NRF LIVE: "Instagrammable Moments"

Phillip: [00:01:39] Hello and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast about cutting edge and next generation commerce. I'm Phillip.

Brian: [00:01:44] I'm Brian.

Phillip: [00:01:45] And yeah, today we are at NRF 2019. Live at the Javits.

Brian: [00:01:49] Really live.

Phillip: [00:01:51] Bright and early. They know better than to put us during prime time. They put us at 8:00 a.m. as if that could tune us down. But that's OK.

Brian: [00:01:59] This is just so we can annoy all the early morning people. {laughter}.

Phillip: [00:02:01] And annoy we shall.

Brian: [00:02:05] Oh yes.

Phillip: [00:02:05] We took December off. So we've got a lot of news to talk about. We've got another session at 3:45 Eastern today, so you can expect a little bit more of that. And we'll talk a little bit more about this show.

Brian: [00:02:18] Yes.

Phillip: [00:02:18] But I know you were here for day one. Give us a quick recap of day one, if you can.

Brian: [00:02:24] Yeah, I mean, unfortunately couldn't make it to the earlier sessions, which I was really hoping to do. I missed Sucharita's talk, which I always enjoy.

Phillip: [00:02:34] Sucharita Kodali

Brian: [00:02:36] Yes. From Forrester. But I did catch Jeremy King's session from Walmart...the CTO SVP from Walmart.

Phillip: [00:02:48] Walmart Tech

Brian: [00:02:50] That was a phenomenal session. One of the things that he said that just blew my mind was that eight years, ago when he first came to Walmart, he said that they were gonna go 100% open source for their tech stack. That's mindblowing to me for a company of that scale to make that kind of a statement. In the past, I feel like that would have been really radical, and props to him for coming in and having that sort of mindset.

Phillip: [00:03:26] Sure.

Brian: [00:03:28] And building out something that I think performed better than Amazon did in terms of...

Phillip: [00:03:34] Whoa...

Brian: [00:03:35] ...how they scaled on Black Friday.

Phillip: [00:03:35] T-minus one minute, 30 seconds before you drop the A word.

Brian: [00:03:38] I know, right.

Phillip: [00:03:40] What's interesting is 2018 in retro, 2018 was the year of open source, I think.

Brian: [00:03:47] I think you're right. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Phillip: [00:03:49] We saw like something... I forget... Matt Asay of Adobe has the actual calculation. I think he's the one who's sort of stewarding that. Something like 18 billion invested in open source acquisitions in 2018. If you look back to like 16 and 17, I mean tons of open source companies, like MongoDB, went public. But we see open source acquisitions and project stewardship in retail, in particular, and in cloud technology, happening across the board. So I think more and more, especially in 2018, we saw that open source powers enterprise and open source is now powering retail.

Brian: [00:04:31] Yeah, totally. I think you're absolutely right. I think that open source powering enterprise is going to continue to be a theme of this coming year, and we haven't really done a predictions episode yet. Since we kind of took a break, but that's going to be one of my predictions for the year.

Phillip: [00:04:47] Yeah, well, we will do an official predictions episode probably right after NRF.

Brian: [00:04:54] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:04:54] Which is right on time for us. We usually are a monthly on everything. So our February predictions show sounds about right.

Brian: [00:05:02] I would say so.

Phillip: [00:05:02] So Walmart technology... The continued maturation of Walmart as a retail... Well it always has been a mature retail brand, obviously, but I think a lot of people sort of thought it had some age on it. And in the last two years in particular, massive turnaround story.

Brian: [00:05:23] I mean, ever since the Jet acquisition.

Phillip: [00:05:26] I think so. Yeah.

Brian: [00:05:27] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:05:27] It's sort of a Jet, Moose Jaw, ModCloth and... Yeah. And anyway all of our favorite...

Brian: [00:05:34] Eloquii.

Phillip: [00:05:35] Yeah, Eloquii. I mean that's very recent. That happened in 2018. Very, very cool stuff. I don't want to get too far without talking about our survey because...

Brian: [00:05:43] Oh. Right.

Phillip: [00:05:43] I want to know what our listeners have been thinking of the show. And this is our very first listener survey. And we want you guys to get in on helping create the content for us. And the best way you can do that is to give us your feedback about what you think works on the show, what you like most about the show, how you found the show... So even if you've listened once, even if this is your first time, we want you to head over to survey.FutureCommerce.fm and take our first ever listener survey and for your time, that five minutes that'll take to go through the survey, we'll give you a chance to win one of three Google home hub devices.

Brian: [00:06:20] Pretty sweet.

Phillip: [00:06:21] Yeah, it's a pretty sweet deal. So in exchange for your thoughts, we enter you in that drawing, and three lucky winners will get that. So, yeah, survey.FutureCommerce.fm.

Brian: [00:06:32] Or just go to FutureCommerce.fm and click on the survey link.

Phillip: [00:06:36] Great. Okay. So okay. So Jeremy King... That session in particular got like a whole lot of social traffic actually.

Brian: [00:06:47] Yeah, it did. I think what was interesting about that session, and the room was packed. I mean standing room only it was all around the walls. I think people are really interested in what Walmart is doing right now because they're killing it. This is probably the most excited I've been about Walmart in my entire life. {laughter} Well, we joke about that, right?

Phillip: [00:07:14] Sort of a running joke...

Brian: [00:07:16] I mean, right now, in terms of momentum in the market, and in terms of how Walmart is partnering with technology companies, with other retailers, with their presence at this show, as opposed to the other retail giant that is practically non-existent at this show.

Phillip: [00:07:36] We mentioned that last year, too.

Brian: [00:07:37] We did.

Phillip: [00:07:38] Yeah.

Brian: [00:07:38] Every year Amazon's sort of absent or is here in a very nominal way.

Phillip: [00:07:44] Just like the pay product or something.

Brian: [00:07:45] Pay product. A little bit of AWS.

Phillip: [00:07:47] Yeah, right. Maybe marketplace. They're here.

Brian: [00:07:50] They're here. But it's not in the same way that Walmart's showing up and being a part of the retail community.

Phillip: [00:07:57] And and to be fair, we're talking about them, and they're really not here. What's interesting is the 50% of all retail transactions in 2018 happened in some form through Amazon. I think that was the number that I saw recently. I have to cite that...probably on RetailWire.

Brian: [00:08:17] Yeah, it was at least on pace for 2018.

Phillip: [00:08:21] Yeah. Crazy. OK. So that's great. So that was day one. And I think we had a little bit of catch up, too. I mean, we walked the Innovation Show floor. If you're not on Instagram, following us on Instagram we're Instagram.com/commercefuture. And we've got some really cool stuff coming there, so we'll be doing a lot of social engagement and doing some live video, some interviews... And check our Instagram stories. We'll do the best we can to repost those throughout NRF onto our Twitter feed. But that's where you're gonna find a lot of ways to stay in touch with us during the show. Give me a little bit of...

Brian: [00:09:00] Before we move on from Jeremy. I just want to point out also, I think what was really interesting about Walmart, and what they're going to do this year. I know, I'm still on the Walmart train here.

Phillip: [00:09:09] No, please. Yeah.

Brian: [00:09:10] I think the other thing that's exciting is, not only are they doing really cool things, but they're growing their team, and they're focused on on this as really their go to market. Tech forward, tech first, digital first... It's I mean, it's the merging of physical and digital, for sure. What I think Walmart has that's really powerful is all of our stores, obviously.

Phillip: [00:09:34] Yeah.

Brian: [00:09:34] And so, you know, I think Walmart Labs alone is going to be adding 2000 additional workers this coming year.

Phillip: [00:09:42] Wow.

Brian: [00:09:42] Which I just think is really, really exciting and really indicative of where retail is going.

Phillip: [00:09:49] I mean, my 2019 goal to get at least half of those folks listening to Future Commerce, they need to know what they need... Well, we'll tell you guys what you need to be working on. We'll set your roadmap. {laughter}

Brian: [00:09:58] I have to say, that interview... It sounded like a retail commerce interview.

Phillip: [00:10:04] Right.

Brian: [00:10:04] That's where people are... Sorry. It sounded like a Future Commerce interview. Like if we had Jeremy on our show, it probably would have ended up sounding a little bit like that session, in terms of the questions.

Phillip: [00:10:14] What's really interesting... So if you go back, I don't know... We're a little ahead of the curve usually on some of these things.

Brian: [00:10:22] Sometimes. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:10:23] Usually. When we're not like super spacey, you know, brains in jars, meta beings, way out in the future... When we keep it pragmatic, we're usually pretty spot on. There was a retail 2040 report, that came out recently. Did you happen to take a look at that? Because that was super interesting to me.

Brian: [00:10:45] Yeah. Yeah, I got a quick browse on that. That was interesting. I thought it was interesting.

Phillip: [00:10:48] So it's behind sort of an email gate. An e-mail wall. So it's a PDF you can go grab. If I were you, I'd go check that out. A lot of the things they're talking about are things that we've covered for two plus years on the show.

Brian: [00:11:03] Right.

Phillip: [00:11:03] I mean, obviously, drone delivery high up there. All the things that... Retail experience... Like experiences that sort of mimic real world conditions....

Brian: [00:11:16] Stuff that we were hoping would happen in like three years, not by 2040.

Phillip: [00:11:20] Right. Not by 2040. And maybe some of them would be more ubiquitous. But they do mention some of the retail experiences that I found were really interesting that landed in 2018 or showed up on my radar in 2018. Like the Canada Goose cold rooms...

Brian: [00:11:35] Oh my gosh, I love that.

Phillip: [00:11:36] So if you're not familiar... Do you know the Canada Goose brand, Brian?

Brian: [00:11:39] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Phillip: [00:11:41] It's like an outdoor brand. Luxury. So I mean, at a price point.

Brian: [00:11:45] Super cozy.

Phillip: [00:11:46] Yes. At very, very aspirational luxury sort of retail price point. What's interesting about that brand is that, you know, if you're in the market for a puffy jacket, and a very expensive one, you probably want to know what it's like to wear it in the conditions in which you'd use it.

Brian: [00:12:05] I feel like a Canada Goose jacket has ended up in a Macklemore music video before. I want to say. {laughter}.

Phillip: [00:12:10] You would know? You're sort of the resident Macklemore expert?

Brian: [00:12:14] I don't know if I'm an expert, but I mean, he is from Seattle, so...

Phillip: [00:12:18] So you've got the... Wouldn't he go to a thrift shop? Isn't that sort of his...

Brian: [00:12:22] Yeah, right. Sure. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:12:24] Canada Goose in a thrift shop. Show title... So this idea that Canada Goose has is that they have a freezer in their flagship store.

Brian: [00:12:37] It's a freezer dressing room.

Phillip: [00:12:39] It is. Which is the best thing ever.

Brian: [00:12:41] It is the best thing ever, but I imagine you get really cold like...changing.

Phillip: [00:12:47] You know, you can step into and maybe having put the jacket... I just remember our experience of Filson earlier this year.

Brian: [00:12:52] I love Filson.

Phillip: [00:12:52] And what's really nice is like having the mirror. I can put the coat on, and I can look at myself in it, but I'm not really feeling what it's like to be in the warm jacket.

Brian: [00:13:04] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're in the warm, cozy environment in Filson. Which is amazing. I mean I love that environment.

Phillip: [00:13:09] And there's like a roaring fire there, which is like exactly the experience that you'll have when you're...

Brian: [00:13:15] In a lodge... But not when you're in your coat.

Phillip: [00:13:19] Traversing the Pacific Crest Trail.

Brian: [00:13:21] Right.

Brian: [00:13:22] That picture of you in that coat was amazing. Repost that.

Phillip: [00:13:25] Anyway, the whole reason I brought that up is it's one of the things that's mentioned in the Retail 2040 report, which, you know, I think we already covered most of those things. Still awesome to see it all in one place. And it's something that we should... We should try to put those sort of things together.

Brian: [00:13:41] We should... You know what, it's a great idea. We should do like retail 2050. Our own version.

Phillip: [00:13:45] Brains in jars, meta beings... One thing that I saw that kept...

Brian: [00:13:51] We should have Romley back on the show.

Phillip: [00:13:53] We should actually. You know what? We should. We should do that for our two year anniversary.

Brian: [00:13:57] I love that idea.

Phillip: [00:13:58] One thing that I saw that was making the rounds from the show yesterday is a big focus on sort of practical AR.

Brian: [00:14:04] Yeah. Yes.

Phillip: [00:14:05] I've seen a lot of augmented reality, or practical augmented reality talk as of late. And I was really impressed by some of the things that were being shown. One thing in particular... I'm going to have to cite because I can't remember who it was. Let me see if I can find it real quick. There was a...

Brian: [00:14:25] The demo?

Phillip: [00:14:27] The demo of if you see like a shelf of granola bars, and you want to figure out which ones are nut free...

Brian: [00:14:34] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:14:34] Having an AR app for the store that would like highlight nutrition facts and sort of label and badge without you having to look at the actual price, like the price tag or some of those, you know, call out tags. That was really interesting.

Brian: [00:14:46] Sort of inevitable that we would be seeing technology like that. We've been talking about something like that happening for a long time. So it's great to finally sort of see that come to fruition and into action. AR has come so far. There was that video that we posted of the shoe that was an AR that was just off the hook.

Phillip: [00:15:05] Oh, my gosh, that was insane.

Brian: [00:15:06] Yeah. AR right now is... It's really starting to get to that point where people are starting to use it in actual retail context. I don't know if you saw that Amazon has been pushing their AR functionality like crazy and...

Phillip: [00:15:25] Oops. Man down. Hold up. This fell off the thing. Woops.

Brian: [00:15:33] Technical difficulties....

Phillip: [00:15:35] Oh, the power came out. Could we just leave that on the floor? Okay, that's great. Oh.

Brian: [00:15:47] And we're back. {laughter}.

Phillip: [00:15:50] Don't worry. I'm just knocking stuff off here. That's how I do.

Brian: [00:15:53] We thought it was an AR, so we just knocked it off.

Phillip: [00:15:55] Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to put my hand right through it. That's how you know it's real augmented reality.

Brian: [00:16:01] So realistic these days.

Phillip: [00:16:02] So that shoe demo that came out was a Unity 3D demo.

Brian: [00:16:07] Yes.

Phillip: [00:16:08] With augmented reality. And it looked... So some things that were really incredible about it is that usually these environment overlays are very sort of cartoon like. This was Unity. It was like absolute almost photorealistic like very, very... It's on that uncanny valley line.

Brian: [00:16:29] You know, what's crazy? We're gonna start seeing content creation happen in AR instead of like realistic, in the physical world content creation photos and so on, we're gonna see most content created digitally without having to have product physically onsite.

Phillip: [00:16:51] Yeah. Well the true thing that was... Just to talk one more thing about the shoe because you know I'm on the shoe.

Brian: [00:16:58] Yes. Oh, man. We should talk a little more about shoes here.

Phillip: [00:16:59] They used the Nike Air Vapor Max which has a translucent soul.

Brian: [00:17:08] Right.

Phillip: [00:17:08] So the the soul itself is, there's some like light occlusion effects and some shaders and not easy to do in real time stuff. In fact, if you were to watch, go back to some of the like behind the scenes from like Toy Story and like the old Pixar films where they had to invent technologies just to do these things. You know, fast forward 20 years. We're doing it real time.

Brian: [00:17:33] Right.

Phillip: [00:17:33] And we're doing it through the lens of your phone, on your phone. This technology is in your pocket. That's crazy. But the fact that it was sort of understanding the environmental lighting and projecting that into the model.

Brian: [00:17:49] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:17:50] So now admittedly, Nike probably has phenomenal 3D models of this sort of stuff. So, you know, it always lives and dies by the accuracy of the model. But this technology demo was just great. And having that in a retail context, that's not to light your way. It's like two years away.

Brian: [00:18:11] Yeah, totally. Yeah. In fact, at this point, there are a number of technologies that are making it possible for midmarket retailers to really take advantage of this technology without too much cost. I can think of a couple of retailers that I'm personally working with who are implementing stuff at this scale. And they're gonna use it for content generation. They're going to use it for, you know, customer purchasing journey there. This is finally here.

Phillip: [00:18:44] Ok. All right. Hold on. So here's the thing. Because we've been talking about this for years now. Content generation. Everybody wants this like this. This is so good. Everybody wants right now in e-commerce user generated content coming from social networks. They want you know, when they say UGC, they really just want a very obviously user generated photo of my product in their context...

Brian: [00:19:13] That we can use to sell our products.

Phillip: [00:19:15] So it's not just me selling my product, that I can have my customers sell my product for me. And hopefully it's not just like a place, like they're just trying to fill out, you know, a section on a product detail page. But what's really interesting about that is if entire retail experiences could be your user generated content.

Brian: [00:19:33] Right. Exactly.

Phillip: [00:19:34] So having an AR experience where someone... We're on Instagram live right now, if we were able to actually use that to project product into what we're talking about and show you rather than tell you about the Air Vapor Max, that's kind of thing, that I think we'll be more commonplace. And again, like Facebook is the only one that is poised to have both the social network and technology and the retail integration, like the digital commerce integration and the trust of retailers. Instagram accounted for like something like 64% of digital commerce top of funnel social traffic. I forget what the metric is. Instagram has two thirds of it. They have the networks.

Brian: [00:20:28] Right. It's funny to me, you know, in all of this, you know, hubbub about Facebook and privacy and, you know, oh, we should get off Facebook. It seems like Instagram's been completely divorced from that. Like everyone still loves Instagram.

Phillip: [00:20:45] Oh yeah.  I think I don't think most people realize that it's Facebook.

Brian: [00:20:49] I think they do. They just in their minds they think, oh, Instagram's cool, and Facebook's not.

Phillip: [00:20:53] Instagram is tracking what I'm doing. Facebook is an annoying channel for amplification of views that I don't want to hear other people spout off about. That's why I stick to WhatsApp to talk to all my close friends because I don't want Facebook or Instagram spying on me.

Brian: [00:21:10] It's all Facebook.

Phillip: [00:21:11] It's all Facebook. Yeah, pretty much everything's owned by Facebook.

Brian: [00:21:14] Speaking of shoes...

Phillip: [00:21:16] Oh yeah.

Brian: [00:21:17] Let's stay on shoe train for a minute here.

Phillip: [00:21:19] Can I jump in here with something?

Brian: [00:21:21] Yeah you can. You're the shoe guy.

Phillip: [00:21:23] So OK.

Brian: [00:21:26] We haven't talked since...

Phillip: [00:21:28] We haven't talked since it happened. Huge acquisitions continue to take place in the realm of like shoe retail, which is really cool. Obviously, well it may not be so obvious to some people... A lot of M and A action that's happened in... So if you're not following footwear, there's like a lot of footwear equity groups, or they're not really private equity groups, but like brand ownership and brand.... It's like brand holding that exists in the footwear space. And I think a lot of fashion is that way. But what we see is, so like last year in particular, the Camuto Group...

Brian: [00:22:08] We talked about that.

Phillip: [00:22:09] Yeah. The Camuto Group.

Brian: [00:22:10] Was purchased by DFW.

Phillip: [00:22:12] Correct. So and it itself had many, many brands, one of which I interviewed at a Meet Magento, New York, I think?

Brian: [00:22:22] Yeah. Sole Society.

Phillip: [00:22:24] Louisa Chan from Sole Society. And that's a Nordstrom incubator project. So very, very cool brands. But what's really interesting is that you see now actual like independent retail chains that have developed niches for themselves that are starting to get snapped up. So in particular, one that is on our radar, is Stadium Goods, who if you're not in the like Hypebeast sneaker world, Stadium Goods is a well-known brand. It's a consignment sneaker store for resale of limited edition sneakers and streetwear. What's really interesting about a brand like Stadium Goods was so they were acquired by Farfetch for 250 million. It's not a retail play. Stadium Goods is partnered with brands like Complex for content generation.

Brian: [00:23:17] Right. Exactly.

Phillip: [00:23:18] So it has less to do with direct to consumer retail experience and more to do with the content that is being created around those retail experiences. So, you know, Complex has people like John Mayer who does long form interviews with them to talk about, you know, shoes and streetwear. And so you have this kind of zeitgeist influencer powered content, which usually a media company would have... That is a media companie's bread and butter is to attract eyeballs. And now they're doing that, but they're doing it with a retail angle, which is really interesting.

Brian: [00:24:03] Totally. I heard another furniture company, that will remain nameless, that's said that they're developing products for content. So basically, they're testing content to see kind of how the content does, and then they're actually building products to the content as opposed to using their products to create content.

Phillip: [00:24:26] Yeah.

Brian: [00:24:27] I think that content is king. "Content is king" means even something more than it did 10 years ago.

Phillip: [00:24:36] This shouldn't be a surprise.

Brian: [00:24:39] Right.

Phillip: [00:24:40] Because we're not just doing this sort of thing for... A lot of what product development is in 2019 is geared around how we can share those experiences on social networks.

Brian: [00:24:54] Right. Communities.

Phillip: [00:24:55] Right. There's an ice cream shop that just opened up right next to my house, two doors down from the Dollar Tree. And so I took my wife. I left the kids at home. Don't tell them that I went and had ice cream without them. I took my sister and my wife. We went to this place. It's Thai rolled ice cream, sort of a store, which is not a new thing. But what's incredible about this experience is that it's incredibly interactive, where maybe a decade ago you would go to something like Cold Stone, and you're just watching them make the ice cream. This ends up as a beautiful thing that you want to share with other people.

Brian: [00:25:38] Right. Sharable products.

Phillip: [00:25:39] The whole point is that the product is shareable. And you walk in the door and everywhere you look, is their Instagram. It's not a Twitter. It's not a web site. It's not Facebook. It's Instagram. We want you to share the visual experience. And this is a consumable product.

Brian: [00:25:56] Right.

Phillip: [00:25:57] It should be like you eat first with your eyes. Right? So the whole idea here is that we're having Instagramable moments. All product development in 2019 should be thinking about having products that can be shared, you know, with other people.

Brian: [00:26:11] We talk about the difference between retail and B2B and, you know, direct to consumer and business to business. And maybe the next split is actually not B2B or B2C as B2B as actually becoming a lot more B2C centric and B2B like. Maybe the next split is actually content ready and not content... or built for content and not built for content product listings.

Phillip: [00:26:36] Wow.

Brian: [00:26:37] In that content is actually the division between types of business. I mean, I don't know. It's an idea.

Phillip: [00:26:49] Well... So going back to the Farfetch acquisition of Stadium Goods. It's not just about shoes. I mean, I wish it were just about shoes because I love shoes. It's not just about shoes. It's around content generation in the space because they're not the only ones, you know, creating content. Now they've created a unique retail experience. I went to the store last week just to check it out. In 2018 alone, we're looking StockX had 44 million in investment money, including Marc Benioff at Salesforce.

Brian: [00:27:23] Right.

Phillip: [00:27:24] Grailed is another brand grabbed 15 million. Goat merged with Flight Club, and Goat being one of the largest apps for selling things on a secondary market. And you and I talked about second hand commerce a few months ago.

Brian: [00:27:41] We've talked about that a ton.

Phillip: [00:27:42] Yeah. And so actually they're like carving out an entire niche of luxury experiences for second hand resale. And this brand Stadium Goods, in particular, they don't just have people coming into a retail store, and they didn't just sell that for 250 million, they have an entire audience of people that are buying and selling and engaging in commerce outside of that. And now they're creating content. I mean, that's as Future Commerce as you get. And so 2018, maybe that was the year of the sneaker.

Phillip: [00:28:15] It really was. Yeah. I feel like shoes kind of led the way for experiential retail in the past two, three years. And you know, I think... Actually side note. I think Stadium Goods went to market on Magento, by the way. Yeah, pretty interesting. I feel like, you know, as we look ahead to experiential retail and what that means and in light of the fact that Walmart is going with a completely open source stack...

Phillip: [00:28:49] Oh, I see where you're going here. Yeah, you're tying it all together.

Brian: [00:28:52] Yeah. I think what we're looking at ahead in this next year is the focus on content and commerce together that requires the flexibility that we've, you know, we've had in the past, but probably is a much more mature version of of open source that we've ever seen.

Phillip: [00:31:56] And at the same time, so we're seeing all this... This is all very, very interesting. And I love this sort of stuff. But these are small numbers, right? I mean, two hundred and fifty million ostensibly is not that much in in our space.

Brian: [00:32:12] Right.

Phillip: [00:32:14] Not when you're talking about behemoths like Amazon who are opening HQ2. And surprise, surprise, 10 miles from one of Bezos' homes.

Brian: [00:32:24] So... I was just about to be mean...

Phillip: [00:32:33] There's a lot of Jeff Bezos jokes that could be made. Yeah. We're going to refrain.

Brian: [00:32:39] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:32:40] But that whole move and the outfit of the world's biggest retail brand... And they're investing more in just building a secondary office.

Brian: [00:32:53] Yes. A secondary and a third office.

Phillip: [00:32:55] Yeah, exactly. HQ2 is more like HQ2 and 3...

Brian: [00:32:59] 4? Is there a 4 out there maybe?

Phillip: [00:33:04] Yeah. So it's an interesting amount of investment that's happening just to continue growth of that brand. Now they're way more than retail, obviously.

Brian: [00:33:15] Right.

Phillip: [00:33:16] At this point. What's interesting to me is the parallels, very strong parallels, to where you interact with Amazon for everything in your life at this point. You know, once upon a time, a hundred not quite a hundred years ago, Sears was that. How do you think Sears became a portrait studio? And, you know, you can buy a home in a box and get I mean, at one point in time is the department store was the center of all commerce.

Brian: [00:33:47] And now it's gone.

Phillip: [00:33:50] And now it's gone. Did you like that segue?

Brian: [00:33:50] I do like that segue. Yeah, yeah. It is interesting. I think, Bezos has even said that, you know, in some period of time that Amazon might go the way of Sears. I think they're doing everything they can to prevent that.

Phillip: [00:34:05] We're gonna to a cite on that quote. {laughter}

Brian: [00:34:08] We'll pull pull it out.

Phillip: [00:34:10] Anything's possible.

Brian: [00:34:11] Yep. But what I think is really interesting about HQ2 and HQ3 is that Amazon has to build everything that they do. I think, you know, as compared to Walmart, which is doing a lot more merging of their San Francisco office and their corporate headquarters in Arkansas. And they're really focused on building a blended team. Amazon sort of started with that, but they have to create all the jobs for the technology that they build.

Phillip: [00:34:47] Right.

Brian: [00:34:47] Whereas Walmart and Google, and Google has also expanded their offices recently, have a much more partner centric approach. So they're leveraging all the employees that are here at NRF as part of their growth. So, you know, as they build out their ecosystems, it's not 100% growth on their own team. So they don't need that sort of that new site. So I think it's interesting that Amazon is building those headquarters. And it's made a big splash, and the process that they used to go about it was really visible. But I feel like Walmart and Google, they're spurring a lot of job creation that's not even being attributed to them. And it's actually a bigger and better story.

Phillip: [00:35:41] I see what you're saying.

Brian: [00:35:41] It's actually a bigger and better story because they're partnering with the new technologies. Those people are hiring people. Their ecosystems actually have a much greater reach than the three locations that Amazon has. And it's much better for America in general.

Phillip: [00:35:59] Wow. Wow.

Brian: [00:36:00] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:36:00] That's good. I like that a lot. There's a hot take. Speaking of which, we see brands, it's not just Amazon that's doing same day delivery anymore either. I mean, you see grocery brands are doing a massive investment...

Brian: [00:36:19] Postmates just got another hundred million dollars investment. We're looking at a 1.85 billion dollar valuation now. Yeah, I know. Totally. And also, I mean, Amazon acquired Whole Foods. We're looking at one day delivery there next year. Right.

Phillip: [00:36:37] There was a story that we shared out on social...

Brian: [00:36:39] Two hour delivery.

Phillip: [00:36:41] Yeah. To all Whole Foods. And I mean, in any other time, this would have been the biggest story that we have. And I mean, I think in 2017, it might have been one of the biggest stories.

Brian: [00:36:56] We called it. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:36:57] Yes we did call it. We made another prediction, too. I think we'll get to that. In 2019, seeing massive retail expansion in that like it owns all of these stores in Whole Foods. It was obvious that they're going to roll out same day delivery to all of them at some point. But yeah seeing it's...

Brian: [00:37:20] Well, what's really interesting is, just yesterday, the Kroger had Rodney McMullen... He said that actually Kroger suspected that Amazon would move into physical grocery back in 2014, which is why they ultimately purchased Harris Teeter, which was a pretty big acquisition at the time. And so, now I don't know if they ever publicly stated that like we did, but that they thought that was going to happen.

Phillip: [00:37:48] Well, we have we have the evidence, the physical evidence to prove that one.

Brian: [00:37:52] But no, you're right. I think your point is that the edge that Amazon has had for so long is disappearing because tech companies here at NRF have in the past couple of years have matured well beyond where they were at when Amazon originally gained that edge with Prime. And so now pretty much anyone can have free two day delivery. And anyone can have, you know, 2 hour delivery. And anyone can have these technological...

Phillip: [00:38:26] I mean, not anyone.

Brian: [00:38:27] Not anyone. I'm sorry.

Phillip: [00:38:28] But more than just one or two.

Brian: [00:38:31] Yeah broad mid-market retailers can take advantage of these things.

Phillip: [00:38:36] I would even say that it's easier for a small retail chain, a very small retail chain to have a better customer experience than a mid-market retail chain in that they understand their customers more. They're closer to their customers. I am actually later today, here at NRF, I'm hosting a panel.

Brian: [00:39:00] Yes.

Phillip: [00:39:02] So we'll be doing that in coordination with CGI on the Innovation Stage at 11:00 am, and we'll be... What's really great about that panel is we have two interesting retail brands. One's called Rituals, which is a European sort of bath and body fragrance brand. They're all about experiential retail, by the way. What they want is they're sort of bucking that trend of we want to help you find what you need as fast as you can. And the second you walk into the store, the hand you a cup of tea, like they make you a cup of tea.

Brian: [00:39:36] I love that.

Phillip: [00:39:36] Here, you can stay for a little while. Like, we want this to be a little safe haven for you.

Brian: [00:39:40] It's kind of like the Toms store on Abbot Kinney.

Phillip: [00:39:42] It is. It's exactly that. Yeah, right. So like what we talked about a few weeks ago is that it's like coffee store first.

Brian: [00:39:49] Right.

Phillip: [00:39:49] Right. It's a coffee shop first where people are, but it's also retail in that you're working amongst all the retail. In this case, it's like you have a retail sort of like a concierge who greets you with a cup of tea and asks you what your daily rituals are like. That's why it's called Rituals. What's incredible is that European consumers totally understand that, and they get that. They value it as a premium experience, whereas the American consumer needs education because they are like, What are you doing? Like, why are you hitting me this cup of tea?

Brian: [00:40:20] Right.

Phillip: [00:40:20] What are you trying to... Like, how much do I owe you for this? It's all about like the price point. And so there's some education there. And then there's another company on the panel called Sheetz, which is a smaller, more regional player in the gas station, convenience store, deli sort of market. I would say if you're familiar with other brands like WaWa or Cumberland Farms or something like that, it's more of a high end, you know, gas station type experience. But they've had tremendous success in a small regional market in like Pennsylvania and surrounding states because they know their customer better than anyone else. And so creating these opportunities for like being a destination outside of the kind of place that would usually be a destination is creating retail experience.

Brian: [00:41:13] Absolutely.

Phillip: [00:41:14] So I'm super excited about that. I'll be hosting that panel at 11:00. You have a business card in your hand...

Brian: [00:41:19] Yeah. Yesterday, I met Rob LaBonne from LaBonne's, which is a small grocery chain in Connecticut. I think they have like three stores. And I met him in line at the food truck area just down over there, which was in and of itself is kind of an example of a quick pop up experience. You know, they've been around for a while, but it was just really interesting to hear his take on, you know, as a boutique grocery retailer, what this show meant to him and the types of technologies that he's taking away from this. You know, I think that's what we're getting at is...

Phillip: [00:42:04] So we should have probably had him here. What was his was his biggest takeaway from day one, do you know?

Brian: [00:42:09] Well, it was only lunchtime.

Phillip: [00:42:11] OK.

Brian: [00:42:12] So, he was excited to see some of the new technologies.

Phillip: [00:42:15] Does he say like what he's looking for in particular?

Brian: [00:42:17] There's a company, and now it's escaping me... It's in the very back corner of the main exhibition hall. I wish that I remembered the name of it. I actually dropped by the booth. It's a four letter acronym. Anyway.

Phillip: [00:42:35] ACME.

Brian: [00:42:35] Yeah. {laughter} They do like an all in one for smaller grocers. It's checkout. It's e-commerce. It's kind of everything.

Phillip: [00:42:47] We had one of those on our Innovation Lab review last year.

Brian: [00:42:53] Yes.

Phillip: [00:42:55] They provide like the the inventory management, the cart tracking...

Brian: [00:43:00] Yeah. Yeah. It's like ERQS or something. I have to look it up. But it was just interesting to hear him talk about the fact that, you know, he can as a three store grocer walk into this show, this gigantic thirty eight thousand person show, and walk away with technologies that are going to be able to benefit him at a very local level and help him sell to his customers better. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. And I think that's what we're getting at right now is, you know, these technologies are available to everyone now, not just Amazon.

Phillip: [00:43:34] Right. They're all probably built on Amazon's infrastructure though. {laughter}

Brian: [00:43:37] Well, AWS.

Phillip: [00:43:39] Amazon is profiting some way.

Brian: [00:43:40] That's true. That's true. Amazon always wins.

Phillip: [00:43:42] I have to believe at the end of the day, somewhere, somehow Amazon's making out in the end.

Brian: [00:43:50] Also, back to what you were saying about experiential retail. Starbucks is actually one of the first great examples...

Phillip: [00:43:57] Oh this is... Yes.

Brian: [00:43:57] Yeah. Their new store here, The Starbucks Reserve store... We should give it that.

Phillip: [00:44:03] So actually, we have a Starbucks Reserve in Palm Beach. It was one of the six that exists of the 1000 that we're supposed to have existed by the end of 2020. I was actually going to cover it. It's funny. This wasn't in our doc at all. I was going to talk about this as sort of the experiential retail failure in that having this... Yeah. Sorry. Carry on. You were going a different direction.

Brian: [00:44:28] The direction I was going was I just saying that it's another kind of example of that cup of tea as you walk in. But it's more I mean, for Starbucks, you know, their product is the sort of experience. But I feel like, you know, as well as other brands sort of finally start to take on that experiential component, they're going to end up being like Starbucks, but with all of the other products that they already sell. So, yeah, I mean, failed experiential retail might be true. Maybe that's because Starbucks is only selling coffee.

Phillip: [00:45:08] It's so ubiquitous. I don't know, actually. They move a tremendous amount of food now, too.

Brian: [00:45:13] They do. No, it's all food and bev, though. It's not like they're using the food and bev experience to attract people to other purchases.

Phillip: [00:45:23] Right. I'm interested if a food and bev brand can make the leap into other types of like...and I know they've tried. So Starbucks is an incredible lifestyle brand. So you've got this opportunity where people come and spend... We talked about Toms having an experience among retail. They sell everything from connected coffee cups now to...and they sell a lot of that sort of coffee accoutrement. But having my local Starbucks has headphones, USB power cables, battery banks...things that you might need while you're working.

Brian: [00:46:06] Right.

Phillip: [00:46:07] So there's definitely an opportunity there to sort of branch out.

Brian: [00:46:10] You know what I would love to see, though? I think this is kind of where I think you're headed. A Starbucks / Toms collab. Where they've got a wall of shoes in their Reserve store. And it looks like one wall of a shoe store...

Phillip: [00:46:25] I'm sure this has existed at some point.

Brian: [00:46:26] Probably.

Phillip: [00:46:26] There are so many collabs of this nature. Nike did a collaboration with Momofuku here in the city sometime ago. That was also an AR experience, by the way. So it's top of mind because I just went there. But you go to Noodle Bar, and when they dropped this like limited edition collab, the folks at Noodle Bar on the Nike app, you could use an augmented reality experience on the menu. So you have the Noodle Bar menu that you fill out like a sushi menu where you're kind of like checking the boxes of like the things you want in quantities. When you point the Nike sneakers app at it with AR, you see the shoe on the menu.

Brian: [00:47:13] That's fun.

Phillip: [00:47:13] And you could buy the Momofuku shoe, which is great.

Brian: [00:47:17] Super cool.

Phillip: [00:47:19] I think we're gonna see a lot more of that kind of thing. Starbucks is uniquely poised. They've got a great technology play. Of course, that's that's just one brand that could do it.

Brian: [00:47:30] There're tons of other collabs going on right now. I mean, it's not just shoes. I saw Woolrich collab with Birch Lane.

Phillip: [00:47:40] Oh, that's right.

Brian: [00:47:41] Right? So cool. And actually this gets back to something that Richard Kestenbaum has talked about at length before, which is ingredient brands.

Phillip: [00:47:50] Yes, I love this.

Brian: [00:47:52] I know, right.

Phillip: [00:47:53] For those who aren't initiated...

Brian: [00:47:54] Well, ingredient brands are the ones that you trust as a consumer, but you'd never see a product that's specifically that brand. So like Polare Tech ends up in a lot of gloves and or...

Phillip: [00:48:11] But it's interesting because there's so much in the athletic world. You see this a lot. So we're seeing a lot of collabs, especially around winter time, with like Gore Tex and 3M. And what's funny is that consumers have awareness of these brands now, and they seek them out. Like Vans just did a whole shoe collab with with Gore Tex.

Brian: [00:48:36] That's cool. Vans and Gore Tex. I like that.

Phillip: [00:48:38] Yeah, and I think, I want to say Converse did of Gore Tex, as well.

Brian: [00:48:44] Nice.

Phillip: [00:48:44] And while these technologies might traditionally have been incorporated in the past without being loud about it. They're actually being sought out by consumers now is like Vikram Rubber and Outsoles are on every hiking boot that you can find.

Brian: [00:49:02] Yeah. And George Costanza.

Phillip: [00:49:04] Right. {laughter}

Brian: [00:49:05] Super excited about that Gore Tex hat. {laughter} Yeah. No, I think you're totally right. So actually, what I think where we're headed is actually more brands that maybe sell like Woolrich, that have their own lines are gonna become more ingredient brand focused.

Phillip: [00:49:23] So go on.

Brian: [00:49:24] Yeah. So like brands that we would typically associate as a direct to consumer brand, they're going to find the way to expand their market is to end up in other pull a bunch of other people's stuff. And Amazon might have even like one of their house brands collaborate with Woolrich or Sefaira. And...

Phillip: [00:49:48] Right. The textiles are...

Brian: [00:49:48] Textiles are one example, but furniture... The wood from a furniture maker could be used to go build something else... A home... Or whatever it is.

Phillip: [00:50:04] So when you said ingredient brands, my brain went to like McCormick, which is like they make... The world's largest seasoning brand.

Brian: [00:50:12] Seasoning.

Phillip: [00:50:14] That's where my brain goes to. Which is also an interesting thing. I noticed it wasn't McCormick. I mean I have to think about what are some of the other like sort of seasoning and spice brands that exist in the world. If you think of any, just rattle them off. There is one that I saw an advert, like there's a truck. It was like a delivery truck driving around with, you know, with the logos all over it. I'm thinking, I don't think I've ever noticed like a McCormick truck before. So it's like it's just an interesting thing to have brand awareness of. I know the brand.

Brian: [00:50:48] Right.

Phillip: [00:50:49] I would buy the brand.

Brian: [00:50:49] And this is actually a really good example of ingredient brands, the actual food ingredients that where you have like a brand association with a specific spice. But then they collab with someone that's doing frozen goods and it says, "Seasoned by McCormick" or whatever. So happens all the time.

Phillip: [00:51:07] If we have a... "Seasoned by McCormick..." {laughter} Give me like one little prediction just based on one day of this show. If you had to make a prediction of what 2019... I could not have predicted 2018 is the year of the sneaker last year, based on what I saw at NRF. But, it's the first show of the year. Try to make a little bit of a call. We will do a real predictions episode after this. But try to make a call of what might be the big retail conversation in 2019?

Brian: [00:51:44] I have an advantage in that I've already had a chance to walk around all of the Innovation Lab stuff. And so this coming year, based off of NRF, specifically the Innovation Lab and the startup area, I think it's going to be the year of using data to make informed decisions about products, whether it be assortment or like one to one selling, or when to white label. Like I think White Label is... We've been talking about Brandless. And we were talking about Amazon's house brands and we've been talking about Wayfair and the way that they've approached that. I feel like that's gonna become a bigger deal at even a smaller scale. I mean, across a broader set of businesses. When do you call something a brand? When do you not call it a brand? When you bring something in from another brand into your store, and when do you not? When do you have a marketplace? When you not have a marketplace? Making good decisions, database decisions, instead of just based off of the traditional market research. But using big data to make those decisions is where we're headed.

Phillip: [00:52:58] And OK. So yes. And also being able to do that in a predictive manner. So I think using past data from your past performance to actually drive your predictor capability. So you don't have to wait for those long cycles for product research and development.

Brian: [00:53:22] Exactly.

Phillip: [00:53:22] And as we all know, products take a long time to develop...supply chain...

Brian: [00:53:25] It's getting faster and faster.

Phillip: [00:53:28] Yeah, rapid development of products... And I think the consumer is more accepting than ever of short lived ephemeral type product selection and category.

Brian: [00:53:43] Oh, one hundred percent.

Phillip: [00:53:44] So the idea of a limited edition of something as a product innovation cycle, like we only have X many of these... You see this with with big startup fashion brands, like Allbirds, where the whole fundamentally there's three silhouettes, the whole driving of the passion of the ownership of the brand. is that it continues to refresh itself through colorway selection and partnership.

Brian: [00:54:19] Right now.

Phillip: [00:54:20] Sure.

Brian: [00:54:21] I think you're dead on with that.

Phillip: [00:54:26] I think we're a long way from seeing Allbirds kind of sell out into the AOV play where there's an Allbirds key chain or something. We don't need that kind of product diversity. But seeing seeing smaller runs. The consumer is poised to accept that from everybody.

Brian: [00:54:42] Right. I totally agree with you. In the past I think consumers have done it with a specific set of products. Shoes, you know, probably being a good example of that in the past few years. That's happened more. I think we will see that with even like furniture. We've talked about furniture on the show. I think that we're gonna see people treating furniture as disposable.

Phillip: [00:55:02] Yeah.

Brian: [00:55:03] Which we've already started to see that.

Phillip: [00:55:05] That's a whole other conversation about sustainability.

Brian: [00:55:08] Yes.

Phillip: [00:55:08] But yes. Yes, totally. OK.

Brian: [00:55:15] How about you? Well you haven't really seen the show. Well, why don't we do yours at the end of the show?

Phillip: [00:55:22] I'm cringing at how... Two years ago... You know, I'm sort of cynical. Two years ago, I would have said I would have absolutely vomited over somebody saying it's the year of the customer. But...

Brian: [00:55:34] Oh gosh. Don't say it.

Phillip: [00:55:38] I if I had to pick a technology implementation of the kind of thing I'm talking about, I would say guided commerce is the future of of digital commerce experiences. If you want to understand your customer like you could give them, ostensibly the way that we shop online as a power user feature. We provide endless selection and almost no curation, and we provide endless filtering capability to everybody. I don't know that everybody wants that type of experience.

Brian: [00:56:14] Right.

Phillip: [00:56:15] So giving the customer the power to have the experience that he or she wants is the best practice in digital commerce now. In the same way that we see curated stores like Amazon 4 Star... It's not 5 Star... 4 Star... So in the same way that we see those sort of curated retail experiences start to pop up. I think we're going to see a lot more of that come to digital commerce as well, especially pure play digital commerce. So you're seeing this with outdoor brands that have very niche product selection that are very application specific. So cycling, for instance, you know, you have all these things that to an untrained consumer, look exactly the same. There's a lot of nuance in selecting those, and a power user really cares about it. But the unaffiliated needs a little bit of help. And I think one outgrowth of that, one expression of that, is guided commerce. So it's not slice and dice. This isn't catalog filtering. It is an engaging experience that only that one person could really ever have. And if you want it like five years ago, we probably call that personalization.  I don't know that it's actually...

Brian: [00:57:30] Two years ago we would have called it personalization.

Phillip: [00:57:31] I don't think that's actually personalization. I think it's something different. And there is no like forget...

Brian: [00:57:36] Personalization is just like, you know, taking what you know about your customer and spitting stuff back at them.

Phillip: [00:57:40] Right.

Brian: [00:57:41] This is helping your customers...

Phillip: [00:57:42] The Hallmark eye roll application of personalization was. And if it's raining outside, we can suggest a rain coat to them.

Brian: [00:57:54] Right.

Phillip: [00:57:57] What I don't want is to have to re-explain to you every time I walk into the store who I am and what I'm looking for. I want an actual relationship with you, as a consumer. And if I can do that in traditional retail, like in 18, we talked a lot about clienteling. This is just virtual clienteling, right?

Brian: [00:58:19] Exactly. Actually, it's... Thank you. Right. Clienteling is the future of commerce.

Phillip: [00:58:23] Oh sure. A hundred percent.

Brian: [00:58:24] And speaking of which, I will give you a little preview into the show later today. There is a facial recognition company here that I think you know, I think we're gonna start to see facial recognition be the way that people opt in to having those experiences presented to them in store. It's going to be part of it. It's going to be part of that experience. And I have some ideas on how that could all flow together. It's not going to happen this year. I don't think like we're not going to see mass adoption of people saying, yeah, I want to be recognized when I walk into a store. But I think where to start to see some more. We saw a little bit of it last year. I think we're going to see a lot more of it this year, in terms of technology. And then adoption will happen in the next few years.

Phillip: [00:59:15] I don't know that we'll see it at a show like this, but I assume in these sort of manufacturing and textile industries, it's way more prevalent. I really feel like last mile customization of products is here to stay. And I think that those sort of ultra personal products that people create that, you know, nobody would really ever want except for them, are the kinds of things that will drive additional retail growth and brand engagement, because that's the kind of experience that your most valuable customers want from you is they want to take your product and make it their more than ever. And I can think of four brands right here within a one mile radius of the Javits that are doing that in-store right now. And so we have you know, and again, you think of brands like American Girl, you think of brands like Build-A-Bear who we talked a lot about both of those...

Brian: [01:00:15] Build-A-Bear's here.

Phillip: [01:00:16] Yeah, we talked about those brands a lot in 2018. I think we're gonna talk way more about others, including in food and bev, having ultra personal food, ultra personal beverage, that's not just make your own supplement pack. It's way more personal than that. I think those kinds of experiences are gonna to drive a lot of retail and grocery engagement in 2019.

Brian: [01:00:39] And there's a little preview into our predictions episode. Can you wrap this up? Yeah. Well, thanks for listening to Future Commerce. As always, we would love to get feedback from you. And the best way to do that is through our survey on our site survey.FutureCommerce.fm. Or go to our site and click on the survey. Future Commerce.fm

Phillip: [01:00:57] And when you do that, you're gonna be entered to win one of three Google Home Hub devices. So even if you made it all the way to the end of this episode, you are uniquely qualified to take our survey.

Brian: [01:01:09] Oh, yes. With that, retail tech is moving fast.

Phillip: [01:01:13] And Future Commerce is moving faster.

Brian: [01:01:16] Thank you so much.

Phillip: [01:01:17] Thanks for listening.

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