From Cart to Checkout: Enhancing the Outdoor Retail Experience

Phillip: [00:00:08] Hello, and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast at the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm your host, Phillip Jackson. Today, we are going live to Salt Lake City. So pack your bags for the Outdoor Retailer conference. That's right. The omnichannel retail conference in the outdoor industry where we held an all day event, a summer camp for adults in the outdoor retail industry. [00:00:30] And we did that at the Tracy Aviary there in Salt Lake City with our friends at BigCommerce. And if you can imagine a day of leather crafting and painting, and listening to a jam band, and s'mores, and of course, delicious lemonade from Me & the Bees. We had such a great time. So thanks so much to BigCommerce and all of the partners that made it possible. We have an amazing set of content here for you today recorded in the outdoor amphitheater there at the Tracy Aviary, an incredible event venue. And you're [00:01:00] going to hear us speak live. My co host, Brian Lange, Co-Founder of Future Commerce, is sitting down with a number of technology businesses that are helping to power the next generation of this experiential outdoor industry commerce experience, especially when you're going into the digital marketplace. And so in this first panel, we're going to hear here today  Brian is sitting down with Klaviyo and Stripe, two businesses that are helping bridge the gap between inspiration of outdoor gear [00:01:30] and the actual purchase. And it doesn't matter if that's personalized email campaigns or frictionless checkout experiences. Whatever industry you're in, there are a lot of things to think about, and there are some incredible data packed insights here in this particular panel. So without any further ado, let's go listen to Sanjeev Gill of Stripe, and our friend, Elcee Vargas, over there at Klaviyo, who's talking about how they're creating the next generation experiential commerce checkout and loyalty retention experiences [00:02:00] for customers in the outdoor retail industry.

Brian: [00:02:06] We're back here live.

Elcee Vargas: [00:02:09] That's right.

Brian: [00:02:10] BigCommerce Summer Camp. This is so exciting. Thank you so much all for being here. We are in the relaxed portion of the night. That's the portion where we drink wine. And we all have beverages. Both of you have beers. I have wine. I'm saying this for the digital audience, because everyone else can see that. But I think we're going to have a [00:02:30] great conversation. And I'm super excited to talk to both Stripe and Klaviyo about how we can bring consumers closer to the checkout. And I think we can actually, where I want to start is actually the buyer journey, because I feel like this is a really important part of this process. And it seems like buyer journey is actually harder and harder to get people to get to the checkout point. And so what what's the deal with all the drop off? Why are people dropping [00:03:00] off on the path to checkout right now? And I'll just open that up to both of you.

Elcee Vargas: [00:03:04] Yeah. I think I can start with that one mostly because I did do some research around checkout drop offs and what drives that. So the prevailing research right now, and I'm sure retailers have heard this a lot, is that 70% of carts are abandoned, which is an overwhelmingly large number. And when you dig into the reasons why, it really falls into two main camps. So [00:03:30] one on one side are factors that retailers, merchants can control. So there are shipping challenges of, "Hey, I'm going on a trip, and this package isn't going to arrive on time, and so I will drop off." Another one is "Shipping is way too expensive, and I just couldn't afford that." Another one next to shipping would be returns. So if I, as a consumer, feel like, "Hey, if I buy this product, if I don't [00:04:00] like it, I'm not going to have a good experience with returns. I would a 100% drop off," and that was shown in the study as well. And then finally, and then, Jordan, I'd love to get your take on this, is payments. On my end, if something really mundane, like, I'm right at checkout right to purchase something, and I don't have my credit card. That is a drop off right there.

Brian: [00:04:21] Yeah.

Elcee Vargas: [00:04:21] Or if I don't think website is secure. So those three are kind of the main things that you can control. And [00:04:30] on the other side, so this camp, Jordan, I'd love to get your take on the payments piece, are factors you just couldn't control. Right? Like, "Hey, I am just not ready to pull the trigger on this very expensive product. I need to do some more research." Or there are external factors. Right? Like, "My kid is being a menace," or "Somebody called me on the phone," or "DoorDash is here." There are so many, kind of, different factors that you just have no influence over, and that stuff just [00:05:00] happens.

Brian: [00:05:01] Yeah. Jordan, before you jump in here Yeah.  I think that's dead on. Context has collapsed. You have very little control about the environment that your customers are purchasing in. The dog might have just thrown up on the carpet, You know? And you're trying to check out and buy a hat. The things that happen in your life because of how close people are to their phones [00:05:30] now, it means that your store might be dog throw up carpet. And so it's within that context that we have to help people make purchases. And so Jordan, as you think about the buying journey, it seems like it's getting more and more nonlinear. It used to be this really clean path all the way straight to Stripe. And it feels like people are having to see different ads [00:06:00] or different, you know, seek products in different contexts many times before they actually get to the point where they check out. How is Stripe helping to facilitate getting people from those nonlinear moments to an actual checkout point?

Jordan ___: [00:06:18] Yeah. Well, thank you, guys. You both set me up beautifully here because referring to this as a journey, we do think of ourselves as that last piece of the journey to go from, "Okay. I've got this in my cart. I want to get this purchased [00:06:30] and over the line." And the way that we look at this is friction, and how can we remove all of the friction from that process? So your original question of where do we see drop off?  From the payments perspective, two of the primary culprits are going to be, are you presenting the payment method that someone is expecting to pay in? In North America, we have a little bit simpler landscape for that, but it's still very important to have, especially with [00:07:00] the conversations earlier about the different generations and Gen A especially, if you want to make a payment, you need to be presenting the one that they're expecting to use. So if somebody is wanting to use Apple Pay because they're on the mobile app and you're only presenting cards, then that's going to present an issue. I think then the other one becomes, going back to friction, our optimized checkout suite, we have poured thousands of hours of engineering [00:07:30] nerdery into how do we create the quickest checkout experience. So if you have a poor checkout, it can take 120 seconds to get all of your information in. That's a lot of time for your dog to throw up on the carpet. So taking that to a 6 second checkout like we have with some of our new tools like Stripe Link, I think makes a huge difference in that final conversion piece.

Brian: [00:07:54] It's a great way to put it. In fact, one of the things we talk about at Future Commerce quite a bit is the difference between good friction and bad friction. [00:08:00] And I feel like good friction is where there's opportunity for people to think about the product and be able to consider why they would want it, and if it's the right fit for them. And bad friction is when they finally make that purchasing decision in their minds and then they have all of a sudden, it gets really hard to get to the point where they want to get to. Purchasing decisions are happening closer and closer to payment points, though, it feels like. And I think about, like, trends on [00:08:30] TikTok, and we have a brand, a friend of ours, called BK Beauty. Incredible brand that sells a lot of product through TikTok. And one of the things they mentioned is the closer they can get to the moment people being inspired by the trends, the more likely they are to actually make a purchase.

Elcee Vargas: [00:08:54] Yeah.

Brian: [00:08:54] And so the decision to buy actually happens because of the trend. They're just playing into [00:09:00] that. They've got to get people to check out once they've kind of entered into that. And so I think about repeat purchasing and how people can kind of come back to that and keep coming back and making more purchases and how that relates to what will eventually become a loyal customer or will it? So that's another question for you, Elcee. What do you see right now as far as repeat purchasing?

Elcee Vargas: [00:09:26] Yeah. So the main reason why checkout is so [00:09:30] crucial is probably not why you think. For Klaviyo by the way, I work at Klaviyo. It is an email and marketing platform that is very specific with its targeting, and it's very particular to behaviors and customer data. And the reason checkout is so important is because of the first party data, the rich first party data that you get from that information. So if you can imagine within a checkout experience, you know exactly what product that customer wants to buy, you know what their size is, what colors they like, what styles they like, what kind of products they like, a [00:10:00]nd from that information, you can now create specific segments that are so targeted to exactly what they would like. Because we talk about nonlinear journeys. There are all these channels that you can market your product in. But if you are not in those channels, [00:10:30] you are going to lose the sale guaranteed.

Brian: [00:10:34] That's a really good point.

Elcee Vargas: [00:10:35] You just have to be in them. TikTok is a really big one right now.

Jordan ___: [00:10:40] Yeah. I think what I would add from that is that closeness to the customer.

Elcee Vargas: [00:10:44] Yeah.

Jordan ___: [00:10:46] I heard a quote from somebody where they were saying Stripe sells deep care. And what we really deeply care about is that last final removal of friction and from the perspective of being close to your customer and knowing who they are [00:11:00]. Overwhelmingly, the trend for us is companies of all sizes saying, if somebody's going to come back and buy from us again, we better know who that person is and tee up exactly the experience they want. And, I mean, you can speak much more deeply about that than I can. But from the payments perspective, that's, okay. We've seen this person before for this type of item or this type of purchase size. We would expect them to use this payment method, and we should just present that to them, and they should one click and be done.

Elcee Vargas: [00:11:28] Yeah.

Brian: [00:11:29] What are some tangible [00:11:30] ways that Stripe is pulling that checkout experience closer and closer to that decision point? Are you and then specifically for the brands that are in the audience, how are you integrating with other pieces of technology that they have to help get to that point of purchase faster?

Jordan ___: [00:11:47] Yeah. I think what we try and do is be flexible so that the brands can control that. I mean, a big theme for Stripe is you should be offloading a bunch of the undifferentiated work that exists [00:12:00] within payments. So you shouldn't have to care about the new payment rule and the new regulation that came up that now has to be tweaked. Those are things that we can handle. In terms of getting close to the customer, we want the brands to understand their customer, and be able to focus more on that piece of the payment experience. So it's not that you don't need to work on payments. It's that the work that you do on payments should be really tailored to your business and how you're providing value to the customer. And then the way that we try and do that is [00:12:30] we try and be very flexible with different payment services and different APIs to give you the flexibility to go build that experience that you know that your customers value.

Brian: [00:12:41] It's amazing. Yeah. So what are some examples of brands in the outdoor category that you know of that have done a really good job with some of this?

Elcee Vargas: [00:12:48] Yeah. I was looking at mutual BigCommerce Klaviyo customers just for this panel, and I was looking at three customers in particular, and I'm happy to share kind [00:13:00] of what the use cases were. The first one is Bear Paw. Have you heard of Bear Paw, y'all? So they do wool lined winter boots. And their use case is so interesting because they do primarily that, at least for that line, mostly in winter. So what they do in the off season is to keep that relationship warm. So throughout the off season, they're letting people in the segment know that, hey, there's a summer collection that's out, [00:13:30] or just in general keeping that relationship warm so that when the buying process for winter comes, then the relationship is warm and they're ready to buy, which I think is really interesting. And they do this thing that is not within checkout, but is within list growth that I thought was really interesting. And so on their website, on the home page, there is a pop up that shows up, and it asks you to sign up for a welcome series, which is standard. But [00:14:00] if you don't sign up, it actually offers an exit intent pop up that shows an offer that is better than the welcome series. Don't quote me on this, but I feel like it's something like 10% in the first pop up in the welcome series. And if that doesn't work, it becomes 20%. So I thought that was really novel, and they tested it a lot, and that was the piece that really worked. The second brand, and this is very top of mind because I saw paddle boards in there. It's called [00:14:30] Pickleball Central. They're on the BigCommerce as well. And they do this use case on their, I think, their home page, or it could be a landing page. But it's a quiz where if you are a pickleball player, you get to input very precise information about how you play. So it asks questions like, how long have you been playing pickleball? What is your style? What other sports do you play aside from pickleball? And at the end, it surfaces three [00:15:00] paddles that they think you would really enjoy playing with. And by the end, you can send an email or an SMS with your results. So not only is it a great list growth tactic, it's also a really good way to get first party data. Because now at this point, you know, okay, this person has been playing pickleball for a very long time. They do the spin, I guess. I don't play pickleball, but apparently, spin's huge, and there's a different paddle for it. I learned more about [00:15:30] pickleball in the last 24 hours than I have in my whole life. But that, I thought, was really clever. Because you get an excuse to reach out to this brand. But I have another one.

Brian: [00:15:43] Go. Go. Go. Please.

Elcee Vargas: [00:15:44] Yeah? Okay. So I just love nerding out on use cases. The third one is a brand called Goreware. So they do high end cycling gear. I also do not know much about cycling. I don't know if it's high end, but it looked [00:16:00] high end to me. And their use case is they were very particular about their checkout process. They tested a lot into it. I remember seeing how much they've A/B tested the flow, but they ended up with a flow that will send them an email with the product that somebody left in their cart with no discount. And then they follow-up with an SMS message, I think there's no discount in there [00:16:30] as well. But it kind of splits off if they have this person that's consented to SMS, they receive a text. And then if that doesn't work, they'll send two emails kind of as a follow-up. The first email has an offer that is compelling, but not as compelling as the second one. So it gets increasingly more effective. And I saw how successful that was. I mean, that flow prints them money. It was so effective. And, yeah, those three [00:17:00] examples are prime examples mostly because of the amount of data that it took to even deliver that kind of personalized experience as one. And the second piece is really knowing and testing into these tactics, because otherwise, you're not going to learn what works for your brand in particular.

Jordan ___: [00:17:19] Well, thank you. This is another perfect tee-up. Your check is in the mail. I'll talk about this more generically, but, I mean, a very important thing we've seen where,  [00:17:30]Stripe, again, obsessing on engineering details and nerding out the way that we do. We do a ton of A/B testing. And at some point, realized we need to extend this capability so that our customers are able to do this also. And so that's an important trend that we're seeing where we've released in this optimized checkout suite. You can A/B test the different services you're presenting and the different payment methods. And so you don't have to take our word for what's going to work. You can go test with different customers [00:18:00] and route them into, "Okay. I'm going to present this package of payment methods against this package, and let's see what actually works better." So I would just second the testing being really important from our perspective.

Elcee Vargas: [00:18:12] Yeah. Each brand is so unique. Right? I mean, there are use cases you have the use cases of the running shoes that have to be replaced every 6 months, and then you have the camper vans that don't need to be replaced for, like, 10 years. I don't know how camper vans work. Maybe 10 years? I don't know. How often you replace them? Clearly, I'm not the target audience. [00:18:30] But it's really varied, especially for outdoor. It's such a unique, varied space.

Brian: [00:18:37] It really is. Yeah. There's so much going on in outdoor. What I love about outdoor, and we talk about context. It happens all over the world in so many different ways. Gardening to skiing, right? And when I'm on the slopes, I may need to buy a new pair of goggles, and I might do that with one of my hands on, kind of making my way down, which [00:19:00] I definitely have done. Or I might be gardening and realize that I need a new pair of goggles as well. And I've got dirt on my hands. And so I think you nailed it.  One of the things that I heard you both talk about is the importance of having the right technology in place. And so modernization of the stack is something that, you know, is on everyone's minds. Everyone's got some legacy tech or piece of tech that they're ready to replace that maybe they've outgrown or they feel like is not meeting their [00:19:30] needs. And I think there's been in the past a lot of very big initiatives to do innovation. And that means big replace, rip and replace, and "Oh, we got to do our whole system at one time." And sometimes that's necessary. But sometimes you can kind of step your way there and do things incrementally. How would you recommend the brands here kind of think through being able to be agile as they improve their tech [00:20:00] stacks, but also make sure they make the right decisions so they have the right foundation? Jordan?

Jordan ___: [00:20:07] Yes, I would actually call back to, I think it was the first panel tonight. I apologize. I can't remember who said this. But it's not enough to look five years ahead and say, "Okay. This is our solution for the next five years." So we want to help people move incredibly quickly, and there are different ways to do that. Certainly, you could go in and do a big rip and replace. But, I mean, realistically, with [00:20:30] payments, this is the lifeblood of your company flowing through. You can't disrupt the revenue coming in and where it's going. And so often, what we help people do is how can we help you crawl, walk, run as you get into this experience? So we should be able to go in in a matter of weeks and create a new project for you and allow you to start innovating. And that knowledge that you gain about payments and how the APIs are working and whatnot provides a good foundation for you to build. The other thing I would say is that a lot of our customers [00:21:00] come to us and ultimately make the decision to Stripe because they feel like they are future proofing their payment stack. So I think those are the two ways that we think about that question is, how can we help you move very quickly and build expertise around this? Because, again, it's not that we're saying you're not going to need to know payments. You will need to know payments, but you need to know them in the context of what's really important for your business and your customers. So build that muscle, get more sophisticated over time, and then go with a partner who's  [00:21:30]on the leading edge of technology is, I think, how we would approach it.

Elcee Vargas: [00:21:34] Yeah. I just to build off of that, the main thing I am thinking about, especially for merchants, just because of the amount of data that you have in your hands that are, one, possibly just not accessible to you, or second, is not actionable. So what I would say is there is so much data that you need access to, and where your brand is going is going to be based on the data that you have now. [00:22:00] So make sure that you have as much data as you possibly can about your customers. You need to know how they behave. Do they like to buy with coupons? What other products could they possibly like? There's now the influx of AI as well, and that definitely feeds into the tech stack evaluation. Is this platform going to take you to your next five years? And where the next five years are, AI is definitely a part of it. So the more you can build [00:22:30] the data in, the better off we'll be.

Brian: [00:22:32] We made it to the end without mentioning AI. Pretty good. Alright. Great.

Elcee Vargas: [00:22:35] Cool. Thank you both so much.

Brian: [00:22:36] Thank you so much Klaviyo and Stripe. Thank you.

Phillip: [00:22:46] As we dive into our next segment, I want you to put this in the front of your mind. How does Omnichannel really work? Well, it comes down to operations. Our friend, Kris Gösser, often says that operations [00:23:00] is what makes the magic of marketing come to life. If you don't have great operations, meaning if you don't fulfill on your promise to deliver something on time at the right price, if you can't sell and grow your business into new markets, especially overseas, and if you don't manage compliance factors, especially in the realm of taxation or in cross border duty calculation. There are too many things that yes, they're unglamorous, but there are too many things that are crucial for your back-end [00:23:30] operations that make all of those flashy front-end experiences and this cultural commerce intersection work. And no better folks to speak about this than our friends at Avalara, ShipStation, and NetSuite, who are going to round out this idea about creating a business omnichannel experience that makes operational sense and doesn't frustrate your employees. It also makes your customers happy because you're fulfilling your promises, and also creates a flexible future with a tech stack that allows you [00:24:00] to grow in the future. So that's what we're all about at Future Commerce. Let's listen in to this last panel recorded live at Outdoor Retailer with Brian Lange sitting down talking about the future of the tech stack.

Brian: [00:24:17] I have to say, so at Future Commerce, something we really care about is in context connection, places, and moments for people to really genuinely share ideas and exchange values [00:24:30] and truths and do that in settings that are conducive to that. And what a beautiful place that BigCommerce picked. Thank you so much again to BigCommerce. This is the exact kind of setting that I like to have my content in. That would be an outdoor amphitheater. Super cool. Well, we're going to get into a really fun conversation today about the merging of physical and digital and what that means across channels. And so, I want to [00:25:00] open this up to the three of you to get things started. What are some of the challenges that brands and retailers face today in the process of providing a good experience across both physical and digital?

Travis ___: [00:25:14] I'd say some of the big issues are, you know, the automation of things and just driving through, like, when we look at how things change over time and whatnot, the need to automate, the need to fix the processes that everything [00:25:30] is manual is is so important. And I think that's very important, especially in the tax software side of things with compliance. Nobody likes it. Nobody wants to do it, but it has to be done. And so that's where we come in. So I think, you know, in that omnichannel experience, you want to give a good experience to your vendors, to your customers, whether in distribution or they're in retail as well.

Brian: [00:25:55] Apologies, Travis.

Travis ___: [00:25:58] Was Kris supposed to be here?

Brian: [00:25:58] Oh my gosh. New name. Caught me off guard. Yeah. Yeah. No.  [00:26:00]I think you're dead on. I think that's super, super important for this discussion. Carl, what do you think?

Carl ___: [00:26:10] So I think if I summarize it best, it started on the first channel conversation we had today. And that was about putting the right infrastructure in place for future growth, not thinking two years, four years, six years, but basically not roadblocking with regards to the technology [00:26:30] that you choose. We see a lot of products based companies these days start with digital, have a storefront, entering different marketplaces, really doing that omnichannel experience. And how do we make sure that you pick a foundation of something that's in place that talks and plays well with others? Otherwise, you're going to have a hairball. You're going to be running everything in Excel. You're going to have lots of versions of the truth, and you're going to have very [00:27:00] aggravated customers. So in the true element of customer satisfaction being key, because regardless of whether you're as old as I am or Gen Z or an Alpha Z, everybody wants things in real time like yesterday. We heard that through walmart.com. Right? It's no longer acceptable to have things show up 4 days later. It's same day or first thing in the morning tomorrow, regardless [00:27:30] of when you order that. And whether you're going to Amazon, whether you're going to other marketplaces, Walmart, TikTok Shop. Now they have a huge thing at the OR show about that. How do we play with that and get those orders from those different channels into a core so that we can then distribute that to our customer base and keep them happy and keep them loyal and keep them coming back. Right? Amazing.

Ken ___: [00:27:58] Yeah. That question [00:28:00] is probably like a 2 hour podcast for you guys to discuss. I mean, there's a lot to unload there. But, I mean, I think kind of piggybacking off what they said, the biggest thing realistically to manage all that is your tech stack. And I think, you know, this is something that at ShipStation if you look at where we fit, we're plugging into a lot of different things, whether it's Avalara, NetSuite, BigCommerce, and pretty much every sponsor here that we're communicating data back and forth. The biggest thing that we [00:28:30] see is that people are, especially businesses, are really good at kind of understanding more or less here's our product, this is where we want to go for our future. We want to go into retail, we're going to go into this market, or whatever it is. Not so great at looking at their tech stack. And so what you find is you have different departments that are just kind of like, let's plug in this in, marketing this, and manufacturing, and then you get this, like, hot garbage mess of a tech stack, and none of it talks to each other. Right? So what do you do? Right? You use [00:29:00] Excel, you get CSV, dump loads on into different systems that create error, create problems. You gotta pay to integrate it? Because the integration cost is going to be more than that software cost. Especially when we're doing over 10, 12 systems. This is what we see or pretty much I see everyday. So, I mean, the biggest thing that I think you can do is really, just like Carl said, like, don't think about where you are. Think about where you're going five years, 10 years, build your tech stack to go. Because almost everything now is scalable. Right? So to use NetSuite, who's one of our strategic [00:29:30] partners, you can just get what you need from NetSuite as a small company, then as you grow, add on what you need. So whether that's Avalara, whether that's ShipStation, whether it's endless amount of companies. But, again, it scales with you and all those systems talk and work together, so all of your data is in one place. Everything in terms from a customer experience, everything that your orders, your returns, all that information is in one place, in real time talking. That's how you scale.

Brian: [00:29:58] So Yeah. That's a really good point. I think let's [00:30:00] get back to the last question that we asked on the previous panel. How do you think about innovation when you're you're talking in an omnichannel context? And you're saying, look out 10 years, understand where you want to be, understand where you're at now, and understand what you have to untangle to get there. And a lot of innovation is actually just untangling the problems that you have. Now, I think about this in terms of an outdoor context. And I think when we think about different ways that this purchasing journey happens [00:30:30] in outdoor, it can be varied at every level. And, you know, there might be a situation where you might have a product in one state, someone needs something in a state that they're going to be traveling to to go on a ski trip or whatever, and they're going to have it shipped to a location that's not the location they're purchasing from, or maybe it's a location that you don't have a warehouse in. You have to think through how you're going to get that stuff to them in the time frame that they're going to be in that location and when they need it. [00:31:00] And so actually, there's huge, like tax implications and tax burden implications for this, understanding where to have inventory, how to do this. And so I'm going to say Travis this time to get it right. Can you give me some examples of how the tax burden can be reduced and optimized using technology in situations with complex needs like an outdoor brand might have?

Travis ___: [00:31:29] Yeah. I mean, with [00:31:30] outdoor brands, I mean, tax management is huge. Right? So you nailed it with I'm in different states. I've got locations in different areas. So you're holding inventory. Well, you've got tax implications on that. You've got assets. There are tax implications there. Where you're shipping to? Nexus. Right? Then you get into B2B. Maybe it's a distributor. It's not a consumer. Right? So certificate management, like who's tax exempt and who's not. Being able to do that in a shopping cart, [00:32:00] being able to manage that in the back end and being able to do that seamlessly is so important because at the end of the day, that customer expects what they see is what they're going to pay. When they get there, they're not going to be presented with a second bill or a third bill.

Brian: [00:32:14] So basically, again, you think about this and a lot of this happens in like very needy situations sometimes, like a tent pole might break or something along those lines. And so there's often on-demand and rush processing situations that happen. And so [00:32:30] from an omni perspective, what are some things that brands can think through from like an inventory position and how to optimize that part?

Carl ___: [00:32:39] So I think it is just having visibility into your inventory, first and foremost. Right? And also seeing trends in near real time so that you can be proactive and react. And what do I mean by that? Unless you're going to the secondary markets where there might be, for your example, a tentpole snaps and you haven't [00:33:00] carried that tent in five years, or it's a product that doesn't really move. It doesn't make sense to tie up all your money in that inventory for non-moving products when, say, this black pen is the new hot item. Right? But I've got red pens and they're not hot anymore, what am I going to do with that stuff? No one's buying it anyways. But I'm seeing a common trend, a seasonality trend on a certain style or a brand, making sure that you got [00:33:30] that visibility so that you can see and kind of almost future protect yourself. I need this item in these locations during these months because that's when we see the move for that. Tent poles in the middle of winter in Alaska, maybe not so hot. But in the summer, possibly. Right? So following those patterns through visibility, through a unified platform is really what kind of sets you up for success.

Brian: [00:33:56] That makes sense. Yeah. And from a shipping perspective, there are all kinds of implications [00:34:00] for this as well. What do you think about that?

Ken ___: [00:34:03] Yeah. So, I mean, on the seasonality aspect, I mean, if it's your busy season, you got a big warehouse, you gotta have your tech stack in order, you gotta be communicating obviously, with your inventory to understand where everything is, make sure you have it in stock. But one of the biggest things that people don't think about, there's a ton of research, you can obviously Google it and find tons of studies on this. If you think about where you're selling, so if it's not your own website, but it's an actual marketplace, most of them run the same type of algorithm. [00:34:30] They're based on reviews, there are some sponsor listings, things like that. But the closer you are to the top, if someone types in "tent poles," more opportunity you have to make sales. Right? Pretty basic math. One of the biggest factors in that is actually shipping, which blew my mind when I read this study. But again, most people, that's their biggest complaint. So what's ironic about that, if you read these, they're mad at the carrier, but they leave you a bad review. Right?

Brian: [00:34:58] Yeah. Totally.

Ken ___: [00:35:00] So [00:35:00] it affects your rankings. So, again, shipping plays a huge part in this, but a lot of it is communicating with your customer. And so, if you need to expedite shipping, to be able to have a shipping partner that can give you those rates to get you to get that out the door quicker, especially if it's an emergency, if it, again, it's someone that broke a pole and they need to ship it and you gotta go overnight, that kind of scenario. But most people are expecting it in three to four days. That's kind of the average. The irony is most people are four to five days.

Brian: [00:35:31] Yeah. [00:35:30] And that window is just increasingly getting more and more tight. And especially, again, I think outdoor, there are often situations that arise where having even faster delivery is essential for people to be able to go do the things they want to do or need to do. One of the things that we've been talking about is a lot of B2C use cases. But there's actually a huge component of B2B in [00:36:00] outdoor as well. And so maybe you could talk a little bit about, I'm thinking about brands that I've worked with in the past, like Lib Tech Snowboards. We've set up a whole bunch of additional, selling to like, you know, smaller shops and making sure that the resorts had product on hand at the right time. But there are often even more, less B2B2C type stories in the space. H [00:36:30]ow have you seen brands be able to sort of tie together their B2B and their B2C stories and make them a little bit more seamless? When we think about the consumerization of B2B and the B2Bification of B2C and how those two things are coming together. And I've written extensively about this actually. So what have you seen in terms of how to integrate those two different purchasing cycles? [00:37:00] Maybe for the mom and pop ski shop, and I keep using ski as an example, but or other industries that have similar purchasing cycles, and give those types of small business owners the opportunity to engage in the type of purchasing journey that they're used to as consumers. Ken?

Ken ___: [00:37:21] Yeah. So I mean, from a ShipStation standpoint, or from a shipping software, in that general, it kind of to us all blends because at the end of [00:37:30] the day it's just how do we get product from a to b? Right? But there's some complexity in that, especially when you're dealing with a B2B, you know, you're moving more product. It's also more time sensitive, especially if you're drop shipping. It's that model, which people could argue whether that's B2B or not, but if you're using a marketplace, it can be considered that. Those time constraints are hugely important not only to your company, but if you're drop shipping for Home [00:38:00] Depot, let's say, or REI, I guess in this case. They're watching that. They're making sure, like, "Hey, you said it was going to get here in three days, and all of a sudden it's there in five days. There's a problem." Right? And unfortunately, we all have competitors. You want to keep those contracts, you want to keep that business together. So you have to make that delivery promise to get that there. Otherwise, I mean, you're losing customers and you're losing that B2B experience from those retailers or whoever you're selling through.

Brian: [00:38:26] One hundred percent. Travis, what do you think?

Travis ___: [00:38:28] Absolutely. I mean, the other [00:38:30] side of it is the B2B buyers, they want that B2B or B2C experience, sorry. They want to be able to sit on their couch at 9 PM and not leave a voicemail, but be able to order, complete the order, get everything done the exact same way that they did. And I mean, so who's taxable, who's not? Where is it going to? Where is it coming from? So those things are a huge factor in your ecommerce equation. And I mean, obviously it then goes [00:39:00] to speak to the ERP on the backside of that. But that's very much that giving the blending of the B2B and the B2C is that experience, that user experience, and being able to have that at any time, anywhere as a B2B buyer is changing how that operates.

Brian: [00:39:16] Yeah, totally. And I am thinking about NetSuite and your role in all of this as well. I've seen retailers and brands actually have two piles of inventory for B2B and B2C and have to deprecate [00:39:30] them and then move things over, and then you start to factor in b stock. And, like, it starts to get insane. How have you seen, or been able to help brands optimize for both B2B and B2C cycles?

Carl ___: [00:39:43] Yeah. And I think I'll start with it is true. B2B buyers want that business to consumer Amazon type experience. Right? They want the notifications of pick, pack, ship, when it's coming. They want the shipping [00:40:00] notifications just like a business to consumer. So I think those two lines have kind of blended in using partners like BigCommerce operating with those two distinct sites because there are a lot of other things you need to think about with regards to, say, pricing. Your B2B pricing might look completely different for that same SKU as it would be going through a retail site and buying individually a onesie. Right? You could have volume pricing. So there's [00:40:30] those things that you have to configure within your business to business and business to consumer sites, and you've got your different marketplaces, your different channels. They could have different pricing. But yet they're all feeding from the same inventory that you've got, to your point, depending on how you make the data based on your contracts with those REIs of the world or the Walmarts. You've got fulfillment obligations or you get hit with fines and penalties. So making [00:41:00] sure again, we'll go back to a platform that's scalable, that houses all that information in one central repository that then feeds these different channels, that's really where it starts and what really everybody should be thinking about is making sure you've got something that regardless of whether you're pre rev or, you know, 1,000,000 of dollars, you want that infrastructure in place. So as you grow, it just becomes a number thing. And what I mean by number is instead of moving  [00:41:30]1000 pens a month, you're moving 10,000, and you don't have to add additional headcount or technologies to assist with that growth.

Brian: [00:41:39] Carl, I think I heard you making the case that it's never too early of a time to invest in a system like this. If you have plans for growth, you need to be out ahead of this. Are there some examples of brands that have done a really good job using systems like the three of you have to put together a full stack of solutions [00:42:00] and be able to serve both B2B and B2C in that robust way you've explained? Ken, what do you think?

Ken ___: [00:42:10] Yeah. If you actually go to our website, ShipStation.com, we have a couple hundred case studies. A lot of them go through this, they detail all the use cases. And there's outdoor type stuff, there's apparel, there's auto parts. I mean, pretty much anyone that ships, you know, we love these stores. And so we love building these use cases and helping people understand how they can [00:42:30] do it. In a way, they're all kind of unique because everyone here's business is kind of a snowflake, you all do things a little bit differently. But there are, again, some things that everyone needs to do. And again, a lot of this is how do you get your business to be able to scale from a technology standpoint. And that is getting the right products in place and making sure that they all talk to each other, that they're all working together, they all have the same data, that's going to be your best bet to scale. [00:43:00] I mean, I can't preach enough. I have, like, probably 10, 15 calls a week, like, with our customers and trying to sort through this, and it's the same theme that it's like nonstop. So I can't stress it enough. That is the biggest hindrance of anyone trying to scale their their business.

Brian: [00:43:17] Yeah. I would totally agree. So integration... So it's not just about having the right technologies for the things that you need to do with those pieces of technology. It's about having technology that has the openness to be able to integrate with all of [00:43:30] the other tools that you have.

Carl ___: [00:43:31] And we heard this in one of the earlier sessions as well, about you don't want to be the first person trying to figure out how to make A talk to B. You want a technology partner ship with a bunch of vendors that have done this before. And, you know, you look at the tech stack here, we all play very well and throw BigCommerce in there as well. Existing integrations are already in place. So don't reinvent the wheel. [00:44:00] Your reinvention is literally the products that you're developing. You shouldn't have to worry about the back-end. Be the creative on the front-end. Bring that product to market, and then let industry experts help you with the back-office stuff.

Travis ___: [00:44:15] And I think one other thing around the integration too is to understand that somebody's already done it. And it's probably done it, you know, multiple times. People have thought about these things before you. But the other side is if it's not doing what you want, look for the openness of it, [00:44:30] but also reevaluate your own processes. You may be doing something that's really not industry standard, and you think you're special and you think you're this. But why is it you're doing it that way? Is it because you got tied up in other sort of bad flows that have made you go down that road with that specific process and why it doesn't need to be integrated exactly that way? Because exactly that, you know, if everyone else can work with it that way, it probably is designed correctly as well.

Ken ___: [00:44:59] Can I [00:45:00] add one more thing to that?

Brian: [00:45:01] Yes, please.

Ken ___: [00:45:01] We run into this all the time. When you're dealing with technology, one of the big awesome things they can do, it's totally customizable. It's awesome. Yeah. That is good. But you need to ask yourself, do you need this or do you want it? Because if you don't need it, I am telling you, if you start customizing software, everything that you want to integrate to that now has to be custom. So we get it like, well, we don't call an order an order, we call it a [00:45:30] snuffleupagus, it's like, right, but there's no API for that. No one can, we can't read that. So but people do crazy things like that all the time because they got talked into it by someone. It made sense from a warehouse person or whoever they're buying from. Try to keep it as standard as possible. I know that sounds very boring, but just understand when you're building a tech stack, it's like if you're building a house. If you want to have an 8-foot wide door in your house, you're going to have to build a custom door to that thing now. There's [00:46:00] a reason why things are standardized, so try to keep that in mind.

Brian: [00:46:04] It's true. Carl, do you have any examples of any brands that NetSuite's work with that are good examples of this in the outdoor space?

Carl ___: [00:46:12] Hester Gloves always come to mind because they started with us when they were under 2,000,000. They've since probably hit that $30,000,000 mark. They've only added a couple people seasonally in the warehouse with regards [00:46:30] to bodies. A new facility, larger warehouse. I think that's a great example. We were talking today about Cotopaxi. I rep their bag. Love their bag, to give them a plug. But bag's phenomenal. Love that brand because they've stayed true to their course and their mission from the beginning, and they use technology to assist. I think there's actually a case study that we've got a joint one on the ShipStation's website. But brands like [00:47:00] that. GoodR. You can get free sunglasses today or yesterday or the day before. Great customer of ours as well. So that's, I think, utilizing all the stacks that are here today.

Brian: [00:47:13] Amazing. That's great. Well, we've hit the end of our time here. Travis, do you want to add one last word before we turn it over to questions?

Travis ___: [00:47:22] No, I think I'm pretty good.

Brian: [00:47:24] Cool. Well, thank you so much to our panelists, Avalara, ShipStation, and NetSuite. Thank you so much. [00:47:30] Alright. Well, I'll let you get to campfires and Bob Ross painting and more. Thank you all so much for being here tonight. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Phillip: [00:47:44] If you have a raffle ticket, who has them? You got them. Alright. You want to bring them down here. Okay. So make your way down and bring them down here. We'll collect them, and raffles will begin at 9:30. Alright?

Phillip: [00:48:07] Thank [00:48:00] you so much for joining us for this episode of the podcast. We have more content from the BigCommerce Summer Camp coming your way later this week. You can subscribe so you never miss an episode of the Future Commerce podcast, and you can get that at FutureCommerce.com/Subscribe. Totally free. Join the Future Commerce Plus membership, though, if you want to ad free versions of this podcast and bonus After Dark content and exclusive discount on print and merch plus private GPT. Thank [00:48:30] you for listening to this episode of Future Commerce.com /plus. Thank you for listening to this episode of Future Commerce. Remember, the future of commerce's culture. We'll help you surround the next corner by understanding the world around us. Thank you for listening.