The Jason & Scot Show - E-Commerce And Retail News

EP259- Listener Questions News Amazon is building Micro Fulfillment Centers to deliver fast-moving grocery & convenience SKUs in under 45mins. Locations include Seattle, DC, Baltimore, Dallas, Nashville, Detroit, Chicago, San Diego, Phoenix launching this year. Listener Questions Ted: will headless commerce take off in 2021? why/why not? RetailRazor: Amazon has been getting hit w/an endless series of media articles about their private label development at the expense of other merchants on the platform. But #retailers have been doing this since, well, forever. Ex. – Dept Stores private label apparel. Why is Amazon different? Wanda Cadigan: We’re seeing a big increase in visual media use cases for e-com. It’s the new digital proxy for in-store experience. Curious on your thoughts around shoppable video trends and adoption esp. in Americas. Darin Archer: When will we have a major paradigm shift from the online store? Category pages and PDP’s seem dated in the era of TikTok. Instagram shopping and all those other things are like pop-up shops. When will retailers make a big step change in the experience? Brendan Witcher: When will the Jason And Scot Show T-shirts finally be made available and can I have mine signed before you send it? You guys rock! Thanks for helping to keep balance in the (retail) Force. Kevin Cronin: Thoughts on e-com conversion tracking and how it has +/- impacted companies/industry. BinhWinn: What do you think is keeping Amazon from entering the promising African market? Kelly Goetsch:  Looking forward to the episode! I’m seeing all the CX-related vendors (Salesforce, SAP, Bloomreach, Acquia, etc) building or buying CDPs in the past ~12 months. I get the value of CDPs but why were all of these acquisitions done so rapidly? Is this related to 3rd party cookies? tec_wiz: We have seen a significant “stimi” bounce on Amazon, do both of you feel the reopening exuberance will keep the sales acceleration going and if so for how long? Interested to see if you two are in the Jamie Dimon camp? Trevor Sumner: There will be a multi-billion media shift to in-store.  Who controls the brand spend?  Will it be media folks?  Will shopper marketing and trade dollars increase?  How will brand orgs need to transform to take advantage of the digitized store? Scott Silverman: What do you think will be the most surprising post-pandemic consumer behaviors that e-commerce retailers should prepare for? Episode 259 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday April 8, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

EP258 - Retailer Owned Brands and Other News  CPG’s and other traditional houses of brands, have not had a lot of recent success launching new brands. Challenger brands get a lot of buzz, but they are struggling to scale. Meanwhile, retailers are quietly launching new “owned brands” every year that sell over $1B. In this episode we cover the latest owned brand news from Amazon, Target, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Episode 258 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Monday March 29, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

EP257 - Cookies, IDFA, and Commerce Deep Dive Changes in mobile tracking (IDFA), and browser tracking (third party cookies) are likely to disrupt digital commerce. Here is everything you need to know. Background Privacy Law Changes California Consumer Privacy Act of 2020 (CPRA) California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Third Party Cookies Safari (19% share) 3P cookies blocked as of March 2020 Firefox (4% share) 3P blocked as of Sept 2019 Chrome (64% share) will block 3P January 2022 Mobile Tracking (Digital License Plates for Mobile Users) Apple Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) – Goes from Opt Out to Opt In  Q1 2021 Google Play Services ID for Android (GPS ADID) – Still Opt Out Use Cases that are impacted by IDFA/3P changes Audience Activation and Retargeting Frequency Capping and Suppression Media Attribution Audience Insights and Segmentation Personalization Alternative Solutions 1P Walled Gardens (Facebook, Google, Amazon) Real ID Systems (Trade Desk, Liveramp, Epsilon) Clean Rooms Cohorts – Google Privacy Sandbox: FloC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) Impacted Businesses Google – Biggest winner, built a business based on relaxed privacy standards, now pulling the ladder up behind them Apple – See Google, but with a smaller share of browser market Facebook – Lose ground to Google/Apple but gain on everyone else Amazon – Winner. Forcing more ad dollars to Amazon walled garden Shopify – Loser. Forcing Facebook to capture more commerce instead of referring to Shopify sites. Publishers – Loser. Harder to make ad model work Other Retailers – Loser for customer acquisition, slight benefit for retail media networks Conclusion Advertising rates go down which depreciates ad based business models (content sites and games). More businesses pivot from ad based to paywalls. Greater focus on Customer Lifetime Value (via subscription and platform approaches), more cleanrooms. Much harder for new businesses to challenge incumbent walled gardens. Episode 257 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday March 17, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

EP256 - Colin Bryar former Amazon Chief of Staff and author of Working Backwards Happy episode 256, our penultimate 8-bit episode! (we’re going to have to migrate to 16-bit for next week). Colin Bryar is author of “Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon” (affiliate link). This is the definitive book about the unique processes, programs, and culture implemented at Amazon which have enabled its remarkable track record of speed and innovation. Colin had a 12 year career at Amazon and served as Jeff Bezos technical advisor (chief of staff) shadowing Jeff in all meetings for a year. His co-author, Bill Carr ran Amazon Prime Video and sat on Amazon’s S-Team. These two had a front row seat to many of the most seminal moments in Amazon’s history. If you work with Amazon, need to compete against them, or just want to duplicate their success in another field, you owe it to yourself to listen to the episode and then read Colins book. Episode 256 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday February 24, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Announcement: Live Clubhouse Chat: Shopify vs Amazon Wednesday night March 3rd, 9:30pm ET we'll have a live chat on Clubhouse discussing the epic battle between Amazon and Shopify. http://joinclubhouse.com/event/M4knLWBy http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. 

EP255 - Instacart Chief Revenue Officer Seth Dallaire Seth Dallaire is the Chief Revenue Officer at Instacart. In this interview, we cover his experience at Amazon, the challenges of operating Instacart’s 4-sided marketplace, key trends in the digital grocery space, and Instacarts evolution as a retail media network. Episode 255 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday, February 10th, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Episode 254 is a breakdown of Walmart and Shopify Q4 2020 earnings reports, a recap of 2020 sales data from the US Dept Commerce, and Amazon News. 2020 Sales Data US Dept of Commerce released it’s retail data for December, which gives us a full picture of 2020, as well as the Q4 e-commerce data. Retail sales in 2020 were $5.6T, representing 27% of the U.S. GDP Retail as a whole experienced healthy growth of 3.4% versus 3.5% in 2019 E-commerce grew 32% to $792B in sales, vs 15% growth in 2019 E-commerce was 14% of all retail sales (vs 11% in 2019) Jason wrote a detailed recap of 2020 in Forbes: 2020: Not Quite Retail Apocalypse, But Great For E-Commerce Walmart Earnings US Q4 comp sales grew 8.6% eCommerce sales grew 69% FY revenue was $559.2 billion, comp sales increased 8.6%, E-Commerce sales grew 79% Shopify Earnings Fourth-Quarter Revenue Grows 94% on GMV Growth of 99% Full-Year 2020 Revenue Grows 86% on GMV Growth of 96% FY Subscription Solutions revenue grew 41% to $908.8 million,  FY Merchant Solutions revenue grew 116% to $2B Shopify Expands Its Checkout System to Facebook and Instagram Amazon news: Amazon acquires Seltz, a Shopify competitor Episode 254 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday, February 19th, 2021. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. https://retailgeek.com

EP253 - Amazon Q4 2020 Earnings Amazon Earnings Amazon reported in Q4 2020 earnings on Tuesday Feb 2. Jeff Bezos is stepping down as CEO and moving into an executive chairman role. Read his letter to employees here. We deep dive into the Q4 and full year 2020 results. Sales, profit, and free cash flow were all above expectations. US product sales had a robust 44% YoY increase. 3P continues to grow as a share of sales (now 55% of sales mix). AWS continued to grow. Other income (which is largely ad sales) was up 66% representing $21.477B of revenue in 2020, well above expectations. In other news: Walmart is accelerating it’s automated picking for store fulfillment. Uber has purchased Drizly for $1.1B. We spoke with the VP of Partnerships at Drizly on Episode 163. Episode 253 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

EP252 - Amazon FBA Roll-ups w Chris Bell CEO of Perch  [NOTE: The audio quality of this episode is not up to our usual standards due to some internet challenges. But we felt the content was valuable enough to publish the episode anyway.] A number of firms are acquiring, or some would say rolling up, brands that primarily distribute their products on Amazon using Fulfillment by Amazon. By some accounts, these firms have cumulatively raised over $1B in capitol, and are rapidly acquiring brands. This week we explore this trend, with the founder of one of these firms, Chris Bell, CEO of Perch. Chris sees Perch as a next generation CPG conglomerate leveraging the Amazon marketplace. While traditional CPGs may review their pricing quarterly, and set marketing strategies annual, Perch adjusts pricing strategy hourly, and advertising strategies daily. “Amazon marketplace is 2x any CPG and growing faster.” CHRIS BELL, CEO OF PERCH In this interview we cover: Overall trend, and how Chris sees the marketplace Perch criteria for acquisitions Synergies for brands in the roll-up model Off Amazon strategy Potential risks of this model, including from Amazon What the potential future of this market looks like If you’re interested in selling your FBA business to Perch, you can reach them at info@perchhq.com. Episode 252 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday, January 27th, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

EP251 - 2021 Annual Predictions 2020 Recap – Predictions made on episode 204 2020 Predictions Recap Scot Shopify wilts a bit – new competition comes out with different angles (marketcap stays static) – No Fedex does something drastic – buy eBay? Merge with Alibaba? No (but shoprunner for 0.5) The year of returns – “happy returns” – a startup raises $100M+ in space. No (but 0.5 for year of returns) Mallageddon continues At least another 8k stores Yes 8721 stores +1 Google gets aggressive in ecommerce Yes +1 (Bill Ready, etc…) Score 3/5 Jason Walmart – growth slows due to completion of grocery build out. Marc Lore leaves Walmart. No on growth, yes on Marc Lore (0.5) Amazon – Opens affordable grocery concept. Digital grocery wars heat up. Yes Owned brands continue to grow. 5% of retail in 2019, could be 8-10% in 2020 (as measured by IRI, for CPG private label). Yes Installment Payments heat up – At least one company is acquired (Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, QuadPay, Sizzle) Yes (IPO’s) Digital in-store heats up, QR codes make a comeback Yes Score 4.5/5 2021 Predictions Jason: Made to Order apparel business > 9 figures Retailer offers viable health alt insurance option to consumers Grocery E-Com > 10%  someone deploys(not pilots) MFC Amazon Shopify Competitor (shipping solution) Retail Media > $20B Bonus – More store closures in 2021 than 2020. Scot: Amazon move to same day prime by opening a huge wave of neighborhood DCs (near DSPs) Shipping (Shopify) – launch own DSP Shopify marketplace  ‘zero friction addiction’ sticks – I’ve seen 30-40% repeated a lot, I think it’s 60-80%. commerce penetration says at 16% or better in 2021. spac/ipo? Dnvb wave Bonus: post-covid anti-consumerism/materialism wave Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 251 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, January 21st, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.