking right now about I mean, what first comes to mind is maybe creating a logo or something like that? And I think for us, we're pretty, like easy standard. I think we just use like Futura or something like that. But for people who are looking to actually develop their own typeface, what are some challenges they might encounter down the road when it comes to maybe designers trying to use that? Jonathan: Yeah. So if you want to think about all the places where the brand needs to be represented, right? So if you are going to be using your type in an application, like a mobile application, you're going to make sure that the type performs its small sizes, that it looks great on screen and that the readability remains strong when it's presented that way. And you also want to think about your audience, right? Jonathan: So if you're selecting a typeface, and you know that you're going to be communicating with an audience that's global, you have to make sure that you have the necessary characters to ensure that you can communicate in all the languages your audience uses. So those are just a couple of the considerations, but those are big ones. Stephanie: No, that's some good things to keep in mind. So when I'm like... what are some of the maybe top typefaces right now that you see a lot of brands going with? Like, is there anything new that's happening or shifts happening in the world of fonts that maybe hasn't happened up until now? Jonathan: So I mentioned the remaking of typefaces and updating them and that's a big trend. A lot of the big name typeface families like Helvetica and you mentioned Futura are used by these major brands because they know them, they're familiar with them. They know they perform well. They're versatile typefaces, and they're just beautiful designs. And so these updates that are happening, it's a trend that you're seeing more and more of, and what the audience is getting is a broader range of typeface suites which can be exciting so you can extend the family to include more decorative designs so that you can extend the family designs to be more creative with your work. Jonathan: You're getting broader character ranges, which is excellent for taking your brand to different places and geographies. And also some visual adjustments to make sure the performance is there, regardless of what the typeface is. So that's a big one. Stephanie: All right, cool. So I wanted to get into your role a bit. Being at the company for 19 years. I want to hear how it's evolved and what your day to day looks like right now. Jonathan: Sure. So when I started back in the day, it was still really at the dawn of Ecommerce. It was kind of an exciting place to begin, certainly for Ecommerce marketing. Pay per click advertising was just emerging. So I don't think even Google had introduced AdSense at that point. So it was kind of an exciting time and we used all of those things really to establish our Ecommerce business, which when I started, had really just launched. Jonathan: And so at that point, we developed myfonts.com and through my time we've gone through numerous acquisitions. So we have a host of commerce properties, myfonts.com the largest of those today. And so it really went from an Ecommerce marketing roll up into managing operations for an Ecommerce business and took a brief turn in that to focus on a subscription offering and then helped build out a customer success and support organization to help the greater Monotype business grow and ensure that our customers including our enterprise, customers, really have the support that they needed. Jonathan: And more recently kind of turned my focus back over to the Ecommerce world. So now the role is managing the global digital commerce business, which includes our font sites, some of which I just mentioned, a little bit of our indirect business and a relatively new business that's fun and growing, which is called flip font. And it's an application that runs on a mobile phone unless you've changed the UI typeface to one that you purchase from a store. Stephanie: Oh, very cool. Jonathan: Yeah. Stephanie: So what does that look like overseeing the different Ecommerce channels? Like are there different maybe learnings that you're getting from having different websites to be able to like see trends on or see like which ones are doing things successfully, and which ones maybe need to have a little help. What kind of things are you seeing by having that oversight of multiple websites? Jonathan: Yeah, well, that's certainly one of the challenges right? Because it's a lot of businesses rolled up into one business. But there's advantages of that too, right? Because you can test out different techniques on one website. And then if it works out, you can roll it out to others. And one of the challenges is that they all have slightly different audiences, the customers coming from different places, like if you look at the different customer segments, they're not identical. They have different preferences and so you have to act and think in the interest of these different audience segments. Stephanie: Got it. So where are these customers coming from right now? Like, what kind of acquisition channels are you guys using to find new customers and then how are you treating them differently depending on the source of where they came? Jonathan: Yeah. So most of our customers, one of the advantages that we have is that a lot of our typefaces have been in use for many years. And so when a typeface gets, it's purchased and sees used within a project, and that project will spurn additional use, right? Especially if it's in the hands of an agency and an agency might use it with multiple clients. Jonathan: So a lot of people will come to the channels already knowing exactly what they need. And so a lot of the focus is on making sure that we can get that customer who already knows that they need to use this particular font, get them the font, get them in the cart, make sure that they know what license they need, so they can get back to designing as quickly as possible. So that's a lot of the emphasis there. Jonathan: And then the other point of emphasis is really on the discovery phase, and this is for the designer that knows that they need a particular type of typeface, they might have a classification in mind or a couple of different qualities in mind that will suit the needs of their project. So what are the tools that we can provide them, how can we help them filter down the inventory of a hundred thousand plus fonts so they can get down to the one that's really going to be the perfect design, perfect choice for their design. Stephanie: How do you go about personalizing that because I could see it being quite a bit of consulting and education depending on maybe the industry and I could see people also coming in with quite a few wild ideas where when I was looking at design recently it's like, "Okay, don't go too crazy. Don't go too designery or too out there because that stuff will probably got out of style soon." And like, how would someone go about recommending what kind of font a brand should use? Jonathan: Yeah, so I think there's a couple things you can focus on. One is just the making sure that you provide enough tools to help someone navigate the inventory. And so if you understand the attributes of your inventory, you can make it easy to filter down. And also you can go take a look at just the Sans Serif fonts. And then you can look at the Humanistic Sans, not to geek out too much on type here. No, but you can kind of narrow down your selections by the various characteristics of the typefaces for the person that has an idea of what they're looking for. Jonathan: But I think the more fun thing that we do is making sure that we give our customers a sense of how the typeface is going to perform before they purchase, right? So you need a lot of tools that allows the designer to experiment with the typeface before they purchase it. So before they lay their money down, make sure they understand what it's going to look like. And the visuals that we supply are critically important. So making sure that we have the images that don't just show the range of the typeface that's important, but also some fun examples of what it might look like when it's designed. So really just show off the characteristics of the type. Stephanie: Yeah, that's really important. I was just thinking when we're going through making website changes and stuff, I always wish they could just be an easy, quick switch of like, what does it look like with this font, this font, and maybe you guys have this functionality, and I just never knew it. But oftentimes, it's me like trying to preview and going back and changing again, previewing again. And after maybe changing it a couple times, I'm like, "Oh, I'm kind of done." So do you guys have that functionality? I think you mentioned it with the app earlier. But do you have that for desktop as well? Jonathan: Yeah, there's different ways that you can do that. And depending on what tool or what subscription you might have, there's different ways that you can experiment with typefaces. And that's always been a huge problem for the type industry, right? It is sort of, how do you allow someone to experiment with your product, but make sure that you're not cannibalizing your sale? So that's kind of the trade off that we have to work through. Stephanie: So I'm interested in thinking about metrics when it comes to changing typefaces. I mean, I'm sure you guys have case studies where different fonts produce different results, can you speak through some of that? Jonathan: Well, it's difficult to predict. So unless you're working with a typeface that has a track record, and you're doing a new version, you're actually not certain what you're going to get, right? So typefaces are a lot like music where there will never be enough created to satisfy the creative needs, both on part of the person that's doing the creation and the designers that are consuming what's created. So a lot of it is strategic, right? Jonathan: So we know that there are certain needs that need to be served so we'll do a release there. And some of it is creative expression. Stephanie: Got it. And you mentioned that a lot of people come to you knowing what they already want. Do you also do paid acquisition for getting customers to find out about you. Like if it was someone like me and I'm looking for a brand redesign, how would you go about targeting someone who maybe I don't really know much about fonts or for me if I wanted the font I might open up maybe Adobe Photoshop and get it in there and like I wouldn't actually know the process of maybe even buying one and licensing and stuff like that. Stephanie: So how would you go about maybe pulling in a new customer like me with very low awareness? Jonathan: Yeah, sure. So for targeting individual creative professionals, paid search of course is huge and all the typical advertising methods and affiliate programs, which bring people in and will, on the paid search side will also invest in terms where that are not product specific unless there's someone that's looking for a particular style of typeface we can bid on those terms or using terms like something that's more broad like font or by fonts as well. And for the larger customers that we work with those might come in to the agencies that we partner with as well. Jonathan: So if we doing a, involved in a big brand design, it's not uncommon for us to partner with the agency that's working with the brand. So some business comes in through that way. And in other cases, we might see that a brand has started to work with one of our typefaces, and we'll get to know them a little bit better and see if we can expand the relationship and then help them with the next steps in their brands. And maybe there's different ways that we can help them as they prepare to make that move further down the digital path. Stephanie: Got it. So you mentioned partnerships earlier, and I wanted to maybe touch on that a bit because I think maybe in our prep notes you'd mentioned partnering with other technology providers to basically have a more creative and collaborative approach when it comes to design and the whole ecosystem in general. I was hoping you could talk about what those partnerships look like and how you guys are thinking about the design and not just typeface, but the industry as a whole. Jonathan: Yeah, so I think on a more practical level, there are lots of Ecommerce providers that we partner with to put great quality type in the hands of their end users, right? So if it's an Ecommerce platform that has their own templates, you might find Monotype typefaces built in there. So when you're doing your design, you don't have to choose from the standard website, web safe typefaces that you know, are going to be resident on just about everybody's machine, right? So you have a nice variety of selections to choose from. So that's one way that we partner with which puts our type in the hands of more end users. Jonathan: But I think that like when you're thinking more broadly about collaborations with Ecommerce, the industry has just evolved so much. And today Ecommerce when you're thinking about your Ecommerce experience, it's not really just about those few precious minutes that the customer spends on the website, right? To do it right, you really have to be thinking about how that Ecommerce site supports the brand and what are the key elements of a brand that you want to inject into that Ecommerce experience. And then that Ecommerce experience really broadens beyond just shopping. Jonathan: It's all the things that you're going to do to retain that customer and get them to think about you and create that positive sentiment when they're not shopping. So when the need arrives, they're right there going back to your site to purchase something new. Stephanie: Yeah, that makes sense. So talking about retaining customers, a bit and what came to mind was actually licensing for some reason, because that's also an arena that I don't fully understand. And it sometimes scares me of like, "Oh, is there certain licenses we should have around this? And like, how do you protect yourself and your company?" So I was hoping you could touch on what are some of the failures a new Ecommerce company might be making right now, when it comes to typefaces and licensing and not having the right licenses. What do you see happening right now that could be prevented that a lot of people might not know about? Jonathan: Yeah, font licensing is complex, and it's always been complex. And I think that's something that the industry Monotype included, needs to work on to simplify that and make it easier on our customers. And so a traditional font license, the traditional found license that we've been selling forever is a desktop license. So that allows someone to use a particular font on their machine, possibly multiple machines depending on the license. They do vary. And that's one of the bits of complexity right there is that... so take my fonts, for example, we have thousands of partner foundries that sell their products on our site. Many of which have their own licenses. Jonathan: So that puts a lot on the customer to look through and actually read the license and understand what they're getting. So one of our strategies there is to consolidate on fair industry standard terms there. So that the user is going to be more familiar with the license that they're purchasing. But even looking beyond that, it gets more complicated when you look at different use cases for the type, right? So if you want to use a font on the web, that's going to require slightly different font file as well as a different EULA, excuse me a license agreement and you have to pay attention to the amount of distribution with the font as well. So, are there limitations on the page views associated with the font? Jonathan: And, so really additional use cases oftentimes are tied to additional license types. So if you want to use a font in a mobile application, or you want to use it in digital ad, you might require a different license to go along with that. So there's a lot of different formats there that they have to pay attention to. And it's our job as a marketplace to make sure that we educate our customers when they come to the site and help them find the right license. Especially people that are looking to be compliant with that. [crosstalk 00:24:46]. Stephanie: Yeah, licensing is definitely tricky. I mean, how do you... like if I'm using photoshop, for example, and they have all the fonts in there, and maybe I'm using that to build my own logo, or build a page or something or some kind of like PDF, or if you're using a website builder tool that already has a bunch of fonts like is very different type of licensing thing you should think through, or are you kind of already covered because maybe Adobe already has like an unlimited forever license? Jonathan: Sure. Speaking in generalities here, right, because there are different font license agreements. But typically, a font license for a desktop font license is going to cover use on your machine. And as long as that font file isn't traveling to another user, you're good, right? So the output of that font as long as it's static text that is no longer leveraging the font file can be distributed. And that's the case with most, not all, but most font licenses. Stephanie: So I want to kind of touch on some higher level Ecommerce trends because you've been in the industry for a while. I think you could have some fun answers for them. First one is what kind of trends or patterns are you excited about right now in the world of Ecommerce? Jonathan: I think the thing I'm most excited about right now is machine learning. And it's application for recommendations. So recommendations within Ecommerce has been a problem that we've tried to solve collectively for 10s of years now. And I feel like it's really turned the corner in the past few years. The recommendations you get on store and your music service or other places where it's being leveraged have really gotten good, it's impressive, and it's exciting. So you can go from a place where you're making recommendations that maybe weren't well informed, and just come across as noise to recommendations that are personalized and accurate and are really helping your customers solve a problem. So it's interpreted really well and I think there's a lot of potential there. Stephanie: Yep. I completely agree. What about COVID? Have you guys experienced any kind of impact from COVID right now? And how do you see the industry moving forward after this? Jonathan: Yeah. So I think everybody's feeling some sort of impact. I think the companies that have really seen the most positive effects of it are the companies that have the brick and mortar locations where their Ecommerce businesses is taking off, because that's where the activity is moving. And we have digital goods and digital delivery. Jonathan: So we didn't see that. We saw some initial impact and as our customers spend is really tied to marketing and the agency world which was hit pretty hard. But we've since seen a lot of recovery, which is great. We're seeing a lot of positive signs. And when you look at the various products that we sell, we're seeing some really encouraging and some growth signs, particularly on the use of type on the web which makes sense that kind of speaks to the broader industry of Ecommerce. So that's been a strong point. Stephanie: Yeah, that's really interesting. Are there any other surprises that you've seen through all this where you're like, "Oh, now there's all of a sudden an industry around this, or people popping up asking for this that we didn't have before." Jonathan: The ripple effects of this are huge, right? And so, I think initially, it was kind of hard to put two and two together and see what the impact would be. But you think about it, it makes sense when you see companies like Zoom or DocuSign having success that they are and all of this and so we've kind of seen the effects of that as well and are just trying to cope with it like a lot of companies. Jonathan: And I think in some regard, it's been easier than then we anticipated. I'm very thankful that we're here today and not in 2010, right? If you can imagine trying to do the things that you go through on a daily basis, without the collaboration and communication tools that we have today, it would be incredibly challenging. Stephanie: Yep. Are there any challenges that you guys are facing? Of course, it wouldn't be 2010 levels challenges, but is there anything right now where it's kind of like, feeling a little tough to do X, Y, or Z based on the changes in the market or the increased demand? Jonathan: I don't think that they're market driven. I think if you look at the things that we need to do, everything is totally accomplishable. But that doesn't mean it's not without challenges, right? So you have a team and you work together. There's just something. It's difficult to put your finger on, but I don't know if it's the morale of the group or just that whatever you get from being able to socialize in person, so you feel the effects of that when you can't meet in person and just have that initial catch up. But you know, you can kind of do that informally but it's definitely missing something. Jonathan: And so I think everybody kind of has to find different ways to make sure they get that in their life, in their day to day. The other thing that I think is more challenging is when you're trying to solve a difficult problem, and you can't collaborate the same way. So like I said, Zoom is great, but there's really no substitute for getting five people in a room together with a whiteboard and just working through a problem with everybody's undivided attention. So I do long for those days. And hope that we can do those types of things again soon. Stephanie: Yep, I long for the happy hour day where you can just get together again and not worry and catch up on all things work or not work if you don't feel like talking about it. Jonathan: Absolutely. Stephanie: So I want to hear a little bit about more about Monotype and the successes behind your guys brand. What do you see is working? Like how do you portray your company in a design oriented, beautiful way. Jonathan: One of the things that we've had success with is putting emphasis and attention into our communication materials. And if you look at the newsletters, they're very heavy with imagery that shows the type, shows it off, shows how it can be used. And it's really gratifying when our customers tell us that they find these materials which are ultimately marketing materials that are designed to sell, and inform, and educate that they're inspirational to them. Now, so it checks a lot of boxes there and I definitely perceive that as a victory. Stephanie: How do you go about building those materials? Like how do you know what's going to connect with the customer? How do you know... what one person might think is beautiful another one might be like, "Urgh." So how do you build something that connects with the majority of your customers or prospects? Jonathan: Sure, well, you certainly aren't going to please everyone. You need to rely on talented people that are great with type and see the unique value in an individual typeface and know how to use it and design that shows off its characteristics and present it in a way that shows how it might likely be used by a typical project that would work well for. Stephanie: Got it. Do you ever have to educate new customers in a way of like, "Well, here's what we did with this font, like look at that little curlicue there, that's newer," like showing people why something special? Jonathan: Yeah, so I think, readability, legibility might be a good example. And you could read all day on the various aspects of a typeface that can aid or hinder readability. And so we'll put a lot of time into the generalities of what makes a typeface more legible, more readable. And then certainly, if there's an individual typeface that has some of those characters or those properties we would point those out. Stephanie: Yeah, there's a email newsletter, I can't remember who it is, but they essentially show just how subtle design tweaks and fonts make a big difference in like portraying whatever you're talking about. And it was displayed in such a way that made it be like, "Oh, of course, this one looks better," or, "Oh, we're talking about food in this one." Like you can kind of get a feeling depending on the type of font and I just thought that was a really nice way to just show two things up against each other and it'd be general accepted like which one looks better, which one connects with the brand depending on what the product was. Jonathan: Yeah, that's a great way to present it because great typographic often goes unnoticed. Stephanie: Yep. I think that was kind of their point is like, you wouldn't think anything if you just saw this by itself. But if you saw a random font next to it, or a font that was just like so off brand, it would be very obvious and you would not feel disconnected with it. So I like that. Jonathan: Right. Stephanie: All right, let's jump into the lightning round brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to throw a question your way and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Jonathan? Jonathan: I am ready. Stephanie: All right, what's up next on your Netflix queue? Jonathan: Cobra Kai, high recommendation from my wife. So she's jumped in and I'm trailing her. But that's gotten her through the pandemic. Stephanie: I like it. I saw that being the trailer playing and I was just about to watch it. So I'm glad that it has good recommendations from your wife. What's up next on your reading list? Jonathan: It's a book I think it's called Writing Down The Bones. And it's a practical guide to doing more writing and getting more practice at it and ultimately improving your writing skills. Stephanie: All right, cool, I like that. I thought it was going to be A Practical Guide To Typography. And I would say, "Man, Jonathan, you are a lover of typography." Jonathan: I'm all in. Stephanie: I like it. Where are you traveling to when you're able to go out and about again? Jonathan: Oh, Cocoa Beach, Florida is my happy place. And I'm looking forward to getting back down there again. Stephanie: I love Florida. And the last one, if you were to have a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be? Jonathan: Oh, wow. Let's see. Well, I guess I can't steal your idea and talk about Ecommerce. Stephanie: You can just keep coming on the show. Jonathan: I might have the chops to talk about fonts with an Ecommerce audience, but I don't think I could handle it there. So let's see, I might do something just on creativity in general, because I love the arts. I love expression. And so it'd be fascinating to pull in different people from different genres and have them speak about their art form. And who would my first guests be? Stephanie: Yeah. Jonathan: Let's see, I'll probably pull in a musician. And let's see. I'm really excited about the new Deep Sea Diver album that's coming out next month. So Jessica Bazzi. Stephanie: Cool. That sounds great. All right, Jonathan, well, thank you for coming on the show and teaching our audience about all things fonts. Where can people find out more about you and Monotype? Jonathan: So you can follow me on twitter @Zitnik and for Monotype, it's just monotype.com. And you can learn more than you ever wanted to know about fonts from there or you can go to our flagship Ecommerce store myfonts.com. Stephanie: Awesome. Thanks so much.

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the world upside down, and there is a lot of talk about when things will go “back to normal,” or whether this is the “new normal.”  Christoph Schell, the Chief Commercial Officer at HP, is spending a lot of time thinking about what this new world will look like. He’s responsible for setting the company’s path and making sure HP is ready to go-to-market in the best ways possible. How he does that is by looking at emerging consumer behaviors and combining that information with hard data, which leads him to design strategies and solutions that, recently, have needed to be deployed faster than anticipated.  The pace of change is quicker than ever before, and the five-year roadmap that companies had previously planned for are now taking place in a matter of months. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Christoph explains how this acceleration has forced a change in HP’s roadmap and sales model, and discusses why the new plan is so focused on subscription-based services, supply chain resiliency, and data. Main Takeaways:   The Rise of the Prosumer: A new customer segment has emerged in recent months — the prosumer, who is a professional who is now working from home but requires enterprise-level capabilities and technology. Companies like HP have had to pivot to meet the needs of this new group, who are being guided by CIOs investing heavily in workflows and increased security for new work environments.    Everybody is an Inside Sales Rep: With much of the world forced to work from home, how business gets done needed to change. This was especially true for sales, which now had to be done fully remote through digital interactions. But working with many retail partners and revamping an entire sales model is no easy task. All About Supply Chains: Creating a resilient supply chain is one of the biggest challenges companies face today. For global companies, that challenge is made trickier by things like tariffs and other cultural and legal issues that may arise. To become antifragile in the supply chain means to have the ability to assess all your partners from every angle in order to see where roadblocks may occur and if they are surmountable. 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 --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome back to another episode of Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder of mission.org. Today on the show, we have Christoph Schell, the Chief Commercial Officer at HP Inc. Stephanie: Cristoph, welcome. Christoph: Thanks for having me. Stephanie: If it was any other time, I would have you in studio, I'd have you walk down the street to come here but here we are, on Zoom, even though we're basically neighbors. Christoph: That's true. Stephanie: So I want to hear a little bit about your journey. I saw that you have been at HP for more than 21 years which I was like, "Whoa." That's a long time. So I want to hear a little bit about how you came to HP and what that journey looked like to becoming a Chief Commercial Officer, which is where you are now. Christoph: Yeah. So look, you probably can hear this. I'm German. I started with HP in Germany, in '95, as an intern. I did a six month internship in the business school that I went to and I worked with HP as a business analyst and then back for another year to school. And yeah, then actually graduated and I wanted a job at HP but HP had a hiring freeze back then and so I went to P&G in Germany as well. And then one a half years into it, went back to HP. Moved with HP to the middle east. I was eight years in Dubai and then Australia, Singapore, San Diego, back to Singapore. Then I left HP again. I went to a company called [Phillips] and I stayed there for close to two years. And then in 2014, came back to HP. This time, in Palo Alto. And yeah, since then I've been with HP here in Palo Alto. Stephanie: That's amazing. So what does your current role look like now? Christoph: Look, it's a new role. I mean for all these years that I was in HP, there was a lot of change. But actually, one thing that never changed, we always had the globe organized into three regions. These regions were the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and Asia, Pacific, and Japan. And we decided last year that we will change that and we did away with the three regions and moved to ten markets. These ten markets are reporting now into a central structure that we call The Commercial Organization and I'm heading the team of The Commercial Organization. Christoph: And we're basically responsible for all go-to-market, and from category management, we do the product management. We're responsible for basically the revenue and the margin and positioning the products correctly to get with our marketing teams and global business units. So in a classic marketing term, you would say we manage the four P's, the four P's of marketing. And we do that globally. Stephanie: Got it. So tell me a little bit about behind the scenes of why you moved the org structure to the ten markets instead of the three regional one. Like what was the driving force behind that? Christoph: The driving force to me, and I was leading that project from the get-go when we designed this new structure, was a change that we saw in how our customers wanted to consume our technology and how they went shopping. And actually it's interesting to see that COVID-19 has accelerated a lot of this. Christoph: So a lot of our go-to-market has moved online. Either to marketplaces or to online businesses, these can be partners or even our own store. And customers go back and forth between these. They get some of their information during the journey, on the marketplace, on HP, with the partners. Some of them go obviously to publications, they listen to podcasts. And they form an opinion. And when you want to be there with them all the way, you need to be very consistent. Very consistent in how you show up, very consistent in how you manage additional assets. And very consistent in how you get your value proposition across, globally, internationally. And we thought that the structure that we had of three independent regions resulted in too much decentralized decision taking when it came to four P management but also basically, basic definitions of value proposition. Christoph: And so, we centralized this a lot more. We took a lot more control in how we manage it. And that was the big, driving force behind the structural change. There is, hand-in-hand with this, a move to go more and more into subscription-based engagement with customers. And we can talk about this a little bit later. And that's also a lot easier to do in a digital go-to-market, and digitally engage with customers. Stephanie: Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. So you mentioned COVID earlier and I've heard from quite a few guests that their tech or product roadmaps that were maybe for three years to come, that sped up into three months. So what kind of changes has HP seen when it comes to COVID? Christoph: Yeah, look, I will echo that. I really believe that what we've seen now happening in five months is what our plan, our roadmap had to schedule to happen in five years. So there was a huge acceleration. Basically, the way I would summarize it is this move to digital has been accelerated, the move from transactional engagements to subscription-based engagements has accelerated. The request of customers to have more personalized experiences has increased. And that has a profound impact on how we design products. It has a major impact on our roadmap that has clearly changed if I compare from February to now. Christoph: But it also has a significant impact in how we think about talent, how we think about culture that we want to build within HP. It's actually very exciting. The core of our business is around personal systems and printing. And there are categories within personal systems and printing that have become essential during COVID-19. You know, the good-old PC is very hip right now. A lot of people need it to work from home or to learn from home and even home printing which a lot of people stopped even looking at as a desirable purchase, has been coming back in attractiveness. And it's essential, again, for people that work from home and that learn from home. Christoph: And so that helps us a lot to offset some of the headwinds that we see clearly in an office environment with people working from home. Obviously the office business is a little bit neutered right now. So those are the big changes. Stephanie: So how are you guys handling these big changes? Like what were some of the biggest pivots that you had to make over these past couple months and how are you aligning team members and everyone around a big cause like that that is probably shifting a lot of the plans, like you had mentioned, and condensing them into a very short time. Christoph: I'm going to answer this across a couple of headlines. So the first one is really, roadmap. So if you stay with these essential categories of working from home and learning from home, what is really interesting to see is that COVID-19, to me, has created a new customer segment. I call this the consumer segment. And what I mean by that is that you have employees that work from home and expect enterprise type of deliverables in their home. Their CIO's want to make sure that they can work securely and in a compliant way from home. And that required us to think about how can we bring assets that we have usually in an enterprise go-to-market, how can you bring that into individual employee's home? So that's the first change in roadmap that you see. A lot of investment into workflow. A lot of investment into security. Christoph: The second notion under this headline is, when you run an employee's home, you are also participating in how the family entertains itself. And that gives you a boost in how you think about your consumer value proposition and your consumer roadmap. And so, we saw these two things merging. We had to, in the past for example, a product called Instant Ink. It's a replenishment service where your printer sits in the cloud and you pay $2.99 or $4.99 or $9.99 a month and you get a certain page amount based on the subscription that you pay. When your ink levels in your cartridges are at a certain level, we will replenish those and send them automatically to your home. So you don't have to leave the home to go shopping for ink. Christoph: And that has, during COVID-19, really hit a nerve and we saw subscriptions going up. Now the cool thing about this is that you build a very loyal engagement with your customers. And the loyalty that we have on this product is really very impressive. We like the numbers and we have really thought about how can we take this and engage on it from an enterprise point of view and satisfying some of the CIO needs of having employees print from home? That's number one. It requires a bit of infrastructure investments that we're thinking about how can we take this program and scale it further globally from the countries that we're in today to get a more complete coverage. So I think that's one point. Christoph: The second point is, around the headline of supply chain. I think, my generation, we have learned how to optimize supply chain for cost. But we had to now learn that you need to also optimize supply chains for resiliency. And that is a very complex topic to do that when you manage a global business and when you produce some of the products that we have, some of the portfolio that we have, we own the manufacturing. Some others, we do that with equipment manufacturers. And so coordinating that, working on strategies and how to, on the one-hand side, still be cost-effective but on the other-hand side, be more resilient, is actually very interesting. And so that's an ongoing project but clearly something that COVID-19 has required us to do. Christoph: And then the third element is how we manage customers and how we allow customers to really enjoy our technology and consume our technology and I said this before, COVID-19 has been for families, but also for businesses, a concern. A concern to their bottom line, a concern to their cashflow. And so moving from Capex investments to apex investments around subscription engagements and contractual engagements is something that is super important right now and we're bringing those business models to the forefront of our offering. So those are the three headlines I would like to touch on. Stephanie: Cool. Yeah, maybe let's start with the prosumer shift as you call it. I want to hear a bit about how ... So you were focused B2B and on enterprises and maybe not as much on consumer prior to this. How did you shift your mindset and really understand what the consumers are looking for and what they need? How did you change that sales model to be more consumer-focused and at home and working at home and learning at home? Christoph: We very quickly saw an increasing need of customers to become productive working from home. And it started really with a lot of global accounts, enterprise accounts. Think about the financial service industry. Think about call centers that all of a sudden had to move thousands of people that they had in call centers to working from home. And to do that in a compliant way to the enterprise, in a secure way, with cyber attacks going through the roof during COVID-19 because home networks are not as well protected as our usually office networks. That created an immediate request from our customers to come back with solutions, how can we do that? How can you enable us doing that? And can you please do this in a way that we don't have to transact with you but we in through a service [inaudible] engagement? That was the very first thing that happened. Christoph: The second thing that came right on the heel of that was, hey, we need the kids to go back to school and they need to do this online. How can we do that? What's the best ecosystem? It's not just a question of what device you buy but you have to actually think about with school districts, how is it best to move a curriculum online? What's the best way to partner from a technology point of view, what solutions do we have in the ecosystem? If I think about Microsoft, if I think about Google, if I think about other service providers we have? And then again, how do you package that? In the beginning there was a lot of demand for mobility products. And right now, I actually start seeing a shift to a more desktop products because I think kids and their parents are learning the hard way that if you sit six, seven, eight hours a day in front of a small screen, it's not very easy to stay focused and concentrate. So getting them the best possible setup to learn, to read from a large display, to maybe have the speaker set, to have a good microphone for voice. All of this becomes very important. Christoph: And how did they learn this to life from a business modeling point of view, again, was very interesting. In the US, a lot of the education business is still transaction for us but we have other countries where we are letting kids and school districts consume on a subscription model. And so this is something I think that COVID will further. Christoph: So I think those are the two clear items I think that I have seen evolved here in COVID-19. If you then look at our go-to-market, we are a company that does close to 88% of our revenue through partners. And what our partners needed to do, they need to shift their engagement, very often from a physical engagement with a store or a demo room or a sales force, basically there was [inaudible] on feet on the street, to a more digital engagement, to a more call center driven engagement. In the past we talked about we have feet on the street sales people and we have inside sales people. Today, everybody's an inside sales rep, okay? And sometimes they go out and meet a customer but everything has cocooned back into our employee's home as well and the way they engage had to change. So we had to learn how to virtually sell. Which is not easy. I mean right now, I'm talking to you with our video off so I can't read your facial expressions, I can't read your body language, your [crosstalk] either. Stephanie: I'm happy, don't worry. Christoph: It's one thing to do that in a podcast but imagine you have to sell and you have to engage. So you need complete new skills on how to do that. And we've also, I think, had to learn how to become better. Each of our sales consultants become better in social media interactions prior to a call with a customer just to learn a little bit more and to get a little bit more in touch with decision makers of companies. Christoph: So just a couple of ideas but that is really playing out right now. Stephanie: Well that sounds like a ton. So when it comes to prioritizing things, I could see there being so many things. Like everyone's popping up now. Like I need security, I need to be able to work from home but my kids also need to be able to be on. How do you think about what to invest in? Because it seems like some of this could go back to maybe a little bit of how it was before. Like kids might start going back to school eventually, people might start going back into the retail. How do you make sure you're making an investment that's for the long-haul? Like what are you guys betting on to make sure these are good investments? Christoph: That's a great question. I actually think this is just the risk and the bet that we are taking here. We think that while things will correct in the future, a lot of things will stick, okay? And that is informing the priority that we have from a product, a roadmap point of view, and also from a sales force point of view. Christoph: The team and I, when we discussed about this, we think that travel will come back, but it will never come back to the same levels as prior to COVID-19. So that has an impact. It has an impact in how people communicate. It has an impact of how people meet. It has an impact how people design. And overall, how we engage. And so the skillset to invest into virtual selling, into social selling is probably a good investment. Not just during COVID, but it will stick, okay? That's one. Christoph: Then a second one is, commercial real estate. Absolutely fascinating topic, and yes, people will go back to offices but I don't think that all people will go back to offices. And I think that the people that will go back to offices maybe have learned that they don't have to go back to offices five days a week. There are certain things that we will do in offices in the future, but there are also things that we will do from home because we've learned that, you know what? It's easy to do. I don't need to be in a traffic jam, I don't need to rush to get the kids back from school. I'm at home, okay? I also think that some kids will continue to stay home. I could imagine that college students and more of them will move to online classes because it's more convenient. In particular, for this generation. Christoph: So again, these are certain things that will stick and I think your talent, your skillset, the processes that you adapt to and the roadmaps of products that you sell, they have to cope. And so I think the bet that we're talking about here is an informed bet and basically we're just looking for, hey, what is going to stick. I also think that not all of it will happen globally. I think there's going to be different degrees by markets of how travel will evolve, of how real estate will evolve, how working and learning from home will evolve. But overall, I think COVID-19 will have a cosmic, a really big impact, on some of these things and I think that's opportunity for tech companies. Stephanie: Yeah, completely agree. So you just mentioned globally, and I'm pretty sure that you're able to see a lot of consumer behaviors across the globe and I wanted to hear a little bit about what kind of trends that you're seeing. Like what do you see in different areas that's maybe different than the US? Christoph: Yeah. So for me, the most interesting actually when you heard from my intro in the beginning that I've spent a lot of time in the Middle East and Africa, in Asia, amazing to see how quickly customers have moved to online business engagement and to services like business engagements. That has happened a lot faster than it has happened in Western Europe or the US. And so that again is something that will stick and it will have an impact on retail structures. It will have an impact on financing of services like business models. Super exciting, but it's also obviously requiring for certain infrastructure to be in place. I talked about the investment in infrastructure that we are making to bring some of our subscription models to life in those markets. So that is overall a very exciting thing that I see. Christoph: I also see that in our partner landscape, there's consolidation going on. And the consolidation is going on for two reasons, I guess. One is, the overall health of business. And also, the second reason being, that different partners need to get access to different capabilities. Partners that in the past, prior to COVID-19, were focused on value-add reselling for example in the enterprise segment. They have an opportunity to learn how to be involved in consumer business. And the opposite is true as well. Retailers have an opportunity now to be involved in working from home and learning from home and to thinking about a consumerization of IT in the professional world. And both is happening. And it's super exciting to see. Super exciting to see how different partners are taking different strategies and running with it. We see significant impact on our business lead by global system integrators. These are companies that help the large companies, enterprise companies, with outsourcing projects and outsourcing in certain [inaudible] and certain geographies has become very ... Has been increasing quite a lot from a customer demand point of view. And so we see more and more of our funnel and more and more of our business going through global system integrators. Christoph: So there's a lot of movement in the overall go-to-market structure of HP and of the IT industry in general. Stephanie: Got it, that makes sense. So move over to your second point about subscription-based services. Everyone wants to create a subscription service because obviously that's very good for revenue prediction and just good for a business. But not everyone can do it. So what kind of lessons do you have or have you learned around this is how you create a good one, like people actually want this versus we tried this and this is not good. Any lessons there or advice? Christoph: I think it's like any product, you know? If you just do it because you think you should or you can, that's not a good enough reason, okay? So at the end of the day, it all starts with the customer. So you need to hit a nerve. You need to solve for an outcome that a customer wants. Christoph: Let's think what subscription's all about. You are now in an outcome-based engagement with a customer. And I think that is probably a very traditional definition. I think what you need to add now to it is, okay, it's an outcome but the outcome needs to be personalized. And if you can do that, then the likelihood of getting and loyal customer engagement, I think is quite high, regardless of what you invest into. That's number one. Christoph: In order to do that, you need to ... We needed to think differently about how we approach our categories. So what I mean by that is, it's less about the hardware engagement, the hardware sale that we traditionally have in printing and personal systems, but it's more about, okay, here's the outcome. It requires this workflow. It requires this software engagement, if you want, and sometimes the capability of the hardware, they take a bit of a backseat because you're really trying to get involved into a workflow. You're trying to get involved into some productivity element or an entertainment element that your customer is seeking. So I think that shift in mindset as you design the value proposition is very important. Christoph: And then thirdly, I guess you need to adapt the value proposition culturally and by market. So what I described earlier on around Instant Ink. I gave you the US example because we're both here in California in Palo Alto. If I would talk to you and you were in Germany or you were in France or in Singapore, the value proposition would actually look different. And I think that's important that you have the understanding but also the technical means to adjust to a cultural environment and to a specific market environment. Christoph: Yeah, I'll stop there. But I think this is very general answer but I think this is kind of the A-B-C of ... Yeah. Stephanie: Yeah, I completely - Christoph: Having a successful shift to a subscription-based business. Stephanie: Yeah, I agree. I think COVID-19 definitely helped with that because before all this, even myself thinking about entering into a subscription I'm like, I'm going to forget. Is it going to be worthwhile? But I think now, because a lot of people are at home and they're trying to make things easier, there's a lot more things on your plate when you're at home with your kids and you're working and all that, it seems like people are more willing and as long as you deliver on that value proposition, golden. Christoph: I agree. Stephanie: How are you staying on top of, like you were talking about the cultural trends whereas places in Europe, it's very different there versus in the US, maybe people are more eager to get into a subscription. How do you stay on top of what different cultures want and what's valuable to them and what maybe is a little bit too far? Maybe like you mentioned in Germany, they might not maybe their [inaudible] information in there or something. I know privacy there is a very big thing whereas here it's like, okay, charge my credit card and if something happens, credit card company will take care of it. How do you stay on top of that? Christoph: That's actually a very important topic. In particular, when you talk about personalized experiences where we look into customer's data in order to project what the outcomes are, do they want in the future, and to offer, we call it a second of one value proposition. And we are taking a ... When it comes to data, we're taking a very informed decision, understanding local contacts and local laws. We want for our customers to opt in. If they don't opt in, of course, we will not be able to give a personalized experience but we will respect the data privacy concern that they have. Christoph: It does help to have local teams and local setups in key markets so you have your finger on the pulse. We obviously have as well very capable teams that think about trends, design our global business units. And it also helps if you have the ability to not always go and launch a program globally at the first instance but if you start in one market and have a pilot, pause, fine tune a little bit, and then go for a rollout, that can actually be quite beneficial. So I have quite good experiences with that. Christoph: But you are absolutely right. Understanding the local context, understanding the local laws, understanding what is culturally acceptable, beyond laws even, is very important. Stephanie: Yeah. I think having people on the ground who can kind of guide you on that, definitely the only way to go about that. So how are you approaching holiday season? Like what kind of things are you changing that maybe you had a plan six months ago but now is completely different? What are you guys doing around that? Or what trends do you see happening around the holidays this year? Christoph: The holiday season is super interesting because I think it is flavored by how COVID is actually being managed by certain countries and by certain markets. We have a very different playbook by markets because we see in some markets COVID coming back in the second wave and some maybe even a third wave, you could argue. And by the time Black Friday and holiday approaches, that will definitely be the case. And so how do you manage holiday in that context where supply chains can be disrupted. Where you might have another lockdown. Where also then, whenever that happens, all of a sudden the essential categories I've talked to you about earlier, they will come again, even more top of mind from an essential point of view because kids understand, okay, this is going to last longer. We're going to be at home. Parents understand, okay, the office is not going to open up in my city, in my country, I have to have better equipment. Christoph: And so you see this constant, very fluid situation, on demand. And so for us, the biggest topic is actually how to manage forecasts, how to manage supply chains, how to make sure that we have the right product at the right time in the right place and of course, I could have said that before COVID but all the historic data that we had on this, is kind of obsolete. All of that is up in the air because of COVID. We've learned a lot and the challenge that we have sometimes is that you cannot just turn on a dime here. We work in ecosystems, in proponent ecosystems and manufacturing ecosystems. And so reacting to that is not easy. You need to pull a big shift of an ecosystem with you. Christoph: And so we're trying to be agile, trying to be as flexible as we can. We're trying to communicate more with our customers, communicate more with our go-to-market partners. And basically, are planning a lot more to be able to cope. But ask me that question again in January, after this over because clearly, I don't have a crystal ball either on how all of this is going to play out. So it's all about being agile. Stephanie: Yeah, completely agree. Well how are you guys going about forecasting? Because we did have an earlier episode where the guest kind of mentioned don't even try to forecast certain scenarios because you don't know what's going to happen. You can either just ... I don't know. It's different ways of thinking around forecasting where he just said don't try and place it on those scenarios. Like if this happens with the election, this will happen. He said all of that doesn't really matter. What are your guys' viewpoints on creating a forecast that can at least guide you in the right direction, even if it's not right? Christoph: Yeah. Very good point. So maybe that's exactly the point. Maybe your endeavor for the forecast should not be to be accurate but to have a forecast that supports your game plan. And then you execute the game plan. And I actually think that's at least how I think about it. That's number one. Christoph: Number two, we are ... We did do scenarios for Black Friday and for holiday. We have to. Just to come to an agreement of what products we will sell and what go-to-market in what country, what does this mean from a component point of view. What does it mean from a factory point of view. What does it mean from an ocean shipment and airplane capacity point of view? So we need to have scenarios. We cannot just leave that open. But interestingly enough, we tried not to boil the ocean. And when it came to how many different criteria do we use in coming up with this forecast? We centered very much around COVID and how COVID might play out in different markets from a timing point of view and from a consequence management point of view. We are going to be more lock downs or not. The kids go to school or go to school from home. Scenarios like that. Christoph: We also learned that from a component point of view, different countries have been impacted in different ways during COVID. Manufacturing capacity went up and down in different manufacturing countries of ours based on how COVID rolled out. So trying to anticipate that is very important too. I hope that answers it but unfortunately, we did have scenarios. There's only three but we had three scenarios. Stephanie: Yeah. I think that the way you guys are going about it is really smart. Not getting too much in the lead and having higher level themes around the scenarios because I can just think about the number of models that I built back in my finance and product phase and it's like one person could question one little variable like oh that shouldn't be 10%, that should be 15. And it got too much in the weeds and the conversation would always go astray and sort of like you said, kind of keeping it at higher level things that you can influence, would actually give you some kind of scenarios that could be semi-correct. So seems really smart. Christoph: You said this much better than I did, yes, thank you. Stephanie: The third thing I want to touch on, because I can tell, you are so excited about supply chains. So I wanted to touch on that a bit about making your supply chain anti-fragile. Like how are you guys ... Like how were you before COVID-19 and what does your supply chain look like now? Where are some of the big changes you made that are making you more resilient? Christoph: It's actually interesting because already prior to COVID, we had to think about our supply chain strategies because of tariffs. And so that was actually quite a good preparation for COVID because we kind of learned about different options from a supply chain point of view and moving to different cities, moving to different countries, using different logistic strategies, not just ocean and trucking and airplanes but also looking at railway. It's really interesting, interesting scenarios. Christoph: And what COVID then did is kind of play a filter over this possibilities that you have from a resiliency point of view, okay? Which countries and which geographical setups have been coping with the pandemic better than others? And that actually had a material impact on supply chains. It still has material impact on supply chains. Christoph: And so now we're looking at all of this, we've made some moves already, but I think if this project is just started really, it's something that we have to continue to work. It's also not easy just to move from one factory to another. It takes deliberate planning. But I really believe that in a weird way, the whole tariff discussion gave us a bit of a headstart in thinking about how to disrupt our own supply chain for print. Stephanie: Yeah. It seems like it would be pretty tricky figuring out, is this partner going to be resilient and agile, especially if you're starting from scratch with someone new, like building out some new partners. How would you think about finding a partner that you can trust if you haven't worked with them before? Christoph: That's a very good point, maybe even at a higher aggregated level countries. You can have a very good partner, somebody that is super resilient, but if the government in the country where they operate doesn't allow them to manufacture, then that's that. Okay? So it becomes very complex very quickly. You can have a country that wants to manufacture and a partner that is very capable but if the components can't be shipped to the factory for whatever reason, you are head in the water again. Christoph: And so looking at this holistically, assessing country risk, secondary component supply risk and then forming a strategy is super important. Of course, when we do this, we have a very elaborate process to qualify suppliers and to qualify component suppliers as well. I think that COVID-19 has sharpened our senses a little more again. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah it's probably good to have a little bit of that. We'll shake up every once in a while to make sure all the internal practices are good, right? Christoph: [inaudible 00:35:10], yes. Stephanie: Yeah. So what kind of ... What do you think the future of online commerce looks like in the next year or in the next five years? What other things are you guys preparing for right now? Christoph: I'm super impressed by what I see marketplaces doing for our businesses. So it's not just in a business to consumer environment but also be in the business to business environment. In the US, we all daily in touch with these marketplaces be it Walmart or [inaudible 00:35:44], anything with a [inaudible 00:35:45]. Or Amazon. But that's a very US-centric viewpoint. When you look a little bit more globally, there are also other marketplaces. In Southeast Asia, there's a marketplace called [inaudible] that I think is very interesting. In China, you have Alibaba or JD.com for us that are very interesting. Christoph: And at the end of the day, it's super amazing to see how the idea of having tailor-made value propositions to your customers, how marketplaces are dealing with this, how they're dealing with being very customer-centric, moving to a subscription-based business models, moving to outcome-based business models. Anticipating what the customer wants to experience next and what they want their outcome to be next. So I think that is setting the bar, I think, in our go-to-market and it is setting the bar on how close you can be to a customer. So what we require to do is, we obviously participate in these marketplace opportunities but we're also keen to learn and think about how we can get to the sharp partners involved. And also get our own direct go-to-market [inaudible] involved. And basically think about how we think about the relationships that we have with customers but also with partners. And so, we recently launched a new channel partner program and said early on that we do close to 88% of our business through channel partners. Christoph: And in the past, we defined the relationship that we have with partners basically based on two pillars. One was your overall performance your overall size of the relationship that we have from a business point of view. And the second pillar was really around capability, think about certification for example. And we left those. They continue to be important. But we added a third one. And that third one is really collaboration. Collaboration on going to market together, going to market in services-lead models. Going to market by sharing important information, obviously with customers opted in. In order to be able to move to subscription and outcome-based services. And so that is a Herculean task to do that across the tens of thousands of partners that we have. Across the whole global coverage that we have. But it's also super energizing to have discussions with partners and to see what their capabilities are. And as I said to you, I think prior to COVID, launching that third pillar would have been a very tough sell-in into my partner landscape. But with COVID-19, everybody gets it. So everybody understands why this is something that we need to evolve on together and why our customers are expecting from us. Stephanie: Yeah, yeah that makes sense. So with all these changes that you guys are experiencing, what kind of new metrics have you started to have to review that maybe you weren't reviewing before? Christoph: Oh my God. Stephanie: Your favorite ones that you want. Doesn't have to be every one. Christoph: It's a great question. The biggest challenge is that yes, you have data from these digital footprints that your customers leave behind but which of these data are really important? How do you use the data? And let me maybe say this, the data is interesting, but what is fascinating is how you get to the data and how you treat the data. What I mean by that is, a lot of companies, they do A-B-C testing but then it's some executives that can overrule the results of A-B-C testing. Stephanie: [crosstalk 00:39:41]. Christoph: Exactly, based on the gut or user experience or whatever. But that's actually a problem. So I think you cannot be a data-centric company and then have a process that allows for data-centricity to be overwritten. So that's number one and that requires actually a huge cultural shift. Christoph: The second cultural shift is on and around data analytics. And I think we had to really double down on data analytics and capabilities within the company both from an employee skillset point of view, but also from a digital transformation point of view on the tools that we use and the infrastructure that we use. And I think nowhere is this more visible to me, the progress but also still what we've left to do than it is on pricing, one of the four P's. We've come a long way, but more to be done here. So I think that has a significant impact and I think COVID-19 has explained this even more, informed us even more. Christoph: And then the third piece is really this personalization and I think we're starting to offer more personalized experiences. This is clear in the future of where we want to go. And doing that in a partner-based go-to-market where the partner owns the value proposition together with HP to a customer, doing that consistently requires a lot of collaboration. So this is why this third pillar in our HP amplified program is so very important. Stephanie: That seems really tricky - Christoph: Yes. Stephanie: ... trying to make sure the partners are able to personalize the experience based on their platform and how they know their customers. Like how do you ensure there's a level of quality and that they're actually getting an experience that you guys want while also letting the partner influence it based on what they know about their customers? Christoph: Exactly. I think that last piece is very important and it's a joint responsibility if you have an indirect go-to-market. And so we have some part of the information, they have some part of the information. We have a clear understanding about what our brand stands for on what value proposition we want to drive, but they need to ... It needs to match their philosophy as well. So being in close contact, having good communications around that is super important. Stephanie: Very cool. All right. So let's shift over to the lightning round, brought to you by Sales Force Commerce Club. This is where I'm going to ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Christoph, are you ready? Christoph: Wow, okay, yes. Stephanie: Yeah. I know it's 5 o'clock but bring that energy, all right? I'll start with the hard one first. What one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year? Christoph: What one thing would have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year? Stephanie: Yep, only one. Christoph: COVID-19. Stephanie: Yeah, I would think COVID-19. Everyone says COVID-19. So is there anything else that you want to say? Christoph: I guess probably the stickiness of what we've learned during COVID-19. So even when it's over, how much of work from home, how much of learn from home will stay? And how much more blending will we see between consumer and professional lives into this prosumer segment. I think that will have a huge impact. And as I said truly before, I think this is here to stay. Stephanie: Okay. I like that. What's up next on your Netflix queue? Christoph: My Netflix queue? That's a very good question. I moved out of Netflix. I'm currently watching Succession on HBO. Quite entertaining. Stephanie: Okay, that works. I will have to ... Is it good? Christoph: Yeah, it's good in a weird way. Stephanie: Okay, I'll have to check it out. What's up next on your reading list? Christoph: On my reading list ... So there's a book that I really want to read. It's in German. It's about the Weimar Republic. So that's a period in Germany between the two World Wars. And my wife just did a college course on that and it's intriguing. So I'm going to read that book about the Weimar Republic. I'm not yet sure exactly what to expect but it's something that I really focused on when I was in high school so I would like to go back to that. Stephanie: Very cool. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be? Christoph: It would be about drumming, because I play the drums. And it would be a famous drummer. I mean maybe Ian Paice from Deep Purple or Jess Drummer, the [inaudible] maybe. I don't know. One of those guys. Stephanie: Is it just maybe drumming the whole time? Like I can do that. I'll do that for you. I got you. Christoph: Well then you can be on the show, that's great. You can be my first guest. Stephanie: I don't think many people would listen after that. They're like this is what it is? Okay. Christoph: You never know. Maybe. Stephanie: Everyone likes something different I guess. What new ecommerce tool are you trying out right now that you are loving? Anything come to mind? Christoph: Well I'm trying to shed all that weight that I gained during COVID so I have this. Ecommerce tool is maybe too much to say but it's a diet app and I take pictures of all the stuff I ear. So it's actually quite entertaining to relate the calories to the pictures and doing so slows me down on my eating habits which is great. It's all good. Stephanie: Oh my gosh. I mean, yeah that might not be an ecommerce tool but I like it. So it tells you you just lost ... Or you're eating this many calories and it looks like this and it shows you a piece of food like a bag of chips or [crosstalk] - Christoph: Exactly. You take a picture and then it suggests how many calories that might be in there and that in itself is such a negative experience that you stop eating. Stephanie: You're like, ugh, maybe not. I like that. Christoph: I'm not hungry anymore. Stephanie: All right, now last one. When you can travel again, what's up next in your travel destinations? Christoph: Oh my God. I would really need to show up at my parent's place. That wouldn't be too bad. And then Germany. So I would love to see family in Germany. I also wouldn't mind going skiing in Canada, if possible. Stephanie: That sounds great. I need to get back to Germany too. I have a lot of family there, so ... Christoph: Good. Stephanie: Very pretty place. All right Christoph. Well this has been such a great interview. Thank you for coming on the show. Where can people find out more about you and HP Ink? Christoph: All right so look, if you want to be in touch with me, please try and find me on LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time on that platform. And obviously, if you want to learn more about HP, please go to HP.com.

Why wouldn’t someone like free swag? That’s not a rhetorical question. In fact, Jeremy Parker has been trying to answer that question since he co-founded Swag.com in 2016. Jeremy knew that swag and other promotional items were becoming key marketing tools, and he saw an opportunity to build a business that brought those items straight to the people who needed them. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Jeremy takes us behind the scenes of what it was like building Swag.com, including how he went from 3,000 organic site visitors in a month to more than 40,000 organic visitors. The journey to that success was paved with many hiccups, including the difficulty that comes with building an ecommerce platform from scratch, and trying to land their first big-name customer by walking around that company’s campus until they found a buyer.  But today, Swag.com can handle unlimited orders, and that first customer was a little company called Facebook. How did it happen? Learn that and more on this episode.  Main Takeaways: The Snowball Effect — Attracting customers is always easier when you have a proven track record that you can point to. Therefore, it is critical to land key accounts in the early days that can be referenced in future sales conversations. Because when you can point to one successful company that works with you, other companies will follow suit.  What To Know About SEO — Good SEO doesn’t happen by accident. Even though you might have great products and a thriving customer base, organic growth doesn’t happen unless you’re paying attention to your content strategy and making the necessary little tweaks that will bump you up in the search results. If You Build It, They Will Come — When deciding on your product offerings, you have to get inside your customers’ heads and build up an inventory of things that people actually want. Sometimes that means you have to get your hands dirty, do some testing and try things that don’t scale before finally settling on the right blend of offerings. 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 --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. I'm your host, Stephanie Postles co-founder of mission.org. Today on the show we have Jeremy Parker, the co-founder and CEO at Swag.com. Jeremy, how's it going? Jeremy: Hey, thanks so much for having me. Stephanie: I'm excited to talk all things swag. You saw my shirt hoodie. I was ready for you this morning. I have everything branded mission. Jeremy: Every everyone needs a little schtickle of swag in their life. Stephanie: I agree. What is the first piece of swag that you remember? Jeremy: Oh, wow. For myself, I've been going to a ridiculous number of trade shows and events over the years. Honestly the earliest swagger member was stuff that I ended up throwing away and that's one that gave me one of the ideas for Swag.com and we wanted to make sure we only offer products that people actually want to keep. That was my main mission from the very beginning. Stephanie: Yeah, same here. I remember getting a bunch of stuff and throwing it away, but I remember being so excited it was back I think in 2010, it was like my first finance conference and I got like a Koozie. I was so excited because it was like the first thing that I'd ever gotten for free maybe and finances a little bit. Sticklers is about giving stuff away for free. And I look back and laugh now because I would go and collect all this stuff and it would ultimately end up being nothing that I really used. Jeremy: 100%. From the very beginning of our business, we were thinking of swag as an amazing marketing tool if it's used right, so obviously that's a big caveat. And when you think of just marketing in general and you have TV commercials and everyone's trained to now fast forward through commercials and you get a magazine, you flip through the ads, or you put your ad blocker on your computer. If you give somebody really high quality swag, they say, “Thank you.” It's really a powerful tool if it's done really right. And it has to be something that people are actually going to want to use. We don't really like to push the flashiest thing or the new hottest thing. It's all about what are people that actually use every day and get those impressions of. Stephanie: Yeah. I love that. Before we dive way too deep into Swag.com, I want to hear a little bit about your background because I see you've done a lot of things in your previous life. And I wanted to kind of hear what your journey was like before founding Swag.com. Jeremy: Sure. I was a documentary filmmaker actually in college, that's why I went to school for. I actually never wanted to be a filmmaker when I went to Boston University. And I looked at the curriculum and I really wanted it to be in high school my whole … Before college life I always wanted to be a marketing guy. I was always into branding and commercials and how to tell stories through marketing. When I went to school and I looked at the syllabus of film and marketing, they really were the exact same thing, except for film taught me how to make videos. And this is right at the onset of like YouTube. I thought that would become valuable. I became like probably the first filmmaker at BU history that never actually wanted to be a filmmaker. Jeremy: But as I was in school for those four years, I ended up making a feature length documentary that ended up winning the audience award at the Vail Film Festival. And I was [inaudible] and I walked down and the brunch the next day after the award ceremony and half the room are these major celebrities and half the room are these struggling filmmakers. And I did kind of an internal gut check of, am I good enough? Is this what I want to do with my life? And it wasn't, so right after I won this award, when people primarily feel like on a high, they're like, “Oh, I'm going to become the biggest filmmaker,” my thought was, “What else am I going to do? What's my plan? What's really my plan? What am I good at?” Jeremy: And when I graduated college, I didn't know what I was good at. I had no real experience in business or anything, but I thought maybe I should start something and just learn what I'm good at, what I enjoyed. I started a t-shirt company right out of college when I was 21, 22. And really I thought t-shirt sounds so simple, but really you're learning manufacturing, PR, marketing, building an Ecommerce experience, all the different aspects of business, fulfillment, all these different things. And I tried to figure out what I was really good at. Jeremy: And over the last 10 years, I've done a lot of different things. I started the company with my brother and Jesse Itzler. Jesse is the co-founder of Marquis Jet, private jet company. He sold ZICO Coconut Water to Coca-Cola. He's one of the owners of Atlanta Hawks. I started a company with him where we partnered up with different celebrity influencers and we owned their celebrity rights to Twitter and Facebook feeds before people knew how valuable it was. This was nine years ago or so. Jeremy: So [inaudible] a lot of celebrities, buying their rights. That company ultimately got bought by a publicly traded company. I then went on to start a social networking app that ultimately failed. Never start a social networking app, I'll tell you that. Extremely difficult. Stephanie: Semi-hard. Jeremy: Yeah, it's semi-hard to do. And we built an app called Vouch. That basically was about like Oprah's favorite things democratize for everybody. You could vouch for your favorite movie and book and charity and anything you'd want to vouch for and people who follow you really get to know what you like. Really kind of making the like button with its own platform. We ended up having 100,000 plus users. We had tons of influences. It just never materialized. And after doing that for three years, I realized that the next business I want to start, it needs to be something where we made money from day one, I could give a service and a product and I started Swag.com. Jeremy: So, it's been almost five years at this point with Swag. We were just named the 218 fastest growing company on the Inc. 5000. We have 5,000 companies from Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, TikTok, Spotify buying on our site and we spent a really big portion of that building is automated experience for purchasing swag. And now it's about, now how do you handle the distribution of swag? It's more than just making it easy to buy. How do you get into the hands of people? And especially now with this pandemic, that's really the most important thing. Stephanie: Yeah, I was just going to touch on that. I know everyone's probably wondering with everything going on, where conferences are being obviously canceled and not coming back for a while. How are you guys handling that? Because I'm that the swag industry right now is down overall. What are you guys doing right now to not be part of that downward spiral? Jeremy: Yeah, that's a 100% true. They just came up with numbers. ASI, which is like the big organization for promotional products, just came out to number that over 92% of companies in our industry are down approximately 50% in Q2 this year versus last year. So, it's really bad. And then obviously it makes sense on the surface where you have our core buyer was like the HR manager buying for onboarding of new hires. That was one of our big purchases and no one's hiring right now. That business goes away. And then you have the marketing teams buying for trade shows and there's no trade shows happening, so that business goes away. Jeremy: Then you have the office manager buying for internal office and company culture, and no one's in the office right now. You have all these different buyers that really are not buying swag for the normal, the typical reasons to buy swag. So like everyone in our industry, we were very nervous like what's going to happen. And what we've been able to do is take this platform, our swag distribution platform, which is what we're really pushing and what we're really excited about. We'd been building this really amazing platform over the last two years, specifically for marketing managers. That was the initial idea of it. Allowing marketing managers to easily be able to buy swag and then send swag to the remote customers or to best leads to close sales. Jeremy: That was their initial intention. But obviously with this pandemic and everyone's working remotely, it's transitioned to office managers and HR managers really buying swag in bulk and sending it to the remote employees addresses to keep the company culture thriving, even when no one's in the office, so much so that not only are we not one of the 92%, that's downloading over 50% our Q2 this year was more than our Q2 of last year and July was almost double our last year July. And it was our best month ever and August is even better than that. We're really growing frankly in a crazy time for everyone. Stephanie: That's amazing. Now, I'm thinking about it. I ordered swag for our team maybe two years ago and the process, it was crazy. It was so much back and forth of like, “Here's your quote. Oh, you want to more of this? Okay. Here's your new quote? Here's what the design might look like.” It was just a lot. And then of course the big box came to me and then I had to maybe ship things out individually or wait until I saw people in-person if I was being a little cheap. What does it look like now I'm thinking about reordering hoodies and shirts for our team members? But of course I would have to individually maybe shift them out again or are you guys different? What is your process look like that's so different than others? Jeremy: Really simple. On our site, we have very curated selection of products. You're not going to be overwhelmed with too many options. Say the top 25 mugs, you find a mug you could use our filtering tools, really easy to search by color or price point or your type of brands. You find the product you upload your logo. Our system will detect how many colors are in your logo, in the nearest Pantone match. We're making sure we're printing, Coca-Cola red and not Staples red. Once the logo is uploaded, you can maneuver the rounds, you can mark everything up. You select on your quantity price adjuster in real time and checkout. It literally takes less than three minutes to buy swag. There's no back and forth. You can also use our instant quote tool, if you wanted to quote things out before you want to go through the design process on our site, you can upload your different variables, the quantity that you're looking for, how many print locations, the number of colors in the print. It takes two seconds and you're coordinating things out. Jeremy: So, there's no back and forth emails, there's no phone calls, there's no presentation decks. It's none of it. It's really completely automated streamlined. And then when you're going through the checkout flow, obviously you can input your own address, so we'll ship everything to your office. Or if you want us to handle all the distribution for you, there's a pink button on that shipping page that says, one is to hold your swag and inventory easily distributed, [inaudible 00:09:29]. You click on the button, you follow the onboarding and then we hold all of your swag in this online Swag closet if you will, where you can manage all of your inventory in real time. If you're ever running low in stock, we'll send you smart notifications to restock. If you want to send 1,000 different locations, you upload a CSV file we'll calculate the shipping costs in real time, based on the product you selected, where they're going. Jeremy: Once you pay for that, we grab those products off the shelf and we're shipping it all over the world for you. We really streamlined the entire experience. We take it a step further if you wanted it, some companies want this, some companies don't, but we have a whole ability to create different inventory closets for location or for a department. You can have a marketing closet versus a sales closet, versus your London office or New York office. Different people should get access to it. There's different permission settings, approval flows, et cetera. You could really break it down by department, by location and we're doing this with a lot of global main companies all over the world. Also, a lot of small startups who just want to use our service as a way to distribute swag. Stephanie: I was looking through your site and I saw products there that I haven't seen in other swag companies. And I wanted to talk a little bit about how you guys go about picking your products because all of them seemed high quality where oftentimes, I'll go through it and I'll find 50 different shirts on a custom t-shirt company website. And I'm like, “Oh my gosh, actually let me look through all the reviews. Let me see if they're good. Okay. 95% of them are all bad. They all have bad reviews, bad fits, whatever.” How do you go about making sure that you only have high quality stuff there that people will actually want? Jeremy: That's a great question. And that was the challenge. And it's an ongoing challenge, always. From the very beginning, me and my co-founder, each invested $25,000 of our own money. That was our first startup budget. What be used primarily for that was buying samples. We went out and we went to different trade, shows all over the country and we bought samples from tons of different suppliers. And we saw exactly what customers typically see when they buy from sites. A lot of this stuff was really poor quality, would end up in the trash and we would never feel comfortable selling it. We were really kind of laser focused on only offering a curated selection of products that we would actually want to keep ourselves. It's a lot of testing, it's constant testing. Jeremy: How we kind of look at the whole process is we want to have the best of what's out there. It could be the relatively inexpensive, or it could be premium. It doesn't really matter we have to have stuff in all price points. We don't want it to be known as the premium quality supplier. We want to be known as the quality supplier. We have a lot of products there high-end brands, Public Rec, Rowan, Top Wood Designs, Patagonia, different products like that. We also have no name products that you had never heard of, but they're really, really quality. We have a product sourcing team that's constantly contacting a lot of direct to consumer type of products and brands that are not traditionally found in the promotional product space and going after them as well, because we want to be known as the company that has products that no other company in our space offers. Jeremy: What we've been seeing is that a lot of companies that are okay featuring their stuff on our site or are happy to feature their stuff on our site like Bellroy Backpacks, they've never done it in other promotional product sites because the other sites, feel schlocky or throw away or cheap in some way. And we are really, really not that. We're really trying to focus on quality products, stuff that people would be proud to show off, stuff that when you get it, you're going to want to wear it every single day because that's really the only real reason why Swag is a true benefit is that people actually want to use it. Stephanie: Yeah. So, now that you can't go to trade shows and try things out, and are you still going through that process when it comes to finding new products, like just ordering things that you think are great and trying them out, or is it different than what it used to be? Jeremy: No, it's exactly that. It's less expensive in some ways and more expensive in other ways. We want to make sure we have the right products that we're constantly spending a ton on samples. And now at this point in the business also, we're almost five years in and we're somewhat known in our industry. We're the fastest growing company in the promotional product space. A lot of different, great suppliers and direct to consumer brands have heard of us, so they're willing to send us free samples. We don't necessarily have to pay for it anymore. But we're just constantly sourcing more products and taking some products that maybe were cool last year, but we don't think they're going to be good this year and replacing it with new stuff. Jeremy: We don't want to keep just adding and adding and adding because it then makes it very complicated for customers to make a decision. So, we're constantly, always looking at our site and saying, “Is this the right blend and mix of products?” And we're always never happy. We're always constantly trying to improve it. Stephanie: Very cool. I'm guessing there's also a bit of like a data element where you can probably look into the data and see what people are either enjoying. Do you do reviews? Do you use customer feedback to also influence the products that you choose? Jeremy: Yeah. 100%, yeah. After everyone places an order, we always have a survey that automatically goes on the time of delivery, very basic. It's like one question like, “How satisfied were you?” So we can get our ranking and see how people like the products and how they turned out. If we ever get any sort of bad or not 100% amazing feedback about a product, we'll look into it and maybe there's something wrong, maybe the print quality wasn't great for that order or maybe the product itself wasn't as great as what we thought and we'll just remove from our site. We're constantly listening to our customers, understanding do we have the right products at all times? Because that's very important for us. We need to have that. Jeremy: We're constantly testing more and more products. And obviously we're learning what people are adding to their cart. How many products are being … What products together go? We sometimes find that if somebody buys a tote bag, they're going to buy other products that could fit into that tote, like smaller products. Or if they buy a backpack, other types of products are usually bought with backpacks. We're constantly looking at data and trying to make sure we have the right mix of products that go with each other, so we can start positioning certain products. When you buy a backpack, the products that are featured as you might also like actually make sense. So, not just what we think, but what the data is telling us. Stephanie: I love that. Along with maybe getting personalized recommendations, depending on the product they chose, are you also personalizing the experience based on maybe what company is looking around? If a LinkedIn's looking versus Google, maybe you know that Google always buys hoodies where LinkedIn buys coffee mugs. I don't know. Are you personalizing it based on who's actually browsing? Jeremy: At this point, we're not. And we've been constantly thinking about that. The challenge is that there's so many different buyers within companies. Even if we worked, let's say with LinkedIn, which we do or Google, which we do, there's so many different divisions within Google that are completely different. We're selling to the HR team or the marketing team or the sales team or office manager, or just somebody who's buying it for their local team. Everyone's looking for different things. We've done for Google complete stuff, obviously the normal stuff of notebooks and t-shirts and sweatshirts, backpacks and water bottles. But we've also done custom Allbirds Sneakers. It's hard to kind of match up always and all the buyers are necessarily not always the same. Jeremy: So, it's constantly changing, but as we're growing as our processes and we're able to handle a lot more orders and we're analyzing more data, I think that will be a shift in the future of really making the experience as personal as possible and that might be not making it personal at all based on companies or that might be going the opposite way and making it super, super personal. We're kind of learning what's the right mix at this point. Stephanie: So, to talk a little bit about maybe the backend, the tech stack, it seems like there's a lot going on behind the scenes. I first wanted to start with, I saw that you were quoted saying the platform's able to handle unlimited orders in a day. And I was wondering, is that because you guys are leveraging cloud infrastructure or have you built some kind of scaling methodology? What does that look like behind the scenes to allow you to have unlimited orders? Jeremy: Yes. We do work with AWS, which for the cloud obviously makes things a little bit easier, but our entire platform is fully custom. Every single aspect of our site is custom. We're not using any other services. Obviously we're using like Intercom live chat. We're not going to be building our own chat, but the entire platform itself and all of our pricing is very complicated. That's why there's not a lot of companies in the space that could do what we do because it's fully dynamic. Every price tasting consideration, the quantity that you're looking to buy, how many print locations, the number of colors in the print, all these different variables that have to be in play. And now if we have 3,000 products on our site and 200 core products, they all have different pricing structures, they all have different under base charges, they all have different kinds of printing methods from screen printing, embroidery, laser engraving, all of these come with different complications. Jeremy: So, we really had to build our site from this place from the very beginning we couldn't just take an out of the box solution. And frankly I would have loved to take an Ad Box solution for this because it's been taking me five years to build [inaudible] building. We have a 15-person tech team and we're growing, we keep developing more and more and more because it's important. And we want to always stay one step ahead. At this point, like yesterday we did north of a 100,000 in sales all through our Ecommerce site. Things we could really scale and that same day. The day before we did 50,000 in sales and then hopefully today we do more than a 100,000 sales. Every day could literally be completely different and it's completely the same automation. Somebody could buy 5,000 notebooks or they could buy 50 notebooks or 15 notebooks or 20,000 notebooks. And it takes the same processing ability, same exact time for checkout. Stephanie: Very cool. Yeah, that's great. When you're thinking about back in the day, starting out with a custom website versus maybe pulling something like using a platform that is already out there, how did you go about deciding that you wanted something custom and then what did that process look like? What were some of maybe the mishaps or failures along the way where you're like, “Oh, if you guys are trying to build something custom make sure you don't do this or that you avoid this.” What kind of learnings did you get from doing a custom? Jeremy: Actually the truth of the matter was in the very beginning of the business, we went all in on Shopify. And we went all in say, “You know what? Why are we building our own Ecommerce experience when somebody else could do it significantly better than us or is worked through all the kinks?” The challenges, when we start to really build a Shopify, we realize how complicated our specific industry is in terms of pricing. And there's no really easy way. There's no Ad Box solution that could really do it. We spent literally two and a half months building the Shopify store only to then realize, which was a big mistake on our part, that the pricing was not able to be done. Jeremy: We had to really scrap it and start from scratch. And we realized it's going to take us a lot longer to get where we want to be, but we're still not where we want to be, but it makes the most sense. It's really the only way to streamline it as much as we want to streamline it. Now, the typical process of promotional products, as you mentioned before, it's a lot about phone calls. It's back and forth, this quote versus that quote. You change one little element, the whole quote changes. We didn't want to deal with that. We wanted customers to be able to do it themselves, no talking to anybody. If you don't want it, obviously if you want to call us, we love to hear from you, but you don't have to. You could do every single thing yourself and we want it to make that effortless. Jeremy: You want to hold things in inventory, click on the button and now it's all in inventory. You want to distribute swag, upload this and it ships out. Every single thing on our site, we wanted to make it as easy as possible and historically, and traditionally it's not been easy at all. And it makes sense because of how custom the product offering is. Stephanie: If you would have, maybe on day one started out with like, here's the kind of things that we're most interested in. Did you know that you wanted this custom pricing option and did you go and kind of look at different platforms to see if they could do that? Or did you just jump right in? Jeremy: Yeah. From the very beginning, honestly, we spent a year before we built any platform. Our initial idea was we don't really know the platform to build, we knew that the industry needed to be shaken up a little bit. We knew how old and fragmented the industry was, but frankly, I think most entrepreneurs could agree. You honestly know what the right answer is. Most people don't, they think they do, they don't. From the very beginning, our idea was let's just learn as much as possible. Let's reach out to as many office managers, HR managers, people that we know within industries by swag. And let's ask them what they like and hate about the current buying experience that they're having. And we would show up at meetings and we would literally say, “What sites you buy from?” And they would give us some site names and we would look over their shoulder really. Jeremy: This is what we did for the first year. We spoke to over 200 different office managers, HR-related buyers. And some ended up buying became customers of ours for many years and some moved on to other things, but just to see how they purchase swag was a big tell for us, really what the process was. Looking at their email back and forth 40, 50 emails with a rep just didn't make any sense to us. We kept kind of thinking. That was kind of the first six months of our business. The second six months of our business, the remainder of the year was about, “Well, let's do it the old school way. Let's just launch a landing page. Let's go out there. Let's be a traveling salesman and try to sell some stuff.” And we really learned how painful it is. It's like it takes forever to quote, there's a lot of manual labor. Jeremy: Every single thing that was painful for us, we then figured out a solution to automate it. And we kept just chipping away at it. Stephanie: That's so important. I think it's Paul Graham who said do things that don't scale. And that's how you actually learn, like what's working, what's not working and what to build going forward. That's really smart. Jeremy: Exactly right. And that's the same thing with even getting our customers. Now, I haven't made a sales call in four years, but in the beginning I was doing everything. Me and that co-founder, Josh, we would show up at offices and try to sell. And we sold to Facebook as one of our first customers. First customer, really actually. We had a friend who worked at Facebook, got us in the door. We ended up walking around Facebook's office in New York just speaking to whoever we could to see somebody who would buy swag. Ultimately ended up selling them a couple of t-shirts, like 100 or 200 t-shirts. We barely broke even on it. I think we made like 5% margin, like barely anything, but didn't matter to us. It was just about getting that Facebook logo. I remember two days later we showed up at WeWork in New York and WeWork asked us who else we work with? And we said Facebook. Jeremy: They assumed we probably had thousands of others because we had Swag.com brand and Facebook, but really it was just Facebook. And we got, WeWork and we continued that cycle to get that really five core blue chip companies. It was doing the really unscalable things like showing up, showing the products in-person, making the sale, really learning the process as much as possible, and then automating the experience and making that whole buying experience effortless. Now, people don't need to speak to anyone if you don't want to, that's really what our main goal was. Stephanie: That's great. Yeah. I think we've had a couple people on the show. Who've talked about just finding that first customer that you can kind of leverage as the brand name and then just pointing to them and be like, “Yeah, they work with us. Like you should too.” So I think that's a good lesson for a lot of companies starting up. If you find that one brand name and you can reference them, it'll probably help with all future sales. Jeremy: 100%. It's all about social proof, at least what we have learned, it's everything. People are not going to work with you if they don't feel confident. To build up the confidence, obviously you have to have a great platform, but that doesn't happen overnight. That takes time. You have to have a great brand and a great design, make people feel confident, but other ways are who else you've worked with? A lot of our shirts and what's big reason why we've been able to scale with very little money is a lot of our t-shirts and apparel has a Swag.com in your label. We do our own products. Jeremy: When people [inaudible] t-shirts that's 5,000 people knowing about Swag.com. They see the t-shirts, they see the quality, they feel how great it is, they see the print, they have the instant social proof that Facebook uses them or Google uses them, whoever is getting the product and they see Swag.com and it drives a ton of traffic to us. That only really works if the products are great as well. Obviously people are getting really poor quality and everything's says, “Swag.com,” no one will use us. It'd be opposite [inaudible 00:25:52]. Every single thing really has to work hand-to-hand Stephanie: Yeah, that's a really. Jeremy: Yeah. We were thinking about it initially because I wear jeans a lot. I was thinking like I buy one pair of jeans for like three years. It's kind of looks cooler, the more you wear jeans, it gets more faded. But with Swag.com or swag in general, people buy stuff for a specific reason. You're buying it to give it away and then you need more stuff. If they're buying it to give it away, we have to make the experience of giving away products that other people actually want and see. And then that new person, that person who just bought that 5,000 t-shirts now they need more stuff for the next event. It's a completely different kind of business. And we just try to figure out, we have to make sure that our logo is everywhere that it can be, obviously within reason. Stephanie: I love that. Let's talk a little bit about the backend when it comes to warehousing your inventory. How does it work behind the scenes? If you're able to allow someone to essentially have their cart saved and then say, “Okay, ship this to one person in California and then ship this to one person in Florida.” What does the backend look like to make those logistics work? Jeremy: Yeah. Upfront in terms of the actual buying swag and bulk, we have integrations with different kind of the best vendors in each industry. So, like the best one for drink wear, best one water bottles and obviously we have a big selection of product. When somebody buys 1,000 mugs or something on our site, it's automatically connects to our supplier network that produces the highest quality mug with their logo and then drop ships it directly to the customer's office or wherever. But if they're holding stuff in inventory, it ships into our 3PL. We have four strategic locations all throughout the US and we're adding more locations in Canada and Europe right now to make it cheaper for global distribution. Once the products are in our fulfillment center, then they log into the, my inventory portal and they see all of their inventory in real time. Jeremy: So, if you're ever running low in stock, we'll send you smart notifications to restock. They can easily upload their CSV file. We'll calculate the shipping costs in real time. They pay for it. We grab it off the shelves and we're shipping it to 1,000 different locations. We also have this feature called the Swag Giveaway. Oftentimes, especially now, people don't necessarily know where their remote employees are living. Say you went to a trade show. God willing the world opens up, we have trade shows again, and people go to your booth and they give you their email address. You'll know what t-shirt size they are. You'll know where they live, but you still might want to engage with them. We built the Swag Giveaway feature, where you can create a fully recipient branded landing page. Let's imagine Google just uploads their logo and their colors. Jeremy: And they could easily blast out to a CSV file of just having the person's first name and email, that recipient will click on the link. It will be branded with Google, they'll select their t-shirt size or they'll select their mug, or water bottle, they'll be able to choose which product they want. Input their address, submit. It all speaks to our system. And now we have the address that we can distribute. We're building all of these tools to allow people to distribute if they're shipping to one address, thousands of addresses, or even if they don't have the recipients addresses, but easy way to capture that and also distribute. Stephanie: Wow, that's a lot going on behind the scenes. Jeremy: Yeah. Stephanie: How are you thinking about the front end part of the website because to me when you're ordering swag or something where you really want to see the details of like, is that embroidery right, are the colors right and also just like making sure that you have people who are converting and not just sitting on maybe their design or their shopping cart? How are you moving people along through the website and what kind of best practices have you seen when setting up the front end user interface? Jeremy: Good question. It's probably the most challenging thing for our business because it is custom and everyone is somewhat concerned about, is this going to come out perfect, is it could be the right logo color, is it going to be the right positioning. What we've learned is obviously we built our patent technologies is one of the first things we built to detect the number of colors and the nearest panto match in your logo when you're uploading it. So, to make people feel really safe, they're going to get their exact color. Now, obviously it can never be 100% because web colors are not the same as Pantone colors that are used for printing and t-shirts, but it really gets to the closest match. And if you want, and if you know your Pantone, which a lot of companies do, it allows them to easily input their exact Pantone, so it overrides everything and it makes it really easy. Jeremy: Obviously they can maneuver their logo, they can mock it up. And what we say is, after you place your order, we're always going to create for them a virtual production mock-up to approve before we ever start to print. We'll never go into production until they give us the green light. Really customers should feel super safe that even if they upload their logo and they're not sure is this straight or is this exactly the right position. It doesn't really matter. We're always going to create that mock-up and they can make as many revisions as they want before we start with the print. That makes it really easy. And in terms of our distribution, obviously they can always just add this stuff to inventory and just easily distribute. The process on the front end, we try to make it really effortless and streamlined. Jeremy: It's taken us four years. We're constantly adding more and more features to make that experience better. We're launching a feature very soon called the Company Art Folder. Imagine you bought something and 20 other people in your company buys different things. It should lump all of your artwork together as a company art folder, so you never have to really hunt down the designer to make sure you have the right file or is this the right logo, is this the approved logo for swag? You can always, when you're uploading your logos, select the pre-approved designs that have been used and purchased by other people in your company, so you feel more safe. Or unlike my orders page, let's say Jennifer on your team is out sick one day, you can log into your account, you'll see all of your orders and then there's another tab that says company orders. You see everyone else in your company what they purchased, so you could easily reorder what somebody else ordered and easily subtract and make sure you're using the exact same artwork. Jeremy: We're trying to build this platform as effortless on the front end to make it really, really streamlined. And in terms of getting people through the funnel, what we've seen is our platform really does work well. I think that the more simple features that really solve a problem. And as you mentioned before, Paul said, “Do things unscalable before you scale it.” Every single thing we do, it has to be super painful for us, for us to spend time developing a solution for it. Once it's overwhelmingly painful, then we build the solution to make it easy. Jeremy: Then obviously we see their abandoned carts. We can track everyone's abandoned carts. And then we have our SDRs calling all these abandoned carts within like 10 minutes of the time that they'd been in to make sure that there's no experience that's wrong. Sometimes people say, “The shipping is too high.” Or, “It doesn't seem I can get in my in hand date.” There's certain things that we could actually help out and maneuver possible. And if it's not possible, we'll let the customer know it's not possible. But getting in front of them right when they're thinking about, are they going to purchase or not and they might have issues, that's really, I think we found the most important thing for us. Stephanie: Yeah. That's really smart. Have you seen people pick up their phone right away or have you experimented with texting instead? Jeremy: We haven't done texting and I've been researching some companies and I think it's actually a really good idea. We've seen a lot of people if they're actively looking on our site or they've just left in 10 minutes, they're likely to pick up their phone. Even when people fill out a form on our site and we have a lot of … Obviously our core business up until this point was Ecommerce experience adding it to distribution, but we have a whole ‘nother business where people could buy swag boxes in bulk, giving a really great unboxing experience for new hires or engaging with your best clients. That's fully custom branded boxes inside the boxes, as custom notebook and water bottle and pen and custom note card, crinkle paper. We've allowed people to custom build those boxes effortlessly through our site. Jeremy: All you have to do is upload your logo, the same process as buying and adding to your cart, you click on the button that says, “Build a box,” and it lumps, all those products together as a box listing. It makes the entire experience super simple. And we've seen with those bigger box orders. A lot of times it might be like a two to three week sales cycle. When Ecommerce could be like they land on a site and they check out that same day, boxes, they're fairly larger sizes. Typically, they're usually using our distribution platform for distributing because no one has room in their office for boxes or wants to boxing up themselves. So, they actively use our distribution platform for that. And that cycle takes a little longer. Getting on the phone with them, really talking through the challenges or what their issues are and what their questions are, we find is really, really important. Stephanie: Yeah. That's really great. Oftentimes when you're talking or this can happen, when you're talking to a customer, they don't always tell you exactly what they need. One example you gave there was, you want to be able to go into a library where your logos are there, which is huge. I remember ordering swag back in the day at other companies and it was always kind of a review and escalation process of like, “Is this the most recent logo? Are these the right colors? Is this our team logo?” Okay. How would you find out something like that that maybe a customer wouldn't know to tell you, but it would just make it easier if they did have that there? How do you go about getting in your customer's head? Jeremy: Yeah. I think it's just like just being their teammate. We like to think of in all of our customer success likes to think of it, is that we're an extension of your brand. Obviously if you're buying swag on our site, it has to really be the quality, but it's only going to be quality and only what you like, if the logo is right, the positioning is right, it's exactly what you want. Especially dealing with bigger orders, we like to jump on a call with customers, have a conversation, try to understand what the use case for their swag is, what their budget is, what their timeline is who the audience is. And we like to suggest ideas and obviously customers can go on the site and not talk to us if they want to talk to us and use our filtering tools and our search tools and just our browsable experience and find what they want. Jeremy: But if they want our help, we want to be there to help them. I think it's just constantly trying to understand, the reason for them buying swag and with the use cases. And then we constantly offer different suggested items that we know that we work with that other companies in the similar space have worked with. And we give other solutions for them to kind of play with. And I think it just gives a great experience where they could do their own kind of sourcing and they can also use us as a guiding tool to find them exactly what they're looking for. Stephanie: When you're thinking about getting new customers, what kind of acquisition channels are you using or finding success in right now to get these large companies using you guys? Jeremy: Yeah. I like to think about marketing and it's not always going to be the same traction channel is always going to work. Now, from the very beginning, we were doing a lot more Google ads because we wanted to get paid back fairly quickly and we've realized early on, at least for our business prospecting on Facebook is a little more challenging when you're dealing with B2B buyers. But for Google, when is looking specifically for swag it's quite challenging [inaudible] Google, obviously it's very expensive. In the beginning it maybe makes sense to do Google just to get those early wins and get the credibility. But then maybe you kind of shift away from Google and you do some more SEO. SEO for us has been tremendously successful. We started really diving deep into SEO about 18 months ago, just to put things in perspective. Jeremy: Last January, we had about 3,000 organic visitors to our site, in 2019 January. January of 2020, we had North of 20,000 organic visitors. And last month we had nearly 40,000 organic visitors. Really growing the base in terms of organic, putting out tons of content, always it's content that maybe has stuff to do with swag buyer like buying swag or maybe just has to do with the audience, HR managers, the best HR solution tools. Doesn't necessarily have to be about swag, but it's a valid topic related to the buyer. And then ultimately when the buyer comes on our site, reads about it and then is going to Facebook or Google or any of their other properties, we can re-target them. That's been a really great driving force for us, but also partnerships. Jeremy: There's a lot of different companies in our space that don't necessarily sell swag. They sell other products to the office manager or other products to the HR manager, that we could really parlay and work on. We could promote them to our audience. They could promote us to their audience. We've been trying a lot of different things, affiliate marketing, a lot of different stuff, but usually it's always the one or two kind of traction channels that are the most beneficial at that time. And right now it's SEO [inaudible] hands down has been the best driver of customers for us. Stephanie: Okay. I want to dive into that a bit then, because I hear people are always talking about SEO. There's so many SEO agency, they'll do all this SEO stuff for you. I think there's like tons of bar jokes, maybe not bar jokes. Maybe just be regular jokes about SEO agencies and consultants and stuff. I want to dive into, what are you guys actually doing when it comes to your SEO strategy because it sounds like it's been successful? How are you finding out what topics to write about? What are you seeing work? Give me all the nitty-gritty on what you all are doing behind the scenes. Jeremy: Yeah. I think from the very beginning with SEO, it was about making our site compatible and making it work for Google traffic. Our site, at the very beginning … I'm a branding person. My background is in branding and user experience design for the customer. There's a lot of things that are behind the scenes that Google looks at, that the customers don't even realize. And frankly, it doesn't even mean anything to the customers. I had to learn that. I didn't know anything about that. Frankly, I'm fairly new to SEO. We started really 18 months ago and I realized our organic rankings should be a lot higher based on our brand, based on these experience. We're getting a quality product out there and it should be getting a lot more traffic. The first step was just analyzing our site and realizing, “Well, how do I make the site faster?” Jeremy: Or, “How do I make the site make more sense in terms of Google?” So for example, on every single product page, 18 months ago, we had no other associated products below the fold. Now, most people don't necessarily look at those below the product the fold because they're trying to upload their logo, mock-up things. There's a lot of stuff for them to do on the product builder page to add to cart. But you need to add those other products below the fold, so that in terms of Google, they see that that product listing is connected to four other products or so, right. There's all these small kind of tweaks or theoretically, you want to keep adding and making your site feel refreshed. You're not going to be refreshing your homepage every single two weeks. It doesn't happen. Jeremy: You're not going to be redesigning your product builder page every two weeks or your browsable experience every two weeks. What you can do, is you can maybe put like a blog post in your footer, make it like the latest blog posts. Every time you update your blog, every day or every two days, your site is getting refresh constantly. There's all these kinds of small kind of tweak things that you could do in terms of overall site. And then it's about kind of pinpointing the content that you really want to go after and saying, “Well, who is our buyer?” So, really understanding who your customer is and trying to write really good content, not just like throw away stuff, really good content with great subject lines that get people to read something and learn something, get real value out of it that might not be about swag related, but has to do with swag adjacent, if you will. Jeremy: If someone's looking for office holiday party ideas. They might not be looking for swag, but maybe we could get swag in there somehow. Or best ways to engage your remote employees or something like that. Or what healthy snack food to have in the office, literally has nothing to do with swag, but the person who is looking for that is ultimately going to be looking for swag. And we don't necessarily need to convert them today, at this point, we could convert them a month from now. When they are looking for swag, just be on the top of mind, re-target them and ultimately convert them. Just putting out consistency. I think in general, whether it's SEO or whether it's being a startup founder or whether it's anything you do in life, I think it's just really all about consistency and just trying to have more good days than bad days. Jeremy: Constantly just trying to keep pushing as hard as you can because at the end of the day, you're going to get to a much better place if you're consistent with it, you keep pushing forward and no small setbacks really affect you. Stephanie: Yeah. I completely agree. Are you all doing the content creation and things like that in-house still? Or have you hired that out? At what point would you say like, “Oh, it's about time to hire this out,” to have someone else work on it instead of maybe an entrepreneur doing it all themselves? Jeremy: So, initially it was all me writing the content, then it became use some freelancers and now it's becoming, now we have the resources we're hiring actually this week, a full-time writer for our own team to be writing content and doing all of the stuff that we want to do. I think in everything, it always starts with the founders. Me and my co-founder, I think we've done really ridiculous, crazy things over the last four years to get to where we are. We've driven u-hauls 11 hours making deliveries at 11 o'clock at night. Having my family and my grandma, my aunts and uncles rolling t-shirts for three days straight trying to win these big deals and having no resources to do it. You're always kind of founder, CEO and head intern all at the same time. Now, at this point we're able to hire some of those roles that doesn't really make sense for us to be doing at this point or frankly, people who are just a lot better at it than we are. And that's where we're really excited to get to. Stephanie: I love that. I'm sure your grandma thanks you. Poor grandma, she's a real VIP over there, rolling t-shirts. Jeremy: Yeah. She was making fun that she hurt her back and that's why her back is messed up because of the [inaudible 00:43:33]. Stephanie: All because of you, Jeremy. Jeez. That's great. Before we move into a lightning round, is there anything that you wanted to cover today that I missed? Jeremy: No, no, this has been great. Stephanie: Okay, cool. Yeah, it has been a blast. All right. So, let's move onto the lightning round brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to throw a question your way and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Jeremy? Jeremy: I'm ready for it. Stephanie: All right. What's up next on your Netflix queue? Jeremy: Oh, cool. I started watching … I was in the Hamptons this weekend. Stephanie: Fancy. Jeremy: I know, very fancy. My mother-in-law's in town and she wanted to go out. [inaudible] and there's all these ads all over the place for million dollar beach house or something. I think I started watching some real estate show. Stephanie: There you go. I saw that also on Netflix. I was watching Selling Sunset, though I need to finish that one first. Jeremy: That's fine. Stephanie: All right. What is the best promotional item you've ever received? And what's the worst one? Jeremy: Well, okay. The worst one is obviously easy. It's all about the schlocky pens that don't write. Stephanie: Oh my gosh, yes. Jeremy: Pop socket, lighter. There's some of these things, stuff when they do the hybrid stuff, it's just kind of ridiculous. Like the highlighter that also acts as a compass. It's like, “No, that's not the right thing.” So, a lot of those. And a lot of people trying to sell me on selling their stuff and it's not good. Stephanie: You're like, “No, this is no.” Jeremy: Yeah. I don't want to be mean to anybody. I just say, “I don't think it's the right fit,” or something like that, but it's not good. And the best stuff I think is honestly anything really you're going to keep it. A really high quality water bottle, something you're going to see every single day it's could be on your desk and you're going to get those impressions. I'm really proud of that, but obviously we've done bicycles for companies. We made fully custom bicycles. A company came to us and they had their whole executive team. They're very into health. They want to do something a little bit different, unique. They have a campus. We create a really cool custom, fully custom logo, colors, everything bicycles. That was a really cool project to work on. And obviously we've done really cool backpacks. We did a backpack for Facebook, which I thought was really cool where the logo was nowhere on the outside. Jeremy: [inaudible] was we wanted to make the product so kind of premium. These are like very nice backpacks, that it didn't like scream Facebook. No one even know about it, except for the people who are wearing it. So, it was black-on-black logo on the inside of the backpack, so like when you open, only the people who are wearing it, see it. That's, I think is very important. I knew this was going to happen because frankly I started getting a sense that socks were going to become very popular. We sell [inaudible] socks and clearly socks is very … No one really sees it, but it's all about the person who's putting on the socks, is wearing it, who were seeing your logo. It starts to feel that kind of connection to your brand and eventually becomes that brand evangelist. It's all about that internal. Stephanie: Yeah, that's awesome. What is a new Ecommerce tool that you're trying out that you're loving right now? Jeremy: New Ecommerce tool? We're using a company called [Tend 00:46:36]. It's very early in it, but you're able to kind of track all the different people who are coming to your site without them inputting real information, which I think is kind of spooky, but kind of cool, just to see who's checking what. Stephanie: Cool. Jeremy: For me, it's kind of the core stuff. It's the Intercom, it's the HubSpot, it's just the marketing automation, streamlining things. And there's two different things, obviously with Intercom, which is our real life customer success. People are always here to help and jumping on the phone call. Then you have the HubSpot, which is really automating the experience. Having both sides for our type of businesses is very important. Stephanie: Great. All right. The last one, a little bit harder. What one thing will have the biggest impact on Ecommerce in the next year? Jeremy: Wow. Stephanie: Yeah. Jeremy: That's a good question. I'm still laser focused on swag. I don't necessarily always think about the broader industry as a whole. I think for swag, I think it's easy. I think it is swag distribution. Everyone's working remotely. I don't see people getting back into the office anytime soon. Even if they do, it's going to be somewhat of a new normal, maybe not every day. People are still going to be able to need to engage with the remote employees or the best customers. And who's going to want to fly across the country, maybe to that trade show. They might want to do things a little more remote and automated. For Swag, that's where we're going and we're going to be automating the distribution of Swag. I think that's our next phase. Jeremy: Or somebody's one year anniversary, send them automatically Swag in the mail. Or somebody's had a baby, send them Happy Mother's Day or Happy Father's Day type of swag in the mail. So, really automating different life activities where you want swag. Stephanie: Awesome. Love it. All right, Jeremy. This has been a blast. Where can people find out more about you and Swag.com? Jeremy: Yeah. You can obviously reach out to me on LinkedIn Jeremy Parker, and obviously come visit us at Swag.com. That's S-W-A-G.com and we would love to work with you on your next order. Stephanie: Awesome. Thanks so much for joining. Jeremy: Thank you so much for having me, guys.

Although many brands were forced to invest a bit more into their ecommerce operations in 2020 than they expected, many still have brick and mortar stores that need attention, too. Foot traffic is down at local malls and on Main Streets all over the world, but there is a way to bring people back to that in-store experience.  Audrey Gauthier is the Vice-President of Marketing and Ecommerce for Little Burgundy, a multi-brand footwear retailer owned by Genesco. She believes that an omnichannel approach and some creative partnerships are the answer to this widespread problem. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Audrey, (who called in all the way from Montréal) explains that customers who are comfortable with both in-store and online shopping will ultimately be your highest-value customers. She dives into how Little Burgundy is driving conversions in both areas through partnerships with local creatives and businesses that bring more in-store traffic while also providing new and exciting online shopping experiences. Plus, Audrey reminds us why concentrating on the basics of logistics and shipping is what ultimately builds confidence with your customer base.  Main Takeaways:   Is the Partnership Worth It?: There are common problems facing stores, malls, and other retailers in every country. If you can find a strategic partnership that benefits all parties, you can not only revive your own business but help bring more prosperity to an entire community. (Pro Tip: Metrics matter. When measuring the success of these kinds of partnerships, pay attention to the average order value, traffic, and engagement numbers.) National Reach With Local Flavor: Whether you are a mom and pop shop or a worldwide brand, connections are a key driver for success. Bringing local artists and creators into the in-store or online experience can help build a stronger connection to the people in the communities you’re working in that can carry your company even farther. Would You Like To Leave A Comment?: When there are open and transparent lines of communication through all levels of an organization, improvements that have real impact can be made much easier. When an in-store sales associate can easily present feedback she received from a customer to the ecommerce or marketing team, that customer insight which may have gone unnoticed before can instead be turned into a new solution or campaign.   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 --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome back to another episode of Up Next in Commerce. I'm your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder of mission.org. Stephanie: Today on the show, we have Audrey Gauthier The vice-president of marketing and ecommerce for the Little Burgundy division of Genesco. Audrey, welcome. Audrey: Hi. Thank you. Stephanie: Thanks for coming on the show. Audrey: Yeah, sure. My pleasure. Stephanie: It feels like you're so far away. Where are you calling in from today? Audrey: I'm in Montreal, actually. That's where my accent is coming from as well. Stephanie: I love it. Are you guys opening up your retail stores of Little Burgundy or are you still strictly working from home? Audrey: We opened up the office. In Montreal, actually, we're allowed to have 25% of the employees working from the office, so we manage our calendar for people that want to go back to working from the office, but also everyone can actually work from home if they prefer as well. Stephanie: Very cool. So before we dive into Little Burgundy, I wanted to go through your background a bit. I saw that you've worked in the world of ecommerce for about a decade, and I wanted to hear what drew you to ecommerce, and a little bit about your journey. Audrey: Yeah, sure. I mean, I first started my career after a master in administration. At the beginning after my studies, I really wanted to work for ad agency, but after interviews had gotten me really into retail world, so I started for La Vie En Rose, which is also a Canadian-based retailer out of Montreal. It's a lingerie retailer, could be similar at the smaller case to Victoria's Secret. And I quickly fell in love with all the opportunities at ecommerce and the endless possibilities and creativity that goes really beyond the activation that we're doing, but also in terms of troubleshooting. So, really it's what got me in ecommerce. Audrey: And then after I got an opportunity within the Aldo Group and then continue my career in footwear since about seven to eight years now. Stephanie: Very cool. So what have been some of your favorite campaigns that you've worked on over the years? Audrey: One of my favorite campaign was actually the first time we shot abroad. We went to Mexico City and worked with combination of talents that we brought with us from Montreal and some others that were local based. That was just an amazing experience to be able to shoot abroad for a campaign that was going to live both in store and also in the digital side, so really exciting. And I would add to that that's recently just navigating to COVID and our new reality, coming up with our fall-winter campaign and trying to really connect with the customer with this new reality and just reinvent ourself was really fun and different and challenging, but a good end for me. Stephanie: I'd love it if you could highlight what Little Burgundy is. Audrey: Yeah. Yeah, sure. Little Burgundy is a multi brand retailer. We started back in 2008. We were initially launched by the Aldo Group and acquired by the Genesco Group back in 2015, so about five years ago. And, I mean, we're really boutique sale retailer, so we only have 38 stores. We're pretty strong on ecommerce as well. But even though we're a nationwide retailer, we really tend to do things locally and try to connect with local communities. Our stores look a bit different from every region. We try to partner also with local influencers, local artists and ambassadors. So, I would describe us as, really, a multi brand retailer that carry brands like Dr. Marten's, Converse, Vans, brands that you can get in a lot of other retail stores, but we even though we're multi brand, we really have a strong artistic brand DNA. Stephanie: That's great. So, when it comes to forming partnerships with the local talent or the artists, how do you guys approach that? Because I think that is really important when you're walking into a really fun, nice shoe store, you've got good music going, you've got good art around, but how do you guys think about finding new artists or finding people that are a good fit? Audrey: There's a lot of searching, I would say, especially if they came into consideration that doing business in Canada and most specifically in the Quebec province, we always love to do everything in French and English. And that goes as well for even the music in our stores. There's certain laws in Quebec that you need certain amounts of songs that play in your playlist in the store that needs to be in French, so we need to manage our playlist in store so we enough French songs and local artists from Montreal. But that goes as well from people that are connecting with artists. Our musician, for example, from Toronto or Ottawa are really different than the people that are connecting with more local based Montreal and French artists. Audrey: So there's a lot of researching from my team, either through connections and contacts or Instagram, Facebook ... just always trying to be in the know of who's up and coming. And also, we're still a pretty small player, so budget wise, in terms of collaboration, we really love to just be highlighting new artists that are up and coming, and [inaudible] the ones that have been seen around by every other retailers or partners. Stephanie: That's really fun. That seems like such a great way to lift up the community and really help out a lot of people, like you said, the artists and people who are doing really cool work. Audrey: Yeah, absolutely. Stephanie: Cool. So tell me a little bit about how you're thinking about, so you have your retail stores opening back up soon, and you also have your ecommerce stores going. Tell me a little bit about how you're thinking about the omnichannel approach and how you want to sync them together so it all feels similar. Audrey: I see really that regardless of the channel, we really need to provide the very best experience we can to our customer. In the recent months, there've been a lot of customer that for the time they shopped with us online. They used to be in-store customer. And we saw from the data that the customer that do shop in both channels are the one that are bringing the most revenue to the company if they're active in store, but as well online. Audrey: So I think moving forward, we're not only going to try to drive our business either online or in store, but really convert them both. And some initiative in regards to that, for us in our end will be solution like we call [Book Us 00:09:28] for example. So you buy it online and then you can go within the next hour in your favorite shop and maybe spend a bit less time in store, but at least it's reserved, it's for you, you can try it, try your size, especially in footwear, because it could be quite tricky in terms of size. So you can go in store, have that experience, but it's more fast and easy because you've done your pre shopping online, you reserved your item, you know it's waiting in store for you. The store's assistant is there to maybe offer you an alternative product if that doesn't work for you. Audrey: So, I think all of that omnichannel experience and improving both the in-store, but as well, the online is going to be key, same thing with just the shipping and return as well. So, I mean, if you decide to go in-store, try the product, we don't have it. We currently order it for you and then it can be delivered either to the store or your home. But we need to do a better job of just shipping faster, same-day delivery without pain, returning it the way you want, either in-store or to a delivery location without any cost, without any trouble to go through, or you don't have to call customer service. Audrey: So, I think on the logistic end, that's where we're actually going to win in the upcoming years of ecommerce. Stephanie: I love that. And I saw on your website that it said you could return shoe within 365 days. Is that right? Audrey: Yeah, exactly. That's something we always been actually doing with Genesco. The only thing is we've never really been pushing it, so through COVID and the culture of our stores, that was the type of messaging that we were putting up front of the customer, just to reassure them in their process, especially for the new digital customer that were used to maybe buy in store and become more comfortable with returning in store the next week or within the next two weeks. Stephanie: Yeah. I think that's so important to get someone to feel like there is no risk with buying if you can't get it back in a year. It sounds such a good idea, to have people come back and store so they can get comfortable with the experience and get a part of the in-person experience that you guys have built up. So how are you thinking about other ways to drive them in the store that maybe isn't competing with the free shipping? Because it seems like it'd be hard to want to go in store if I know that I could buy something online and ship it back for free for a whole year. Audrey: Yeah. It's been an ongoing question, to be honest, since we've been reopening our stores. I mean, traffic has been, even prior to COVID, it was a little bit down in malls, and it was already hard to get customer to actually go in-store. So, our job is even tougher in terms of really just increasing that traffic and really making sure that the customer do show up as well in store. So we're looking at doing special launches, special partnership as well. I think a good way of winning, especially in tough situation like we are is doing partnership maybe with other retailers. We recently done a partnership as well with RBC Bank in Canada. So that was a way to get new customers. Audrey: I mean, downtown is pretty much still dead for us in Montreal, as well as Toronto. The traffic has significantly decreased overall, not just in shops, but in restaurants and bars and every places, but for the ones that are still going downtown to maybe give a special promotion that they can get on their lunch break or something like that. Audrey: So we're really just trying to work more closely with other retailers, other partners, the malls also itself, or if it's a street store to work with, like the neighborhood, that store to find partnership and ways that we can all together bring more traffic to our stores. Stephanie: Very cool. So, what kind of launches or partnerships are you seeing success with right now? What kind of things are you trying out that are working? Audrey: The RBC partnership that we've done, it was basically giving an exclusive offer to the RBC Bank members. It was successful in the way that it brought a lot of new customer to Little Burgundy and they were also high-value customers that were spending more than average. So in a time where businesses is tough, definitely that was a good win for us. Audrey: Another one is we have this student price card in Canada, it's called SPC. And it's giving discount to members of SPC when they are student and could be applicable in multiple retail location. So that's another way that other partnership that we're seeing, that it doesn't change the entire business, but it does add up at the end with multiple type of partnership like this. Audrey: And I think another good way of winning is working closer definitely with the malls, because at the end of the day, we're in the same boat. We're all seeing either decrease of traffic and difficult business. So I think we need tighter communication with the malls and the partnership, if they're doing an event to really involve the retailers as well. With one of the mall regroupments here in Canada, Cadillac Fairview, they're doing a incentive during the holiday, so if a customer buy Cadillac Fairview $100 gift card, then they can get special items in certain participant store. So that's another way of, again, in terms of traffic and partnership, try to get more customer into our doors. Stephanie: Yeah. That seems like definitely the way of the future is figuring out how to partner with people who are around you to create really good experiences. Yeah. It seems very smart. Stephanie: Are there any metrics that you pay attention to when you're forming these partnerships and these spatial launches? Audrey: Mm-hmm (affirmative) As I was saying, with RBC, the average order value, the revenue it's bringing, but also in terms of long term, are they staying customer? The acquisition that we're doing through that partnership, are they going to redo a purchase in the next six months and then next year, or that was really just a one-time to get the promotion, so it's a little bit less valuable for us? So, these are definitely metrics that we're paying attention. Stephanie: That's great. So how do you keep customers coming back? Because there are so many shoe stores, so many competitors out there. How do you engage with your customers in a way that keeps you top of mind? Audrey: Yeah. Good question, and definitely a good challenge being a multi brand retailer, and with also increasing competition in terms of just the offer out there with the multiple retailers and also big players, even from the States that are coming in. Audrey: So, I mean, for us, a thing we've always been good at is showcasing the product in a different way than our competition does, but also than even the brands are doing themself. So we showcase a Vans product in a different style or different aspirational look than what Vans would do or what a Footlocker would do. So, I think that's what one of our advantage, because it seems to work with our customer, and from previous survey or focus group that we've done in the past, they always say that at Little Burgundy, we do things differently, but in a good way. We succeed to stand out, even though we're not the biggest player. Audrey: And even though we don't carry all the product, but we have the reputation of carrying a good selection of product. If you want a footwear that is on trend, it's maybe not the most fashion forward that you would see on a red carpet, but at the same time, it's a safe choice in terms of being on trend, so we're being one step ahead of maybe the core people, but at the same time still being affordable price. So we are in a good position in terms of our offer and all we presented. Stephanie: Yep. I think that's a good space to play in, because who really wants to wear the red carpet stuff anyways? Most of that looks a little crazy. Stephanie: So, on your website, you mentioned that you have a magazine that goes out every season. Tell me a little bit about that. Audrey: Yeah. Our magazine, we actually launched it since the very beginning of Little Burgundy. And it's always been at the heart of who we are. And I remember when we were part of Aldo, everyone wanted to work for the Little Burgundy division, because it was with our magazine and all our artistic direction, we're doing things always a bit more edgy. And that was just a really good vehicle for our brand DNA and to show Little Burgundy, again, differently than other multi brand retailers. Audrey: That being said, about three seasons ago, we stopped doing the printed magazine and really went more with digital version. So we still do those strong artistic direction campaign every single season, and we create a specific team for a season where we're going to do articles and work with artists, et cetera. Audrey: So, similar content with what we would have done for the magazine, but we're really doing it more for the digital. So assets are optimized for digital, we're doing more video content as well, we're uploading articles on the website. So we move away from the print and magazine, basically because of the cost of printing, but also we were just able to track a better return on investment with everything we're doing online. Audrey: So then a tough decision when we first started the magazine, because it's been part of our DNA and heritage of Little Burgundy. Even in the office, we have all our covers of the magazine that are showcased in the hallway. So we've all been super proud of it, but just with the world changing, we took a more digital direction in terms of content. And I'm not saying that we're never going to go back to a print version of the magazine, but for now we're really more focusing on still creating good content exclusive to Little Burgundy that has always a really defined angle, but then really optimizing that content more on the digital side. Stephanie: Yeah. So to dive in a little deeper on the digital magazine aspect, what kind of engagement are you seeing on that? When you send it, I'm guessing, through your email or wherever else, how many people, or how many of your customers engage with it and read the entire thing? Audrey: It's not a magazine like it used to be, a full issue. It's more we're releasing content as we go throughout the season. So it's more going to be through blog article and just a newsletter that is more informational. But it's not in a format of a full magazine, like page one, two, three, et cetera. Audrey: So, we see that like people are ... It's just funny to look at engagement of people in certain articles versus others. The latest one we released, I don't know if you got a chance to see it, it's really, really small article, but it was just of these dogs, so the dogs of people working at Little Burgundy, and obviously it involved dogs, not at all related to the shoes, but it was interesting because we got a very wide reach of people engaging with that article and just spending more time on our website. So at the end of the day, in terms of KPIs, we had a good returns, even though it was not direct sales. But again, it's content that are just making us a little bit stand out from the crowd, and our customer just going on our websites, spending time with us and engaging with Little Burgundy instead of spending that five minutes on Footlocker, for instance. Stephanie: I love that. I think anything with dogs or animals probably would perform we. Audrey: Yeah, definitely. Stephanie: So when you create content that, how do you also keep Little Burgundy branding on there so people know who brought this content to them without hitting them over the head with it? How do you make sure it's engaging, but also does the job? Audrey: In terms of letting the customer know that it's from Little Burgundy and this content that is brought to us through, let's say, paid advertising ads or ad on Facebook or Instagram, that's why we really launch campaign that are very different, that are very [inaudible] driven, that are a little bit more edgy than what you would see on maybe another retail or a medium. So we're really trying to have our ads running, but really with a strong artistic direction. So, if you see a Blundstone ad on your Instagram, and then you see a similar ad with the same background or the same artistic direction but for Vans on your Facebook, you can still relate that it's probably from Little Burgundy, just because of the artistic direction. Audrey: But it's really important for us, and I think it's one of our strength as a multi brand retailer to be able to tell a story to our blog, our newsletter, our in-store window, with our own tone of voice, even though we're going to market Dr. Martens, Adidas, Nike, like any other brands. Stephanie: Yep. So previously you guys were owned by Aldo, and then in 2015, Genesco acquired you, which is an American brand, what did that change look like? Did you have to change your tone of voice or your design, or were there no changes at all? Audrey: No, there was definitely tons of changes. And it's been a big journey, because, I mean, you're detaching a business that was already very tightly attached to another business and then you're reattaching it to another strong structure. So it's been a couple of years, actually, just going through that process and being able to be fully running on new platforms. Audrey: We've pretty much changed everything, like the POS in store, our shipping carrier, our warehouse, every single aspect of the business has been scoop out and look at, and we needed to confirm that, yeah, we're moving forward with that third party or not. So it's been a lot of work, I would say, in terms of acquisition from both and even from people working from Little Burgundy, but also with Aldo and the Genesco folks as well. Audrey: In terms of business, I feel really fortunate that it's actually Genesco who acquired us in terms of they're a multi brand, their expertise in retail, they've been around for ages. And being part of the Journeys family, they're a multi brand retailer, as well as us, while Aldo was a first class business. So we were always a little bit like the outsider within that structure. Audrey: Joining Journeys, they're really more similar to us in that sense of being a multi brand retailer. So for a small player like us from Canada being only 38 stores, I mean, it gave us access also to the management of certain brands we're working with. So we have always had our good, strong relationship with all our brand partners in Canada, but now we also have access to getting more involved and knowledgeable of this strategy more globally from our brands. So that was definite win for Little Burgundy within this acquisition, actually. Audrey: And if I can add to that, I'm also glad of our Aldo heritage, just because of I put us knowledgeable at footwear being from a first class company, that were working with manufacturer all around the world and creating their own line of products. So I feel we're the perfect situation that our previous family was actually making shoes and our new company, they're really strong in retail and with brands. So I feel we're really gaining from Little Burgundy in this acquisition. Stephanie: Yeah. That's great. I'm sure that Genesco and the brands within Genesco are learning a lot from you all, but what are some of the biggest insights that you learned from being able to see into these other brands that were similar to you? Stephanie: Like maybe where you have been able to see how other brands do things or how they track things or how they do things with retail where you were like, "Oh, we weren't doing that before, and now we're going to start implementing them." Audrey: I would say one of the big learning that I saw from being part of the Journeys family, they always have this tagline of "Journeys is a family with an attitude that cares." And that's true. They're really super transparent, sharing data, involving the team from the coordinator to the designers, the part time employee in store to the store manager, they're really involving everyone from the company to almost sit at the same table and really share knowledge. Audrey: An example of that is at the POS level in store. We have a button that is called Feedback Button. So anyone from the store employees can hit that button and send directly their feedback to the various team from the head office. And even all of the management team, we have access to the feedback from the store. Audrey: So I feel that transparent communication that we have within the company is such a eye opener for everyone, actually. And there's just a lot of transparency between what's actually happening from the sales floor to the office decisions that are being taken. So that's definitely a good learning with joining Journeys and seeing really that family vibe is just to connect more with people that are from the stores to know their reality, know their feedback from the customer, because they're really at the front line. So I feel that within this company, we do succeed with just bringing back together and the office team and the sales team, which has beneficial even for the web business, so many feedback that we get from the stores, then we're like, "Oh, okay. They hadn't thought of that even for ecomm so we can apply some changes as well for the website," from insight we're getting from the sales associate, in-store comment from a customer, for example. Stephanie: That's really smart. It seems like that's a great way to empower the retail employees, because I think we've all been in a retail store before where you can just tell the employees there are not happy, they don't feel excited to come into work, they don't feel a strong connection with the brand, but it seems really smart to start empowering them so then they feel like they are a part of the success. Stephanie: So what kind of disruptions are you preparing for within ecommerce? Audrey: There's been a lot of I mean, upgrades, like with the store closure in March, and just really putting all our focuses on actually the web business for a couple of months and seeing how it's overall helping the business, we've been fueling and investing a lot in ecommerce upgrade. Audrey: So, on our end, we've been even launching, for example, affiliate program or working with partners like Curalate for more UGC content on our website. We're going to do soon launching with PayBright, which is allowing to pay multiple payments as well. So for us, our average order value for goods, it's going to be quite good in terms of just helping overall conversion in the website. Audrey: Other big changes we're going to be seeing is in terms of just the inventory management, and being able for the customer to not only, again, make a purchase online and then add ship it to the store, but also go and pick it up within the next few hours at their favorite store to try them on. Audrey: So, those are some of the disruption in our model that we're seeing for the upcoming months and that we're just trying to fast forward and act a little bit faster than maybe we would have expected at the very beginning of the year, knowing that there's definitely a lot of opportunities with ecomm right now and that we're really on the hill that we're going up quite fast. I'm not sure if that sounds right in English. Stephanie: Yeah. We've actually heard that from quite a few brands, of the plans that they had for maybe three years are now happening in a matter of months. Audrey: Yeah, exactly. Stephanie: While you're doing all these ecommerce upgrades, are there any new pieces of technology or tools that you're implementing that you're excited about? Audrey: Yeah. So, PayBright, I'm actually quite excited about it. And funny enough, I think that the solution we're using in the US is Klarna. I'm excited about it. Prior to COVID, I was a little bit not sure about implementing a solution that will allow our customer to pay in multiple payment. I just felt doesn't necessarily feel right for just a pair of shoe enough like a big, so far or really expensive purchase, but now, a little bit the economic situation we're in, the uncertainty, the fact that so many people lost their job too, I feel a bit more confident and sure about adding it, and I'm curious to see also the result if it have conversions. So this one I'm quite happy. Audrey: But overall, our buy online, pick up in store and more real-time inventory is definitely the biggest change. I think there's a lot of good AI solution and a lot of good front end customization, but most of the retailers still have a little bit of trouble with their back in and just decreasing their numbers of cancellation or shipping faster or having good return process. So, the improvement we're doing more in terms of inventory management and being more reliable in that sense, that's definitely what I'm looking for the most, not the prettiest thing that we could see on the website or things like that, but it's really something that on the long end, it's just give confidence to our customer that we're able to commit to a fast delivery or just that if you order from us, you're actually going to get through your product and it's not going to get canceled, et cetera. So I'm really excited about just the basics. Stephanie: Yeah. That's cool. I mean, real-time inventory seems really tricky when you have multiple brands that you're working with. Audrey: Yeah, but at the same time we own the inventory and it's being either shipped from the stores or the warehouse, so it makes it a bit easier to manage. Stephanie: Cool. All right. So I'm going to shift this over to a lightning round. So the lightning round brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Audrey? Audrey: Yeah, I think. Stephanie: What's up next on your reading list? Audrey: Next on my reading list is a book from Margaret Atwood that I've been looking up for ages and just didn't took the time to read it, so I was always reading something else. It's called in French [Foreign Language 00:40:03], and English it's The Handmaid's Tale. I just never got to read it. I know everyone read it before, but it was never on my table. So that's the one I'm currently starting. Stephanie: That's great. You'll have to let me know how it is. Audrey: Yeah, sure. Stephanie: What's up next in your travel destinations, or where did you just go, since you were just on vacation? Audrey: I just come back from vacation on Monday at noon, actually. I went to, it's a small Island in Quebec, actually. It's called Magdalena Island. It's a fisherman island, really cute, red cliffs, and you're surrounded by the sea. There's tons of just really welcoming people. They have even a weird French accent, so for an Anglophone, it might be a little bit tricky, but it's definitely worth going there. Stephanie: Oh, that's fun. I'll have to check that out. What app are you enjoying most on your phone? Audrey: Currently, I've been spending a little bit too much time on TikTok, because we recently for Little Burgundy just launched a TikTok channel. I didn't even add it on my phone; I obviously knew what TikTok was involved, but I never spent time on it. So recently my team has been just pushing me videos to watch and just to be more aware of that platform and our customers that are on it. So I've been spending a little bit too much time on this app, actually. Stephanie: I feel you there. I end up going down a wormhole where I start with just a couple of videos, and then all of a sudden I'm like, "Whoa. I just spent 20 minutes watching dancing and makeup tutorials and organizing your house videos." But it seems a perfect platform for Little Burgundy. Audrey: Yeah, exactly. Stephanie: All right. And the last one, what one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year? Audrey: Tricky. There's so many things that are happening right now, but I think, for Canada, the cost of shipping is so expensive here. Obviously Amazon and big players are just setting up the bar very high for fast shipping, very low cost, et cetera. So for smaller retailers, for us, expectation from the customer is just getting higher. I think shipping carrier and negotiating prices will be very challenging but could be a key changer. Audrey: One of the company that you should actually maybe include in your next podcast, a guest from Canada, they're called [inaudible 00:43:18]. I think they might even be in their 30s, if I'm not mistaken, two guys from Montreal who launched that ecommerce website, and they just announced that they're doing same-day delivery currently in Montreal, but they're looking to launch as well in Toronto. So if you're from Montreal and you purchase before 1:00 PM in the afternoon, you're safe to get your order the same day. So these type of services are definite game changer, but I just think it's hard to get there still being profitable. So that's definitely an area that we're going to keep a close eye on. Stephanie: Yeah. That would be interesting to hear, the economics behind that business and how they guarantee that. That would be a good interview guest. Audrey: Yeah, definitely. Stephanie: All right. Audrey, well, this has been such a fun conversation. Where can people find out more about you and Little Burgundy Shoes? Audrey: Yeah. So about me, definitely on my LinkedIn, so Audrey Gauthier, if you can spell that right. And Little Burgundy, well, I invite you guys to go on our website, littleburgundyshoes.com. We currently don't ship in the US, but we're really looking forward to it eventually. So it's still worth to stay tuned and look at what we're offering. Stephanie: Very cool. Thanks so much for joining. Audrey: No problem. Thanks to you.

Why don’t more companies offer affordable international shipping? The answer is because navigating the world of VAT, customs, international duties, and other intricacies make this too much of a headache for most eCommerce operators. Additionally, technical components, payment options, logistics and, yes, varying holiday calendars are all variables that a company needs to consider when it is expanding globally. It’s nearly impossible to do without some sort of help.  So the question becomes how do you face this nightmare ready and prepared? That’s where Matthew Merrilees comes in. Matthew is the CEO, North America for Global-e, and they solve these problems. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Matthew shares the ins and outs of what it takes to equip your ecommerce brand for international expansion.  Whether you need to address currency concerns or want to understand the data that drives your competitors to success in the market, Matthew shares those secrets and more on today’s episode.  Main Takeaways: Is It a Holiday? — When brands expand internationally, it’s important to know and plan for holidays that affect customers in every single market. There are opportunities being missed by companies who are too focused on the big international holidays and not enough on local strategy.  Pay With Ease — Customers want transactions to be simple. Anything that makes a transaction hard, or confusing, will almost certainly result in an abandoned purchase. Implementing an integrated, hyper-localized payment and taxation strategy is one of the first things companies need to consider when expanding internationally. Plan B — Companies and individuals are currently experiencing many unexpected disruptions in life and business. Being able to navigate through those disruptions is necessary in order to continue providing the best possible customer experience. Creating contingency plans and backup systems to deploy if there is a disruption in your logistics or backend operations will take you a long way.   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 --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome back to another episode of Up Next in Commerce. I'm your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder of Mission.org. And today on the show, we have Matthew Merrilees, the CEO of North America at Global-e. Matthew, Welcome. Matthew: Hey, pleasure to be here Stephanie. Thanks so much for having me. Stephanie: So, I want to dive in a bit into your background. It looks like you've worked at a lot of different logistics companies. Before we touch on Global-e, I was hoping we could go over your background a bit and how you got to where you are. Matthew: Yeah, for sure. It gets a bit about me, and my background, definitely started, I would say from call it my family history, just the family history of fathers and brothers. And call it family members who grew up in operations logistics, and obviously [inaudible] Ecommerce. So, I think as I followed the family tree and fell into place, I think all in all it definitely did kick off and start my career at DHL Express, where I spent quite a number of years in various different positions, leadership roles, and such. And then made the transition to FedEx where I definitely did a lot of the same. And obviously, now here at Global-e. I think when you look at the background, straight from university into the logistics arena, was quite exciting. Stephanie: Yep. Very cool. So tell me a little bit about Global-e. What is the company? And what kind of customers do you guys have? And how do you interact with them? Matthew: Yeah, for sure. What we are is a cross border enablement platform, right? We focus primarily in three different arenas that support our brands, which is in boosting international conversion rates, which is boosting overall sales and revenue of course. And then most importantly, boosting customer satisfaction for an international transaction. Right? So I think when you look at the vast portfolio of brands that we work with from a global perspective... I mean, we worked with over 350 enterprise global brands, right? Matthew: So when you look at some of the likes of, let's just call it Forever 21, Reformation and Anastasia Beverly Hills, Marc Jacobs, Hugo boss, Versace. But, I think when you look at the broad gamut of brands, I mean it is something that is, for me, always eye opening. Just how we're able to help take an international transaction and really, truly localize it to a way that consumer in that individual market would really expect to buy online. And I think there's a lot of barriers when you look at the international market and how we help these brands really position that data, that knowledge, that insight, and that expertise is really I'd say where we come in and help. Stephanie: Cool. And what stage does a company need to be at to partner with Global-e? Do they need to be as big as Forever 21, or could a new DTC company also utilize your great services? Matthew: Really it's any size, shape or brand. I would say just over I think seven years ago now we deployed the business, right? And I think we came out of the gate with a very strong enterprise focus. But, I think as we evolved we saw the demand in market for small medium enterprise type brands. Really it's any size, shape or brand who has let's just call it an Ecommerce platform running an online digital storefront. And it is someone that obviously has an Ecommerce strategy in place today. So it's not just the Bigs that I think you see in the market that we continue to focus on and then come into the portfolio. I think it's also those brands that are digitally native, that are really looking to capture revenue outside of their home market. So I think it's really any size, shape or size customer that could lead to that discussion. Stephanie: Cool. I was hoping we could kind of start the episode there around what are maybe some international fails you see happening with brands right now, or hiccups that maybe new companies would encounter if they don't use a solution that figures out all the different challenges when selling across borders. Matthew: Yeah, for sure. I think sales are important. Obviously, I think brands all have different approaches to sale, right? There are some heavy sale brands by design. There are some flash sale businesses out there that really drive high, heavy traffic to a limited amount of inventory. And then I think there's your typical sale holidays where everyone's on sale, which is typically your Black Friday type periods that we recognize here in the North American market. But, I think as brands start to think internationally and think what sales exists outside of just this US home market. For us, we start to really get into the education process, which is number one; what are the holidays that are happening outside of the USA? Is it Singles Day? Is it Boxing Day? Is it Click Frenzy in Australia, for example? Which I think is the beginning part for a lot of the brands that we tend to work with. Matthew: I'd say number one, what are the holidays? What and where do these holidays exist? And then number two, how do you get prepared in order to approach that consumer? Is it a similar approach that we have to a domestic customer here in the US? They're going to need to be spoken to and treated in a unique way that more relates to them in that market. So I think sales are critically important. But, I think with branding awareness of when they're happening, why they're happening, and how to really give that consumer, let's just say the customer satisfaction experience that they would expect, is important. Stephanie: Yep. Are there any holidays that come to mind that you've seen a bunch of brands missing? Because I've heard of a couple of them like Singles Day. I think especially more recently, we started hearing about these other sales that go on around the world. But, is there any big opportunities or a time when you say, "Hey, there's a sale happening." And a lot of brands are like, "Oh, I've never heard of that." Or, "That's never come across my radar before." But, it's like a big important one? Matthew: Honestly, the three I listed, and the reason for listing them is because they are the most important, that typically I would say a lot of brands are just not aware of. And believe it or not, don't have strategies planned around. They used to be sales, and I think that specifically the two in both Boxing Day, and I'd say most importantly, Click Frenzy, is probably the one that is most highly missed out of the portfolio of brands. Just saying, "Wow! Click Frenzy, I didn't realize how large it was." And it's something that we absolutely want to help tailor to our market, which is such a key focus market for a lot of US brands in Australia. Stephanie: Got it. So what kind of strategies are you maybe suggesting to them? Maybe we'll focus on those two. How would you walk a brand through these holidays and maybe how to approach it to get into that market? Matthew: I think it all begins with the communication. So number one, we talked about the education, the awareness, which is obviously going to be key. And then I think with the brand. Every brand, as I mentioned earlier, the approach sale differently. So I think when you look at whether it be a flash sale business, whether it be a traditionally just natively sale business, who's very highly discounted down to high luxury brands that like to go on sale at certain times per year, typically two times or so per year, I think it all begins with their engagement. And obviously a lot of the brands, they free up their time for these marketing efforts. And we help break down a lot of barriers to get them to focus their time on the strategy. But, I think it begins with a setting strategy for each one of these markets. Matthew: And it begins with communication. How are you going to touch that consumer? How are you going to touch that consumer in a way that relates locally to them? And then obviously making sure that you have all the tools in place to execute on that sale so that when that consumer hits for an Australian day like Frenzy, they're seeing their currency in Australian dollars. They're aware of GST and the 10% that has to be captured on every single order that is being built in your product price. These are things that you need to communicate, "Hey, we've got a great sale going on. But, hey, also we accept your local currency. You can come buy with confidence." So I think as long as the marketing strategies within the brands are executing them the way they typically do, I think the next step there is to make sure that they've got the tools and the site in place to then obviously relate to that customer. Stephanie: Got it. And are you helping them implement those technologies? Or are you more giving avenues of like, "You couldn't implement this tech stack or you could go with this one." Matthew: So we typically implement it. Right? So all of our brands, even all of the ones that I've spoken about in the entire portfolio, basically what Global-e is doing is helping, let's just say arm and equip their site to be able to speak to an international consumer. And I'd say a lot of brands, come to us and say, "Hey, we view you as our international outsource Ecommerce team." Because we need to understand not only that I need to equip my US site to be able to speak to a consumer in China versus Singapore, versus Thailand and Canada and Australia and so on but, I also need to know what's the right proposition. How do I take insights and data and duty and tax? And what do I do with all of these different elements that are barriers to that customer buying? And how do we break it down so it's local to that consumer and market? And these are when I say quick to site and be ready for that type of volume to be hitting your site so that you're able to convert that customer, that's where Global-e comes into play. Stephanie: Got it. It seems like, you mentioned data earlier, it seems like you would have access to a ton of data from working with all these brands and seeing what works and what doesn't work. Tell us a little bit about some of the insights that you guys are seeing and also teaching your brands when it comes to selling internationally. Matthew: Sure. So I think the first thing that in an engagement with a brand that we have, right? Because there's brands of all different verticals, as you can imagine whether it be fashion and retail, whether it be beauty, whether it be footwear, streetwear and so on and so forth. So I think the one biggest insight in a lot of brands I would say, come to us for is, we want to understand what the rest of our vertical's doing. How are they being successful? What are they doing to target consumers? And let's just say all these parts of the world. So we really, I think from a data perspective, we consolidate it. And we sit on mountains of data that we can then drive from an insight's perspective to the brand that, "Hey, based off of where you're selling today and based off of where you should be selling tomorrow, we're going to help you build a strategy on let's just say end to end perspective. Right? Matthew: So it all starts from when the consumer hits the site, right? Currency, how are you going to show it? How are you going to also locally round that currency to make sure that it's a number that that consumer can relate to in that market. Down to duty and tax strategies, shipping propositions, and all of the elements that we know are going to have an impact to a consumer buying. And as an example of that for a few key markets that we can at least relate to, Canada. Canada is a market that acts very much like the US. And I'd say far too many US brands that we tend to see will typically treat, let's just say a Canadian shopper as they would a shopper within Singapore. And basically just take that product that they're selling and sell it at the same experience worldwide and say, "Okay. But, did I think that a Canadian customer is used to paying tax when they hit a local shop to buy the shirt?" They never ever see the term duty in market experience. Matthew: So on your site, you should never ever display duty and taxes as part of an overall transaction. Otherwise, that consumer's going to be shocked to see extra costs and abandon. And there's other elements to, how do we factor in duty into the product price? Because that's typically going to be a conversion driver for that Canadian consumer. And that goes even into markets like Europe and the UK, where it's that inclusive. The typical buying experience for a European consumer. So the second that a US brand now puts at the point of checkout duty and tax and breaks it out, it's going to cut their conversion in half. So these are the insights on a market by market basis where every country is and has to be looked at independently. And as far as too many times when we come into these conversations, our brand's just taking a single strategy for the world. And I think that's kind of one of the biggest opportunities to help our brand succeed. Stephanie: Got it. Yeah. That's great. How are you all staying on top of consumer preferences or making sure that you're staying on top of what's hot? You can think of WeChat, it came up pretty quickly. And how people are using it changes all the time it seems. How is you guys' company able to stay up with what people are expecting in different markets, and how they're buying? Matthew: Yes. I think honestly it has evolved over the years. I think as a mature business with a lot of mature brands that obviously we rely on and rely on us. Depending on which aspect you're looking out of the business, we've got a lot of robust technology internally that will help with that. So from a payment perspective, this is not going to be a single payment provider that's going to be able to take it to offering every single payment method that you need in your arsenal to be able to let's just say, service the world. I mean, enabling WeChat, Alipay, UnionPay into China's is critically important. But, to be able to enable that is a big challenge. So I think typically what we do to stay ahead of let's just say that front is we work very closely with our brands. Matthew: Like I said, there is a knowledge base out there with our brands that we've built up over these seven years that really drive and are a piece of driving our overall roadmap. So I think the voice of our customer is so critical that we continue to evolve, to adapt and definitely change. And then I think also internally with our focus only being cross border and international, we've built out the expertise, the knowledge and the data to understand that. And I think between the combination of the two, I think what we tend to do is always stay multiple steps ahead where a US brand can then focus their efforts on marketing on their US domestic market. And so for European brands, which is also no different. Stephanie: Yep. Makes sense. When I'm thinking about everything that's happening right now, it seems like there is a lot of buying shifts happening. But, I haven't really thought about maybe internationally, how the buying behaviors are changing. So I was hoping you could maybe touch on any trends or opportunities that you're seeing overseas right now that maybe other people can't spot because they don't have access to all the data that you do. Matthew: Where I was heading with it a minute ago is having a chat with myself. I think when we look at the brands, I think there's a lot of elements that we do bring from an insight's perspective. So when you look at the data, it's really a methodology around duty and tax we talked about. That's one very big element. How and what to do with duty and tax in every single market to showcase it. I think when you look at payments, another very big element like Alipay, you mentioned WeChat pay, UnionPay, all very important into China. But, then into other markets like Germany, where Klarna is a highly adopted installment type pay methods on all throughout the Nordics, it's critical and key. And you have to have that there in your arsenal to be able to convert a consumer or even acquire a consumer within that region. Matthew: And then I think we even get into let's just say the Netherlands, over 58% that as we see through our platform of all odors or within the Netherlands are paid with ideal. I think these are the elements when you look at duty and tax strategy, when you look at payment strategy, when you look at overall shipping strategy, right? You mentioned logistics carriers and the challenges that they're having today. Matthew: I think another element of that is from a logistics suite, offered your consumer a checkout, you need to make sure that that multi carrier approach is ready, equipped, and able to handle the volume that is going to be coming their way, especially as on a daily basis that can tell you our operations team is keeping up with the overall feedback from every single carrier from lane closures to lane impacted. Even just down to value, limitations and free ship thresholds and when to offer what. So I think as you look at the price strategy, the payment strategy, the duty and tax strategy, and you bring literally all of this together from a full end to end solution, that's really what obviously makes this a successful approach to brands. Stephanie: Cool. And are there any opportunities you see right now that are popping up? Or you're like, "I see a lot of maybe consumers internationally looking for this type of product." Or there's an unmet need here that could be solved. Any secrets that you have about these international markets? Matthew: I think for me, and typically what we tend to see in our market here is yes, brands come out of the gate saying, "Okay, I'm going to go international." What does that mean? That to a lot of our brands ends up meaning I want to focus my efforts on English speaking countries, such as Canada, UK, and Australia. And I think that's a good approach for brands to splash with. But, I think when you look at our business globally and we start to look at markets and regions, and then you call it... Any insights of secrets, I think right now what we've seen is the Gulf region. The Gulf region through COVID is a region that really has not decreased at all. And only seen a positive growth trends since, call it January of this year. Matthew: So when we let's just call it, are reaching like the peak of April, we saw over a 575% growth in year and year sales [inaudible 00:19:48], which basically the trend has only continued and accelerated May through June. So I think for me and a lot of what we're seeing, even specifically in that Gulf region with luxury with the UAE really accelerating with Saudi Arabia, with Kuwait, with Qatar. These are markets that brands never think in the US markets to put a strategy behind them. We're seeing such a huge growth globally that I think they're starting to rethink their strategies. Stephanie: Oh, that's a good one. And have they always been part of your arsenal or is that something also that you guys are pivoting a bit more into that area? Matthew: So, I think the beauty of what Global-e does with our brands is literally with a single integration, whether it be the currency, the hundred plus currencies that we enable. Or whether it be the 150 different payment methods that we offer, the duty and tax guarantee for limiting risk and liability to our brands, all of that pulled together in single integration, opens them up to the world. So the first thing is, make sure your site is set up for success. So that should a consumer from a certain market hit your site, then they're able to convert. And that is what Global-e does. And that enables let's just say, even the Gulf region out of the box. Matthew: And then it becomes, "Okay, now we've got a proper offering. Now conversion and sales is accelerated where we want it to be." And I think those second level conversations begin with the brands, their digital marketing teams, and how do I start acquiring new customers? How do I start really pushing my efforts to markets where I know that the demand is there and that I should not just waste my time trying to cover off all 220 countries and territories out there. Let's focus in major and majors. And let's really get a strategy together. This can have an impact to our overall celebration for business. Stephanie: Cool. So I'm thinking when it comes to international sales, the metrics that maybe you're providing back to your customers, or that you guys are looking at frequently, maybe differ a bit than US centric sales. What kind of metrics do you guys look at to see if things are going well? Matthew: So I think from our perspective that the major metrics that we tend to focus on with our brands is always going to be conversion rate. Conversion rate is something that as a hosted checkout solution, Global-e has a full impact on. So our brand's checkout is powered by Global-e as simply put. Meaning that we have hyper localized every element of that overall checkout. Which means if they're going to put in all of the effort from a marketing perspective to get that consumer to a point of checkout, we are going to make sure that they are going to buy. And I think when you look at the ability and the approach of that let's just say localization, conversion rate is always a forefront of what we look at with our brands. Matthew: And then I think sales growth, right? Sales growth as revenue is always going to be a second team metric that we 100% I would say, study and operate, and look at with our brands. And just full circle rounding it off as customer satisfaction. Even down to NPS scores with our brands that we share. And we look at down to the market level to make sure that if we're getting from some negative feedback in a certain market, why? How do we help better equip that experience from an Ecommerce perspective, to make sure that we're not just seeing and hearing that feedback but, we're actually it. Stephanie: Cool. When talking about negative feedback, I was just thinking about when launching a new product, it might be easier to think like, "Oh, I should go international." But, oftentimes people internationally don't like the same things maybe as the things that we like here. So, is there any advice or guiding that you do for these brands who maybe are like, "We want to go international, we want to go everywhere." Is there ever a time when you're like, "Actually, I'm pretty sure people in Asia would never use that." Like they don't like that. Matthew: No, I think from a brand perspective our approach is typically always going to be as a brand, it's the continuing drive to say the way that you've invested and looked at the domestic market. Not just from a fragmented perspective but, from a full end to end perspective, from the way that you talk to your customer, the way that you show them products, the way that you position products, the way that you promote products or free ship thresholds or show tax into certain markets. You can't do anything differently when it comes to international. The way that your strategies are built here domestically are not different than that of international. And when we really interact with our brand, it's specifically to help educate them on that overall fact because you're right, consumers expect different things in different markets. Matthew: And if you're not setting up your site for success to complete that, which is obviously what our biggest value add is, is that when our platform sits on top of your website, you don't have to worry about that anymore. Right? And you can now focus your effort on acquiring new business and new customers, which is really where brands want to be spending their time, especially the small and midsize ones who don't have these robust teams as some of the larger brands out there. You're talking to owners, you're talking to founders, you're talking to literally the folks that built this business from the ground up. Matthew: So they're involved on every single ticket that every single consumer puts through the site and they're reacting to it. That's why I think for them to not have the burden of thinking about currency, thinking about, "Hey, I have to now register my business in Australia or Norway, or Switzerland." Or what's happening in the UK with Brexit and how are duty in that threshold changing in a market like Canada, which is so important. This is stuff that they no longer have to think about. That's typically where we see the brands heading and we opened them up to the world so that they're truly giving an amazing experience for their consumers the first time it ever hits their site. Stephanie: Got it. Yeah. So it's essentially on the brands to make sure that they have a product that's good and that will sell internationally. Then you guys come in and take care of everything else. But, it's kind of up to them to do that due diligence and make sure that the product that they're about to bring internationally is actually a good fit for that market. Matthew: Absolutely. And I think when you look at the brands, obviously, product placement performance, they own and control the brand, right? At the end of the day the customer is the brand's customer. It's their data. They have access to all of this data. It's not ours, it's not our approach with the brands. It's always "Listen, we're going to push and give you all the bits of information that you need in order to market to that consumer." And then we also help through partnerships and other marketing channels, even let's just say bringing eyeballs to their site. And I think those are elements when you look at how can you help brands and how can you obviously look to convert that brand, it's super important. Stephanie: Cool. So you just mentioned bringing eyeballs to their site and that piqued my interest in what kind of effective channels are you guys seeing right now to bring new international customers to these brands? Matthew: Yeah. I'll give you one example that I think is a relevant one. And we mentioned because it kind of ties into the overall payment perspective that we mentioned with offering Klarna in Germany and the Nordic region. And Klarna is getting very active in the payment space, which we've just been following very, very closely. But, I think Klarna has done a very nice job of securing some dominance in that European market. So one of the elements that we've done is we've partnered with them. We said, "What can we do from a payment perspective to outreach to consumers?" How can we take our brands and put their products within the Klarna network of consumers that exist out there to let them know that this small little mid sized brand in the US exists? And that is something that we've done to help the brands just as an example, that is super important. And we've seen a lot of value and a lot of return from that where this is something in a market that just typically these brands have not even thought about putting dollars into. Stephanie: That's really interesting. It reminds me of earlier, when I was talking about products and may be opportunities. I mean, you hear that stuff happening, of people going on a vacation to Thailand, or like the guy who created red bull. They're oftentimes overseas, when they see something happening, they're like, "Oh, I see a method of doing this." Or I see something that people really enjoy. And they may sometimes bring it back to the US. But, that's also really interesting, kind of creating in a way an exchange that says, "Hey, here's a bunch of brands that you may not know about." And these overseas brands actually might want to tap into them as well. Matthew: Precisely. And then I think you get into a whole digital marketing effort that the brand really at that point takes a strong hold on, which we even sometimes will help them with. And I think when you look at it as, what are you doing from a marketing perspective? Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram? And how are you taking it from that digital perspective? And a lot of the brands that we market are specially through the times that we've had now, just really focusing hugely on Ecommerce. And how to tap into Ecommerce in two ways, either domestic or international. Because that's the world we're living in at this time which is supposed to really push the brands that had not had a firm strategy in Ecommerce to get there even quicker. Stephanie: Do you see any successful marketing efforts that are going on, that are similar themes among brands where they've shifted their marketing to this effort or another effort? And you see traction happening that maybe wouldn't have happened before COVID? Matthew: I think just more of the adoption of digital marketing efforts and spend into more markets outside of the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK. I think the first thing is really getting that digital marketing effort through whether it be Google, whether it be Instagram, whether it be Facebook. I mean, that is the traditional trend that I see as highly adopted right now across the brands that we work with. Each of them do it very differently. That's for sure. But, all in a unique way that's unique to their brand, where they build a personalized approach to build that trust with the consumer to get them to return. Matthew: So, I think for me, the channels have been pretty consistent in the adoption, like the ones I just mentioned. And then I think it's more about how do I now start focusing on where to do this next? And that is traditionally what I spend a decent amount of time with our brands, just talking about what is your strategy? What's the next market that you're going to push money into, where you can get a return? And here are some that we see as focus markets for your industry, leveraging what we've seen globally across the vast portfolio brands that it is that we work with. Stephanie: Cool. So when thinking about some of the challenges with cross border shipping, I'm thinking about the high shipping rates and maybe local return options. And like you mentioned earlier, duties and taxes, how would you go about stack ranking these priorities for a new Ecommerce shop? And starting to think about this, what are the things that you just need to have as number one priority because if you miss that you're done, whereas the other ones can get figured out along the way? Matthew: Yeah. So for me, I think the biggest aspect is having a full end to end approach. I know we talked about it a bit earlier where the customers from a US perspective are not going to miss a single instance of the way that the customer needs to be communicated to, talk to. And even down to the element of shipping checked out with. But, I think when you look at the backends and prioritization of what's most important internationally, I'd probably put a duty and tax pricing strategy first. I think when you look at the overall elements and barriers that may differ between that of a domestic transaction and that have an international one, duty is not something that many brands are equipped to handle. Matthew: And I think duty is something that brands can most likely understand how to find a solution to calculate. But, then I think the question comes into, how do I calculate duty and tax into every single market throughout the world? But, then most importantly, how, and what do I do through being taxed to make sure that the consumer see it in a way that they will buy. And we mentioned Europe being a really key market for that. If you're in Germany and you want to buy a sweater, you go into your sweater store and you buy that sweater, the experience that you're going to receive is that sweater will be valued at a hundred euros. And you're going to have nothing more to pay outside of that a hundred euro, call it VAT inclusive experience. Matthew: So, if you now try to talk to that German consumer in a way where you're saying, "Hey, check out my website. And I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to break out duty for you. I'm going to break out tax and another line item for you." That consumer's not going to relate to it. So I think if I had to stack rank them all, even though I think pulling the full end to end is necessary to truly make it work from payments to currency, to communication, to customer satisfaction, all of those elements, even down through checkout and translation of checkout. And the ability to recognize city where there is a city, or recognized state where there is a state, or province where there is a province. These are all elements that should be pulled together. But, I would put the duty and price strategy first because I think it is the biggest barrier that brands struggle with. Stephanie: Cool. Yeah. That's great. It's always good to know where to start. But, agree on having an end to end solution. So this is a little bit of a higher level question. But, I know there's been obviously a lot of shakeups when it comes to logistics, like we mentioned early on. Is there any new ways that you hear brands or that you're advising brands to prepare for? If there's another pandemic, if there's something else that happens that maybe interrupts the logistics and supply chain and all that kind of stuff, do you hear anything behind the scenes of like, okay, going forward, we have this new kind of model or strategy to kind of future-proof us a bit more? Matthew: That's a good question. I would say through COVID, what it's taught me and where I spent a lot more, let's just say time conversing than I thought I would have with brands was building contingency plans, when I came to realize that a lot of portfolio brands out there heavily reliant on a single logistics fulfillment center to manage their DTC business. And I think that as COVID hit and volumes doubled because stores closed and then fulfillment centers' staff had to be cut in half, I think that posed for a huge logistics challenge that not many brands retailers or 3PL fulfillment centers were quick to handle. Basically double peak volume in a non peak period, completely unannounced. So I think when you bring that all together, I spent a lot of time with our global brands specifically, who really came to us and said, "Hey, we have some opportunity here. Meaning we've got product in many different markets throughout the world." Matthew: So, if in fact, my facility in New Jersey shutdown tomorrow, obviously Global-e controls the technology elements of it but, the fulfillment piece they still own. So can we point our website for every single transaction, not change a thing for the consumer so that they're not impacted. Let's start pulling that product out of Hong Kong. And the answer is yes. I mean, it's something that we could have easily done and we did do. And I've built more contingency plans than I ever thought I would have had to with our brands to support them should this have happened. But, as I landed my plane, I think the biggest kind of lesson learned here for me, if I'm sitting in on the brand side is to say, what is my contingency plan? Should something like this come up again. And do I have... Or can I turn inventory, or one in another market or another destination or location should my facility in New Jersey get shut down? Stephanie: Yeah, that's great. So are there any disruptions that you see coming maybe to Ecommerce after all this kind of settles down a bit, that you've built contingency plans around? Matthew: I think for me, the acceleration that's going to continue, that started the second COVID hit to continuing to let's just say accelerate as each one of these markets, typically that got hit hard. Six to eight weeks post that time, really, we saw the recovery. And it's almost like the far East started and then Europe happened and then the US was kind of the latest to the table, which was super interesting. But, I think for me, what I'm seeing a lot of now is I speak to all of our brands on a regular basis, is we're seeing a lot more brands now equip their business to be more digitally native. I think the old model of taking product and putting it in inventory, in market next to that consumer and having a very highly driven brick and mortar strategy, has changed. Matthew: And I think that the more personalized brands that are equipped to continue to accelerate their digital strategy, is either doubling down or it's accelerating. And I think that that is to me, the biggest disruptor that I see coming in this landscape, which is the digitally native brands that exist out there that are highly emotional and personalized to their consumer, are really thriving during these times. And I think that we're seeing a lot of the larger, more complex brands that are out there start to really build accelerated strategies to make sure that they keep up. Stephanie: Very cool. So, if I'm a newbie with, I'm building my new Ecommerce company and I'm starting to think about going international, where can I actually look to find out what's happening behind the scenes at some of these brands? Maybe to see how are they operating their logistics or what is their playbook? Is there anywhere or communities or anything like that, that I can learn from other brands or see the behind the scenes of how it's working? Matthew: Yeah. I think typically there's going to be, from an education perspective, we see a lot of brands adopting different cross-border publications, different cross-border strategies through a lot of the conferences that have now become digital and more I would say highly even access. It's in the past, these trade shows and all these things that used to really thrive on required a lot of time, a lot of dedication, a lot of effort, a lot of money to be able to access. Matthew: And I think now what I'm seeing with these all go virtual is you're starting to see a lot more of adoption into these channels which is a lot easier to access. And I think when brands typically come and they're looking in the enabled arena, they learn quite a bit. And I think that is one of the things every time we do talk to a brand it's the first thing that they ask us. How is our peer group performing today? And are you happy with our conversion? And what changes can I make to be able to improve? And I think that's just one of the biggest I'd say value adds from a data and an insight perspective that brands look for. Stephanie: That's great. Yeah. I really liked the idea behind the virtual events are leveling the playing field. So now everyone can get access for either cheaper or free and not have to travel. And that's a really good point and a great place to start. Matthew: Yeah. For sure. Stephanie: Before we move on to the lightning round, is there any topic that you really wanted me to touch on or cover that you were hoping I would bring up? Matthew: No. I think a very wide gamut of everything, which is great. No, I am fine. Stephanie: Okay, cool. Yeah. I do like to go in different areas of the conversation. Matthew: All good. Stephanie: Yup. The lightening round, which is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Matthew, are you ready to go? Matthew: I am as ready as I will be. Stephanie: Alright. What's up next on your reading list? Matthew: Poof! My reading list, I would have to say Peppa Pig is one of the next books because my daughter is begging me to read it to her. So I will be most likely reading that this evening with her. It's between either Peppa pig or Star Wars books. I'm trying to twist one way, I'm not going to say which way. Stephanie: Peppa Pig. Matthew: Exactly. Peppa's super popular right now. Stephanie: Oh, I know. Matthew: That is the next step on my reading list. I have to be very honest. Stephanie: That is probably mine too. I like it. Yup. My son is obsessed with that as well. Alright. What's up next on your Netflix queue? Matthew: Netflix queue? Stephanie: No kid stuff. Matthew: No kid's stuff. Right now, I would say Dexter has been recommended highly to me and seems to get a lot of good ratings. So I think that with COVID now in place, my wife and I will saddle in and watch. And begin to accelerate the number of views that it seems [inaudible 00:42:42]. Stephanie: That's cool. Stephanie: So, if you were to have a podcast, what would it be about and who was your first guest to be? Matthew: I think if I were to have a podcast, I would say my podcast will probably focus something around sustainability. I think that right now with everything that's happening in the world today, and when you look at just the impacts of COVID, and everything else that has happened in the world, I think that you're going to see a lot of brands really adopt sustainable activities and life in general. Even down to our arena, which is call it shipping and how to package materials and stuff. So I think when you look at it, that would be for sure my approach. Who would my first guest be? I think my first guest would probably be my mentor and my father. I would give him the opportunity to be the first guest on my show and at least jump in and be able to share that memory should that podcast take off. And I know that I could say that I started with a family member. Stephanie: Well, I like that. Yeah. We have been actually talking about starting a sustainability podcast. So now I have a perfect host. You're it. Matthew: You let me know. Stephanie: We'll call you up. Alright. One more. What is A, your favorite piece of tech or a new Ecommerce tool that makes you more efficient, or you're having success with? Matthew: What is the most? I would say right now for me there is a tool called Monday that we had used that has brought us a lot of efficiency in the overall arena of project management. So I think managing the level and the amounts of projects at a single time can be at times overwhelming. So within our project group it is a tool that we've adopted that I actually find very insightful because it really gives me a nicer view and a view and a clean view of the overall working structure of what we currently have to deploy and make sure that we continue to support each one of the brands in the queue, whether it be small, whether it be large. And get them out on time to hit their overall deadline to celebrate their Christmas. Stephanie: That is great. I will have to check that out. Well, Matthew, this has been an awesome conversation. We really did go all over the place. And I think our listeners will love it. Where can people find out more about you and Global-e? Matthew: So for me, I would say Global-e obviously hit our website, www.global-e.com. I think you'll learn a lot, right? I think a lot of the statistics, a lot of case studies, a lot of country market reports, a lot of different case studies and things that we've done is going to be there. You can engage us there. And obviously, we are happy to help any brand of any shape and size. So, if this becomes something that you'd love to engage us on, hit the website, submit your information, and we've got a team member in pretty much any part of the world that's going to be able to help you. This is an incredible thing to be part of at such a cool global brand that we are. Stephanie: Amazing. Cool. Well, thanks for effort. Thanks for listening everyone. And we will see you next time.  

As 2020 continues to throw curveballs left and right, the only thing we know for sure is that we have no idea what is coming next. That’s a tough pill to swallow, especially if you are a business owner trying to plan for the next quarter, or even the next week. Consumer behavior continues to shift in varying directions, and every industry in the world seems to be in a constant state of flux.  With so much volatility, what is an entrepreneur to do? Taylor Holiday has some ideas. Taylor is the Managing Partner of Common Thread Collective, an agency that helps eCommerce companies grow from zero to millions. Recently, the companies he works with have been forced to change the way they operate. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Taylor takes us through what it means to build an antifragile business, and how that mentality can lead to a thriving business despite what the market or current environment has in store. Because, as Taylor says, there’s no point in trying to predict what the future holds, and instead, founders should be creating many different models so you can prevail even during volatile times. So what does that mean for your Q4 strategy? How should you be preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? And what data should you really be looking at when developing a Facebook ad strategy? Find out all of that and more in this interview.   Main Takeaways: Never-Ending Qs for Q4: 2020 has been the year of uncertainty, and Q4 will be no different. Traditional planning for end of year events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday have to be approached with a new mindset, one that can adapt and pivot quickly. Companies need to put systems and plans in place so that they are prepared to take on any and all scenarios that might arise. Building Something That Works in Spite of You: Modeling and forecasting are tools that every business uses to help guide strategy, but neither are ever 100% accurate. Because humans are wrong more often than they are right, it is critical to set up systems that can survive not only when you’re right, but also when you’re wrong. That is the fundamental practice of being antifragile.  How The Past Predicts The Future: Drawing insights from historical ad campaigns is a double-edged sword.  When it comes to analyzing data, you can’t look too far back or too far forward. Yesterday’s ad data can help inform your decision for what to do tomorrow, but it can’t help you make a month or year-long ad strategy. What can be beneficial, however, is poking through the creative assets of campaigns from companies decades ago, pre-internet. Those are timeless sources of inspiration that can help you stand out from the uniform ad campaigns of today.    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 --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome to another episode of Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder of mission.org. Today, we have Taylor Holiday join the show, the Managing Partner of Common Thread Collective. Taylor, welcome. Taylor: Thank you so much for having me. I am excited to be here. Stephanie: Yeah, I'm really excited to have you here as well. I have followed your Twitter threads and I think we're going to have a lot to talk about today. Taylor: Okay. That's good. Now I feel accountable to everything I've ever said. So here we go. Let's see what I can dig up. Stephanie: Yep. I've looked at everything back to 2008, so we're going to cover all of it. Stephanie: I wanted to start with your background a little bit. I saw that you were in the world of sports. Taylor: Yeah, I did many [crosstalk 00:00:50]. Stephanie: And I wanted to hear how you evolved. Taylor: Another lifetime ago, I was a professional athlete. I played baseball in the Yankees organization for a couple of years, and that was my life for the first 25 years of my life, was committed to that pursuit. Then one day I got a call and they told me that they were no longer interested in my services and I had to figure out what on earth I was going to do from there. That sort of set me off onto the second phase of life. I'd like to think I'm breaking my life in this sort of 25 year chunks. I'm about halfway through the second quarter. Stephanie: That's awesome. What did you decide to do after that? Taylor: Well, I didn't really decide much. I was finishing up, so I got drafted when I was a junior in college, so I had some school to finish. I was sort of in the off season. I would go back to school and take them at a semester at a time. When I got released, I started trying to figure out, okay, well, what was I going to do? And I was a political science major with a minor in psychology, and I loved to argue, and so I figured, well, I'll try and be a lawyer. That was sort of what I was prepping to do. I was prepping to take the LSAT and head off to be a lawyer. Then I had a good friend that had been a childhood friend, and is still now my business partner named Josh, who was starting a company. In between class, he would let me come to their office, which was him and his brother in a garage, and print the orders off the website and take them to the post office, and that was my job part-time. Stephanie: Sweet. Taylor: One day, day one, there was one order, and then within a year and a half we had done 60 million in revenue and that became my business school, and how I got into entrepreneurship. Stephanie: Wow. That is crazy. That's really good growth, and I'm sure you learned a ton while working there. Taylor: It was wild. But it sort of met everything in me that being an athlete did. There was a team of people that I love, working towards a common goal, every day you showed up and had something to do intentionally to be better. I was single, I was young, I had nothing else to do. We just lived at the office, and it was everything. As the business was sort of growing, we got asked this question of like, "Well, this is a real company. What's your job going to be?" And they went, "Well, you're the young person. Why don't we figure out Ecommerce, social media, and you know some famous people, so how about influencer marketing?" And I was like, "Okay." Then I started Googling, how do you set up a Facebook page. And just had no idea what I was doing, but learned, got to play in a sandbox, where suddenly I developed a skill that mattered in the world. I got really lucky in that sense that they entrusted me with that responsibility. Stephanie: That's great. What kind of famous people do you know? Now I'm intrigued? Taylor: Oh, so many famous people. No, not really. I had played professional sports, so I had a lot of relationships with athletes and agents and people like that. Our product was built for that community, and so it was just literally Facebook messaging friends and being like, "Hey, can I send you this product? Would you wear it?" That snowballed really quickly. We ended up building an incredible athlete team with ... at one point, we had all four MVPs of the major sports. We were brokering deals with Kobe Bryant and China, Shaquille O'Neal was a business partner. It was wild. We got involved in so many things in that first business that we had no business doing as 26, 27 year old kids, and made every mistake you could possibly make, but just learned so much that has sort of been the foundation for what we get the chance to do today. Stephanie: That's great. Yeah, that's a really good story. So fast forward to today. Tell me a bit about Common Thread Collective. What is it and what is your role there? What's your day to day look like? Taylor: Yeah. Common Thread Collective is an Ecommerce growth agency. We help consumer product Ecom businesses grow from zero to $30 million. That's sort of the range that we focus on, and we do that through a combination of paid acquisition services, email, SMS retention and landing page development, and then creative for that whole customer journey. So, we really see our role as the guide for our clients along that growth trajectory that we've lived ourselves and are currently living alongside them with the brands that we own and operate. So, we sort of approach growth from an operator's mindset, which we think really sets us apart from a lot of marketing agencies. My job is to be the CEO of that organization. It is certainly a very different job than when I started where I was doing the work. I spend much more of my time now thinking about organizational structure and culture and hiring than I do about marketing. That has just sort of been my own personal evolution, which I'm learning to love. But yeah, that's what it does. Stephanie: That's cool. So how do you go about picking who you want to partner with, which companies you want to? Taylor: In terms of the clients? Stephanie: Yeah, clients. Taylor: Yeah, so our mission for Common Thread Collective and really for our whole ecosystem, and I think Andrew talked a little bit about this on your podcast, is to help entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. That is our heartbeat. It's what drives us because we ourselves have experienced the transformation that comes from being a successful entrepreneur, what it offers you in life. So, we love to partner specifically with founders and entrepreneurs who are in that range of business. Usually, when clients come to us, they're somewhere between two to 10 million in revenue, and we're helping them sort of reach that next phase of growth along the way. That connection to the person who is passionately committed to the product or idea that they have is what motivates us. It's what keeps us engaged, because the reality is, when you work at an agency, you're not going to love every product that you're working on. Taylor: You're not going to care as deeply as the founder about hair care and sports wear and fitness equipment and beauty products and vitamins. There's just no way, but what we learn is that, what really works is when we care about the people. That's when our people internally are the most inspired, that's when they wake up in the middle of the night and think about ideas for the product, is that when they fall in love with the humans on the other side of it. Stephanie: Yeah, that's great. I want to jump right into something I've been following. You were discussing a little bit about how brands should be approaching holiday season, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and how they should be thinking about their marketing and advertising efforts. I think it was on Twitter, maybe as an email thread, but I was hoping we could dive right into that, because we hadn't actually talked about that on the podcast so far, and I think it's a perfect time to kind of discuss how you think brands should be prepping for Black Friday and Cyber Monday and how it's different than in the past. Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. This is a crazy time, right? It's never been a more volatile moment in the history of Ecommerce, which is not necessarily the longest history in the world. I would put it right up there with every business season in our country's history, certainly in terms of the volatility of the moment. When you think about trying to forecast into an environment that is this volatile, there's huge error bars on any prediction that you're going to make as a business owner. If you think about some of the things that we're looking at, as we think about Q4, is retail going to be open? Are people going to be able to shop in stores? We have no idea? Is the USPS going to be able to handle the influx of demand on the infrastructure? We have no idea. Taylor: What is the social position of our country going to be after this election? We have no idea. As you think about that, what you have to sort of agree or accept is the idea that whatever you think is going to happen is likely going to be wrong. What that means is that, unlike years before, where we were in a more stable environment, you need to have plans that account for different possibilities. As you think about something like your Black Friday promotion, which in years past, maybe a very simple exercise of just going well, we're going to try and bundle some products and do a discount, you need to consider the possibility, well, what happens, what would our discount be if USPS doubled their rates? Would we still be able to offer and afford free shipping? Taylor: I would start to have multiple plans. The same is true for the tone of your messaging. If we come out of an incredibly hostile election on November 4th, and three weeks later we're in holiday season, and the country's significant unrest, what is the right message for your brand to have to sell products into that environment? Rather than trying to guess which one is going to be accurate, I would begin to have a multitude of plans for this moment in ways that we've never really had to consider that level of volatility before. That's one of the big things we're talking with our clients about, is this idea of how do you deal with the idea that you are most likely going to be wrong about whatever you think is going to happen in the future? Stephanie: Yeah, that's really good. I like the idea of making scenarios so you don't have to predict the future. How are you thinking about advertising? I think you were mentioning that you can actually prep in a way that you know it's going to be expensive to advertise during those times, and so how brands can actually start prepping early so maybe they're not being met with these really high costs. Taylor: Yeah. I would just contend that I don't actually know that it's going to be expensive. I think that's a theory that people have, is this idea that big retailers are going to be allocating a bunch of money into the platform and CPMs are going to be through the roof. But we have seen really dramatic things happen where like, last time when the pandemic got peaked in April, all of a sudden cell phone usage goes through the roof, the inventory allotment for ads goes really high, CPMs plummet. The idea that we know for sure, this is, again, sort of that idea of the contingency planning, I think is really hard. What that means, and I think what you're driving me towards is this idea that, how do I build revenue in a more predictable fashion when the ad environment could be incredibly volatile? Taylor: What I would say is that, when I think about forecasting, we described Ecommerce forecasting like a layer cake. The base layer, the foundation with the least variability is your existing customer set. You know that when you acquire a customer, they're going to produce future revenue for you as well as present revenue, and they do that really predictably. It's not subject to CPMs, it's not subject to the levels of volatility based on any sort of thing. So you can always start by my existing customer side is going to produce future revenue, and you can look at cohort specific LTV data and figure out exactly how much future revenue. That's the foundation of your forecast. Then the next layer is owned audiences. If I think about like organic SEO, my keyword rank of position two on keyword, CrossFit sports bra is going to produce for me a certain volume of traffic that will lead to revenue. Taylor: That's more predictable, even than advertising CPMs. The same thing with my remarketing traffic is going to be more predictable than my prospecting traffic. My email database that I've collected ahead of the moment that aren't yet customers, but they're people that I can speak to for free is subject to less volatility than those environments. The more that ahead of this Black Friday, Cyber Monday, you can develop owned audiences of communication that allow you to forecast more accurately your future revenue, the better position you're going to be in, and the less subject to that crazy volatility you're going to be. The end tactic there, out of that sort of ideology, is that right now you should be accumulating as many emails and YouTube subscribers and Instagram followers and website visitors that you possibly can to help you build a foundation for that future revenue in a way that's less volatile. Stephanie: Oh, I love that. Are there any specific examples of creative campaigns that you're working on with your brands right now, or that you know of? Taylor: Yeah. So, one of the big things that we love as a vehicle for this is quiz funnels. A lot of our brands are running these quiz funnels, and what I mean by that is you come to the website and there's like, hey, let me ask you some questions to help make a perfect product recommendation to you. And it's email gated. So, you're saying, hey, give us your email, and at the end of this, we'll send you a specific product recommendation. So, what that does, what we've been able to see is that, with many of these quiz funnels, you're able to prospect at virtually the same return as your general campaigns, but you're collecting emails at four to five to six X the rate. In those examples, what you're doing is you're almost able to match your present value, but you're banking a lot more future revenue off of all of those owned audience emails that you're capturing. Taylor: That's one example of the way that we think about this, of like, not just like the singularity of how much revenue I'm making now, but what additional assets are being accumulated to drive future value. Another example I would use, and this is something we talked a lot about last year, is that website traffic. So, when you go to do remarketing, which most of your revenue in the holiday period, specifically Black Friday Cyber Monday, is going to be driven out of your remarketing audiences. What that means is that website traffic today has a high future value. The more website traffic you can generate now, the better. Let's say you have two Facebook ad campaigns, and one has a 50 cent CPC, and one has a dollar CPC, but the ROAS is the same, I'm going to give preferential treatment in scale to the campaign with the lower CPC, even if the ROAS is the same or slightly less, because that traffic is going to yield future revenue in a way that's really important. Those kinds of thoughts around, what is the incremental value of the audience creation, is a really important consideration. Stephanie: Oh, I like that. How often are you checking in with those ... when you're starting to do that prospecting, in a way, early, how often are you checking back with them so you stay top of mind? Taylor: The window that I think about, so we have our general campaign set up, which is that we look at our time lag report, which in Google is basically the average window that a customer will make a purchase in. You can look at and see, like, what percentage of your customers make a purchase within 24 hours, within 48 hours? Usually, almost 80% of your are making a purchase within seven days. For the initial consideration, our primary remarketing funnels usually attempt to encapsulate the primary consideration phase, which is usually somewhere around seven to 10 days. But in terms of this strategy, what we're doing is we're building an audience that, ultimately, when it comes to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the widest Facebook audience you can look at is 180 days. Taylor: The second you get within six months, which just happened for us a couple of weeks ago, we got within that six month window of this. Now, you've got an audience that you're going to speak to again at Black Friday. I don't know that we have an intentional strategy to speak to them again at a 45 day window or a 90 day window. We don't. But I think that one, that's a good idea. I think that it might be worthwhile to just sort of warm them up again, but as long as they're within that 180 day window, I have the capacity to speak to them at Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Stephanie: Got it. That makes sense. So, what kind of mistakes do you see companies making when it comes to these growth strategies? Taylor: Oh man, that's a broad question. One of the primary ones is what we call the single account ROAS problem, which is this idea that most people are running their ad accounts on the idea that every purchase is the same just based on the cost to acquire the customer. Let's say I have a target of a two to one ROAS, which basically means that I'm paying 50% of the purchase price in acquisition. Well, the reality is that not all customers are equal to you, and not all product sales net you the same amount of dollars in your pocket. One of the things that we work really hard to get really clear with our clients on is the value of customers by different cohorts, so by first product purchases an example. If you think about every skew that you have in your store, every skew has a different margin and has a different return rate and has a different shipping cost. Taylor: Each of these three variables mean that, even at a fixed ROAS, so if you applied a two to one ROAS across every skew that you have, the net dollars in your pocket is different for every skew. Really understanding which products net you the most dollars as a business owner is a critical data element that I do not see enough people consider, and they don't design their ad accounts to reflect the variable value of the product. Stephanie: That's a good one. I haven't heard anyone talk about that as a mistake yet, so that must mean a lot of companies are making it. Taylor: Yeah. It's because it's hard. The information is hard to access, and it's hard to get granular visibility too. It's a much simpler decision-making mechanism to go, "Well, my blended cogs are 30%, and so if I get a two to one I'm making 20% generally across my business." That's a much easier consideration to make than to try and actually break it down by individual skew and get really specific on the decisions. Stephanie: Yep. Are there any best practices when it comes to developing spreadsheets or dashboards or something that can give you easy access to that information that you've seen your brands or yourself develop? Taylor: Yeah. We've built a tool to do this, to calculate cohort specific LTV data, to ultimately give us a view that we care a lot about, which is your 60 day LTV by specific cohorts. The reason we look at that time window is because most early stage Ecommerce businesses can't really wait much longer than 60 days to really realize the value. They just don't have the cash position to be able to wait longer than that, nor do I think it's really wise to wait longer than that. We've built something internally to do it, so I wish I could say like, hey, just go copy this spreadsheet and set it up, but it is difficult information to access, but you can do it. You can build cohort models for your business, but beyond just the LTV, the easiest thing to do is to really deeply understand that you did economics by every skew that you have. Taylor: What I would do to start is I would export every product that you have, I would mark the MSRP, so the retail sales price. Then next to that, I would put the cost to you as a business. Then I would put the return rate of the product, and then I would put the shipping cost of the product, and then I would calculate the net value of every skew. Just being aware of that for your merchandise set, like for the entirety of your product catalog will give you the kind of information that you need to then think more specifically about your ad account. Stephanie: That's great. To shift a bit into, we were just talking about how to grow a company, then track metrics and all that. I know you also have just been recently talking about an anti-fragile Ecommerce playbook. I was hoping you could kind of detail what that means, how are you setting up the anti-fragile Ecommerce companies, and what does that playbook look like? Taylor: Yeah. This goes back to this idea that we are bad at predicting the future. When I think about how I want to build a business, I want to build a business that thrives when I'm wrong. I actually want to accept the fact that I am not going to be able to determine the future, and I want to set up the business to be able to survive in almost any environment. That's sort of the idea of anti-fragile, is not just that I'm resistant to negative, but actually the negatives can be in an environment in which I succeed. The way in which I think that you're afforded the opportunity to do that is by having a specific set of attributes related to your business that allow you to sort of thrive in variability. Some of those are ... now you're going to make me try and quote my exact tweet to see if I can remember all of them, but one of them is high margin, right? Taylor: This is seemingly obvious, but this idea, the more room for error that you have to still be profitable, the more that the variability on your CAC, as an example, still does it affect you, and it allows you to potentially win when others can't. So, high margin is one. Another is, and this is a really underrated one, is great payment terms with your manufacturing supplier. One of the biggest things that destroys cashflow for Ecommerce businesses is obligation to front the cash for inventory. One of the best skills I think an entrepreneur can have is relational development and negotiation skills with their supplier to develop trust, to get to net 30 terms on delivery, where you're actually realizing the revenue of your product before you have to pay for it. That allows your cash conversion cycle to speed up tremendously in a way that's super, super helpful. Another one [crosstalk 00:21:19]. Stephanie: When I saw that, I'm like, that's huge. We have the same thing in media. People will start coming and be like, "Oh, we have net 60 or net 90 payment terms." You just can't take no for an answer sometimes, and just keep trying to build up the relationship and be like, "We really can't do that." Oftentimes, you'll be able to get down to net 30, just like you're mentioning here. So I thought that one was a really good point. Sorry, keep going. Taylor: Yeah, that's exactly right. You just got to think about your cash conversion cycle and how you're going to not be in a position where you have to sort or seek outside capitalization to fund when you're winning. That happens in Ecom because of the cost of inventory upfront, which makes it a complex cash management business. Another one, and again, these seem obvious, but I think we don't consider them enough is low OPEX as a percentage of your revenue. We have this principle, we call the four quarter accounting principle, which gives you sort of a directional guide to where you want your revenue to go. So, if you think about your top line revenues of business, we break it into four quarters. The idea is, if you want 25% profit, then your costs need to exist in these quadrants. Taylor: You need to have 25% CAC, so a four to one, what we would call marketing efficiency rating, so total revenue divided by total sales is 25%. 25% cost of delivery, which is basically the cost of the product from wherever you're manufacturing it all the way to the customer. Then 25% of OPEX, and that's your payroll, your rent and all of those things. If you look at your P&L and you look at it relative to each of those four quarters, you can figure out where your profit gets eaten up and where you need to go make improvements. So, the lower your OPEX is, so you can do this by not having a really expensive office by controlling your overhead in an employee count in smart ways. Really, just looking at how do I run this business as clean as necessary or as possible in order to give myself opportunity again, because there's going to be variability in my other places. Taylor: The shipping thing is a good example, where it's like, maybe my cost of delivery is normally 23%, but because of the shipping thing, maybe it's going to go to 27% of my revenue. If that destroys your profit, because your OPEX is too high, then it gives you a lack of options. That's a really important one to consider. Gosh, what else did I say in there? Stephanie: You also said diverse traffic mix, which I like. Taylor: Okay. Yeah, so this goes back to the point that we're talking about. Just like an investment portfolio, if you're over-indexed on any single channel, if that channel deteriorates in value, your business is in real trouble, but if you have a diverse traffic sourcing, and I think, so the question is, what's a diverse traffic sourcing? A good baseline metric is 50% paid, 50% organic. You're going to be able to survive volatility in any one of those channels, because you have a good amount of traffic from other sources. All of these things, make it so that when the inevitable problem strikes, your business is set up for it. Taylor: I think that we under consider how important it is to get into these positions of strong foundations of anti-fragility before we pursue further growth. Especially in this crazy environment where we're in now, where basically every forecast that I see every business make is wrong. The question is, what do you do? A lot of people want to try and think about like, well, how do I forecast better? I just go like, I think that's a fool's errand. I think attempting to predict the future, there are just too many inputs to do it well. So, instead, how do you build a business that when you're wrong, you still win? Stephanie: Yep. Yeah, I love that. I think it's such a bad mindset to think that like, you have to be perfect. I think that that's how companies do it. Even when I worked at other finance groups within companies, we were usually not right, which is why we did scenarios because you usually are wrong. Taylor: Well, that's exactly it. The quote that I always come back to is that, all models are wrong, some are useful. They're useful in their ability to understand where you're importantly wrong. When you have a detailed model, let's say I have a prediction that shows me what I'm expecting my traffic to be by every channel next month. Okay, so for direct organic search paid, search paid social, I have a prediction. Well, the reason that model is so important is not because it's going to be right, but because it allows me, as I'm actualizing the data, to understand where I am importantly wrong. As the data's coming in, I can start to see, Ooh, I'm missing my prediction in email by a lot, and it allows you to then think about strategies to go and solve that problem, where if you don't have that model, if you don't have that prediction, it's really hard to determine where the problem comes from. Stephanie: Yep, exactly. It's like the pandemic too, who would have predicted that? It's straight out of Missing, Taleb's book. That's a black swan event, you never would have predicted it, so why try? Just different scenarios, and a worst case scenario like now. Taylor: It seems a lot like I'm reading Antifragile as I'm thinking about the application of Ecommerce. It's like, well, how do you think about a business like that? What I see is I see frustration from our entrepreneur partners about their forecast being wrong, and they get really upset about it. I get it. It's really hard. You have to make decisions about this. So, it is an important exercise and you want to reduce the margin of error as much as possible going forward, but you have to begin to expect that. That's one of the things I think about being a more seasoned entrepreneur who have seen thousands and thousands of forecasts be wrong is I'm no longer surprised when they are. So, it just gives me a different frame of the problem. Stephanie: Yup. When people are trying to think of those black swan events or scenarios, how can someone go about building a scenario if they don't even really know how to anticipate it? They don't even know what to prepare for. Taylor: I like the idea of, rather than trying to predict the future, you should extrapolate the present. That's the Nassim Taleb idea, which is that, where are you now, and where do you believe you will be in the next month based on the present? If you extrapolate the present versus predict the future, then what it allows you to do is to think about, okay, my organic search is currently at 20,000 visits a month, and it has grown by 5% a month. If that continues, I'll be at 21,000 visitors next month. You put that into place, and then as you actualize it in real time, then you can understand what's happening. What you need to understand is that, the further out you go, the wider the margin of error becomes. Predicting tomorrow is a lot easier than predicting a week from now, which is a lot easier than predicting a year from now, because the number of inputs and variables just increase as you move out. Taylor: That idea of constantly re-forecasting and constantly actualizing your prediction and making adjustments, that's the skill, that's the exercise to continually get in the habit of doing and understanding where you were wrong. Then, doing your best to understand why, I think sorting out causality can often be sort of this thing that we chase and we make assumptions around. I think it's sometimes useful, but more importantly, it allows you to make adjustments in your next forecast, and then do it again and then do it again and then do it again. But again, no matter how many times you do it, you're always going to be wrong, and that wrongness is the thing that I think is really informative, and it allows you to ask the question, how do I make sure I'm okay when I'm wrong? That becomes the important thing to then go build. Stephanie: Yup. I love that. Yeah, it reminds me back in my Fannie Mae days, I used to do with a housing forecast, and we would literally be forecasting for like the next month, and we would have data almost halfway through that month and we would still be wrong. I think it boggled my mind how we'd be wrong, but even thinking of that, I'm like, there's just no way, once you get past a certain point, you just have to keep re forecasting, even if you're halfway through the month sometimes again. Taylor: This is such an important understanding about how we as humans process information. My favorite example is something I call the roulette run problem, where if you've ever been to Vegas, there is a reason that at the roulette table, they display all of the recent numbers for you. The reason is, is because what your brain does, when you see a bunch of reds in a row is you go, uh, well, the next one has to be black. And you build this relationship between past data and future data that is not real. We do this all the time with information as humans. We're just really bad at computating things in a statistically rigorous way about the future. This is also why humans are actually really bad media buyers, and why we try and train all of our internal media buyers to make as few of decisions as possible inside of the ad account. Taylor: Because if you think about what most people are doing inside of a Facebook ad account, is they're loading up a dashboard. They're looking at past data. So, they're looking at historical data and making inferences about the future without using a computer, without using a calculator, without so much as writing down chicken scratch. They're trying to make predictive decisions about how things like CTR and CPC and ROAS are going to relate to the future, and they're almost always wrong in those decisions. This is just like, it's really important to understand what the biases are that affect us as humans in our decision-making. Stephanie: That's great. Talk a little bit more about humans being bad media buyers, how are you all going about buying media? What are some best practices? Other than just saying like, "Okay, just rely on the platform, let it do its job." What kind of things are you guys trying out and doing and seeing success with right now? Taylor: What I'm going to push back on is that language that you use, I think diminishes the right idea, which is people love to say like, "Oh, well, yeah, just let the algorithm do it." They say that in a way that reflects that that's the simplistic decision. What I'll tell you is it's not. It actually takes incredible discipline to be thoughtful about allowing the computer to do what the computer does best and focus on what you do best. With our media buyers, their job, if you think about any machine learning tool, the key to a great machine learning tool is the inputs. Machine learning tool is just taking a set of inputs and understanding them to generate future outputs. Well, the key to being a great media buyer is you set a good structure of inputs. I'll give you an example. Taylor: Let's go back to this idea of different product values and different average order values by purchase types. If you were to export your last 30 days of orders and you were to build a scatter plot, where across every day, every dot was an order by AOV, you would have a variation of different order values. If you think about one of the most common mistakes I see in an ad account is you have a campaign that's bidding for lowest cost, which is the conversion objective, where you're basically saying to Facebook, give me the lowest CPA that you can inside of this ad set. Then in that ad set, what they will do is they will sell a bunch of different products with different prices. Let's imagine I have five different skews. I'm a jewelry brand, and they range in price from $50 to $500. Well, what product is Facebook going to favor if the structural setup is lowest cost and you give it those options? Stephanie: Yeah, the cheapest one. Taylor: So, you're building a structure where the computer output is going to be focused on the skew that likely doesn't generate you the best net outcome. That is a tactical media buying error that has to do with poor structural setup and understanding of the tool, that has nothing to do with the decision making of which ad you should allocate the budget to. That's the kind of thing we teach our people to think about over and over and over again is, am I setting up the right structure for the output that I want? Stephanie: That makes sense. You would instead maybe have like similar price products so they can all actually see the performance, instead of teaching the algorithm to, of course, always showcase the cheapest one because you don't have a budget? Taylor: That's right. Or I'm going to bid for highest value instead of lowest cost. Facebook has different conversion objectives I can set up relative to the thing that I want. The question is, and we play this game at our company every Friday morning called [inaudible 00:33:36], where I pull up an ad account and we go through campaigns and I make the media buyers tell me, what are you intending to accomplish with this campaign? What were you trying to do? Then let's discuss of whether the structural setup and inputs were right for that outcome. Did you design the system accurately to generate the thing that you want? Because Facebook's tool is incredibly good at getting you what you want, but over and over and over again, I see people design systems that will never, ever generate the outcome they want. So they're setting up games where the rules mean they will never win. Stephanie: Yup. That's really good lessons. Any other things that you've seen, like similar themes of ad buying, where you were like, I've seen quite a few people do it this way and it's wrong. Anything else that has come on your radar? Taylor: Yeah. The big other thing is just the relationship of budget to number of variables. One of the things, again, this all comes back to some basic statistical ideas, where if you think about ... have you ever seen a graph of how long it takes to normalize the data for flipping a coin? Like how many coin flips it takes before you basically get to 50% outcomes? Have you ever seen a graph that looks like that? What it is, is that like, when it's a two sided coin, the amount of flips that it takes to normalize the data, so in other words, the time at which it will reach the predicted outcome of 50%, it's somewhere, usually in the range, by the time you get to 100 flips, it's almost always going to be at 50%. Now, if you take a six sided die, okay, do you think it takes more or less rolls to get there? Taylor: It takes substantially more, because there's more possible outcomes, so the amount of time that it takes for the data to normalize is a lot more rolls than if there's only two possible outcomes. Taylor: So the same is true of the way that you build a campaign. The more end nodes in your structure, so think of an end node as an ad set or a campaign to an ad set to an ad. The number of variables in your campaign is going to determine the amount of budget that is required to get to statistical significance, to get to accurate outcomes. The other big mistake I see people make is they build these campaigns with all these end nodes, all of these ad sets, all of these ads and a very tiny budget. You might as well check back in three years and then you'll actually get a definitive result. What they do is they build campaigns like that, and then they make decisions on insufficient data. What that is, is it's basically looking at four flips of a coin and then saying, "Oh, it's 70, 30 heads. The truth here must be this coin yield 70% heads." Taylor: Instead, you have to build structures that allow you to get to accurate information quickly by having an appropriate amount of budget against the number of nodes in your test, if that makes. Stephanie: Yeah, that makes complete sense. Is there any ratio where you're like, for every 10 ads, you need $1,000, or is there any ranges like that? Taylor: Facebook gives you this information. They tell you that they want 50 conversions per ad set per week. That's what they need to get you out of the learning phase. There's a lot of people that are these Facebook truthers, that think like Facebook has all these ulterior motives to attempt to get you to spend money. I get it. They are rationally self-interested, but your success is actually in their interest. So, they will give you directional understanding of how to use their tool best. So, part of what they tell you is that they designed this thing called the learning phase, which is basically their way of declaring that the data that you're seeing is not trustworthy yet. When you are still learning, you should not act on this data because it's not actually predictive of the future. Taylor: But then when you get out of learning phase, now you're in an actual set of outcomes that are more predictive, they're more accurate, they're more deep, they're more true about the set of inputs that are there. So, the way to get out of that is this idea of ensuring that, based on your budget and based on your target CPA, you can get to 50 conversions per week per ad set. Because campaigns use a daily budget, if you take 50 and you divide it by seven, the formula that we give people is 7.14, which is just 50 divided by seven, so for your daily budget. 7.14 times your target CPA. Again, that's the payment that you want for the objective times the number of ad sets in the campaign, that needs to be your daily budget in order to get through optimization as fast as possible. Stephanie: Ooh, that's good. I'm writing down the formula now, so we can put it in our show notes. Taylor: Yup. Stephanie: Okay, cool. Awesome. That's really good tips around Facebook ads. I agree about the, like when you were mentioning the learning phase, we have our own ad network, and it's just the same thing. Our growth team's always like, "Hey, we need about $1,000 just to learn and then we'll let you know what the cost per click is." It's not just Facebook, it's other platforms as well. Taylor: That's right. People get frustrated by that because it's a media buyer, especially if you're a company that's charging on a percentage of ad spend, it's really hard for that to feel like anything, but a self serving piece of information. But the reality is, it just goes back to an understanding of how data happens. It's like, again, if you wanted me to tell you the results of flipping a coin, give me a hundred flips, not five, and it's the same thing. That's the understanding that we need to get to about how you get to statistical significance. Stephanie: Yep. So, are there any surprising campaigns that your team has initiated or certain kinds of ads that you were like, "That's not going to work", and they actually performed well? Taylor: Oh man, all the time. I'm so horrible at predicting what will work well, creatively in particular. Man, anything that I think is like a really interesting format right now. Stephanie: I feel like the formats right now are ... they have to be kind of different. There's a lot happening with the ad platforms because of brands pulling back and other brands dipping in on those ad platforms, but also just with the styles of ads that are going out. With the whole world, it just seems like things are different. So, I'm wondering how you guys are approaching that. Taylor: Yeah. Different is a good thing. The hardest thing is actually to avoid ruts. Because there's this horrible habit that we have in the media buying world. I'll lump us into this. We fall guilty to it too, which is the way that you generate ad creative is you go to Facebook ad library, you look up your favorite brand and you copy the styling of their ads, because you're making an assumption that they're working. But I'm a big believer in sort of the purple cow principle from Seth Godin, which is this idea that, the value of an ad deteriorates in repetition of its use. Every time that an ad goes out into the world and every time it's replicated, it becomes less valuable. That same thing happens with ad formats. We've seen it with influencer ads and UGC and the Mashable style, and these formats that have become really popular, eventually their impact is reduced as people encounter them. Taylor: I think that the key thing, and this is the biggest challenge inside of an organization like ours, is how do you produce a system that constantly generates novel ideas? That's what I would think a lot about. Again, I know this isn't the simple answer, where I can say to you, just use an ID story squared, whatever format, but I would be lying to you if I said that. Instead, I would really take space to challenge yourself to think like, one think a lot about the beginning of the ad. I know this is cliche, but it's just so true, is that video average watch times on Facebook are like four seconds for great ads. You just don't have as much time to say the thing that you're intending to say. It's sort of the David Ogilvy quote, "If you're selling a fire extinguisher, lead with the fire." That is just fundamentally true. Taylor: I would think about that as a core principle, but beyond that, you've got to break the feed. You've got to be novel, and you've got to figure out a way to differentiate yourself. People are scrolling a mile a day on their phone. If you plan to stop them and break them, then you've got to figure out a way to be compelling right off the bat, and a great metric for tracking this, so we have this principle that we sort of developed off of AIDA, which is a sort of legendary advertising hierarchy of effects model, and we've sort of applied modern metrics to it. So, if you think about the first one, the most important one before ... so with the hierarchy of effects model, they happen in sequence. The second one can't happen until the first one happens. I think this is really true of Facebook ads, which is you don't get a chance to communicate your message until you stop them and capture their attention. Taylor: A metric we focus on a ton is three second views divided by impressions. In other words, what percentage of your served ad impressions result in a three-second consumption? You want to see that number get close to a north of 40%. Otherwise, you are paying for a lot of people to scroll past your ad. Stephanie: Yep. I like that. I like having specific metrics set up for the AIDA format, which for anyone who's like, "What's AIDA?" Attention, interest, desire, action retailers. Taylor: That's right. That's exactly right. We assign a metric to each of those variables, so attention is this three-second views divided by impressions. Interest is video average watch time. Desire is outbound CTR. Then action is ultimately CPA or ROAS or whatever you use there. But the important thing again, with these models, is to think about them happening, they have to happen in sequence. What that does, what I love about using that as a feedback loop for our creatives is that the worst feedback that you can give to a designer or a creative is your ad's not working. That is so not helpful, because what do you do with feedback that says it's not working? What you can do is if, instead of thinking about the ad as a single unit, I think about it as component parts. If I say to them, "Hey, your three-second view to impression ratio is really low." Taylor: Well, now I can think about what's happening at the beginning of the ad. Or if I say, "Hey, everybody's dropping off at four seconds." Now, I can think about what's happening at that point in the ad. So, you can start to now deconstruct the actual ad into pieces that allows a creative to actually take it and iterate in ways that are productive. Stephanie: Yeah, I love that. It seems it could get a bit overwhelming if you have tons of ads running, like starting to just try and dissect, what's happening at the four second mark, or what's happening when it should be the D in AIDA? How are you thinking about, if the company has like a large amount of ads that they're testing? Taylor: This is a great question, because this is the number one marketer's dilemma, is that, what do I do next? There's a thousand million gazillion things to do. The answer is you sequence by volume of opportunities. I'm going to just start with the ads that are running in my campaign with the highest spend, and I'm going to iterate on those first because that's my area of highest potential impact. Then I'm going to sequence the rate at which I engage with my ad creative relative to their potential impact. That's a really important thing to think about is that, the sequence by which you decide to do things has opportunity cost to it. So, you have to make sure that you are going after the areas of highest impact relentlessly first. Stephanie: I love that. Yeah, really a good way to think about it. How are you thinking about maybe ... oftentimes, history repeats itself, how are you thinking about looking at historical ad styles or going back to direct mail, which a lot of people are doing right now since everyone's at home? How are you thinking about viewing history to maybe impact present day advertising methods or growth strategies for your brands? Taylor: Yeah. We have this course that we teach to all of our designers called advertising philosophy. The idea is to do that exact thing, which is to understand the fundamentals of advertising that are always true. So, we start with things like behavioral psychology. We read The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton, which talks about different human biases, to help them understand things that are just true of people, period. Then from there, we sort of begin to allocate that against the medium. We read a little bit on advertising and the history of advertising the change, the history of advertising, which are all just chockfull of amazing adding examples that are primarily prints from a legacy of magazine print ads, but they're so much in those print ads. If you think about how hard it was to actually create impact with a print ad, like someone had to open a magazine, they had to see the ad, then they'd to physically go somewhere to take action. It was way harder to be an advertiser there. Taylor: So, the copy had to be so strong and the visuals had to be compelling. There's so much to be learned from a lot of those principles that I think we underestimate the value of the art and history of advertising before we worry about applying it to the modern medium. So, we teach that to all of our people, because one, we want them to fall in love with advertising, because we think it's an incredible art form. A lot of times, for creatives, advertising is sort of seen as the thing that you do when you fail at being a real creative. We just don't believe that. We believe that it is like a true, true art form that reaches millions and millions of people, and if you can learn to really love it and to love the way in which you can impact human behavior with your communication, it can unlock like inspiration for you. That's a long winded way of answering, and it's not just as simple as direct mail, but you've probably realized by now my answers are rarely simple. Stephanie: No, I love them all. Every time I'm Like, ooh, that's a good quote. We should pull that one, because yeah, that's a really good point. Even thinking about when we're generating ads for Mission, it takes so much brain power to think about like, what's good copy, what kind of images should we use? What is someone going to remark about? It's a process. It's harder than even building out a podcast sometimes. So, I can [crosstalk 00:47:18]. Taylor: Yeah, as a simple hack, because I think these things are cyclical. If you are really creatively stalled and you're looking for inspiration, I would really encourage you not to use Facebook ad library as a mechanism for copying. Go look at one of these books, they're full of ads, and literally copy an ad from 1960, and think about the language, the imagery, and literally replicate it in the modern day. It will be more impactful than copying somebody's ad from Facebook ad library. That is a much better source of really potentially impactful ad creative than is the stuff that you're going to see from basically every brand on the internet. Stephanie: Yeah. That's really great. Are there any brands that you're watching that are actually always head of someone, where you're like, these brands all have the same ads, but this particular one is always kind of ahead of the game? Taylor: Yeah. I put out the other day, like one of the things I've gotten shamelessly relentless about is when I see something amazing, I go try and figure out who did it and try and hire them. So, TRUFF, the hot sauce company, their ad creative is as good as anybody's I've seen in the last few months. I put out on Twitter the other day, like I was citing that as an example. I just said, whoever did this, if you reach out to me, I'll double your salary to come work for me right now. Taylor: I think what they've done is really, really fascinating, clever ways of taking a sort of historically boring product in hot sauce and making it super compelling. One of the things, a lot of creatives feel constrained by the product attributes, like our initial entry point in ad creative all the time is like the product features. We just have this phrase that we tell our creatives all the time, which is you live in an infinite creative universe. You can say and do anything and make it relevant to this product. One of my favorite examples of this is there's this legendary ad from Gillette razors. It's a picture of an egg in a frying pan, and the headline is, this is an ad about razorblades. Taylor: The copy just talks about how the nonstick material in the pan is the same thing that they use to build the razors so it doesn't grab your face when it goes by. It's just brilliant. But the idea is like, it's a picture of an egg in a frying pan. It didn't come with the asset library from the client when they sent it over. But if you open yourself up to the possibility of telling stories broader than just the library of photos you receive from the client, and you really embrace this idea of an infinite creative universe, you can do anything. I think that's when you get to the really interesting stuff. Stephanie: Oh, that's great. I love that. Yeah, one of the ads that a friend's company is running, it's for socks, but it's literally a piece of corn growing out of two different. Something like very random, not relevant and it's their best performing ad. Taylor: That is the thing. It's like random. Again, you've got to think about somebody who is scrolling endlessly on their phone, and what is going to stop them Taylor: It's just about understanding, and this is the thing. You've got to be an internet user. In the same way, like everyone thinks about platforms like Reddit is this really specific sub-culture where you'd have this specific language. I saw a hilarious ad for a Reddit out the other day that understood this really well. It was Fresh Box, or one of the meal delivery services. The ad was basically like, "Hey, Reddit, my boss asked me to run an ad on Reddit, so I went ahead and took care of it for you." It's basically this meme app that Reddit users use, which is a robot blowing up the brand. It was basically the satirical way of understanding the medium so clearly, that they mock themselves in a way that made them endeared and loved by the Reddit users. That sort of ability to understand the place and the environment in which people are receiving your content is a real skill. Stephanie: Yeah. No, that's a really good example. I know we only have a couple minutes left, so I did want to ask a higher level Ecommerce question because from the interview, I just know you're so excited about predicting the future and you just feel very confident about it. Taylor: Do it. Stephanie: I wanted to hear, what kind of trends or patterns or disruptions are you most excited about right now in Ecommerce, or do you see coming down the pike? Taylor: Let's see. One of the things that I like, I'm sort of betting on for the future, is the global Ecommerce market. I think about the ... when anytime I see a marketplace where there is this pent up demand, that the infrastructure doesn't yet support, but it's finding a way to happen even before the infrastructure exists, what that means is that, by the time the infrastructure catches up, you're going to have a massive moment of arbitrage. Think of it like a wave that builds up that suddenly then released by some sort of technological innovation, and that's where there's periods of arbitrage before everybody else shows up and the competition's there. I think about a market like India, where you have this massive, massive market that is coming online really, really fast, and you have this problem, which is a payments infrastructure. Taylor: Nobody there has credit cards. Almost everything is cash on delivery, and none of the systems yet support the infrastructure for that delivery and payments processing. But yet, there's massive engagement from the user base. The second that gets solved, it's going to be a huge opportunity. This is true in a ton of other countries, where you have ad inventory costs that are extremely low, you have demand that's really high and you just don't have the systems that need it yet. That's a thing I'm watching and following really closely, as we already have clients that are seeing 30, 40, in some cases, 50% of their spend in international markets, where there's tons of friction in fulfilling the product. The second that, that all goes away, we are on the precipice of a truly global marketplace in a way that we haven't even begun to process. It's going to be really, really cool. Stephanie: Ooh, that is a very good answer. What other parts, or what other places in the globe are you looking at right now? India of course, is a big one next million users, everyone's focused there, but what other smaller markets are you looking at right now that you see a big opportunity, or your brands [crosstalk 00:56:20]? Taylor: Places where like, so the United Arab Emirates is anytime you ... especially, if you have any sort of luxury product, there's massive opportunity there. There's highly efficient opportunity. It's pretty volume constrained. It's a small country. Super interesting. I think Southeast Asia is super, super interesting to me. Nigeria, even from a talent standpoint in the Ecommerce world, that's a giant country. I think sometimes, because we have these geographically warped maps because of our Western centric view, we don't realize how big some of these countries are. Those are a few, Nigeria, Southeast Asia and India from a hiring standpoint, from a potential market opportunity standpoint are places that we're following really closely. Stephanie: And is good spots to watch. All right, so we have a few minutes left. I want to hop into a quick lightning round brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Taylor? Taylor: Ready, fire. Stephanie: All right. What's next on your reading list? Taylor: What is next? I'm going to pull up audible right now. Do I have a countdown on my clock? Shoot. Where's my reading app? Audible. Someone just sent me a book. Oh, I know what it ... Here, let me take it. I'm failing at the time challenge, but [crosstalk 00:57:36]. Stephanie: That's okay. Thankfully, we can edit this podcast and make it [crosstalk 00:57:39]. Taylor: Yeah, a book called Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson. It's all about sort of racial history in the United States and some of the things that have led to our own version of a caste system. This is a big sort of initiative for me personally, in my own learning and development right now, is sort of redesigning my own sense of history, as well as we've got a bunch of big diversity inclusion initiatives inside of CTC right now. So, I'm trying to do the work of my own education, and that's a book that was just recommended to me. Stephanie: That sounds good. I will have to check that out as well. What's up next on your Netflix queue? Taylor: Man, Netflix is so dead right now. It's one of the biggest drawbacks of COVID era. We just finished Money Heist, which is awesome, or Heist, maybe it's just called, which is dub from a Spanish show. So good. But I'm watching a show on Amazon right now called Upload, which is about this idea that like in the future, they've invented a way that when you die, they upload your consciousness into this digital world and you can interact with the present world. It's sort of a comedy, but it's ... I like those sort of futurist dystopian content. Stephanie: That's interesting. If you were to create a podcast, what would it be about? It can't be Ecommerce, and who would your first guest be? Taylor: Right now it'd be about trading cards. I've become obsessed with baseball cards in the last few months. My guest would be God to the name of Evan Vandenberg, who's launching this company that I might potentially be an investor in called [CollectX 00:59:07], which is basically, think of it as Robinhood meets DraftKings, but it's basically the digitization and tokenization of physical cards into a market dynamic that I'm sort of obsessed with. That's a weird nerdy answer. I'm sorry. Stephanie: I know nothing about trading cards, but that sounds very intriguing. All right, and the last one, what favorite piece of tech or an Ecommerce tool are you trying out right now that is either making you more efficient or you're having a lot of success with? Taylor: It's one that we're building, which is our growth data tool, which is just all around cohort specific LTV data. I have this super fun position of being able to hire a rad developer and a rad product manager and just build something that I want.that is just so fun. To have ideas in your head and then for them to be able to manifest themselves into the world, it's magic. That's my real answer, but I'm an obsessive Evernote user. I believe a lot in creating an external hard-drive for your brain as a really, really powerful tool. I think we were already sort of bionic people more than we realize, and expanding your mental capacity by taking great notes, I think is a serious life hack. Stephanie: Yeah. I completely agree there. All right. Well, this has been an awesome interview, so many good insights and tips and things that people can actually implement, which I love interviews like that. Where can people find out more about Common Thread Collective and yourself? Taylor: So, commonthreadco.com is our website. Then, I would say follow me, Taylor Holiday on Twitter. Stephanie: You are a good Twitter follow. Yes. All right, thanks Taylor. Taylor: Awesome.

Without question, the last several months have accelerated ecommerce adoption and drastically changed consumer behavior. The entire sales lifecycle from finding a prospect to closing the deal has been turned upside down. Now two key obstacles lie in the path of ecommerce leaders… The first is the more obvious, more discussed problem: How do you operationally and technically need to change to meet your customers' evolving needs?  The second key obstacle is not as often addressed, but is equally as important: How do you then communicate to your customers that even in these changing times, you are equipped and ready to meet their new needs?  The binding and laminating business doesn’t sound like it would be ripe with insights into answers to both of these questions, but Jeff McRitchie, the VP of eCommerce at Spiral, is here to prove that assumption wrong.  Jeff has nearly two decades of experience in the ecommerce and digital space. Just last year, his own company, MyBinding.com, was acquired by Spiral, where he now helps lead ecommerce operations. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Jeff explains what it has been like merging his ecommerce business with a more traditional binding company. He shares some of the challenges he faced along the way, and what methods and strategies he’s leaned into to find success. Jeff also discusses tips for building out a winning SEO and content strategy, and how ecommerce is playing a larger role across the entire business, including in customer acquisition and content marketing.  Main Takeaways:   The Merge: When a primarily ecommerce company merges with a larger more traditional business, there are a lot of balls in the air to create a cohesive and efficient system. Most of the adjustments have to be made on the side of the acquiring company, which needs to learn how to compete in a digital marketplace. That means that education has to be a priority both internally and externally.    Use Their Words: Every industry has jargon and industry-speak. It’s easy to fall into the trap of using that language throughout your platforms and channels. Instead, you have to meet customers where they are with their own language, and use the words and phrases they use. This will ensure that your customers feel like you are speaking directly to them and it also helps create more longtail SEO opportunities. Content For Now that Pays Off Later: Some of the most-viewed content you create might be consumed after a customer makes a purchase. On the surface, that might make it seem like content-creation is not a good customer acquisition strategy. On the contrary, it’s actually a critical long-term strategy in the sense that good, useful content is critical for brand awareness and building trust, which customers will remember when they need to buy in the future. 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 --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome to another episode of Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles. Today on the show, we have Jeff McRitchie, the VP of Ecommerce at Spiral Binding, My Binding and Binding 101. Jeff welcome. Jeff: Thank you. Stephanie: Thanks for coming on the show. I was excited when I was looking through Spiral's background. It looked like you guys started in 1932. Is that right? Jeff: Yeah. I mean, we've been around for a long time. Stephanie: Yeah. I think that'll make for a really fun conversation because I'm sure that the company and you have seen a lot of transformation over the years, so that'll be fun to dive into later. Jeff: For sure. Stephanie: Tell me a bit about Spiral. What is it? How do I think about what you guys do? Jeff: So Spiral is really a company and we've built ourselves around helping people to bind presentations and proposals. We do a little bit of laminating. We do a little bit of other things, but really we focus a lot on binding. We sell the equipment and the supplies for people to be able to bind presentations, proposals, books and training materials. Those are probably the primary things that come out of it. Jeff: We're a niche player in the office products market is one way to think about it. We're an interesting a hybrid of a company because we sell a little bit in B2B, a lot in B2B, a lot in B2C or B2B to C sort of space. Then we also have some really interesting national account sort of business as well. Kind of a little bit of an evolving company, we're a manufacturer and a distributor at the same time. We have lots of different faces which presents some really cool challenges from the standpoint of being in a digital transformation or Ecommerce role. Stephanie: Okay cool. So how long have you been at the company for? Jeff: My story is interesting, actually I'm co founder of a company called My Binding about 17 years ago. Last year we sold to Spiral. I've been with Spiral for just over a year now in this sort of digital transformation role but with My Binding, which was more of a pure play Ecommerce space. We grew and we were the largest sort of binding Ecommerce player in the market. Then all of a sudden we joined forces essentially with Spiral, which was the largest sort of B2B player in the market. Now we're one force together going after the binding and laminating market. Stephanie: Oh, interesting. What was that process like where you had your own company, you guys were selling online and then joining a company that maybe wasn't doing as much of that. What was that process like when it came to incorporating your company into an existing older company? Jeff: There's definitely some upsides. Suddenly you have increased purchasing power, you have more access to talent and capital. Those were amazing things, but the integration side of things is tough. Jeff: I mean, you're trying to merge systems and figure out how everything works together and learn the language of a new company. Some of that stuff is not as easy as it should be, as well as trying to figure out where exactly are they on the landscape of digital transformation and how do you navigate that when... We were pretty much an Ecommerce or digital first organization. That wasn't really their background. Now we're figuring out how do we be both? That's a pretty big challenge actually. Stephanie: Yeah. That sounds really difficult. What does the customer journey look like for Spiral or what did it look like compared to My Binding? Jeff: I guess the best way to think about it would be that in a B2B, B2C sort of Ecommerce experience, we were really building our business around a large number of transactions with a large number of customers, essentially small transactions to a large number of customers. On the more traditional B2B model, the traditional side of the Spiral business would have been around a small number of transactions to really big customers. Which is pretty typical when you look at this idea of traditional B2B and more like an Ecommerce B2B sort of experience. At least a B2B, to C sort of experience. Jeff: That was the really interesting thing is that we were dealing with customers from all over the country that in almost every industry that you can imagine, but most of them were rather small and we are filling specific needs for those customers. That was fine. On the spiral side you were looking and saying, hey, they had deep relationships. Relationships that went back decades, in many cases, with organizations where they were the supplier of choice. They had complex contracts and all those kinds of things. That was never really part of the Ecommerce world. Trying to figure out how do you merge those two together to get the best of both. It's not easy, but it's really fun actually. Stephanie: Yeah. I can imagine it takes a lot of training for their existing customers who are used to those contracts and used to things being done a certain way. How are you maybe going about training the customers who are used to doing things the old way to be like, Hey, we actually can do this online usually. Jeff: Slowly. Stephanie: Any lessons there that someone can take away if they're going through the same thing right now within their org? Jeff: You don't have to do it all at once. Our approach is really to allow customers to interact with us the way they want to interact with us by giving them better options. Really the priorities for this past year have been to try to integrate systems and then upgrade our footprint so that we can allow the company to put its best foot forward. Really starting with the E-comm side and getting everybody on the same platform and then tied into the same systems. Jeff: Now we're actually probably just a couple of months away from launching our brand new B2B E-com experience for the traditional spiral customers. Essentially we have been allowing them to continue to exist and deal with the company in the way that they used to while improving the experience and then bringing the platform up for the entire organization. One of the things about especially B2B commerce is that it gets really complicated as you tie in lots and lots of systems and a lot of interesting rules. Jeff: Customers want to deal with you in the way that they want to deal with you. What we've found is that we have to build specific experiences for our different customer types. That's the approach that we've been taking. I think that's a good approach from the standpoint of, you're not trying to force everybody into the same sort of experience because not everybody wants to deal with it in the same way. As a large organization that sort of deals with these sort of different challenges, we have to answer questions, like, do you display pricing on the front end of your website or is it a login only experience? Jeff: What pricing do you show people or what price pricing do people get and how do you control that and how do you manage that and how do you make sure that that experience is personalized for individuals? Then there's the age old question, which is really challenging in an organization that has multi channels and that is, how do you deal with the channel conflict? Whose customer is that? I guess it depends on who you would ask because everybody thinks that the customer is theirs. Yet ultimately the customer needs to deal with the organization in a way that the customer feels the most comfortable, not in the way that the organization feels most comfortable. Stephanie: Yeah. That makes sense. What kind of legacy or what things did the legacy customers get hung up on the most when you guys are making this transition and trying to show them that a new platform's coming? Is there similar themes of things that they're like, oh, I don't feel comfortable with that, or, I don't want to move because of this? Jeff: I think when it comes to customers, most customers want technology. I mean, they become comfortable. I think that they don't want to lose functionality. That's been probably one of the hardest things is that even if that functionality wasn't the best, they become comfortable with it and they don't really want to lose that. Yes they do want a best in class experience. One of the hard things that we all have to deal with in Ecommerce right now is that the bar has been raised. Jeff: There are people who want more and more features in terms of their online shopping experience. What you find is that you need to be able to roll these things out, but you need to make sure that it doesn't make things harder on those customers, especially long time corporate customers. They are really dependent on these things working smoothly and easily. That's actually one of the hardest challenges in this process has been, okay, well, we've done a lot of cool things for customers over the years. One off, you build a feature on the website just for that one customer. Jeff: Well, trying to then redo that and not lose a substantial amount of functionality for specific customers, especially large customers that you have these really deep relationships with, that's pretty tough. Stephanie: I was actually going to ask that next, when you mentioned that you were personalizing the experience for certain customers to make them feel more comfortable or hearing what they want and trying to incorporate that into the platform, how do you go about picking out what things you should maybe personalize or give to the customer without going down a worm hole of having a personal experience for every customer? Jeff: Ultimately, we're taking an approach of first saying, what's the best in class experience that we could build. What are the things that are going to be the best for all of the customers and then looking and saying, "Hey, can we in our roadmap put in the flexibility to accommodate for these many things that customers have asked for?" Jeff: How could we build this in such a way that we can add that on or this on? I'm not sure that we always nail it just from the standpoint of... It's pretty tough to keep everybody happy. But we're taking the approach of, hey, we can make it substantially better for everybody. It may not be perfect, but it should be a dramatic enough improvement that they'll recognize that we have their best interest in mind. Stephanie: It seems like some of those requests might also fit other customers as well or it might be something where they're like, oh, I actually wanted that and never thought to ask. It could be helpful when it comes to product development on your side, like technology development. Jeff: Yeah, totally. We had a really good team that we used to build out stuff and we're able to iterate fairly quickly. That's the good news because sometimes we miss something and so... But as long as you can respond fairly quickly to a customer's need, it gives you an opportunity to serve them better and to communicate. But the other really important part of this is really getting the account managers and your sales people involved in this process so you get some really good feedback because one of the challenges that we face at least is that sometimes as the E-com department and on the technology side, you don't always get raw feedback. Jeff: Maybe the stuff you're hearing is from the people who are yelling the loudest, not necessarily from the people who are trying to help you. You're not necessarily hearing about the features that are going to make the biggest difference for most number of users. Stephanie: That makes sense. With this whole re-platforming and new tech stack that you're going to be launching what pieces of tech are you most excited about showing to the customer or bringing online that maybe wasn't there before? Jeff: For us it's really about an enhanced user experience. We kind of been a little bit on the old school side on the traditional B2B piece of it. This gives us the ability to provide a really much better experience end to end in terms of transacting with us. Some of the things that we're aiming for, that are harder than I was thinking they would be, would be real time freight quoting. When you're a B2B company and you've got a distribution network across the country, and you're trying to figure out how much that pallet is going to cost to go to this customer. You think, hey that should be super easy. That's like in the Ecommerce world, until you start to realize, well, it's really important that you get that right. You have to first know where all that's going to ship from. Jeff: One of the biggest things is a really deep integration with our ERP so we can understand where the inventory resides and then how much it weighs and the sizes and all those kinds of things so that we can do that on the fly. Because right now we do an add back type thing. We'll tell you what the freight is later. Customers don't like that. Especially not in the Ecommerce world. Getting that upfront, same with sales tax calculation. Right now, a lot of that's done on the backend and people want to know upfront. That means building a system that has management for resale certificates and all of those pieces. Jeff: I need to understand where are you exempted, where you not exempted and what are you exempt from and all of those kinds of things so that I can quote you and tell you what the sales tax is going to be upfront before you place your order. That's another piece of it that we're excited about. Requisition list is another one where people will have their own custom price list in the system where they can quickly order. We're building a system where they can upload an Excel file with all of their items that they want so they can do quick ordering and quick reordering. Jeff: I guess those would be a few of the systems. Like a quote management system to allow people to request pricing on items and then for us to respond to them live and track that inside of our system is another one that we're building. Those are all areas where we're saying, hey, this could really enhance the user's journey and make it a lot easier for them to do business with us. Stephanie: That's great. Yeah that sounds like some great changes. Have you had any customers trying out the platform as beta testers and have you seen any difference when it comes to average order value or anything? Jeff: We're not quite there yet. We finished design and we're in the midst of development at the moment. I would say that that's going to be one of those steps prior to launch. Will be first to have sort of sales associates and account managers jump into the platform and test it for themselves and then to really get especially key customers in the system testing, and then also giving us feedback. What do they love? What did they not like and how can we make it better for them? That's on the roadmap before launch to be able to say, "Hey is this better for you?" It's funny because on a traditional B2C Ecommerce launch, you'd be focusing so much on the front end. Jeff: Like, the My Account pages are taking just as much time for this site because that's where our customers are living. They want to use the search, but they really want to use the my account pages. They know what they want, and they need to be able to quickly reorder it. They need to be able to see their orders. They need to be able to have the ability to upload those requisition lists. It's a little bit of a twist but getting them, especially into those my account pages so that they can spend some serious time understanding their accounts and telling us what they like or what they don't like is going to be really important for the launch process. Stephanie: Yeah. That's really interesting about focusing on my account page and how much time they're spending there. I'm sure that things like product suggestions or also bots might be very important on that page to help showcase items that maybe they wouldn't otherwise buy when they're just quickly uploading something or just reordering. Are you guys experimenting with some of the suggestion features? Jeff: Most definitely. Yeah. That's part of the vision is to try to figure out and say, okay, we have these deep relationships with customers and they buy specific sets of products. How can we expand to purchasing a product set? How do we get them and introduce them to complimentary products and show them the right pricing and the right place so that they can say, "Hey, I should totally add that on." That's something that I should consider. It's an interesting challenge for us because we have different personas or groups of people that we're dealing with. Jeff: On one hand we're dealing with dealers and they're really reselling product. You're trying to show them maybe categories of product, where do they need to expand because they're buying for specific purposes. Then you have end users and those end users you might want to show them a different size or a different color. We're experimenting with what the best algorithm is that we can use to show them the right products and then also in the right places too. Stephanie: That's great. What tests are you most excited about that you're pitching to everyone right now and some people maybe aren't sure about? Jeff: I'm actually most excited right now about the lead gen side of our business. Stephanie: Tell me more about that. Jeff: When you start to think about what the power of Ecommerce is for a B2B organization. Ecommerce can really become the engine that powers the acquisition efforts of a company. Especially because we can get in front of hundreds of thousands of customers a month, whereas the traditional B2B sales force might only touch hundreds of customers per month. Maybe thousands, but definitely not hundreds of thousands. Jeff: The idea of... What does it take for us to build a really cool robust system to not only bring these leads in but then to try to figure out how do I score these leads and then not only take them and turn them into an immediate sale, but to determine which ones of these really can be turned into those more traditional B2B accounts that we have these deep relationships with that are going to buy from us for years to come, many tens of thousands of dollars, right? Jeff: The really exciting part to me is looking at it and saying, okay we are on the Ecommerce side, on the B2B2C Ecommerce piece of it. We almost have too many leads. We get so much traffic that comes in. So then how do you figure out, take all those leads and build a really robust system where you can make sure that they're getting exactly what they need, and you're closing as many sales as you can, but then how do you figure out a way to pass those accounts up, the right accounts to the right people so that you can build them into a much larger long term sustainable program. Jeff: For us, that means building a really cool inbound sales team that makes sure that we take care of those leads and that we foster them and do all the things that we need to do, but then building an outbound sales team as well that's going to go in and then say, "Hey, let's take these leads and take them to the next level." Then also figuring out a system for passing accounts up and down inside of the organization. You really want to be able to pass a lead up or a customer up that has substantial potential to be either a national account or what we'll call an enterprise level account. Jeff: But you also want the reciprocity of getting those accounts back or the smaller accounts back from the team. I will say that no one wants to give up that account. That's a big challenge inside of an organization when you're trying to say, "Hey, I'll give you some, you give me some." The way usually ends up being is someone... Everyone wants to receive, no one wants to give. But the system only really works if you can give the best to the... But then also that you can receive quality back. For instance, handing back to the E-com team, only the accounts that don't do any business, isn't really a win. Jeff: You really want your enterprise salespeople focused on enterprise level accounts. We're having to sort of wrestle through what does that look like in terms of structure. I don't know that we really have it all figured out yet, but it's a cool idea. Stephanie: I'm guessing there's a way to automate that and create rules. So it, like you said, can go up or down depending on certain criteria from when they're coming in. How are you all thinking about automating that process? So it's maybe less of a salespeople having to give and take and whatnot, and more like, Oh, this is automatically routed to you based on these metrics. Jeff: That's exactly what we're doing. We're exploring machine learning and big data to try to figure out a really good way of scoring customers because using that scoring, you can figure out how to pass customers up. Then a set of rules as well that says if these customers aren't of a certain size or if they have this kind of profile, they really belong in this group. But it's an interesting challenge from trying to figure out where do you get all this data from, and then how do you process it? We're exploring different options right now in terms of what that might look like and how we can best approach that without spending a ton of money before we bet that it actually works. Stephanie: Yeah. That's really cool. So outside of the prospect giving that information, what kind of things are you looking into right now to find the information to help with that scoring process? Jeff: It's actually challenging. You have certain pieces of information that are given to you which you have usually a name and an address. Their email address usually has a domain associated with it, especially in B2B. So you can pull a lot of information from that and you can start to sort your domain, your customers by domain. But really we're looking and saying, okay, well we do know the purchase history. The idea then is, okay, if you were to sort all your customers out, you can sort them on a scale of, let's say a one, two, three. You can say my best customers spend the most money with me. My worst customers spend the least amount of money with me, but that really misses part of the point. Jeff: You almost need to add a second access to this, which is really about customer potential. When it comes to customer potential, we're looking at the idea of what would it take for us to add some big data to this? To understand the size of their company and the profile of the company that they come from, or the industry that they come from as well, because the industry can be really important to us. But then the other side of it is also looking at what they purchased. Like for instance, people who purchase specific equipment or supplies, they're going to have a much higher lifetime value with us because those are proprietary or have maybe a really good pull through rate. Jeff: For instance, it may not be that it's a proprietary supply, but when you buy that machine, you have to go through a lot of supplies to make it worthwhile. You look at the data and you say, okay, that customer has a huge amount of potential. Not because of the amount that they bought from us, but because of what they bought or who they are, the company that they work for or their position. We're looking at the possibility of maybe even extending that into some of the databases out there that help you understand whether people are in market and what their roles are as well. Jeff: Because when you're dealing with B2B, you're not really selling all the time to the company, you're selling to a person inside of the company and that person has a role. You have to figure out, okay, well what role do they play in this picture? That helps us to sort them into personas. If you're dealing with a really small number of accounts, you can figure this out, but we have to automate it because it's not really feasible to do that in a one off basis. Stephanie: Yeah, definitely seems like you're going to need a whole entire data or business operations team who can build those rules out for you and have dashboards. That seems like a big project, but well worth it. Earlier, you mentioned that you guys have more traffic than you know what to do with and lots of leads coming in. Of course my first question is how are you getting this traffic? How are you acquiring potential customers? Jeff: Sure. I mean... We're in a niche industry, right? So that's part of it. We've been around for a really long time. Because of that, at least... Spiral has been around 80 years, My Binding for almost 20 on the web. As you start to look at that, we created a massive amount of content. Thousands of videos and pages. We really have in a lot of ways, the best websites in our sort of space and industry. Because of that, people are finding us to solve problems. What you find is that we built out these websites and either through SEO or through paid search we're driving a ton of traffic to the websites because they convert and that makes a ton of sense. Jeff: We're essentially... We have all of this content and it's really designed around this idea of how do we solve these problems for customers? We can drive more and more of that content. The website deals with a certain number of those sort of leads and converts on its own. The challenge for us tends to be, what do you do with the people that are maybe a little higher in the funnel? You're now talking about making sure they have a really awesome call center that is going to be able to answer those questions. Live chat is really big. We've extended our live chat hours all the way to midnight which is unheard of in the B2B space. Jeff: I want somebody there to talk to somebody if they have questions about products. Especially really big products. We're experimenting with the idea of doing triggers for live chat. We did that and that was really successful for us. We turned on the trigger and said, with the idea of if I walk into a store, somebody says, "Hey, how can I help you?" We did that on the Ecommerce site and we had massive numbers of people that were engaging with us. But the surprise to us was that many of those people were actually much higher in the funnel than we were used to dealing with. Jeff: In other words, they were now engaging with us and they weren't ready to buy. They were in the research space and they had lots of questions. Which is really cool but it just changes the model a little bit and you all of a sudden have to figure out how do I step up for that? How do I make sure that I have the right person to answer those questions? That's part of it. Driving the leads really comes to how do you acquire traffic on scale? Really good high quality traffic for the site. Then the question is, well, what can you do with it? Driving the traffic is really exciting from a standpoint of it doesn't have to be done in one way but you have to be maybe a little bit creative to do it because you really are trying to get in front of people that have problems rather than... Jeff: At least in our space, you don't come to a binding website unless you have a problem that the binding website can solve. It's not exactly an impulse purchase. You're going to show up and you're not going to just browse around. I wonder what kind of binding machines they carry. You probably are on a mission to solve some sort of problem. Right. Whether that's like your bosses told you that you need to buy a binding machine or you need to upgrade the way that your reports or presentations are going to look, or you have a deadline of Friday and you need to get these reports out for the annual meeting. Jeff: These are all sort of really common sort of scenarios and so then the question is, will this product work for my specific needs? That's a question that our customers are constantly asking. Building to that has been a really great sort of acquisition model for us to build around the idea that every customer that comes to us comes to us with a problem that we can solve for them, and then figuring out how do you work backwards to that? What problems could we solve? Then as you start to get creative with that and build massive amounts of content, that content lives out there forever. That's been really a big part of our success, is really the longevity but also the content generation sort of machine that we've built over the years. Stephanie: How has your content... What is the style now today? Is it only educational? Is it humorous and how has it evolved over time? Jeff: We've tried a lot of things over the years. We've tried to be funny. I think we think we're funny sometimes. We've tried a bunch of different things. We've tried to be really educational. It was really hard to figure out the ROI of that. What we've really... If you were to look at our content, we do a lot of content that is really close to the bottom of the funnel, but that would be really helpful. We go with that sort of helpful thing as well as deep. So the idea of building out a really robust and large set of content over the years about products. Jeff: We spend a lot of time making sure that we have all of the details about the product, even to the point where our competitors come to our sites to look up products because they don't have as good of information as we do. That's one piece of the content side of things for us. We have a lot of how to videos. We did a bunch of experimenting around the videos. We found that the videos that people really cared about would basically answer a couple of quick questions. But mostly it was, will this product work for me? How does this thing work? Jeff: We made a whole series of those videos, almost five thousand of them that are really around the idea of how does this product work and a quick demonstration essentially. Usually around a minute long that takes the product out of the box, show someone how to use it. Those really work well for us because they show a customer generally what are they looking for. A lot of customers they want to see what it looks like or they have a machine already and they want to say, "Is that's the thing that works with my machine.? They don't understand our language. Those videos have worked really well for us as well. Stephanie: That's great. Are there any surprising pieces of content that you didn't think would work that did, or surprising sources of customer acquisition that you wouldn't have looked into before? Jeff: We've had a few blog articles that have found traction in the world and the web that I wasn't really anticipating. We've written a lot of content over the years. Most of the blog articles get a little bit of traffic. They're like evergreen content, little bit of traffic over a long period of time. But occasionally we'll end up with one like... Something about how to laminate without a laminator. Stephanie: That's a good one. Jeff: Amazingly, there's a lot of people that look up that and I was shocked. It consistently drives more traffic than almost any other blog article for us. Which is odd. I'm not sure it drives a ton of business because they don't want to buy a laminator, but if you think about it, there's a whole segment of people that have maybe problems that we don't traditionally associate with our business. That would be one thing and then the other piece would be the language piece. Jeff: It's always surprising when I discover that the language that we use internally for our business doesn't match the language of the customer. An example would be we talk about binding covers all the time because we're in the world of binding. A lot of people they just talk about card stock. In the paper world, the card stock doesn't even exist. It's not a thing. People will talk about it. It's cover weight paper. Index weight paper. Card stock is like this sort of crafting term. Yet it's sort of taken on a vocabulary of its own in the world. Jeff: When people search for binding covers, often they'll use that word. That's always surprising to me as well. There's a whole list of those things where people basically they choose to use their own words to describe things. Now you're trying to figure out how do I technically be accurate about this product but really use their language? Because if you don't use their language, then you're not going to show up in search for this stuff and they're not going to feel comfortable with it. Stephanie: That's a really good reminder, especially with generational shifts that the new consumer might be using completely different language than what you're used to. How are you exploring what that language might be? I mean, especially a company that has been around since the thirties, how are they figuring out, oh, this is what they call it now, this is what the kids are saying these days? Jeff: Probably the easiest thing for us is to look through our search results and especially the no results found once because often it's those things. When people are typing in stuff in the search bar and nothing's popping up. You look at that and you're like oh... A smart merchandiser, someone who understands your products really well, they start to make those connections and they're like, oh, wait a second. That's what they mean. Obviously a lot of that like spelling mistakes and things like that. You can fix those in your search engine but when you start to look at it, you start to see sometimes patterns. That's one of the easiest ones. Jeff: The other two that are really helpful for us would be Google autosuggest. Just start typing things in Google and then figure out what Google thinks that you should add to the end of it. All of a sudden you realize, okay, maybe people are searching for maybe a slightly different side of things than we thought they were. Then the other one would be Amazon. Amazon, their product terms are awful. Yet they sell so much. Why? Because they tie into language. They have usually products that have all these different words in the titles that you would never imagine. Jeff: As you start to look at products that are really successful on the marketplaces, you can start to realize, okay, well maybe they're onto something there. They've managed to call out even the most important attributes of that product in a very search centric sort of model or they have really been able to hone in on maybe key words that we weren't thinking of when we've been building this out. Especially because often you start with whatever... A point of reference would be the manufacturer's title. It becomes quite difficult sometimes to sort of detach from that, but Amazon detaches automatically because they let people come up with their own titles for stuff. Jeff: Usually it's the sort of ecosystem that will change the title to try to optimize. Sometimes when you find really successful products that you're realizing, Oh, maybe people do care about that. Stephanie: I love that. That's really good tips to remember about, finding those keywords and how to discover them because yeah, I think even longterm key words would probably be really good for your industry. I'm thinking, how would I Google something like that? I would probably be like how to create a hard cover book for my presentation or something really long winded like that. It's a really good reminder about the keywords importance. Jeff: Then obviously you have your paid search stuff too. You can look and see in your paid search accounts, you can say, okay, what keywords are actually driving? If it was a broad or a modified broad match keyword, you're going to start to dig in and you can say, oh, it actually matched on this keyword and it drove a sale. Again, driving back and saying, okay, what am I driving sales on? It tends to be a really good place to start discovery as well. The only thing, the problem with that is that you might be so far off that you're missing the boat completely. That's where it takes a really good merchandisers to sort of nail that stuff down. Stephanie: I also think it was interesting earlier when you were talking about how to laminate without a laminator and thinking about selling something through saying, oh yeah, you don't need to buy through us. Here's how you do it because I'm sure a lot of people, like you said, are searching for stuff like that or how to fax without a fax machine. I know I've searched that quite a bit, but making fun of it and you might actually be able to convert someone who's like, Oh, I actually just do need a laminator to do this, but having a humorous video around that. Jeff: Yeah. As well as maybe they decide that they want to buy some cold laminating pouches. The idea is, if you can be really helpful in the long term, going back to that idea of video. We've done a lot of videos over the years. We understand that many, many, many times people use our videos post-purchase not pre-purchase. People are going to the video to figure out how does this thing that I already bought work. Well, that doesn't really help us but it does help us in the long term. Jeff: As you look at it and say, it's not going to win us the sale today, but it will win us brand awareness. It does potentially when you do supply sales. Because we're a very supply driven sort of space. If you think about it, if you buy a binding machine, you got to buy some supplies for it. Longterm, we want to have an awareness and be in front of customers so they understand who we are when it comes time to buy the supplies that they need. Stephanie: Just like you said, it's really important to continue to stay in front of that customer so they come to you to buy supplies and remember you guys. How do you go about doing that and keeping a customer retained? Because it seems like it would be easier with these legacy customers who are maybe in these year or three year long contracts. Now when you're moving towards Ecommerce and they can hop around really quickly, it seems like you wouldn't be able to retain customers as easily. So how do you go about staying in front of them? Jeff: I mean, there's a lot to that, the question. To give you maybe a general overview of our thoughts is a big part of our business and something that's really important to us. Especially on the E-com side of things, it really starts with delivering a really awesome experience upfront. So you need to be able to help them find what they need and then deliver it to them in a really reasonable timeframe or meet their deadline. All that kind of stuff. To have the product in stock and all of those kinds of pieces. That's actually harder said than done when you deal with a really large niche category. Jeff: That's the beginning piece of it. Once you've given them that positive experience, or if they've had a negative experience, you use your customer service to basically earn a customer for life. That's actually the motto of our customer service group. Earn a customer for life. As you look at this idea, you say, okay, well, we now have a shot at their business longterm. Now the challenge for us is, okay, what's the best way to reach them? The easiest way is email. We have a ton of automation in our emails. We send emails based upon what you've purchased with replenishment. We send life cycle campaigns based upon... Welcome to the store anniversaries campaigns, and then also best customer campaigns, win back campaigns and reactivation campaigns. Jeff: We have all these automations that go out. They're really helpful. We also have sales that go out on a weekly basis that keep people engaged and keep things front of mind for them. You combine all of that on the email side, but then you recognize that that maybe only gets you half the customers. The question becomes... Because there's a bunch that are opted out in the B2B space, it's really hard on deliverability to get into the inbox. More and more people are using advanced filtering programs to prevent spam from getting through to their employees. Jeff: As you look at that, you say, okay, well, email only takes you so far. So then what do you do? The real question is, back to that conversation we had earlier about lead scoring, how do you determine your best customers or your best potential customers and make sure that you get somebody to call them? To send them a personal email which are easier to get into their inbox or to find another way of touching them. For us right now, the two other ways of touching them that we're sort of exploring, one would be SMS and then another would be direct mail. We're kind of in the process of exploring a test on SMS. Jeff: I'm not too sure how we feel about it, honestly. We have to figure out how our customers feel about it, just from the standpoint of as you look at customers giving their personal cell phones for business purchases and getting text messages. But you think about it, that's a great way to get in front of people and stay in front of them as long as you're going to be super, highly relevant. Then the other piece of it that we do a little bit of would be on that retargeting side of things. If you don't know who that customer is exactly, or don't have their ability to email them, you can at least sort of [inaudible] do it, make sure you're sending or placing ads more frequently into their feeds on different platforms through retargeting. Stephanie: That makes sense. It seems from, especially in SMS perspective, it seems like the only angle you can go about is being helpful. Like oh, you probably are running out of supplies, order now. I don't know, you can get a discount or something. It seems like there's not too many ways for B2B companies to use texting without the customer being like, "Oh, I don't want to be thinking about work right now." Unless it's a trigger for them to be like, "Oh, I need to reorder this or else we're not going to have it on the day." Is that true or are you seeing other avenues? Jeff: Well, the first step would be to be helpful with order cycle. For instance, think about what Amazon has done with allowing you to get a text when the item is delivered. Which is a big problem for a bunch of our customers, especially in pandemic, but even outside of that. It might be delivered to a central desk or to the shipping and receiving area of their company like an alert. Alerts are a pretty good option for us to sort of get our toe in the water a little bit and to stay active. Then yes, something that's personalized. Jeff: Then also, what we're struggling with is what is the best time of day to do this? Probably don't want to send it to them in the middle of their evening. They're disconnected from work, but you also need to make sure that... It's got to be time adjusted for the time that they're in and they also really needs to be followed in their workday probably. Those are some of the things that we're sort of figuring out and testing right now and saying how is this going? Then what's also the most appropriate way to collect where people don't sort of get freaked out. Because it's one of those things, do you want to get text messages from your binding company? I don't know. You got to ask it in an appropriate way. Stephanie: Yeah. That's a really good reminder. All right. We have a couple minutes left and I want to jump into a quick lightning round brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Jeff, are you ready? Jeff: Okay. I'm ready. Stephanie: I'm going to start with the hard one first for you because I feel like you're in a game right now. I got to keep it going. What one thing will have the biggest impact on Ecommerce in the next year? Jeff: Well, I think obviously it's COVID. It's pushing people online in completely new ways. It's shifting customer expectations around a whole bunch of different things. It's ruined the Amazon two day expectation, which I don't mind, but it's also shifted the way that people shop, where they're shopping, how they're shopping, and even their mentality. I don't know that we even really totally understand how it's affected everybody yet because everybody's still sort of in this scrambling mode. But ultimately I think as this shakes out, it's going to change the landscape of how we market, but it's also going to change the landscape of how our customers interact with us. Stephanie: I like that. What one piece of advice would you give a new Ecommerce entrepreneur? Jeff: I would probably say stick with solving the customer's problems. I know that tends to be a B2B thing, but it's not really a B2B thing. If you think about it, I need the right sweater for me. Really be customer centric. That becomes really cliche and that's why I go to the idea of solving a problem. You got to think about what sort of value proposition are you offering to this customer that's unique, that is going to allow them to accomplish something that they wanted to accomplish when they came to your site. Jeff: I think by focusing and being really focused on the customer problem, I think you can build out really awesome experiences, and then that deep understanding of your customer will take you really far. Stephanie: That's a good one. What is your favorite day in the office? I'm trying to imagine what a binding company feels like. What's your favorite day in the office feel like? Jeff: I mean, most of my days are pretty full of meetings. A day without meetings would be an awesome day in the office. Stephanie: That's a lot of people. Jeff: I think so. In the world of the binding company, a day in the office doesn't look all that much different than a day in a normal office. It might be a little bit like an episode of the office. Stephanie: That's what I had in my mind honestly. Jeff: Yeah. It's like paper company. There is a little bit of aspects of that, but I mean, we're just like any other company. We're a retailer, we're a distributor. We deal with customers all day long. I would say the other thing, the best day in the office is the day that you have customers that love you and that are just heaping praises, especially on the customer service people and your salespeople. When you have customers who are just singing your praises, those are great days. Stephanie: Yep. That's awesome. I'm glad you mentioned the office and I didn't have to. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be? Jeff: That's a tough one. If I were to have a podcast. I am super passionate about entrepreneurship. I'd probably do an entrepreneurship sort of a podcast about starting a business, growing a business, and the creativity that goes around that. If I could get anybody on the show, I would probably pick an entrepreneur. Maybe I pick the person from lemonade stand or one of those organizations that's really making a big impact on starting up entrepreneurs with kids. That's something that I really love. Stephanie: Yep. I like that. Brings back the memories of my parents make me [inaudible] my neighbor's yard for 25 cents which is well below market. Jeff: I think you could make at least 50 cents for that now. Stephanie: I think so too. All right Jeff, this was very interesting, such a good conversation. So many good tid bits that people can actually use from this interview. Where can people find out more about you and Spiral? Jeff: Sure. You can definitely visit one of our websites. We've got SpiralBinding.com. We have MyBinding.com and Binding101.com. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. Shoot me a message and ask me to connect and I'd love to meet you. Stephanie: Awesome. Thanks so much for joining Jeff. Jeff: You're welcome. Thank you.

Amanda Hesser believes that food is at the center of a life well-lived, and it is that belief that led her to co-found Food52 in 2009.  Food52 is a community-centered blog and eCommerce store that reaches more than 24 million people a month. But no platform builds itself, and in the case of Food52, this massive community of users was brought together through a set of unique engagement tactics that Amanda has iterated on and refined over the decade-plus that the company has been around. It’s a strategy that any company would envy, and one that she shares with us today.  On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Amanda explains how she and her team were able to use high- and low-touch ways to get users involved, and why that engagement created a sense of buy-in that made Food52 scalable. As Amanda explains, engaged users don’t just help with content generation, they also provide valuable insights into consumer trends and have helped inform Food52’s latest offering, an exclusive product line that is helping further boost its revenue into the tens of millions. From tips on building a community, to dropshipping products, and launching a new product line, tune in to find out all of that and more. Main Takeaways:   Building A Community: The platforms that last are those that give users a sense of ownership in the community being created. Engagement is necessary to achieve that end, but not everyone wants to engage in the same way. That’s why it’s important to create high-touch and low-touch ways to get — and keep — people involved. Getting the Feedback You Need: Your customers are full of ideas on what’s working, what’s not, and what to try instead. But tapping into those ideas is easier said than done. To access that honest feedback, you need to meet your customers where they are. Generic product surveys often go ignored. Instead, hang out on social media, ask open-ended questions, and engage with your customers in an organic way. It’s Never Easy: Whether you are creating content or building a user base, there are no infallible methods to find success. You can’t be wedded to any one idea, platform, channel or content type. Try new things, explore new strategies, and don’t fall into the trap of becoming complacent just because one thing is working right now. 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 --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome back to another episode of Up Next in Commerce, this is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder of Mission.org. Today on the show, we have Amanda Hesser, the co-founder and CEO of Food52. Stephanie: Amanda, welcome! Amanda: Thank you so much for having me, hello. Stephanie: So, I was just looking through the Food52 website, and it's absolutely beautiful. I love everything about it, the theme, the concept, I mean, the design, really, really beautiful. Tell me a little bit about how you came upon starting it. What made you want to found that? Amanda: Sure. Well, my co-founder Merill Stubbs and I co-founded it together, and we did so because we were both journalists and editors and trained cooks, so we were professionals in the field, but we were professionals because it was a passion of ours. We love food, we love home, we love cooking and traveling and eating, and we just felt that a couple things were happening. One was just that food was really shifting from being this niche topic in our culture to something that was just much more ingrained in Americans' identities and lifestyles, frankly. Amanda: And there was this real sea change happening in the industry and that was really exciting to us, as people who care about food. But we also felt like as a result, what we were being served with as consumers, meaning the content that we had available to us, the products, the conversation, interaction, the community was lacking and really wasn't keeping up with the evolution of its place in our culture, and we felt like there was an opportunity to serve people better to create a very different kind of company than had existed before, one that was much more a 360-degree and also selfishly, we wanted to create this world and this hub for ourselves. You know? We felt a lot of great companies are born out of an unsatisfying consumer experience, and I think that definitely was a piece of what drove us to create Food52. Stephanie: That's awesome. So, how long has it been around? Amanda: So, we launched Food52 in September of 2009, so we are 11 years old, which is both I think on one hand, is an incredible accomplishment and is also... It is not a surprise to us that it has taken us sort of this amount of time to get where we are, because we understood going in that when you're building a brand, when you're really trying to create an emotional connection with your readers and your followers, that it takes time. It's not something you can do overnight. On the other hand, being a startup and being 11 years old, I think once you pass the three-year mark, you start entering dinosaur-hood. Stephanie: Yeah, everyone else that you started with is gone. You're like, "Oh, it's just me left." Amanda: Yeah, there is a survival feeling, which is nice. But also that it's an industry and world that is always looking for the next. So, if you've made it beyond three years, you're no longer the news. But it's actually I think in many ways, in terms of running the company, it's been so great to... Actually, I think once we hit kind of eight years, where we're really not only just more of an established company, but able to really broaden what we were covering as a media company, really ambitiously pursue our commerce business. Amanda: The business just became much more interesting, and it's a complex business, so it's not something that you can... We started focused on content because we understand the power of content to build that relationship. And also to really build brand identity and that was to us, the most important thing that we could do in the beginning. And then we methodically kind of added, layered on all the things that we do now. And I think that even if you were starting today, that is the way to do it, because you couldn't... A, you couldn't get funding to do all the things that we do now. But also, we wouldn't want to, because it's sort of... You really need to build that relationship and you can't just kind of [inaudible] press the consumer with like, books and a site and recipes and content across cooking and home, and a presence on all the social channels. There's a lot of stuff that we do that I think had to sort of slowly evolve. Stephanie: So, yeah. I want to kind of dive into the evolution of your brand, because I think I recently read that you guys reach 24 million people month, is that right? Amanda: Yes, mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Stephanie: That's amazing. So, I want to kind of hear how did you all start out, and then where are you now? Amanda: Sure. So, as I mentioned earlier, we started by focusing on content, and we started very much in the kitchen. Because we felt that is the core of our premise, which is that we see food at the center of a well-lived life. And we serve people who believe in that. We felt like the kitchen and cooking was always going to be kind of our core strength, and so when we began, the vast majority of our content was focused on cooking. We did recipe contests, and we did that because it was a way to test a content model that we felt like was underused online. Which was there was lots of user-generated content, but it wasn't done in a way that really served other readers well and really celebrated the content creators. We wanted to become this platform for them, and what we provided was in some ways, you could look at it as production services, right? People could contribute their recipes, and then we would photograph, then we would test them, and then we would distribute them across a bigger platform, our platform. Amanda: And that was the way that we built community and we created lots of ways for people to get involved. So, it wasn't just for the people who were creating recipes, it was also for people who if you wanted to become a recipe tester, you could do that, or if you wanted to vote on the recipe contest. We created lots of different kind of high-touch and low-touch ways for people to have meaningful engagement and involvement in the curation of the content, and that was something that really hadn't been done well before, and we felt like it was a way to not only build community, but also create a scalable model and send the message that this is a community-driven company that cares a lot about high-quality content, and we can build this together. And we can start with recipes, and then we can build out from there. Amanda: And what we did do was through our recipe contests, we were able to identify really great home cooks who maybe they had a blog, maybe they didn't, but they didn't have a platform that was sizeable. And we were able to provide that for them, and we got them to then write articles for us, and some have done cookbooks for us and many of them have gone on to do their own cookbooks. And I think that building that sort of trust and that relationship in the early days with our community is what has allowed us to get to where we are now, which is a much bigger site, and we still have recipe contests, but fewer of them. But we have other ways for people to be really deeply involved in what we do. And so, for instance, I'll just give you kind of a smattering of examples. Amanda: We have a hotline and on our hotline, anyone can ask any cooking or home or food question, and it gets answered by the community and answers can get voted up or down in a kind of stack overflow fashion. And so that's a community resource. We do our own kind of set of social contests on Instagram. That's really how we built our Instagram community and following was through creating a hashtag called #F52Brands, where we named themes and then people would tag us with photographs relevant to that theme, and then we would repost our favorites. And so, people posted, tagged us, let their friends know, and that's how we built our following which is at 2.8 million. We have a product line called Five Two, and we have a drop ship shop where we sell hundreds of products, really thousands of SKUs at this point, and those are products that are produced by other vendors, that we drop ship through our site and our platform. Amanda: But we wanted to create our own line of products once we had gotten our sea legs in commerce. And so, when we went to do that, it made total sense for us to actually call on our community for their input on the products, and not just in a shallow way, but a really kind of deep and extensive way. We had the data on what people were shopping for, what was selling well on our site, what materials. But we really wanted to hear... and our first product, just to give you a specific example, our first product was a cutting board. Amanda: Now we already sold a lot of cutting boards, so we knew what materials sold, what price point sold, what sizes sold. But we really wanted to just go to our community and say, "What do you want?" In your ideal cutting board, what does it look like? What is it made of? What do you use it for? What features do you want? And we did a survey that was 11 questions, which goes against all rules of surveys, too long. And more than 10,000 people answered, and in great detail what they wanted. And so, we created a product that reflected their feedback, and that's how that has formed the DNA of that whole product line, is using the input of our community to create better cooking and home products than we could have otherwise come up with ourselves. Stephanie: That's amazing. Such a good evolution of the business. How are you encouraging your community to fill out those surveys or want to engage? I mean, I'm sure there's your power users who are like, "Anything Amanda does or puts out or the brand puts out, we're ready to help." But then for newer people, I'm sure there's a little bit more maybe convincing, so how do you strike that balance to get people to help decide on the product decisions or what's next? Amanda: Yeah. I mean, I think there's a couple of different ways that we do it. One is as we saw that there was great interest in having a say in the products we created, we decided to create what we call the Five Two Design Team, and it's essentially a communication channel for that group who wants to have all the latest news on what products we're thinking about, what surveys are coming up, what products are launching. They get a sneak peek. They help us test those products, we'll send them prototypes. And so, people could sign up for that. So, that's one way that people could kind of engage at whatever level they're interested in, but of course, that also attracts people who tend to want to be more engaged. The cutting board survey I think is maybe a bit of an outlier in that it's probably one of the more extensive surveys we've done. Amanda: What we tend to do is kind of lighter touch things on social. So, we'll go on Instagram and we'll ask three to five questions on an Instagram story. And you can vote right there on the story, so we give you the choices and just press a button and let us know, and then we do like to make sure that we give open-ended, sort of open field questions so that people who are extra passionate or who have detailed information they want to share, they have that opportunity. But they can do it in a medium that's right in front of them. For instance, if they're on Instagram already, we want them to be able to do it right there, not have to flick over to our site and fill something out. Amanda: And I think this is not just with our product line, I think this is with everything we do, is meet people where they are and serve them well where they are. And so, that's really the way we think about it, and we also try to frankly, just make it fun. So, it's not just these surveys to feel like we're giving a homework assignment. We want them to be presented in a fun way, and it should be entertaining, but it also should be substantive. Stephanie: Yep, I love that. So, you're getting a bunch of data from these surveys and from the community. Are there any tools or tech or are you using AI or ML or anything to kind of sort through all this data to help make decisions, whether it's for new products, or a new direction that the community wants or anything? Amanda: I would love to say yes. The answer is no. I mean, we have just found honestly that the best way to... We've created for some of the survey answers, our team will create pivot tables so they can kind of group things together. But frankly, the best ideas have come from just reading through people's answers. I think we've gotten better at structuring the questions we're asking, so that many of them can be answered through multiple choice and therefore, you have very straight up data. But the best product features, they come from those open field questions, and we want to make sure that there's space for that and that we are reading through them. And we also have a group, it's kind of VIP shoppers, called Club Sandwich. Stephanie: I like that name. Amanda: And we reach out to them and we ask them for feedback, and actually, I guess with Five Two, we do this too. And sometimes, we'll just send notes to the group and we'll say to the Five Two Design Team, "Hey, we'd love to hear your thoughts on X, Y, and Z, or if you have any product ideas, let us know." And we always say, "We read every email." And it's true. We just, we do. I mean, maybe there will be a point at which we can't do that, but we're a pretty sizable business, and I think that we created the community because we wanted people to feel like they could connect with each other. Amanda: Food is inherently social, and we wanted to create ways online that you could really feel connected to one another, but likewise, I think it's really important for our team to feel connected to our community and to what we're doing and their thoughts on what we're doing. I think when you create more of a wall, that's when you start having... That's when you can have real challenges in your comment section, and you can attract trolls. Our presence and engagement is I think just as important in terms of allowing people to feel like it's not just that they're connecting with each other, but that this hub through which they are connecting with other people has a sense of place and of people. Stephanie: Yep, yeah. That's great. I think a good reminder too about crafting survey responses in a thoughtful way, so then you can actually curate the data easily, but then also leaving the long-form answers. Stephanie: So, one thing I saw was a mention of the film Julie & Julia, and I wanted to hear about that and some opportunities that have come up while building Food52. Amanda: Sure. Well, that particular opportunity came up based on a story I wrote in the New York Times when I worked there. It was actually the sort of dawn of food blogs, and this blogger Julie wrote a very funny blog, which believe it or not, had no food photos because blogs didn't even have photos back then- Stephanie: That's great. Amanda: ... about cooking every recipe and mastering the art of French cooking. And she had an amazing writing voice, very funny. So, I wrote this story about her and it got a lot of attention, and then eventually, Nora Ephron wrote the screenplay for Julie & Julia, where she kind of took Julie's blog and then also juxtaposed it against this memoir or... I guess, yeah. It was a memoir of Julia Childs' time in France. And then created the movie script out of that. So, yeah. So, I ended up playing the part of myself interviewing Julie in her Long Island City apartment, just like I did in real life. And then that sort of story coming out, and having a big impact on her career. Stephanie: That's so fun. That sounds like just a very fun and cool experience to have now. Amanda: Yeah, yeah. I always joke that I had the perfect Hollywood career. I auditioned, which I did actually have to audition for the part for myself. Stephanie: That's great. Amanda: And got the part, it was... Meryl Streep was in the movie. The movie was a success, and now I'm out. I don't ever have to try again. I was like, "I'm good." Amanda: But yeah, it was a fun dip into a very different world. Stephanie: That's really cool. So to shift over into your guys' product line, Five Two, I wanted to hear a little bit about when you knew it was the right time to launch your own products instead of sourcing them from other vendors. Amanda: We launched commerce in 2013, and we didn't launch Five Two until 2018. So, I would say that we took our time getting experience in the commerce space, and I say that but with a caveat, which is that commerce, and I would say especially... Well actually, retail and ecommerce have gone through such immense changes and shifts in the past decade that everyone's learning all the time, even if we've been in the business forever. When we started our drop ship business, there were so many companies who just didn't drop ship. Amanda: So there were great products out in the world that we couldn't sell because the companies were not willing to do a drop ship model. They wanted only to sell inventory, which we understand, but we were betting on the fact that the world would shift and the industry would shift, and our bet has paid off. But it did take time to really build up a strong assortment of products in our category to build relationships. I think that was sort of the big [inaudible] of learning for us, was that commerce is very much about relationships, and it's not just about people wanting to sell their products, but they want to sell them through outlets that they get along with, where you really are partnering with each other. Amanda: That takes time to evolve. So, I think the first couple of years was very much about relationship-building, really understanding logistics. We built our own commerce platform. We don't use Shopify. We didn't do Magento or any of those things. We built it from scratch because the nature of our commerce business is very different. It functions differently than the sort of larger platforms allow for. Stephanie: Yeah, there's a lot going on there. Drop shipping, your own product, blogs, community. A ton. Amanda: Yeah. Yeah. So, we had our hands full with things that we needed to both learn but also refine. We built this platform. It did what it was supposed to, but for the kind of commerce business we are today, it was simplistic, so we've had to over the years continue to develop the platform itself, improve our checkout, improve basically kind of every aspect of it too, kind of reflect the kind of business we are now. Amanda: Anyway, so the first couple of years we knew was going to be learning and then also, the other thing that we learned was what people trust us for and what do they look to us for, and what do they want to be buying from us? Once we felt like we had a real handle on that, then it was a matter of... I think everyone from probably day one wanted to create our own product line. But deciding when we're ready I think ultimately just took us saying, "We're going to do it this year," and that was 2018. You know? It was just pulling the trigger, because everyone's busy, right? In an organization like ours. And so, it's not that people don't want to take on something new and big like this, but they know that if we do, they're going to have to re-organize all their work streams and really devote new time to this. Amanda: And so, it was a matter of finally just kind of biting the bullet and saying, "We're doing it, and we're going to aim for a fall launch," and then working backwards from there therefore, to see how to make it happen. And I think similarly, our growth into retail will be a similar thing. Are you ever ready for retail? I don't know. It felt last year to us like a good time, and we'd started exploring it very seriously, and then COVID hit and so we just hit pause, but we're thinking about it again for next year. Obviously, post-COVID, knock on wood that it will be post-COVID, it may look quite different. But I think it's something that we are committed to pursuing and better understanding and figuring out what makes sense for us. Stephanie: Yep, that makes sense. So, you were just mentioning COVID and I want to hear a little bit about how has that shifted your business? Because a lot of people are home now. I'm sure maybe you have a lot more orders as well, because people are wanting to cook and trying new recipes, where maybe they didn't have time before. But what does that look like for you all now? What have you seen behind the scenes? Amanda: Yeah. It's been a tremendous year for us in terms of our audience growth and our revenue growth. Obviously not something that anyone would have wished to have spawned that growth, but it is what it is. I think what we've come away from this having learned was a couple of things. One is just it's been a real validation of what we do. I think we in our hearts have from the very beginning understood that food and home are such incredible and vital parts of one's life, and that they are worth investing time and thought into, and that's really what we've been pushing as a brand since day one. We were building this company knowing that there was kind of a growing understanding of that. I think COVID really just rapidly accelerated people's understanding, I think across our entire culture. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yep. Amanda: Because I think suddenly people saw that having a place where you feel safe and comfortable and being able to feed yourself and your family and loved ones is just so important, and so it's been great to be a company where we feel like we can serve people in a positive fashion during a time that's really stressful, and that... and I think that we're able to see now what specifically people are interested in. We've been able to adapt with our product lines. For instance, there's a textile company that we've worked with for many years, and their main products, there was less demand for. Amanda: But they were able to make masks, and so we sold masks. We've sold tens of thousands of masks. And not just through them, but through some other vendors who also had the capabilities to make them. There are categories that have shot up that were previously doing fine, but now have become really significant. For instance, hand soap, hand sanitizer, things like that. And then obviously, our sort of traditional kitchenware and kitchen gear sales have really gone... have wildly increased because yes, more people are cooking and they're home. And they're realizing, "Oh, my saute pan isn't in such good shape, or I actually need a different size," and ideally, we're helping them out with that. Amanda: But then I also think just from a maybe more unexpected internal team benefit that we have seen is that we had some people who were working remote previously, but we had offices... We have offices on 26th Street in New York City, and that's where sort of the vast majority of our team worked. And when we had to shut down, we had to shut down our photo studios, our video studios, our test kitchen, we were really faced with a big challenge of how do we produce content without all of that support? Sometimes, not having everything really inspires creativity and I actually think that what we've learned is that we can do a ton with very little and also that people respond to it in a different way. Amanda: We're sort of known for our visual aesthetic, our photography, and kind of the sort of beauty of what we do. And that's great. I think we also pride ourselves with being accessible and relatable, and I think while we were achieving that, I think we've learned from COVID that we have so much more potential if we're actually shooting in real people's homes, not just in our pretty studio. But if we're showing kind of real life, it makes people feel much more at ease and also more open to the content and feel like they can be a part of that. And so, that's been really eye-opening and exciting, because I think for having... Our content team is 30 plus people. And having that many kind of creative minds together, I think has been really inspiring for all of us to just think differently about what we do and what we can do. Stephanie: Yeah, I've heard of quite a few brands saying the same thing of, "We maybe never would have tried this model before, because maybe we thought the way we were doing it was what everyone expected and wanted," and it's been in some ways a good shake-up to be able to see kind of, "Oh, this is actually not only just working, but it's also maybe something to keep for the long term." Amanda: Yeah. And in fact, it's a very common comment on our Instagram TV videos, is "Please don't go back to doing these videos in your office." Stephanie: Oh, wow. So are you guys going to stick with that? And/or are you going to do a mix going forward, once you can re-enter the office? Amanda: Yeah. We are. So, one piece of our office we have reopened is our photo studios, and primarily for things like our product shots in our shop. [inaudible] in a setting. We have not gone back to doing kind of our food videos and things like that. Stephanie: So I wanted to quickly talk through user acquisitions? So, I know you've talked quite a bit about Instagram, and I wanted to hear how you find new users, and what platforms are working for you or what strategies outside of the contests and Instagram stories, what else are you guys experimenting with and seeing success in? Amanda: Yeah. There's no silver bullet, and that's good. I remember the early days when everyone was just relying so heavily on Facebook to grow their traffic, and that was when social sites were really fine with referring back to sites. And I remember that we were uncomfortable with that then, and we didn't... It felt sort of too easy, right? That's one thing that I think people who have been in content for a while, it's never easy and that's okay, and that's what makes it interesting, right? Because you have to constantly be nimble and experiment and keep evolving. Amanda: And so, I think that's been really key, is not getting too wedded to any one thing that's working and seeing it as not just... that that's not a lack of efficiency, it's actually an opportunity to make sure that you're reaching people across lots of different channels. So, there are a couple of different ways we do it. One is sort of channel-specific, right? This year, we launched TikTok. We're still just early days there starting to experiment. We got into Reels, we really expanded our IGTV. We're starting to really invest more time and understanding where we should... how we can add value to Pinterest, right? And create an experience that people will be interested in. So, I think that constantly sort of making sure that you're experimenting, trying new things, and then adjusting across different channels. We just launched a podcast this week. Stephanie: Oh, nice. Congrats. [crosstalk] What's it called? Amanda: Oh, thank you. So, it's called The Genius Recipe Tapes. And it's based on Jamie's Recipes, which is our most popular column. And these are recipes that... It might be a recipe for something like meatloaf, but there's something about that meatloaf recipe that has a particular technique or an unexpected ingredient that really changes the way you cook meatloaf forever. So, it's these recipes that really are stand-outs, and a celebration of the people who have come up with them. And so- Stephanie: That's cool. Amanda: ... Genius Recipe Tapes grew out of the videos that we do where Kristin, who writes Genius Recipes, she invites the creator of the recipe onto the video to talk about how they came up with it, and just talk about their life and cooking. And there was so much good material that we realized that we could create a podcast out of it. So, that's our first podcast. We have one called Burnt Toast, which is on hiatus right now. But this is the first in a push towards building a podcast network. Amanda: So kind of expanding across channels is one way, but the other is expanding across the landscape of contributors who we work with and just really broadening it, so that we are working with people in lots of different voices, lots of different perspectives, and also lots of different expertise, so that we can go deeper on topics like bread or spirits, but we also can bring people who just have a really sort of unique perspective on cooking or home and who will have their own followings, and who we can kind of fold into our world a bit and broaden our audience by reaching theirs, and vice versa, help them build their own following by having them be on our platform. Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. So, I want to hear a little bit about your podcast strategy, of course, that's top of mind for us. I mean, we have a lot of brands coming to us, asking to help them build a podcast or think through that, and I'd love to hear your idea around what does success look like when you're thinking about building out these podcasts, and what should maybe other ecommerce leaders think about when they're thinking, "Oh, I want to build a podcast for my brand?" How are you guys approaching that? Amanda: Well, the way we approached it was we looked at the landscape of what kinds of podcasts were in our space. And obviously, we had some sense of that based on our existing podcast, and feeling like there were... Are there unexplored topics or voices that weren't kind of getting out there, or even just concepts? Previously, we had this one podcast, and we were kind of reliant on it to kind of do everything, so to speak, in our podcast footprint. And I think that what we realized is that in topics like cooking and home, there's a lot to cover, and there are a lot of specialized interests. Amanda: And we felt like if we could create a suite of shows and we could create some in-house, but we could also again act as the sort of platform for creators by partnering with them to create shows that they would like to do but maybe wouldn't have the full source of... Oh, sorry, to give the full resources to do themselves, then we could build on this idea of a suite of podcasts that are around related topics. And then do a lot of cross-promotion between them, and then ideally monetize them collectively, as opposed to trying to just build up one show. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I love that. Cool, so we don't have much time left, and I want to hop into a lightning round which is where I ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Stephanie: All right, so lightning round brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. I'm going to throw a question your way, be ready. I'm actually starting with three different ones this time that I haven't asked before, but I think it'll be interesting to hear your answers to this. So, these three questions are going to be called Lessons Learned or Hiccups, and it's the first thing that comes to your mind when I ask this question of something you learned or wouldn't do again, or would tell a new founder like, "Oh, make sure you avoid this when starting this." So the first lesson learned is around drop shipping. What's a good lesson there, or what's a hiccup you made early on where you're like, "Make sure you don't repeat this?" Amanda: We launched in August, and for November, we decided to sell frozen turkeys, heritage turkeys. So it was a fresh ingredient, that can spoil if not shipped properly in an efficient fashion. And we sold 80 turkeys that year, which we felt like was a pretty big amount given that we had just launched. And 79 of them got to the homes on time, happily, everyone had their Thanksgiving- Stephanie: That's good. Amanda: ... ready to go. But you don't want to not get somebody's turkey to them for Thanksgiving. So that one person's turkey took five of us to track down and then replace and then send an apology gift basket. It took us two days. And so, the person got their turkey for Thanksgiving, but we came away knowing that we were not ready, sort of from a supply chain logistics perspective to be handling fresh foods. So, we stuck to our dry goods. Stephanie: Oh my gosh, that's a great story. I mean, the customer might not like this, but having a good social story about that of like, "Where in the world is Sharon's turkey?" And trying to figure out where it went. Amanda: Well, there's a UPS truck broken down on the side of the road in Florida, and I guess another truck came up and was like, all the packages were shipped over, but the turkey did not make it- Stephanie: Oh no! Amanda: ... in the transfer. And so, somewhere in Florida was that turkey, and pretty close to its final destination, but it just never made it there. But anyway, we learned all sorts about sourcing turkeys, finding delivery companies in Florida, and it's always... Yes, it was a race and every little triumph of figuring out one piece of the logistics was fun. But it was not the most relaxing Thanksgiving for us. Stephanie: Oh my gosh. Well, that's a pretty good lesson when it comes to drop shipping. One, be careful if you're around holidays. I like that, because a customer might actually get upset, and then yeah, the perishable thing is tricky. That's a good one. All right, the next lesson learned is around creating a new product line. What would you advise people against trying or any hiccups you had early on with that? Amanda: Well, I think the hiccup we've had with new products that we've developed is frankly, just not building production delays into our timelines. And it's hard to estimate, right? But I think when you're new and trying to get a product line launched, those launch dates have such importance, and if you can't stick to them, or you... If you can't stick to them, yeah, it causes a lot of high blood pressure. So, yeah. I think that mapping out realistically and not... and making sure that you're building in as many buffers as possible. It is best. What one of the things that we did to kind of get around this was what we did was pre-sales. Sometimes if a product was not going to be able to be released on the date that we thought, we would do a pre-sale for it, being clear about when the actual delivery date was. But it allowed us to kind of soft launch a product and let our community know about it without having a long delay between product launches. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that's a good answer. All right, easier questions up next. What is a favorite recipe you're trying out right now? Amanda: Hmm. Well, let me see here. What am I going to be trying in the near future? Oh. So, Joanne Chang who has Flor Bakery in Boston is known for her egg sandwich, and it's a baked... She bakes the eggs in a water bath, and they're just so light and fluffy, they're one of the most popular... It's a really popular recipe on our site. And I've eaten them, but I haven't made them. I'm going to just follow her recipe sometime this weekend. And I like the idea of not having to fry an egg last minute before making an egg sandwich. I like the idea of it sort of getting cooked in this very sort of slow, controlled environment so you can have a great breakfast sandwich without adding stress to your morning. Stephanie: Yeah, oh, that sounds interesting. I've never heard of baking an egg in a water bath before. I've heard of poached eggs, but never baking it. So, I will have to also find that recipe. We need to get the link to that so our listeners can try it out as well. Amanda: Great. Stephanie: All right, and the last question, slightly harder. What one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year? Amanda: I mean, I think it's what we're seeing now. COVID has just accelerated this industry shift, where larger, more traditional retail companies were being squeezed by ecommerce and the retail landscape was shifting. Obviously, we've seen a lot of bankruptcy since COVID hit. So, it kind of sped up the process a bit. And I think that ecommerce, most ecommerce companies have benefited from people being home more and people not wanting to go out to stores. I do think that mindset of ordering online, while obviously it was well underway before COVID, I think is going to be more firmly part of the way people shop than maybe they had previously. So, I do think ecommerce is poised to have a great benefit. And I think for companies like ours, the big challenge is, if they've had this influx of new customers is, "Okay, now how do you keep them and how do you keep serving them well beyond this extraordinary and unusual time?" Stephanie: Yep, yeah. That's a great answer. Well, Amanda, this has been such a fun interview. I'm a little bit hungry now after hearing about that baked egg. But where can people find out more about you and Food52? Amanda: Oh. Well, on Food52.com and on our social channels, which are @Food52 and @Home52. And we also have a bunch of cookbooks, I hope you will check us out. Stephanie: Cool, thanks so much for joining.

We’ve all been there. It’s late at night, you’re flipping through the channels and you stop on CNBC. Chances are there is an old episode of Shark Tank playing, and sitting in one of those leather chairs you might have seen Kevin Harrington, one of the original sharks. Now think back many years ago, you’re still flipping through the channels, but this time you stop on an infomercial for a George Foreman Grill or a Tony Little Gazelle. Did you know you were actually seeing Kevin there, too? Maybe not physically, but Kevin’s fingerprints and dollars were very much present in those “as-seen-on-TV” specials.  Kevin was the pioneer of the television infomercial, and, therefore, the direct-to-consumer industry. And when the internet emerged, Kevin was one of the first to move his sales online. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, we grabbed Kevin for a quick interview to discuss his latest book, Mentor To Millions, and asked him to take us through his transition from TV powerhouse to digital investor. Kevin explains some of the key areas he looks at when determining if a company is worth investing in, and he details some of the ways that eCommerce companies should be thinking about marketing and product strategy.    3 Takeaways:   If You Don’t Have Marketing Money, Get Marketing Money: It is impossible to have a successful business if no one knows you exist. No matter how small a company might be, marketing has to be a top priority and, when spent wisely, whatever you invest in marketing has the potential to lead to huge ROI. Follow the Customers: The move toward eCommerce began in the mid-1990s when TV infomercials started putting website addresses at the bottom of the screen. Suddenly, companies saw that customers were opting to bypass telephone operators and place the orders themselves, and from there, ecommerce as we know it emerged. By always testing new ways to capture customers, you create opportunities to discover and encourage new types of buying behavior. Exit This Way: What’s more valuable than a product? A brand. And with the marketing tools available today, the ability to create a brand that customers love and trust is easier than ever before. Big buyers everywhere are eager to tap into these niche, high-conversion networks, which in turn, creates exit opportunities for smaller companies that never would have existed in the past.    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 --- Transcript: Stephaine: Welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, and today I'm really excited. We have Kevin Harrington on the show, the OG original shark from Shark Tank and the CEO of Harrington Enterprises. Kevin, welcome. Kevin: Stephanie, thanks for having me. Looking forward to having some fun today. Stephaine: Oh, me too. Your background is so interesting. I feel like I can't even do it justice, going through how you started out in the world of e-commerce. So, I was hoping you could actually touch on that, of where did you start in Ecommerce? Because I see you listed as the original everything. The infomercial guy, the guy who created this stuff. So, I want you to put it in your words how you started out in this industry. Kevin: Okay. Yeah. So, I started... I was a young entrepreneur back in Cincinnati, Ohio, one of six kids, and I had started a... Getting, ordered cable television. And so, I remember I got a 30 channel package. This was, now, early eighties. And so, I'm going through my 30 channels, 24 hours of sports on ESPN and 24 hours of movies on HBO. I get to Channel 30 and there's nothing there. So, I call the cable company and I said, "Hey, look. I love this cable, all these channels, 29 of them. But I'm paying for 30. Nothing on channel, Discovery Channel." Kevin: And so, they said, "Oh, Discovery is our latest channel. It's brand new. They don't have a budget for 24 hours a day. They do an 18 hour a day schedule. Six hours is nothing." And so, that's when the light bulb went off. I'm thinking, "Wait." I said... I literally said to the person, "If I have something to put on that six hours, would you be interested?" "Hey, yeah. Come on down. Talk to us. We're definitely... Whatever you're thinking." Kevin: So, anyway, make a long story short, I started putting products on Discovery Channel back in the early eighties. I then tied up that six-hour block on the nationwide level at the parent, Discovery, which was in now tens of millions of homes. And so... And again, this is back in the early eighties and we were doing the Food Saver, the Jack LaLanne Juicer, the Tony Little Fitness, George Foreman, Billy Mays. We even started getting into mainstream celebrities like Paris Hilton and her lip plumpers and the Kardashians and their skin care and things like this. So, we got involved, and this was early on, the early eighties. Nobody else was doing this, so people call me the inventor of the modern day infomercial. Kevin: So, that's when it all started and we've, over the years, gone public with a few companies. Build them, sell them, build them, sell them. I like entrepreneurship and bringing in the right kind of team of people to help, but... So, as we were then selling products on TV, that was the beginning of my entry into the marketplace and I think as we started getting more sophisticated, things started happening down the road, where we started putting websites. Of course, in the early eighties, websites didn't exist, right? It wasn't until, I believe, around '94 that things started. I mean, Amazon started in '94. I was in business for a dozen years before Amazon ever started. So, selling products direct to the consumer. Kevin: And in the nineties, we started putting websites into our infomercials and wow. All of a sudden, we found a certain percentage of the people, they didn't want to call the operator. They wanted to go straight to that website, get all of the details, and now we found a whole new area business between websites and Amazon and digital and now when you look at Facebook, etc. etc., it's a whole new world. Stephaine: That's awesome. So, what does your role look like today? I read that you have launched more than 20 businesses that have grown to over 100 million in sales each, so I wanted to hear kind of what are you doing today and what kind of principles are you using that you've learned from the many years that you've been doing this? Kevin: So, that first company that I mentioned, we ended up being a public company in a little bit of a complicated transaction. But here we were, public on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock was sitting at a dollar a share and I started bringing the right kind of people on board and you give options and things to people. But make a long story short, a few years later, that stock went to $20, and so I was one of the co-founders and had millions of shares, so this was my first chance to be like... And take some chips off the table, as they say, right? So... Because I was building my business all those years, putting all my own personal cash back into building the business until we had a public company, then I could use other people's money. We had lines of credit and all kinds of amazing things. So, that was the first public company that I got involved with and we had great success with it. So, I thought to myself, look, yes. I can make money selling products, but I can also make money driving share prices in public companies. Kevin: So, since then, fast forward, I like to participate in public companies. I like to be on the board if that's important for me from their standpoint. Also, there's hardcore board of directors of public companies. There's also advisory boards. So, as I invest in companies and take board seats and things, I'm involved now in about north of 10 public companies in some significant fashion, meaning I own equity, shares, board position, advisory seats, whatever. I mean, for example, one of my companies I got involved with five years ago was a little company called CELSIUS and it's an energy drink that... I don't know. Have you ever heard of CELSIUS [crosstalk 00:06:14]? Stephaine: Yes, I've... Yes, I have. Kevin: Okay. So, I got involved at a start-up, CELSIUS. The stock was 22 cents a share and again, I got a nice package when I got involved with these guys. But the stock yesterday hit $19, okay? So, I mean, it's... So, when you think about... When you get in in the beginning and get a big block and that block goes to a big number, that is wealth creation. So, I can talk about national media. I can talk about another one As Seen On TV, another one [inaudible] Travel Biz. I'm involved in various of these pub-cos. Some of them have product, some of them... Most of them have some kind of relation to what I can bring to the table. But I will say this. Almost every single one of them needs the expertise of Ecom and selling and doing digital marketing to create, whether it's customer acquisition or investor acquisition or friendly participant in whatever it might be, the acquisition of names and value to the company. Kevin: So, generally, when I join the board of a public company or the advisory board of a public company, I'll be helping bring some of the things that I've been dealing with and learning about over the last 30-some years in the world of Ecom and internet and digital. So, it... I think my focus now, since I've had great success with helping small pub-cos grow and create value for their shareholders, that's something that's near and dear to me and I love participating in those kind of opportunities. Stephaine: That's awesome. So, how are you able to build buzz or advise your companies to build buzz in the way that you were when you were using traditional media streams like TV? How can you have that same experience online or through word of mouth and conversions online? How are you advising your companies to get that same kind of buzz that you had generated in your past life? Kevin: [inaudible] If we went through... If we take a look at CELSIUS, for example. Let's look at that industry. CELSIUS was a start-up five years ago going against Red Bull and Monster, two of the biggest companies out there that had tremendous shelf space already. So, they started down the path of getting shelf space and they were successful at getting some space here and there, but what we also created was a direct to the consumer side of the business where we started bringing on influencers, big ones like Flo Rida, Khloe Kardashian, etc. And then micro-influencers, fitness influencers. We have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of fitness influencers, micro-influencers, out there on some arrangement that we've made with them to blast all of the information out about CELSIUS, why they love it, why they use it. And these are people... Many of them that approached us because they were users of our product. Kevin: So, now what's happened... So, for example, Flo Rida. He had 26 million followers. He created an amazing buzz to the point where one of his followers and friends was Khloe Kardashian. Well, she said, "Hey, Flo. I love this CELSIUS. Can you get me some cases of it?" So, we're shipping her cases, Flo cases, hundreds of fitness influencers, and now our Amazon business is just crushing it. So, I mean, this is... You can't just sit and wait for it to happen. You got to build the buzz. Kevin: And by the way, there's one thing that I did not say we did. The old days of as seen on TV... I used to spend, some years, as much as $100 million on television. ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, Discovery, Lifetime, all the cable networks, hundreds and hundreds of broadcast stations around the country. But it's very, very expensive and the brand, a product like CELSIUS, in the world of as seen on TV would cost millions, if not tens of millions. So, we chose to go in the newer and much more direct way by utilizing micro-influencers and we've had a great run. The product is now in 165,000 stores, but it's also being supported by the social media influence marketplace. Stephaine: Yeah. I love that. Yeah, really great story. So, someone does not have connections or even maybe a budget big enough to give them even a micro-influencer. What would you suggest to a new DTC startup who's trying to get in front of people? What kind of digital channel are you advising your companies to try out or marketing methods or anything? How would you tell a new person starting out, this is the things that you should look into that are working right now? Kevin: Well, if they don't have the budget, I'd recommend that they go raise some money and get a budget, okay? So... Because if you are in business and you say, "Well, I don't have a budget for the Facebook or Instagram." I mean, this is where you have to test, these outlets, because... I mean, I had a product that somebody brought me two years ago. They had attempted to sell it in stores and on QVC and different places and they got shut down because nobody had ever heard about it. There was no branding. And so, we started running some very inexpensive $5 ads on Facebook and then Instagram and for $5,000 in ads, we brought in $25,000 in credit card orders. Amazing, right? Stephaine: Yeah. That's great. Kevin: Now, these folks that owned the company, we had a partnership now where we're starting to run this and so we were spending 100,000 a week, bringing in 400,000 a week in sales. Making money, paying for itself, unbelievable. So, don't tell me as an entrepreneur, "I don't have the budget." Because for five grand, you can test and you're going to find out. You may be... That... What happens... If you bring in 25,000 in sales off a $5,000 spend, that's self-liquidates, makes money and you're in a big profit position. So, you have to figure out a way to test the digital forces out there. Kevin: The other thing you can do... I know some groups that represent a lot of influencers and there are some people taking aggressive positions, where maybe you could talk them into taking a little equity position in your company in exchange for exposure from groups of influencers, so... Because these big master influencing organizations that have... I know companies, they have 800 influencers that they work with. Well, they pay them, but there's nothing that says they couldn't dribble down some stock or some equity to some of them also, and I think... I'm aware of some companies that are now starting to do equity-based influence marketing and so, I think you're going to see something like that taking storm in the near future. Stephaine: That's really interesting. So, when you're picking companies to either go on their board or help them, what kind of metrics are you looking at for these Ecommerce companies that lets you know whether they're going to be a winner or not? What kind of things are you looking for to pick who you're going to support? Kevin: Well, I like to see that they're spending money on media or influencers or some form of getting distribution. And so, if a company is... They say, "Okay. We've got $100,000 a month budget and $25,000 a week, and we're going to go spend it in an area." I like to see returns on that investment. I like to see at least a one-to-one back, meaning you spend 100,000, you're bringing back 100-plus, at least 100 in sales. But I really prefer to see more like 200 minimum, because now that is now where you're getting to a self-liquidating situation. Kevin: So, the most ideal client or investment for me is when I come into a company that is spending money and actually making money on the spend, but they don't have the money for the media, they don't have the money for the inventory, so they need capital. That is a perfect thing for me because once we plug the capital in, the sales are going to start blossoming and there actually will be self-liquidation so the media, it won't be expensed. It's sort of like an investment to the future profit. So, I think that's... In an ideal scenario, somebody that has a business that has a media spend that's paying for itself. That is, first and foremost, the number one thing that I look for. Stephaine: Well, makes sense. So, for more start-up companies and public companies, do you see them struggling with a lot of the same problems or is it just completely different? And if so, what do you see them hung up on right now, in this environment? Kevin: So, I mean, I think start-ups are different, generally, than public companies. Usually, a public company is working off... The reason they've gone public is because they've figured out a model that generally works and so they want to tell the public, "Hey, look. We've figured this out. We've got the customer acquisition cost figured out and we've got long-term lifetime value of our customers figured out and we just need money to go... And when we go public, we sell stock, we raise money to build the business." Right? Now, that's generally the kind of pub-cos that I like to get involved with. They're kind of over that start-up phase. Kevin: The challenge with start-ups is getting to that point of proof of concept, knowing that you've got something and/or having... And I... Being an old DR guy, back to the old days of selling Ginsu knives and Food Savers and Tony Little Gazelles and Jack LaLanne juicers, I'm an old school guy that likes to see customer acquisition models that work. So, I highly recommend... If a start-up is trying to raise capital, if they can show me an economic model for customer acquisition, I'm in. I mean, it's then a much easier deal because I can see the money is going in and it's going to build the business. I don't like to sink money in that's going to be used for salaries and start-up costs and software and all these things. I like to see money that gets invested into marketing programs that focus on increasing sales and getting new customers. Kevin: So, if a start-up... I mean, if you look at a lot of these modern day start-ups, the Caspers, the Romans, the... I mean, even... There's one. What's the one called? Oh. I'll think of it in just a second, but it's BarkBox, okay? Where people get a box for their dog every month, right? Stephaine: Yep. Kevin: Well, what they were doing was using customer videos. People would open the box every month with their dog and show all the excitement and the fun they were having, and these customer videos were being sent out to millions of people, acquiring new customers. So, they've built a $250 million business with their customers sending out things on Instagram because they were excited about the product. So, they had... They had proof of concept, they had a business model that worked and a customer acquisition model that worked. Stephaine: Very cool. So, what are some... I mean, I'm sure you've seen a lot of different models of customer acquisition. What are some of the most creative ones or timeless ones that continue to work? Kevin: Well, I mean, I think... Let's start with the one I just mentioned because when... This is... BarkBox is a company that, they didn't start on TV like the "as seen on TV." No. That would have cost them millions. They went... They reached out to their customers and so... There's another girl that started a beauty company and she was an intern at Vogue and she went out and started blogging and getting all kinds of information out. She wanted to start her own brand, direct to the consumer, and this is now a billion dollar brand and for some reason, the name of it is escaping me. Kevin: The bottom line is, how did she build a billion dollar company from zero, right? I mean, it was... It's literally amazing. But how she did it was micro-influencers. She recruited 1.7 million micro-influencers and this just took off and built her company into a billion dollar brand. Stephaine: Yep. Kevin: But the bottom line is I had nothing to do with this company. I just watched her and followed her from intern to billion dollar business, and that's exciting for me as an entrepreneur, to see young entrepreneurs doing this. I think the folks that started the businesses Rent The Runway and the clothing companies that, you would get a box every month, those are companies that focused on really tight acquisition costs for their clientele, etc., etc. But I just... I love hearing about these stories, when somebody starts from zero, is an intern at a magazine and a couple years later, running a billion dollar brand. Stephaine: Yep. Yeah. I love that. That's awesome. We will look her up and put it in the show notes. Kevin: Okay. Stephaine: So, one last question before we dive also into your book. What big trend or patterns do you see coming to Ecommerce right now? Any disruptions or things that you see impacting Ecommerce in the next year? Kevin: Well, the big old Amazon is up there, kind of waving its big wand over the whole industry in the product side of the business, okay? And so, I will tell you, what's happening is I'm seeing entrepreneurs start a single product business, get it on Amazon and then somebody comes along, wants to buy them. This is pretty cool because you don't have to have a $100 million business, a $50 million business or even 10 million. You could be doing two, three million dollars a year and someone might be willing to pay you eight or 10 million for that. So, I mean, there is an amazing trend right now. I know people, they're doing roll-ups, as they call them. Stephaine: Yep. Kevin: They're buying companies that... They'll buy them on a multiple of sales or earnings and then, as a big company, they've got an attractive blended situation that allows for their multiples to work for them and then packaging these companies and selling them off. So, I think the difference today versus, let's say, me when I was starting close to 40 years ago, back in the early eighties and I'm running Tony Little and Jack LaLanne. We only thought about just selling a lot of product, building these sales and maybe go public. But we weren't selling these brands. We never thought about, "Oh, let me go sell Tony Little's Gazelle product. Let me go sell the Jack LaLanne Juicer as a company." Right? But it's... Kevin: Now, this is what's happening. People that start a product business realize it is a business and it might be worth... If you got a business that's doing 30 million in sales, it could be worth two or three times sales. It might be worth $60 or $90 million. I mean, these are things that people that are entrepreneurs need to explore because the key thing is there are exit strategies for entrepreneurs today, unlike the old days where it was a lot tougher to find somebody to buy an old asset that you had. Stephaine: Yep. I love that. Very inspiring. All right, so you have a new book out, Mentor to Millions. I want to hear a little bit about that. What is the book about? Tell us all the details. Kevin: [crosstalk] Mentor to Millions, it's myself and my co-author, Mark Timm. Now... And actually, it's very interesting. The foreword is buy Tom Ziglar, Zig Ziglar's son, so... Stephaine: Oh, I love Zig Ziglar. Kevin: Oh, yeah. Me too. And Zig was a mentor to me and he was also a mentor to Mark Timm, and the family, after Zig passed away, introduced Mark and I and said, "You guys should be doing business because you're two good guys that my father mentored." And so, make a long story short, this is a book about mentoring. It's a book... I mean, we turned this manuscript in in January, long before there was any real buzz about COVID crisis and the pandemic. But once the pandemic hit, March, April, and our book... It's just coming out now. It actually launches in September, so right now it's only pre-order and I'll tell folks about that. But the bottom line is it's about how to get a mentor, how to find a mentor, how to utilize the mentor in your world, because I have used many mentors in many ways, and what they did for me is they helped me take my business growth exponential. And not just added on business, but geometrically exponential is what happened for me when I got mentored by the right folks. Kevin: So, Mark and I... It's... I'm the mentor in the book and he's the mentee and it's a story of our relationship and the magical transformation that occurs in the process. So, it's a powerful book about mentoring and how and why and where and all of that. But we're pretty excited because Hay House is the publisher, launches next month. We've got a lot of effort going into it and if anybody would be interested in hearing more about it, they can go to kevinmentor.com and there's an explanation of the book and all about the chapters and the follow-through from me mentoring Mark along the way of building his business. So, thanks for asking. I appreciate that, Stephanie. Stephaine: Yep. That's awesome. We will definitely be checking that out. We will link it up and Kevin, thanks so much for joining the show. Kevin: Hey, it was great to be here. Stay safe and healthy. Take care. Stephaine: Thanks, Kevin.

One of the most vexing questions brands are asking themselves today is how to get a solid ROI from influencer marketing. At Fancy.com, Greg Spillane thinks he has the answer.  When Greg came on as the CEO of Fancy in 2019, he was tasked with re-inventing and rebuilding the brand. Known as the “turnaround guy,” he had experience coming into distressed companies and pivoting them into viable businesses. Fancy was right up his alley. The company was known for lavish parties, and even handing out $1,000 gift cards to celebrities, models, and influencers. After Fancy blew through $100M in investment money, and with no profit in sight, Greg knew there was work to be done. With a new focus on profitability, and building on the impressive technology that Fancy created, Greg figured out a model that created a win-win opportunity for brands and influencers. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Greg discusses how he approached his role when he was brought in to turn around this struggling brand. He details the influencer, channel and email strategies he’s implementing to turn engagement into transactions. Plus, he talks about how to build a sustainable company, the things to consider when building out a board or taking on investment money, and his thoughts on when building an app is beneficial or just a distraction. Enjoy!   Main Takeaways: Influencing the Influencer Market — Most companies have yet to figure out how to get a solid ROI from utilizing influencers. Tune in to hear how Fancy is creating a mutually beneficial relationship by providing a platform that allows both the influencer and the brand to grow and monetize their user bases. Do You Really Need An App?  — When store owners start to have success, many begin to think about that next platform and are eager to jump into building their own app. But Spillane says this may not be the best move for many brands. Before diving into the world of apps, think about what will be different about the app versus the desktop. If the answer is nothing, then you will probably be just fine with a mobile responsive website instead.   Building a Viable Business  —  When taking over as CEO at Fancy, Greg had to re-invent and re-build the business from the ground up and turn the focus toward profitability. Having open and honest communication with the team is crucial during these pivotal times. New CEO? Take it Slow — Oftentimes, new CEOs come into a company and try to do too much too soon. Instead, spend the first 90 days listening, getting buy-in, and letting the problems — and many times the solutions — reveal themselves. 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 --- Transcript: Stephanie: Perfect. Welcome back to another episode of Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder of Mission.org. Today we're chatting with Greg Spillane, CEO of Fancy.com. Greg, welcome. Greg: Thank you, Stephanie. I'm so excited to be here and speaking with you. Stephanie: I know. I'm really excited to have you on. I was going through Fancy.com before this, and I think I've found at least three things that I want to order after the show that I actually have not seen anywhere else. One was an air plant that was on top of an amethyst crystal. I haven't seen that. And the other one was like a chilling beer mug. It looked Awesome. So that's where my mind's at right now. Air plants and beer mugs. Greg: Well, perfect. I'll tell you what, I'll hook you up with a solid discount code and even something you can send out to your audience. Stephanie: Oh, I like it. This interview is already going great. Greg: Yes. Stephanie: So, you have such an interesting story. Fancy is a really good story. I was hoping actually, we can just start and dive right in about what is your role and how did you come to Fancy? And what is Fancy.com? Greg: Sure. Yeah. My background is I guess, little atypical. I mean, I came out of school really as an athlete. I attended undergrad on a football scholarship. So I was a little bit of a meathead type of guy earlier in my life. And was introduced to the internet and really computers really early on. I was one of those guys that had a computer when I was 10 years old, connecting with my 2,400 baud modem to BBST, doing all those types of things. So that's schools, technology is where I studied, I got out. I started my career as an engineer. I quickly realized coding all day is just not for me. And that's kind of where my entrepreneurial journey started. I actually founded an agency. Greg: We were doing customer development for people. A lot of digital transformation stuff really early and sort of the internet booms like early 2000s and built a couple of different products sort of just for happenstance. And I took them to market in a subscription-based model. Well, before SaaS was really even a term. And had some success and had an opportunity to sell that company. So that was great. I decided to go back to business school at that point. And then really spent the better part of the next eight years or so in kind of the management consulting world specific around technology, sort of like big Fortune 100 type of systems implementations, et cetera. And great cushy, all that stuff, like good pay. But I just, I didn't want to be like sort of a cog in a giant wheel. Greg: So a business school colleague of mine had just taken over this company based out of San Diego, was founded by a guy who had already had a billion dollar exit. It's kind of more of an incubator of sorts. Was like four or five companies that had come together and he was asked to run it. And he was looking for a guy who had sort of a tech marketing business development background. And brought me in and I left sort of the cushy corporate world to get back into the crazy world of entrepreneurship. Led that company through a pivot. We ended up eventually rebranding as Events.com. We spun off one of our divisions and sold it to private equity. And it was a nice little ride. And that gentleman ended up moving back into the private equity world and opened up a firm in a venture front and would invest in a number of different companies. Greg: And somehow I became like this turnaround guy that he would bring me in to these companies that had all this potential that they invested in, but for one reason or another was somewhat distressed. And that's ultimately how I got introduced to Fancy. He came in, they sit on the board of directors here, they invested in the company in late 2018 and there were some things that needed to be changed. Obviously, Fancy has been a company, been around for a really long time. So I was brought in, made the CEO in March of 2019. But a little bit more about Fancy, the company itself was founded in 2010, tremendous amount of early success. I think we're talking about people like Jack Dorsey was on the board of directors early on. Even today our board of directors is sort of a who's who of people. Greg: But our company had over 12 million users since our inception. Really found it as more of a social network, Pinterest of sorts. A place to really kind of find and share just really cool and interesting and unique products. And then there was a natural evolution into commerce. And we've had a lot of highs. And the company never had an issue with users or experience, it was really around profitability and finding a way to make this into a viable business model. So we did end up having a situation where there's a couple of insolvency moments which ultimately led to the transition. But I've come in and there's still such a great userbase and foundation in here. And we've sort of been pivoting the company and turning things back around. It's been a fun little ride so far. We're really excited about the future. Stephanie: That's great. So when thinking about coming in and turning around companies, either at Fancy.com or just holistically from like a higher level of what you've done in your past, what is the first maybe 90 days look like when you are looking at a company and figuring out how you want to change it and what's going wrong? Greg: Yeah. Good question. So having done this a handful of times now, I can tell you that I made a lot of mistakes the first couple of times doing it. And I think that it really prepared me for the role I took on at Fancy. I'll tell you what not to do. First, what not to do is go in and start making changes too quickly. To go in and sort of like point out every mistake that the company's ever made. One of the easiest things in the world to do is be a critic. And you can go into a company that's somewhat distressed or has had some issues, and you could just start just tearing things apart. Whose decision was this? Why are we doing this? This doesn't make sense. And even though you can quickly come up with the right direction and the right solution for what you need to do, you can lose your people. Greg: And ultimately, your people are the most important assets you have in many cases. So what you do need to do when you go into a company and you want to turn around, and I think it's something that I was able to do at Fancy even though there were a lot of tough decisions and tough changes, is get the buy-in from your team. A lot of times you do that by just listening and just acknowledging all the great things that they've done in the past. And truthfully, most of the issues that you're going to eventually have to address, they already know they exist and they know what they are. So let them tell you, and you'll start to kind of pull out the solutions. Then when you have to make those really difficult changes that impact people's lives and careers and whatever it may be, the people that you need and people that you keep are on board because they see the rationale and they understand it. And a lot of ways, they're the ones that have kind of helped you, guide you. Greg: So I guess just to summarize that, the one thing that I've learned over time and that I don't think I did really early on in my career is to just take super account of the people and the human aspect of what they're going through and being a new person coming into an established company and having to make change, but doing it in a way that keeps them engaged and let them believe in you and want to continue to be part of the company. Stephanie: Yeah. I love that. So when it comes to Fancy.com, it seemed like before you, it was a pretty fancy environment. Like maybe really nice parties and things like that. Did you have any struggles maybe when it came to convincing the employees like we can't keep doing that? Because many employees are probably like, "I'm used to this and I'm very used to going here and interacting with these people and having this kind of swag." I don't know if that's the case for Fancy.com, but did you encounter any of that pushback when you were kind of evolving the environment to focus on profitability? Greg: Yeah. I did. Funny story, at least I think it's funny. We had the storage unit in Manhattan. And I went into it one day and just a bunch of old fancy stuff, swag and different products, people incentives for revaluation. There are just box. And I open up this box and it's got these thick, like metal credit cards. They're the size of credit cards, but they're kind of like solid steel. And it's like, "Thank you for visiting Fancy. We value you. Here's a $1,000 gift credit to use at Fancy, coupon code." And there are like- Stephanie: Oh my gosh. Greg: ... Hundreds of these things. I mean like a stack, like a box full of them, probably even had thousands of them. Stephanie: Oh my gosh. Greg: I'm like, "What is this?" I go, "We were just giving away, like handing out $1,000 gift cards?" And so I went back to the team uptown. And the founders apparently would go to these parties in New York City and they would have models and celebrities and hip hop artists and athletes and et cetera. And they would just walk around the party just kind of talking and they would just give these $1,000 gift cards away to people. Stephanie: Wow. That's super fancy. Greg: That is super fancy. Right. Right. That's how you go through $120 million in capital in a period of time. Stephanie: Is that what you encountered when you came in? It was like $120 million of capital was kind of spent maybe in not the best ways and you had to kind of get out of the hole? Greg: Well, yes and no. So the positive, and this is what really is I think exciting about the opportunity and one of the reasons why I decided to pretty much route my life and spend the last, however many months in New York. I'd been a Southern California guy, is, yes, that a lot of money went to waste. And there was a lot of money spent on parties and those types of things. But along the way, they built an amazing technology platform. So Fancy is all proprietary and really the underlying technology that's built upon... The mobile app that we have is really rock solid. I'm in technology. And I've been in technology throughout my life and our mobile app, we have, I think today like give or take like 2.7 million active installs of the Fancy app, iOS, Android. Stephanie: Wow. Greg: Fancy.com domain name, the site itself is generating however many hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month just to sort of organic and SEO. Our dataset, we've had over 12 million Fancy accounts created. We've done several million transactions. We're working with however many merchants, some 800 merchants. We're a global company. Last year alone, we sold a product to 135 countries. So there was this asset pool that was built with that money that went out that as a startup you would just never be able to replicate. You just couldn't do those things if you were starting from scratch. Greg: But then because of some of the shortfalls of the company, and this is more from a business perspective, the current valuation and as we've raised last money, I mean, we're just closing out a small little bridge note right now and a $12 million valuation, which is insane. I mean, the intrinsic value of our assets far exceeds that number, but because of the situation that's where we're at. So I look at it as a huge opportunity and an amazing asset pool that we sit on. But short answer to your question is there was a lot of money spent on parties that like Tiësto was deejaying at. They had no business rationale really other than just getting the Fancy brand out. Stephanie: Oh my gosh. I mean, I kind of wish I was at that party, but I don't know if I want to be an investor in that company per se or the CEO at that time. So that sounds like a big turnaround project. Maybe to talk a little bit about Fancy, so there's a lot of products on there, a lot of really cool products, was there any business decisions around product selection or how to curate them or personalize things or around like sourcing new products that you're implementing right now to maybe make the user experience better and to not show thousands of products at once and more personalize it to the people when they're coming onto the website? Greg: Yeah. Really kind of all those things in some way or another. And it's still a work in progress. And we're implementing, actually we partnered with a great company, is actually a portfolio company of Raptor which is the investment firm behind Fancy right now called Luminoso. Greg: And they have a bunch of amazing AI technology, machine learning technology that's being implemented in everything from search to recommendation. Sort of a lot in the social aspects we have in our site how we're going to be able to better make recommendations and curate products more effectively. So like all of that stuff has been unchanged. We did a significant culling of the amount of products that we were on our site when I came on board. I think it was, actually like 400,000 products that were live. Stephanie: Wow. Greg: It just didn't really make sense. Like you can't be a curated marketplace or a highly curated marketplace with that many products available. We were much more open earlier on in regards to who we would let come sell on our site. And what that did is, there were some quality issues in regards to who that merchant was and whether they were fulfilling, and is the product really what they said that it was? So we've moved much more towards like a closed marketplace. We do have an internal brand development curation team who thoroughly vets all of the sellers on our site. Greg: And our philosophy, where we're moving towards as a company is this concept of the rise to the direct consumer brand. We just see so many amazing purpose-driven brands. And I think that's the key. Like Amazon has almost been a victim of their own success fulfilled by Amazon and Alibaba and all these different people who are just trying to source product and get in on Amazon and sort of like tweak with the algorithms. Getting like commoditized products that there's not really a brand behind it. A lot of these people, these entrepreneurs who are selling these products never even take possession of the product. They're not designing the products. They're just sourcing them and trying to sell them. Greg: And we're trying to be the anti-Amazon in that regard. So we want to work with the, sort of like the Allbirds of the world before they are the Allbirds. And get those products on. And we look at it as a huge win-win because we know consumers are attracted to those brands and purpose-driven brands. Brands that have a story. Brands that potentially have a charitable aspect or a self-sustainable aspect. And those are the type of products that they want to find. They want to cut through the clutter. I mean, there're sites out there that have this stuff. I mean, you go to Etsy, you're talking millions of products. And it's like, how do you find these products? How do you get through some of the other junk that's out there? Greg: And then on the brand side, customer acquisition is really difficult and platforms like Instagram and Google are really saturated. That's one of the main channels that people have now to reach out to their consumers. Everyone's talking about influencers and how they can leverage influence more effectively. But I don't think anybody's really cracked that code really well. So we have a huge audience and we spend a lot of time trying to build up the products, the brands that we feature. And we come up with a fair and equitable revenue split. And we reach out to the audience. People come to us to find these brands that have been curated and it doesn't cost anything to be on our platform for the brands. So they're guaranteed to make money when we sell products. And we're going to continue to build on that thesis. Stephanie: I love that. So maybe to zoom in a bit on the customer acquisition piece, you're talking about Facebook and Google, they're getting pretty saturated and pretty expensive. What channels are you guys finding success in right now to bring customers to these new brands and products? Greg: Yeah. It's a great question. So we're really lucky because we really, since I've been here, have not spent a ton of money on having to do sort of paid ads. I mean, we do a little bit here and there and we handle retargeting and that type of stuff, but we have a tremendous amount of organic traffic that just finds us. We're a well optimizer, very high search engine authority. So a lot of people come upon Fancy.com and naturally go there. We also have a mobile app that has a very different shopping experience. It feels much more like a social shopping experience where there's dynamic feed of products and people can like and share and then recommendations are made by what they like. Greg: So we do, do some advertising in regards to getting people to download our app. We found that we have a really high lifetime value for people who have downloaded our app. I think right now our average user opens the app like 5.4 times a month or something like that. So it's relatively sticky. We're working on conversions and optimize the conversion rates on that. Because of the social aspect, those are lower than some more traditional Ecommerce. But the area that we're really focused on and really growing is to continue to build upon our influencer model, our affiliate model and partnering with micro-influencers. The technology is on our site in which they help sort of guest curate. Greg: And this is going to be a big part of our upcoming release, guest curate, different selections of products whether it's for home decor, or whether it's fashion-based, whatever it is, with the idea of, we're creating a great experience for our userbase. But then we want to help sort of build their own personal brand with the idea that there's a quid pro quo. We pay them a percentage of sales and we can attribute when they've driven traffic to the site or anything that's been sold which provides an incentive for them to share and drive people to the Fancy platform and then vice versa. Obviously, we're providing them with an avenue to create more exposure for themselves. Because if it's not being hidden, we want people to know who this particular curator or influencer or thought leader in the space is. Stephanie: Cool. I love that. So it's a good segue into influencers because we've had a lot of people in our audience ask about that and wonder how to even... Like, "Is it successful working with influencers? How do you go about engaging with them?" So what does maybe the back-end look like for Fancy when it comes to building up this influencer network and what kind of success are you seeing? And how would you maybe advise a smaller brand to start this, if you think they should? Greg: Yeah. The influencer models can be tough. And it's definitely something we talk a lot about. We've been toying around, we've done a lot of user research and space. What I would say is the traditional influencer model of, "Hey, let me find a micro-influencer. Let me pay him X amount of money, depending on their size. And let me have them do a post talking about our product or driving people to our site." The experience that we've had ourselves and then with brands that we've worked with is, you're really not going to get an ROI there. It's doesn't necessarily pencil. At least that's what we've seen. I'm sure there's some people out there that have been able to figure that out. Greg: So we're looking at it a little bit differently. At least our approach to it is, we want to create more of a platform that influencers can leverage and become a little bit more native in what they're doing that helps them expand their own reach, expand the value to their userbase. And then ultimately monetize that userbase because that's really what the influencers, especially micro-influencers are looking to do. But it has to be done somewhat organically, at least from what I've seen. And if it's just a matter of paying an influencer, because you want them to use your product or post your product or tag you in something like that, I don't know. I have not personally seen that ROI. I think it takes a lot of time and patience. I've seen some companies, some of the brands that you've talked to that have tried it. They've kind of given up after a couple months of doing it because they just haven't seen the return that they've wanted. Greg: So I think that, that's kind of one component of it. I think it can be kind of difficult to go that route. From my experience, some of the influence could be a little bit difficult to work with but not all of them. So we kind of pick and choose. We do a lot of reach out through our own Instagram account. We have about 350,000 followers. So that helps and it gives us some legitimacy. We're usually able to engage and we got some great people who follow us on Instagram. And that's another big advantage as well. So that's typically where we open up discussions. And then we try as much as possible to look at it from a pure win-win perspective. And we want to be a technology company. So we want to be able to provide them with more of a platform that sort of ties into what they're already doing and allows them to effectively monetize their audience to try to do it as authentically as possible. Stephanie: Yep. So how are you building a platform? I'm trying to imagine what that would look like from the influencers' perspective. Like, is it just a platform based around Fancy products? Or is it kind of separate where it's a platform for their them to influence but other products can be there as well? Or how do I think about that? Greg: So the way the platform currently works right now is we can create a profile on Fancy for a particular influencer which they can curate their own lists, different groupings of different products, et cetera, that they like. So what we bring to the table is, a, we bring in the fulfillment infrastructure. We have the relationships with all the different brands. They've already been vetted. We handle all fulfillment. We handle all shipping. We handle all payment processing. We handle all fraud detection, returns, customer support, et cetera, et cetera. And then what we can do with them is we can give them the ability to go on Fancy, create a profile. It can be done honestly, and we have done it in more of a white-labeled capacity in the past, where it looks almost like their own personal website, their own storefront in which they're able to pick sort of unique and interesting products and kind of populate it. Greg: But in a lot of cases, it's done more of in like a traditional profile on our site. And then we have attribution on that. So it works in more of an affiliate model from, any traffic or any users they drag to our site we can track it and ultimately we can pay them per the performance of what they've done. And then, I think what makes us interesting versus like, let's say in Amazon who does some affiliate type of stuff is we do have a little bit more of an authentic kind of lifestyle brand through Fancy and a little bit more legitimacy with kind of being cool and sort of having new, initially unique stuff versus Amazon, which is great for commoditized products, but isn't necessarily where you want to buy your fashion from. Greg: So that lifestyle brand plus the uniqueness of our products, it's something that a lot of times their users and micro-influencer and influencer working with the type of imagery we use, et cetera, is typically more engaging and more in line with what they're trying to accomplish with their own profile anyways. Stephanie: Got it. Yeah. That's really interesting thinking. It's probably easier than for a brand to just work with you guys to then get access to that influencer network and hopefully be chosen to be on one of those lists or whatnot. Greg: Yeah. It's funny you say that. That's something that we have, as a company have done in the past and have done pretty successfully. When I came in, I really wanted to simplify our business model and I wanted to kind of bring out all these sort of different one-off type of deals, but we've had a lot of brands, like big brands. I mean, like global brands that have come to us and have paid us six figures to connect them with users on our site or influencers on our site in kind of joint marketing efforts. You mentioned T-Pain. And you saw that T-Pain- Stephanie: Yeah. I saw he was called the VP of, I think product testing, but VP had quotes around it. Greg: Yeah. So like, he did a big thing with us, Purple mattresses. You've probably heard of Purple. Purple community was however many, a couple of years ago, we did an entire... We sort of middled an entire campaign with T-Pain. And T-Pain did a bunch of different videos and interesting kind of things. It's created a bunch of content for Purple mattresses that of course was featured on Fancy, but then Purple was taking this content and they were repurposing it for their own purposes. Greg: So there are opportunities there. Like I said, it's a little bit of when you come into a company and you're running the turnarounds, you've got to kind of cut. You got to like really focus. So I'm really, I'm trying to focus on just creating a great user experience trading win-win with our merchants and the different brands that we're partnering with. And then do the best that we can in order to help that experience for our consumers be a better experience by bringing in influencers or people who can really create interesting collections of products that we think ultimately people like yourself, the consumers the world will find value in. Stephanie: Yeah, that's awesome. So when talking about building a company now, and we've been talking quite a bit about around, like the turnaround story and how to rebuild it, one thing I have not touched on that I think it would be great too is developing a board of directors. So a lot of brands right now, if they're thinking about raising money and of course, like the board of directors question always comes up of like, "Who do you want on your board?" And I was hoping you could kind of touch on your guys' board of directors and what's helpful? What's that? Like, how should someone think about having a board and putting that together? Greg: That's a great question. Obviously, you want a board of directors that's going to be supportive of you. You want a board of directors that's going to be helpful, right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Greg: That has connections. That's going to be involved. I've had boards where it's like all they want is reporting, reporting, reporting, which you're going to provide anyways. I mean, you, of course are providing your reporting to your board. But it's like a really effective board isn't necessarily a babysitter of the money or whatever that's been invested. And just kind of like that. I mean, that's helpful. I guess it helps keep you accountable. But what you really want from a board is a group of people that are willing to get involved and make introductions and are actually taking an interest and listening to what you're doing and provide you with valuable advice and help you answer difficult questions. Greg: And a lot of times you don't get that with your board, especially if you get kind of a fund that comes in and maybe you get someone on the board. It's a board, so you can take over. And you're a part of 100 portfolio companies and they're not even really paying attention. They don't really know what you're doing. They don't know your industry, et cetera. I've been really lucky here at Fancy. We have a small board. It's only four of us, well, were five of us, including myself. The chairman of our board is Jim Pallotta. Jim Pallotta is the owner of Boston Celtics. Just actually recently sold A.S. Roma, which is the Rome Premier League soccer team. He's a billionaire. Extremely accomplished investor based out of Boston. Super well connected. And is just sharp as a tack. Greg: And he's involved just enough. Like the perfect amount. Like wants to make introductions, wants to makes his connections. Has just an amazing Rolodex and he is willing to open his Rolodex at anytime to make a connection for the company. And then we have François Pinault who's basically the chairman of Kering. He's married to Selma Hayek. You might know him. He's the guy who donated like $300 million to the Notre Dame when it burnt down, [inaudible 00:30:38]. And so they own Gucci and lots of gallery, like one of the largest luxury houses in the world. So once again, extremely well connected credibility across the board. When you're talking to brands, we're trying to bring on direct to consumer brands. And one of the largest shareholders of this company and board members say owns Gucci, that goes a long way. Greg: So I'm really lucky, very supportive. There are people who have brought more to the table than just money. Really an active interest in the company and making those things. As far as building your own board, look, a lot of times your board members are going to be your biggest investors and you go out and raise capital and unless you've got an amazing idea or you just really doing something special, as much as you want to say you can go out there and pick your investors, that's a lie. So someone's going to write a cheque and you're trying to raise capital, in many cases, you're going to take that capital. And along with that capital comes board seats. So you don't always have the control that you would like in that situation, but if you do have the ability to pick your board, I think you can pick your advisors a little bit more easily. But you want people who are going to be more than capital to the table. You want people who are going to get actively and involved and they're not afraid to open up the Rolodex and make connections. Stephanie: Yeah. I completely agree. It's something you see at least here in Silicon Valley. Sometimes people are excited maybe about really big brand name, investment firms or large amounts of money. And I've always asked the question of like, "Well, how can they actually help you? Like, can they spend time with you? Can they actually give you introductions? Are they willing to do that?" I think not for certain. At least I've heard certain investment firms, once you get to a certain level, they're not going to spend time with you unless they invest a very large amount of money and they have a lot of skin in the game. And outside of that, it might actually be better to work with someone who's in your industry, knows it, can introduce you to people. So, I completely agree. The same thing with building a board or thinking about that. You might not always have the options to do so, but if you do, choose someone who can actually help you and spend time with you. Greg: That's exactly right. Stephanie: So earlier we were talking about, you guys have an app and your desktop version, how did you go about thinking about building out an app? You said it had a different user experience and buying experience and a lot more of a social aspect there. Like how do you think a brand should think about like, "Should I have an app?" Because I think at one point, every brand probably considers building their own app along with their desktop version. Greg: Yeah. No, absolutely. You know what's funny? Or whatever. Six, seven, eight years ago when these were the app... It got super hot and everybody wanted to build an app. Things were different. And sort of like the technology, especially just around mobile responsive websites was different. And to get a really good mobile experience in a lot of cases it helped have a native mobile app. You were able to tap into so many functions or features that weren't necessarily available with mobile web. But what we see today and where we sit and the kind of conversations we have in our product meeting is, we have a great mobile responsive platform. The mobile experience on Fancy.com is really good in our opinion, or it's as good as you would need it to be, is as good as all the other products that are out there. Greg: So for us to replicate our mobile web experience on app, just to have a couple of different features that you get with native didn't necessarily make sense for us. So we did look at it differently. And with our mobile app, the way mobile is structured right now it's of truly much more of a discovery-based experience. It's the kind of experience that people open up and, "This is what our data shows and the testing that we've done." People open up our app because they're just interested to scroll through and will get really interested in cool and unique products. And we focus very heavily on using lifestyle imagery through that. And these are social aspects. People can like and they can build their lists, and they can share, and they can follow other people and they can get updates of what people who they follow or influencers that they're following have liked other products or other products that are on lists and those types of things. Greg: And that would be really difficult to replicate in like a true mobile lab experience. So when we look at it and we look at our product strategy, we ultimately look at web. So Fancy.com and then our mobile experience for that is a little bit more of a traditional commerce-based experience. You go to it, you have categories, you search and find the things you like, hopefully you transact. Well, we look at mobile as much more of, sort of a stickier, joyous engagement where you just want people to kind of open it up similar to how we open up Instagram 25 times a day. Nobody opens Instagram absolutely because you want to buy anything. You're just kind of opening it up because there's like cool images and there's things that you're going to discover. And it's going to bring kind of a little moment of joy in our lives. Greg: We're sitting there in the bank and... That's a lot of how the experience with the Fancy app has been created. Our thought is that people will discover things and they'll find things and they'll like things and personalization will happen through our mobile app and then many cases, they'll end up going to web to transact. Stephanie: Oh, can they currently transact on the app, or is it more of a discovery platform right now that transfers over to those [crosstalk 00:36:09]? Greg: They can transact on the app. Stephanie: Okay. Greg: A large part of our business still occurs mobile. But definitely the experience that we want to have is... I guess that would be my big takeaway to any company out there that was considering building a native mobile app if they're in the commerce world, is why? Like, what difference are you going to offer on mobile versus you're going to offer on web. Because the truth of the matter is people don't need to download another app. And if they can get everything that they need by just going to your domain name through your Google browser or whatever it is in their iPhone, then save the trouble. Stephanie: Yeah. I love that. So how are you thinking about balancing the social aspect on the app? You had mentioned conversions weren't as high as like traditional Ecommerce sites, which makes sense if people are kind of going on there just to see new things and maybe not always having an intent to buy. But how are you going about balancing that to keep people moving along and get them to check out, but also have fun and engage with other users? Greg: Yeah. The big thing with us right now, and big focus is around, number one, personalization. We're doing everything we can to continue to make the experience more personal. I think that, that's something that... There's been kind of an area where I don't think we've always done a great job on that is that, we've very much had a point of view that Fancy has taken in regards to kind of what we think is cool and what people who we want to think it's cool and that kind of gets pushed out. Where I want to have a little bit more, based on your interactions, based on what you've liked, what you've shown, that I can kind of avoid showing you stuff that isn't relevant to you. Greg: That's a big component of that from that perspective. It's a good question. We really, we're okay with conversions being lower with the app because we also have really high engagement and repeat users. So these are people who are just opening up the app quite frequent, maybe some people open up the app on a daily basis. And those people aren't going to buy something on a daily basis. And they're not necessarily going to Fancy because they want to buy something, but they ultimately do buy. Greg: So I think for us, the more the experience gets better, the more sticky it is, the more people want to open up the Fancy app and kind of just enter into that sort of social commerce world, the more people who are eventually going to transact, even though it isn't a straight kind of equation like on a return on ad spent, like you do with more of a traditional website. We have a particular product, somebody goes to that site because they're looking for that product. And then, thought they converted, but they didn't. They didn't convert. Now we're going to do retargeting. We're working at it as a little bit more of an engaged experience. So it's not a huge concern for us from that perspective. Stephanie: I'm guessing you would have to have a different set of metrics when it comes to, how's the app performing versus how is desktop performing? What kind of metrics are like your go to things to check in on the health of the app versus desktop? Greg: Yeah. No, that's a good question. So we track, obviously, just simple things like total sessions, users, new users, app downloads, uninstalls. My dashboard has all that information. Time on app, number of products they've clicked into. We do look at conversion rates across the board. How many users came in? How many times did they convert? Average order value. Standard stuff like that. But when we think about the app and the experience itself, we're really looking at things like, how many users did we have? But how many sessions did we have? So what's the average session per user, Because in our app experience, it is about having people come back and using the app for multiple times. Greg: And then when they do open up the app, how much time are they spending on a typical basis interacting with the app? What are they doing? So those are a lot of things that we look at. And then from a bigger picture, obviously, we're not spending a ton of money trying to attract you on app downloads, like outward spending, but we still have a tremendous amount of new app downloads that happen on a pretty regular basis. So we look very closely at how many new app downloads and what our uninstall rate is. Stephanie: Cool. Yeah. That's really good. Good to know. When it comes to personalization, are there any tools right now that you guys are really excited about? I know you mentioned one that was maybe within a portfolio company that you guys work with, but are there any tools that other brands should be looking into right now when it comes to personalization? Greg: Yeah. Right now we're spending some time on our ESP or our email service provider. And we're looking at a couple of different providers in that space. But that's something where there's some really cool providers out there that do some amazing stuff in regards to personalization around all messaging, not just email, but also push, because obviously for mobile apps. And that's something that we're probably going to adopt here and if not next quarter the quarter after that, and try to revamp the way we do our outbound. Greg: We have about a million people on our email list right now. We send out a ton of emails. I told you about, it's like 2.7 million active installs to the app where you push notifications. And then that number is from our push notifications. So when we actually do a push notification, It'll tell you how many we've delivered. So that is about 2.7. So we do a lot of outbound messaging and I think there's a huge opportunity for us to do more personalization with that messaging. Stephanie: That's great. Yeah, it'd be really cool to bring you back in a couple months after you've done the email stuff and talk about what you've seen with your app and your push notifications and kind of hear an update on all that. Greg: Yeah, absolutely. Stephanie: All right. So we can have about 10 minutes left. I feel like you're going to have some great answers for the lightning round, so I want to make sure that we have enough time for it. So the lightning round brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have one minute or less to answer each question. You ready to go Greg? Greg: All right, let's do this. Stephanie: All right. I'm going to start with the hardest one first because like I said, I think you'll have a good answer. What one thing will have the biggest impact on Ecommerce in the next year? Greg: Oh man. Look, COVID has been terrible but unbelievable for Ecommerce. And I think that the one thing that it's done is it just increase the adoption rate and made it gone through the roof. People like my parents who never bought anything from Amazon, never bought anything from Postmates or anything like that are now just doing it. And even as stores and retail locations of brick and mortar continue to open back up, I think the cat's out of the box. I think the adoption rates are going to continue to rise. I think they're just going to be many more direct consumer brands that are going to continue to come about. Greg: There's going to be new technology that innovative companies out of Silicon Valley are going to come up with that are going just make the experiences better, whether you're talking about augmented reality or different types of things. So I just think that the overall continued adoption of Ecommerce is just going to make the pie, the $7.2 trillion global retail market, the Ecommerce side of that is just going to continue to expand and grow. I don't think, there isn't any stopping site. Stephanie: Yeah. I completely agree. I love that answer. What's up next on your reading list? Greg: Oh, good question. I tend to go back and forth between like more auto, biographical and then just like fiction. I'm a big Stephen King guy. I typically read all his books. I just, whatever, kind of just, moving in, in time. But right now I'm reading Eric Larson's newest book on Churchill, Winston Churchill. And it's really focused on 1940, 1941, in England where the Germans were just bombarding England with bombers and the US hadn't entered the war yet. And Germany was just a powerhouse. I mean, it just looked like they were just trying to bomb them into submission and then Churchill would not submit. And we all know how that ended up turning out. But just so amazing to learn about that guy especially as kind of a CEO of a company where you're faced with, sometimes it just feels like overwhelming odds and you have to be honest with your team and they have to realize the gravity of the situation, but at the same time motivate them and give them the confidence that you can overcome is exactly what he did. And it's been a really good read. Stephanie: Oh, that's good. I will have to check that one out. If you were to have a podcast, what would the podcast be about and who would your first guest be? Greg: So I'm an ex-athlete. I talked to you a little bit about that. So I was actually football player in college. I'm kind of a jock. I still like to do a whole bunch of things. And I learned so much of what I do in a professional world from my athletic career, just dealing coaches and the meritocracy involved and just working hard and showing up on time and competing every day and all those types of things. So I think what I would like to do is, I'd love to have a business focused podcast that had athletes turned business people who are able to talk about their experiences, especially guys in the NFL, experiences [inaudible] of coaches like Bill Belichick, et cetera, and how those principles are translated into the professional world. Greg: I mean, I think someone like a Tom Brady would be a great first guest. He started up his own, [inaudible] TB12, and he's got kind of like a whole supplement line. I'd love to talk about how he's translated, sort of what he's done. Professionally he's the greatest quarterback ever. And how he's having success now and in a business capacity. Stephanie: That sounds like a really good podcast. I will find you a sponsor, Greg, and we will get that off the ground. Greg: Let's do it. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. I like that. That's good. All right. How do you stay on top of Ecommerce or industry trends? What kind of sources are you looking at or tools are you using or resources do you rely on to stay on top of things? Greg: A lot of reading. Yeah, obviously that's the answer anybody would have. Right? But I'm just, I have a number of, sort of hashtags or subject lines that I'm following in my Flipboard account. Every morning I open it up and flipping through and seeing what other people are doing. I also like to read about some of the bigger players in the space that are public. So even following companies like Overstock.com, Wayfair, Etsy, have had tremendous growth in the last several months. I mean, I think Overstock.com stock went from like $3 a share and marched to almost $100 a share most recently. So jumping into their quarterly reports and their 10-K's, as public companies they have to disclose everything. I love to read kind of what they're seeing, what they're doing, where they want to go with things. So that's always helpful pulling a lot of ideas and insights from some of the bigger competitors in the space. Stephanie: That's really good. We haven't had anyone talk about going through their quarterly reports yet. So I love that. That's something I enjoy doing as well, but I thought I was the only one. Greg: No. It's [crosstalk 00:48:32]. Stephanie: Well, Greg, this has been such a good interview. Like I said, we need to bring you back for round two to hear how some of these experiments are going, but where can people find out more about you and Fancy? Greg: Yeah. Well, obviously Fancy.com is the site. You can go into your App Store, Android Store, we'd love for you to download it. You can reach out to me directly. I literally just love people just email me. I get them all the time. So greg@fancy.com. Super easy. One G. And then, like I said, we're raising a little bit of a round of equity right now. We're actually doing it partially through a equity crowdfunding site called Wefunder. So anybody that's says shouldn't learn anymore, wefunder.com/fancy, can see a video and see T-Pain and learn a little bit more about the opportunity. I think it's a pretty attractive investment considering where we're at and what our opportunity is, especially the valuation of our company today. Stephanie: Yep. I completely agree. We will link up that video because it was pretty great. All right, Greg. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure. Greg: Thank you, Stephanie. Great being here.