Maximizing Competitive Intelligence

Phillip: [00:01:18] Hello and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast about the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Phillip.

Brian: [00:01:24] I'm Brian.

Phillip: [00:01:25] I almost said the old intro 360 episodes. It's in there. It's like those synapses are connected somehow. Today we got a little bit in store for you here in just a few minutes, we're going to go to an interview that we had with the Founder of Particl, a really interesting competitive research and analysis tool that direct to consumer brands are using to try to build better. I almost said, "build back better." What's wrong with me today? So we'll be checking in here in just a little bit with our partners over at Particl. Stick around for that because there's some really interesting insights in how businesses that listen to Future Commerce can use this idea of competitive intelligence. So stick around. But before we get to that, we have a little bit of news and some updates here. Brian, let's check in on our new buzzword. I think we actually might have been the first to sort of coin it. Always on trend. We talked a couple weeks ago about the disloyalty program. Brian, we have an update from the disloyalty front.

Brian: [00:02:32] Well, it's funny because you have forever been a very loyal Starbucks drinker.

Phillip: [00:02:39] That's right.

Brian: [00:02:39] But one of their biggest competitors, I mean, does Starbucks really have a big competitor?

Phillip: [00:02:45] One of their competitors. {laughter}

Brian: [00:02:46] One of their competitors.

Phillip: [00:02:48] It's hard to quantify their size.

Brian: [00:02:50] Peet's Coffee has introduced a disloyalty program, which is genius. It is basically on every level, matches what you were talking about, Phillip, about how loyalty doesn't really exist. There are membership programs. There are benefits that people like to get from businesses. But the moment something else pops up that's better, that's an opportunity for them to go take advantage of that. Peet's program basically says, "Anything you've earned at other places come to us and we'll give you a free coffee," if you can show that you're a regular coffee drinker and a part of a program. That is genius because people aren't very "loyal," and this is exactly what you were talking about at every level.

Phillip: [00:03:41] It's at PeetsDisloyalty.com. You can check it out. What they require is for you to upload, when you sign up for Peet's loyalty program or their disloyalty program... This is such a bold move there. If you sign up for their disloyalty program, they effectively reward you with a free coffee if you upload a screenshot of your points in your account from one of their competitors. Their listed competitors are Starbucks, Tim Hortons, Duncan, Better Buzz, Bluestone, Coffee Bean, Tea Leaf, Dutch Bros, Human Bean, or Joe and the Juice. What's really interesting about this... I like that, and this is just how my brain works. You go to PetesDisloyalty.com and they have a carousel of the screenshot that they're looking for from your existing favorite coffee shop loyalty program looks like. Every one of these screenshots is taken within a minute or two of each other by the poor social media intern who had to find, you know, I don't know who it was. They probably crowdsourced this on their slack, but it's like 11:08 11:09 11:01 11:12 11:05 11:04. Somebody had to rack up a bunch of points. They're all iPhones too, by the way. Some of them have location services turned on. Turn that off, guys. Killing your battery.

Brian: [00:05:08] Peet's competitors made more money on that than they're going to make on the disloyalty program.

Phillip: [00:05:13] The really wild thing to me is that Lauren is the person who has all of these accounts, by the way, Lauren has 37 points left in her rewards for Bluestone, but has 545 points left for The Coffee Bean. Here's the deal. The actual QR code for The Coffee Bean is there. I wonder if anyone's spent those points. And do you think Peet's is going to deduct these? Is everybody that works at Peet's Coffee going to just have coffee at their competitors on gratis on you for the next six months? Is that how this is going to work? I don't know how this works.

Brian: [00:05:47] I doubt it. I think it's probably just like one coffee that you get for posting.

Phillip: [00:05:52] I think you get one coffee, you get exactly one coffee. Anyway.

Brian: [00:05:54] Yeah. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:05:55] Super interesting. Right on trend. PeetsDisloyalty.com. I can't talk about this enough. Also, the interesting brand campaign I think you had said that you read in in advertising write-up that this was in coordination with a creative agency called Mischief not to be confused with MSCHF. {laughter} Do you see how I said it?

Brian: [00:06:17] You know what's interesting? This is almost in the same coordination with the JetBlue status match thing you were talking about as well.

Phillip: [00:06:28] Part of what we were talking about, this loyalty free agency.

Brian: [00:06:31] It's interesting. It's all happening at once. And it's right after we talked about it. Jetblue offering status matches as well, trying to capitalize on maybe some Delta levers. As we were talking about in the last episode we did on this a few weeks back.

Phillip: [00:06:48] With a savage landing page, you can get "Feeling blue about the changes to a once favorite loyalty program? Keep it on the DL." I think that's really funny. "Breaking up is hard to do, but who has to know? Because we made it easy for you to cozy up to a new loyalty program." So what they've done is, yeah, they're status matching and you know how I feel like, okay, so you are a platinum medallion at the moment, right?

Brian: [00:07:16] Yep.

Phillip: [00:07:17] Okay, so you would get Mosaic level three, which is above the current loyalty tier that I have earned from JetBlue. So that's nice.

Brian: [00:07:31] I should probably go do that. I'll probably go get that.

Phillip: [00:07:35] It's not like you're going to lose anything. This could be the year that you're, like, platinum everywhere.

Brian: [00:07:37] Yeah, I could be platinum everywhere. No, you know what's interesting? Alaska is actually quite difficult to status match. You have to fly a lot in order for them to hand it over. Basically, you have to earn what you would earn in six months to get to that level anyway. And it's a lot of flying and yeah. Anyway, long story short, I might have to go Jetblue, except for JetBlue and Seattle are not the best to combo. I am going to probably end up at United or Alaska. That's just the way it goes.

Phillip: [00:08:07] If you want to go to JFK, which you do a lot...

Brian: [00:08:10] I do.

Phillip: [00:08:11] There are at least two flights a day. Okay, let's move on. I do want to give a shout out to friend of the show, long time listener, Future Commerce supporter and direct to consumer brand founder Dave Stickland, who we've mentioned before, Franklin's Popcorn, the popcorn guy in the community, has a new venture. I think we mentioned it in The Senss, our newsletter that you can get for free at FutureCommerce.com/Subscribe right now because you would have had the jump on this. He has a brand new venture, a new company called Popsmith. And Popsmith is sort of the next evolution of his popcorn empire. It is a direct to consumer brand that sells both a popper and a packaged product of popcorn. And I recently backed the Kickstarter, very proudly backed the Kickstarter about two and a half, three months ago, as did other friends of the show, Alex Greifeld from No Best Practices, Aaron Orendorff, long-time co-conspirator and collaborator, part of the Mutual Admiration Society. It's like a fake club that I made up just now.

Brian: [00:09:29] Are you loyal to it?

Phillip: [00:09:29] I think Orchid might have backed it too, according to Erika. Yeah, I just made that up now. Someone trademarked that Mutual Admiration Society dot Club. Anyway, we had a lot of people in the ecosystem just because we like to back each other in our ventures. We came around and we preordered this on Kickstarter. I finally got mine, and I have so many amazing things to say about it. It's an incredible product, amazing experience. I'm not being paid to say this.

Brian: [00:09:57] It's a beautiful machine.

Phillip: [00:09:58] It's an unbelievable... Is it a machine? I guess it's a machine.

Brian: [00:10:02] It is a machine.

Phillip: [00:10:04] It's not electrified. You use human power. It's a popper. It's a stovetop popper. And it was amazing to unbox it. Best unboxing experience I've had in 3 to 4 years here. It's hardcore next level, high grade packaging that you feel badly about putting in the recycling, but it can all go in the recycling because it's excellent packaging. Incredible. Multi-ply steel pan. But the real innovation I think is in the popcorn product itself. Of course, you can make your own popcorn with, you know, coconut oil and some kernels and a little salt and maybe some sugar, you know, whatever floats your boat. But Popsmith has done something really innovative and they've created sort of a blister pack, five pack that they sell that is pre-measured, pre-portioned ingredients. And for someone like me who really cares about calories, intake, portion sizes, and making sure that it's like sort of no muss, no fuss, it is just the easiest thing in the whole world to make fresh popcorn. And it's only a couple minutes longer than the microwave variety. Anyway, we're giving free shout out to friend of the show. Popsmith.com. I think everybody might dig this and it's been so much fun. The family, we had such a blast making our first one and I've done it maybe 3 or 4 times since. Really really cool. Love it.

Brian: [00:11:31] Dave is just a joy to know.

Phillip: [00:11:33] The nicest guy ever. So smart.

Brian: [00:11:34] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:11:38] There should be more people like him in eCommerce. My gosh.

Brian: [00:11:41] I agree.

Phillip: [00:11:43] Anyway, brilliant people.

Brian: [00:11:44] He does great stuff out here in Seattle. He's such a community-oriented guy. He's put together a bunch of meetups and I've been to one of them and he's just constantly looking for ways to build people up. Such a great guy. And yeah we're big fans. We're big fans if you can't tell.

Phillip: [00:12:06] Big fans. All right. Well, we are also big fans of our partner over at Particl. They had come alongside us for a few months helping us teach our audience how they can use this idea of competitive intelligence to make their businesses better and make smarter decisions. And we sat down with Josh over at Particl to talk a little bit about how he sees the future of commerce and how you can see around the next corner. We'll get to our interview with Josh right after this. The future of commerce, I think, is what we're all about here, obviously. And the world of the culture of commerce, too, is something we're all about. Just as a reminder, we have our event coming up at Art Basel, the greatest cultural event, especially in the art world, but also emerging as sort of the place to be for brands, brand creators, and operators. If you're an innovator in the brand space, we want to invite you to come on out to our event at Art Basel Miami Beach, December 6th through 8th. We're going to have an incredible time. For more information, get it over at FutureCommerce.com/Muses. And we are going to explore how brands are innovating and how innovation and technology have become a form of a muse that's making us inspired and find meaning and purpose in the world. Brands are our muses. FutureCommerce.com/Muses. And we'll see you at Art Basel December 6th through 8th. Another muse in the world of brand building and this new area of competitive intelligence and how businesses are getting data and insights so they can make better decisions is none other than the Co-Founder and CEO of Particl. Of course, Josh Wilson is here on the show here today. Welcome to the show, Josh, and I'm really excited to hear about how you're thinking more strategically and helping brands make better decisions in the eCommerce ecosystem. Welcome, Josh.

Josh: [00:14:05] Yeah, thanks, guys. Thanks for having me.

Brian: [00:14:07] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:14:08] Let's talk about competitive intelligence because I think once upon a time when my parents, I grew up in a in a retail family and we always looked for the secret shoppers. Who was coming in and spying on us? Is that easier or harder today in the eCommerce world?

Josh: [00:14:24] Yeah, it's a great question. I have to say it's both. So in terms of competition, it's quite harder just with globalization and kind of Shopify's mantra to add a store in everyone's garage. Your next competitor can come from anywhere. Where I feel like historically there were capital requirements and technology kind of barriers of entry that prevented that. But then on the flip side, the shift to online gives you kind of a great pulse on signals and what everyone else is doing. So you can use a robot to scan all your competitor's websites in a fraction of a second rather than sending in that proverbial James Bond spy to go write down prices in a notebook, which people still do. Just so you know. That actually is not quite out of the industry yet. So yeah, I think it's harder and easier in multiple ways. And I think it's great for brands just to be thinking about and to have a strategy around.

Brian: [00:15:27] Yeah. And you're dead on. And there are new tools now, as you've mentioned, to do this. Do you find that how brands and retailers are looking at competitive data is changing based on the new types of information or the ease of access to information that we now have? Is that making it easier to take that data and do something with it, or is it actually making it harder and more complex?

Josh: [00:15:54] What honestly, the shift I've seen is the brands that do it well tend to be almost more cerebral, meaning I do feel like it is the smarter brands who really take advantage of it and it becomes a massive kind of advantage for them over everyone else. And it's kind of interesting. And then with the legacy players, we're fortunate enough to have a handful of publicly traded retailers as customers, and they're now trying to adopt their strategy to catch up to some of the kind of quick DTC brands that are growing, you know, 200, 300% year over year. So yeah, I think it is changing quite a lot.

Phillip: [00:16:35] There was a time where I spent in the eCommerce ecosystem in the early aughts where it was really easy, especially when you had dedicated servers that had limited bandwidth, was really easy to see when your competitors were crawling your website. That was a big part of an IT challenge back in the day is that you would be hammered with these bots that would crawl the site and you kind of knew what they were up to. How does that work today? How is it any different than it was 15 years ago in eCommerce? And how does a product like Particl get its data in the ecosystem without being known as a surveiller but as a value add for the ecosystem?

Josh: [00:17:22] Honestly, the truth of the matter is from an engineering perspective, it's essentially impossible to block bots without blocking customers unless you put everything through a lock behind kind of a login portal. It really is impossible, but you can block probably 95 to 99% of crawlers quite simply, actually, because as in all things, there's kind of a level of sophistication that grows. So it is something stores should be cognizant of. It is something that they should take those measures to try and cut the low hanging fruit. But the matter of fact is I would focus more on how can you use it to your benefit because just telling you from inside the industry, it's impossible to block it without blocking a real human.

Brian: [00:18:16] That's interesting. Talk to us a little bit more about using it to your benefit. Describe what that means.

Josh: [00:18:25] Yeah. So maybe I can kind of explain by virtue of what started the company, why the genesis? And so essentially what happened, I'm actually not a commerce person historically. I actually spent most of my time in the machine learning space in tech. However, my wife is actually the COO of an eCommerce company. It's based in Bountiful, Utah. They do dancewear for little girls who go to dance class. And Covid happened. We're locked at home. We finished watching Tiger King and you're trying to figure, what the heck should I do with the rest of my day? So I started kind of hammering on her problems. And what I found was for her business, and I found this to be true with most brands, they're extremely focused on growth. And I could optimize their ads and I could do little improvements that would help them ten, 15, 20%. But when they would launch a new product, that would that was a game changer for them. They could double their business in a month, with with a real hot product. So really what I started looking at is, okay, how can I use data to say, "Hey, this product, customers will want to want to buy?" And so you need to look at your own data. And then what I figured is, well, why don't I look at everyone else and see what's working for them? And so to answer your question, Brian, that's where I would start is, "Okay, what can I gather from others and pick the best strategies that make sense for me?"

Phillip: [00:20:00] In my days in sort of managing dev team QA at a brand when we had IT, again, I'm the old guy in the room, we used to have to perform all of those functions like everything in eCommerce today.

Josh: [00:21:28] Totally.

Phillip: [00:21:29] As an internal facet of our business. So competitive intelligence was something that we owned, right? We wrote software that were crawlers that went and examined a lot of things. It wasn't just our competitors. It was also our retail partners to make sure that they were abiding by promo and discounting and pricing policies, right? So there was a lot of ownership of our internal technology that powered that sort of not just enforcement, but also understanding our competitive landscape. But today, like everything else in eCommerce, there is not a necessary component within the brand to own that type of technology. You can license that technology or that data from others who are already doing it and doing it well.

Josh: [00:22:10] What I've found is retail is the second largest part of our economy behind real estate. It is the largest private employer in the country. And typically, as most brands are working with very tight margins, there's not a lot of area to make real big mistakes. So when we work with brands, they're typically doing 1 or 2 launches a year. And if they screw it up, you know, they can try again in six months or next year. But that's an eternity in our market and in our world. So it's very important that the few tries you actually have you nail on the head. And so where we come into play is we say, "Hey, let's look at what is working everywhere else." Let's look at most of your competitors have thousands of SKUs. And the fact of the matter is they typically make the majority of their money on just a hand view. So let's start there. Let's take those and use those as a launching point and we found those launches to be much, much, much more successful, rather than kind of just going off of someone's idea that has no data to back it up.

Brian: [00:23:24] So by gathering competitive intelligence, you're looking at what others are doing in your space and you're able to discern like, okay, that might fit and that might not fit. Do you have any sort of recommendations around criteria for absorbing that data? If you've only got, you know, these two big launches a year and you're focused in on these key products there's got to be a way for brands and retailers to recognize some wins, something that they get back that is actually going to be a fit because we talked about this a ton on Future Commerce. Context is everything. So just because it worked for a competitor doesn't necessarily mean it will work for you. What are those contextual markers that help someone determine whether something's going to work for them or not?

Josh: [00:24:14] Yeah. Let me tell a story to kind of illustrate your point because you're spot on, Brian. So we worked with a brand very early on and this brand makes backpacks. Phenomenal backpacks. And they were looking to expand into different product categories. So they used our data. They went and tracked a bunch of men's clothing brands. They used that and they went and launched a shirt, a pant, and a jacket. Now, the data suggested that, hey, the shirts would sell very well because they were tracking t-shirt companies. Total bias there. Of course, they launched them. All three did okay. But the jacket crushed. And the reason is because when they interviewed their customers, they said, "When I'm using your backpack, I typically have a jacket on," and it just seemed like there wasn't quite the cognitive leap for their customer base. If you kind of apply Clayton Christensen's Jobs to Be Done theory, it was a very closely related job to what you're trying to accomplish. So we've actually tried to solve that with AI, to be honest. So typically what we'll do is we ingest our customer's data and we will look at the products they're selling and the product types. And when you're looking at a competitor, we can call out and say, "Hey, this competitor is materialistically different than you. And so you should actually take that lens when you view kind of the insights from there." And with that, we've been able to kind of guide customers towards product types that we feel better overlap with their business, make more sense for their customers to buy, and kind of a natural progression of the business.

Phillip: [00:25:53] It's a, I mean, not to overstate it, but that's kind of I'm given to hyperbole. In that way, you can become a bit of a market maker. Particl can see trends as they're developing. People can sort of contextualize whether those trends are applicable for their business based on all kinds of criteria. I'm sure they have their own context, like Brian said. But then there's also this challenge of lead time and the decision you make today and how long it takes before that product lands and it's ready to sell.

Josh: [00:26:28] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:26:28] So I think some of that too is how much of that do you take into account as sort of the recency bias of a trend and how durable it is? How do you help people? Is it their agency, and they have to make up decisions based on what they think works for them and their customers?

Josh: [00:26:48] No. So in our world, really, our largest benefit is if our customers are happy and want to keep coming back. And so the way we've tried to solve it is we actually do a product life cycle calculation. And so what we're actually looking at is, okay, is this product nearing the apex of his life cycle, suggesting if I were to go create this and it takes two months to build it and put it on a boat and get it here, by the time I launch it, is it going to be gone? Or is the hype going to be dead? So we've actually come up with some kind of leading indicators to say this product is kind of reaching its apex versus products that people will restock, sell out, restock, sell out, and that cycle will just continue into the foreseeable future. So it's really important, Phillip, the way we try and attack it is calling out where we think the product is in its own life cycle.

Brian: [00:27:41] Interesting. So you're doing this on a retailer and brand by brand basis?

Josh: [00:27:47] Yeah.

Brian: [00:27:47] But you're also, I would imagine, collecting aggregate stats as well about the industry given how much data you have. What kinds of trends are you seeing in changing consumer behavior around purchasing and is that data relevant in aggregate or is the contextual analysis that you're offering really the more important thing for each brand to look at?

Josh: [00:28:21] Awesome question. So let me kind of give you an example. So in June, we actually saw kind of industry-wide, the color pink start selling like crazy which I didn't understand, but everyone can probably now draw the connection. It was the Barbie movie, right? And so we saw pink start selling like crazy. And then we had brands that were kind of the major capturers of that, like a SKIMS, for example. And if you went and looked on SKIMS' website, what they did is they basically took all the pink products, put them in a collection for Barbie, and those products sold off the shelves. Now, the thing is, those products actually hadn't been selling very well before. It was a very clever way to use existing inventory, package it slightly differently, and sell it. And other brands mimicked that and had similar kind of responses. So yeah, I think, Brian, I want to start on the macro then look at, okay, who's actually driving the macro, and then which of those strategies can I easily apply for me? And so, Brian, we're really not trying to help you save 15% on your car insurance, to be honest. {laughter} I'm trying to help you have your biggest month ever. That's what gets me up in the morning.

Phillip: [00:30:15] There's a really interesting insight there where understanding of what's happening. Again, coming back to our thesis of what the future of commerce is, if you come into a place where the change in technology is no longer accelerating, but we're coming to a bit of an equilibrium in the way that technology is applied to eCommerce... I guess it depends on what your thesis is... Then understanding culture, understanding what's happening in the culture, and how to adapt to move your brand to be culturally relevant is the future of commerce. So in this Barbie or Barbenheimer example, it's a merchandising decision, and it used to take really brilliant people who had keen insight into what's happening in the world to merchandise appropriately, to remain culturally relevant. Now, if you have the right kind of data and you were paying attention to what's happening in the world, maybe you could say, "Well, it's because of Barbernheimer, it's because of this Barbie moment." Maybe it doesn't even matter anymore. Maybe your understanding of why isn't important. It's looking at signals and saying, "Well, this is what the world is looking for and what they're buying." And it gives us a new reason to merchandise in a different way.

Josh: [00:32:10] Yeah. And like my Co-Founder says, "The opportunity of a lifetime comes once a month." So in June, it was Barbenheimer. In this right now we saw a massive kind of back to school push and we saw some brands actually structure it in a way that made a lot of sense. And we'll see that Q4 is always just the heyday for these types of strategies, so it's important to stay current and up to date. It's important to not read yesterday's newspaper. That's why we think you need data for what's going on right now, not a week ago or whatever. By that point, it's too old. And then kind of to your point, Phillip, it really is this marriage between art and science. Our customer base isn't a bunch of tech nerds. They're pirates. They are some of the smartest, craftiest people you know, and we're like, "Hey, let us be your tech nerds. Let us get you the data. Let's marry the art and science, and produce outsized returns."

Phillip: [00:33:14] Let's maybe talk a little bit more broadly. So what we've been talking about right now is products, product lifecycle categories, trends that are happening right now, and insights into things like competitors. It seems like this is the type of product that has lots of use cases, including maybe the types and scale of promotion by industry or product category. How to make better decisions around things like offers, promotions, cashback versus rewards, loyalty points... It seems like you might have the pulse on other things. What do you currently offer in that way, or what's on the roadmap for the future?

Josh: [00:33:54] So we focused an enormous amount on pricing. I would say it's probably the area that most customers get wrong initially. What people tend to look at is they'll tend to look at brand by brand, how they discount. So Lululemon was famous for never discounting. Now they discount. Allbirds was famous for never discounting. Now they discount. Gymshark is the most aggressive discounter in the Activewear space.

Phillip: [00:34:22] Sure. Yeah.

[00:34:23] So there's all these strategies. What we found and what I can tell you from a data perspective is it's actually less about the brand and it's actually more about the product type. So it's kind of interesting. We see discounts work very well in some product types and very poorly in others, work very well in leggings and very poorly in t-shirts. What that typically means is brands can move the needle with very small changes. As well as they can ensure that they're not just discounting and lighting good money on fire, good margin. So that's kind of one of the things we've tried to do is help people understand that it's actually less about vertically looking at the brand down and from a data and correlation perspective, it's actually more about looking sideways at the product type because the customers are comparing your leggings to someone else's leggings to someone else's leggings. They're not comparing your product to your t-shirt or your leggings to your t-shirt to etcetera. So anyways, kind of changing the way that people look at it I think has been helpful and I hope it's useful to the listeners.

Brian: [00:35:30] I'm fascinated by this. On a product by product basis, the discounting, the moving of the needle on discounting is always like a big topic of conversation among retail in general because discounting has taken over in general. And as you said, there was like this weird movement against it. And then even the brands that said, "We're never going to discount," now are discounting.

Josh: [00:36:01] Everyone.

Brian: [00:36:02] Right. Do you think this also has to do with the maturity of a specific category, or is it genuinely just about the specific product type?

Josh: [00:36:12] Yeah. I actually think it's more closely related to how people feel about kind of the macro view, to be honest. We've seen this shift every year we've done business, we've seen this go more and more in this direction, that it feels like people are a little more sensitive with their dollars than they were before. Looking for a deal more than they were before. Tobi from Shopify recently said that they'd seen customers kind of move down to the next bucket. So if they were buying the really expensive leggings, now they're buying just the expensive, and if they were buying the expensive, now they're buying the, you know... So we've totally seen that from our perspective as well. And so it's very important to understand where you are in the space and what strategies will work for your customers. So let me give you one example. The brand Rad Power bikes, sells those electric bikes.

Brian: [00:37:03] Seattle-based. Let's go.

Phillip: [00:37:05] Brian's a fan. Yeah.

Josh: [00:37:07] Brian's a fan. They crush. They are juggernauts in the e-bike space. Now, what you'll see they've done is they will jack their prices up three weeks before Black Friday sales start, and then they'll discount them down to where they were. And that works so well in the e-bike space.

Phillip: [00:37:26] Don't tell the FTC. They don't listen to this. It's totally fine.

Josh: [00:37:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're busy going after Amazon.

Phillip: [00:37:32] They've got influencers to chase after. Rad's probably off the radar.

Josh: [00:37:37] I'm sorry. But you'll see it a lot and that'll work. It works in a lot of instances. And so it's being clever. It's kind of that marriage of art and science like we talked about.

Phillip: [00:37:51] You mentioned in our pre-show that there are some really good examples of retailers that didn't have successful product launches. I think Allbirds is a good example of the types of industry stories or case studies where understanding their customer didn't necessarily translate to understanding a new market they were entering. And maybe you could catch us up on some of those kinds of use cases.

Josh: [00:38:16] Yeah, we can definitely use Allbirds as kind of a microcosm of kind of the bigger issue. And so I should probably preface this with when I first got into tech and I moved to Silicon Valley, coming from rural Utah, the first thing my boss made me do was go to this really weird boutique outlet. It was in a terrible location, it looked like it was in someone's house, and pick out a pair of Allbirds. Now that was like initiation for being in tech. And so I've been a massive fan of the business ever since. Still am. And as they've kind of grown and launched these product categories, I just remember we had all the data to sit there and say, "Do not do that. This is a bad area to get into." And I would email their CEO and others and say, "I will give this to you for free. Please just don't do this." Because it was total... You could totally see it in advance. It was totally obvious that these were industries that were not growing very quickly. And so they've publicly stated on recent earnings calls that previous product changes have really impacted kind of the returns they've been able to provide to investors. And so I think it's important to learn from examples like that. Even some of the best brands in our industry, some of the real greats, the OGs, learn from their example and make sure we can do better next time.

Phillip: [00:39:44] What are some of those things that you're gearing up for and what are you looking for in the next few months as we go into Black Friday/Cyber Monday to partner with brands?

Josh: [00:39:51] Yeah, so I'll kind of offer some suggestions and kind of try and not talk our book, so to speak. So I found there are some great free tools everyone should be aware of. There's a company called I think it's like a one man developer but called Milled.com too where you can actually subscribe to and see all of your competitors' emails and what kind of offers they're going with. Obviously, follow them on Instagram and see kind of where they're going, and what's working there. So I'd initially tell people to start with all the free tools they have access to. Google Trends, Milled.com, Instagram, and then TikTok now we've seen kind of take hold as well. Those are the four I would tell you to really pay attention to. I also think it's important to focus on 3 or 4 brands. We've had some customers who are focusing on 100, 200... Really difficult just because mean you're trying to fill orders, you're trying to like you're running a business. You maybe have a little bit of time a week for this. So pick a few that you emulate that you want to become like, follow their strategies, and you'll typically get pretty awesome results.

Brian: [00:41:02] Do you have some examples of brands that have done this well in your portfolio?

Josh: [00:41:06] Yeah. So what we saw last Black Friday actually was interesting. We saw a kind of two groups. Some brands actually crushed it, to be honest, and some brands got massacred. And it was funny, you'd see articles of people being like, "This is the best Black Friday ever. I don't know what Jay Powell is talking about." And you'd see brands like, "This was horrible. The world's ending." And what we found when we kind of researched into it and looked deeper is it was very much tied to how they were portraying Black Friday. And I'll go back to Gymshark. Gymshark was one of the best-performing Activewear brands last Black Friday. What they did is they had this bright yellow when you landed on their site, 60% off. And now it actually wasn't 60% off. There were like three products that were 60% off, but they really leaned into it, and that strategy just worked. And so follow the people you emulate, use them as inspiration to come up with your own ideas, and think you'll do very well.

Phillip: [00:42:15] I love that.

Phillip: [00:42:16] Sound advice.

Brian: [00:42:17] I've definitely bought from Gymshark on Black Friday because they are the most aggressive discounter in Activewear.

Phillip: [00:42:24] It gets Brian. It's perfect. It's this caramel center for Brian. It really is.

Brian: [00:42:30] Deep discounts and strong brand combined. Wow.

Josh: [00:42:36] God bless capitalism. And Brian, I'll tell you, like I was watching the data come in and so I don't have the visual cues and I'm just like, "Why are they crushing it? They're killing it." And then when you go to the website, you're like, "Oh, that's why."

Phillip: [00:42:50] Yeah. It's also funny because Brian has a, we're probably a little more artistic than your average media company in the eCommerce space. But Brian wrote a whole baud, a sonnet, or a lament about his feeling that Black Friday has become sort of soulless for him. And yet, Gymshark can still get him to convert.

Brian: [00:43:16] To be fair, that was like 2 or 3 years ago.

Phillip: [00:43:21] Writing a lament in 2020. Say less, Brian. It's been great to have you, Josh. Where can people find out more about Particl and how can they get onto the platform? What's the onboarding like?

Josh: [00:43:36] Yeah, just come on to particl.com. Fill out a demo request. We'll get to you same day. Our process is generally, we'll actually also include a little trial with that as well so you can get your hands in. You can see some live data without ever agreeing to longer-term contract which is wonderful. So yeah. Particl.com, fill out a demo and we'll get back to you same day.

Phillip: [00:43:57] We have a special landing page for Future Commerce listeners Particl.com/FutureCommerce. It's been great. Josh, wonderful to have you. Josh Wilson. He's the CEO and Co-Founder of Particl. And we appreciate anything that gives people a greater insight into what is around the next corner. I think maybe this is one way to see around the next corner if you're looking into that competitive intelligence piece of your business. Check out Particl.

Josh: [00:44:20] Thanks, guys. It was fun.

Brian: [00:44:21] Yeah. Thanks, Josh.

Phillip: [00:44:22] Thanks for listening. You can find more episodes of this podcast and other Future Commerce properties. We've got Decoded is in full swing. We are decoding the way that products get made in the world. Maybe that's a great pairing. Brian, you love a wine pairing. Maybe this is a great pairing with this episode of the podcast. You can find that at Decoded. Season 2 is live now over at FutureCommerce.com. Of course, we have The Senses, which is your human connection to what's happening in the world of brands and retail news and what to make of that. You can find all of this in one convenient location by subscribing at FutureCommerce.com/Subscribe. Thank you for listening to this episode of Future Commerce. We'll see you in Miami December 6th through 8th for Art Basel. Make sure that you go check that out. Brands are our modern Muses, and we'll see you at Art Basel December 6th through 8th.