The Mild Mild West

Phillip: [00:00:08] Hello [00:01:20] and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast about the next generation of commerce. I'm Phillip.

Brian: [00:01:37] And I'm Brian.

Phillip: [00:01:38] Today we're going to unpack [00:01:40] RICE 2022. We were there in force, really excited to get into some of the content and talk about what we learned.

Brian: [00:01:48] RICE being Retail Innovation Conference and Expo.

Phillip: [00:01:53] Thank you. Yes.

Brian: [00:01:54] Formerly Retail X, or IRCE, although IRCE was actually a track [00:02:00] of RICE.

Phillip: [00:02:01] And formerly Design Retail, but now still Design Retail.

Brian: [00:02:04] {laughter} Correct.

Phillip: [00:02:05] It's a show... Like Prince...

Brian: [00:02:07] It's a show of shows.

Phillip: [00:02:10] It's a show of shows. Like Prince, it has many formerly known as titles, but a conference by any other names is just as sweet. RICE.  [00:02:20]We were there in Chicago last week and we had a great Future Commerce team. We had one of our salon events. That was just an unbelievable smashing success. Brian, you did an amazing job putting that event together.  [00:02:40]The whole team did.

Brian: [00:02:41] The whole team. I had a little bit to do with it, but mostly the team.

Phillip: [00:02:48] That particular event and these salon events, for those who aren't aware, are the place where we bring together the greatest minds, the most just [00:03:00] empathetic communicators, and individuals in our space. And we bring them together for an event around a dinner table for us to break bread together and get to have the opportunity to exchange ideas and challenge points of view and sort o model discourse.  [00:03:20]And it's an amazing time whenever we get to do it. This is our second or third one this year, and we have another one coming up. If you would like to attend one of these events, you've got to be quick on the draw. We do the invites via email newsletter and very specifically the invites [00:03:40] go out and we do our best to try to get all the early respondents in that we can, and in particular, also compose a really well balanced dinner with not just a lot of the same kind of person. We respect that. We want to put together a good crew of people. If you would like [00:04:00] to be the first to know when the next salon is happening, what do you do? You go to FutureCommerce.fm/Subscribe and that will get you on the list, and we'll send out a notice when the next one is happening in New York right around Commerce Next, which will be at the next show that we're at. So don't [00:04:20] delay. Get on there. It's about a month away.

Brian: [00:04:22] It was so good. It was really good.

Phillip: [00:04:26] Mr. B-rian, you hosted an entire track at RICE. Tell us about it and tell us about some of the content that took place there. And take our time. Let's learn some things. What did you learn?

Brian: [00:04:40] Yeah. [00:04:40] So it was really cool being the chairperson of one of the tracks of the IRCE event at RICE. It was actually really cool. It was accelerating data-driven experiences [00:05:00] across all channels. That was the name of the track. We had an incredible lineup of speakers. We kicked the day off with Tory Brunker from Adobe.

Phillip: [00:05:12] Oh, I love Tory.

Brian: [00:05:13] Yeah, Tory is great.

Phillip: [00:05:15] Tory Brunker. We go back a long way since before the Adobe acquisition.

Brian: [00:05:20] Yeah. [00:05:20] She really knows her stuff. She talked about personalizing your digital economy and how to go about doing that. Talked a lot about Gen Z, and what they were interested in. I thought it was a great session. From there...

Phillip: [00:05:35] Well, hold on. I said let's take our time.

Brian: [00:05:38] I know, I know, I know.  [00:05:40]

Phillip: [00:05:40] Easy into it, baby.

Brian: [00:05:40] There's one that I'm extremely excited to chat about.

Phillip: [00:05:42] I got you. We'll get there.

Brian: [00:05:45] I know. I know.

Phillip: [00:05:46] On the Gen Z front, you probably sometimes think to yourself, man, the only time I hear about Adobe Analytics is around the holidays when they're talking [00:06:00] about all the data that apparently Adobe has on an entire ecosystem. Adobe Analytics shockingly has quite a large footprint, and I believe it's the largest commercial analytics platform that exists. It's second to Google Analytics, but it's very widely deployed.

Brian: [00:06:18] Mm hmm.

Phillip: [00:06:19] And [00:06:20] powers an unbelievable number of not just retail sites, but a lot of content and media companies that get a lot of traffic. And so they have an unbelievable insight engine. I'm going to put you on the spot. What are some of the interesting insights, if any, that you kind of took away?

Brian: [00:06:39] Yeah, there [00:06:40] was a big focus on Gen Z and them being underbanked. So she focused in on a buy now pay later sort of approach to that and how Gen Z is embracing alternate forms of payment. So buy now, pay later, crypto, [00:07:00] etc... So just there was a bit of a deep dive there that I thought was really interesting. Just talked about how Gen Z now is starting to really pick up their own Netflix accounts.  [00:07:20]Before they might not have had it, but now they do. Can't Afford Real Life Yet is kind of moving into...

Phillip: [00:07:28] That's CARLY, which is the psychographic of a young consumer that we created in late 2019.

Brian: [00:07:38] And so they still can't really afford [00:07:40] real life because they're not banked, but they are potentially paying for their own Netflix accounts. I suspect that their parents are still paying for it.

Phillip: [00:07:49] Yeah, I wasn't going to say. If you happen to be a person with multiple wallets, there's a high likelihood [00:08:00] that you're a Gen Z or a younger millennial. I saw a recent study that was published on pymnts.com Payments with no vowels.

Brian: [00:08:12] Pymnts

Phillip: [00:08:14] Which is a well-known blog [00:08:20] in retail trade. I shouldn't demean it by calling it a blog. They're a media company, but notoriously pay to play. And it's a great outlet for a lot of PR folks, but they do a really interesting series and they do a lot of original research. I find them to be sort of fascinating. But I saw that the [00:08:40] number of digital wallets that millennials have has almost doubled in the past, I thought it was like two and a half, three years. So it must have been like a pre-pandemic level that they were measuring against. It's like basically we all just kind of sat around for two years and just kept aping into a bunch of new fintech startups. And [00:09:00] that's the world we all live in now. Yeah. We'll come back to actually generational stuff in just a little bit. What was another one of the tracks sessions that were there?

Brian: [00:09:16] Yeah. So the next one was with Bradford Shellhammer.

Phillip: [00:09:20] Oh, [00:09:20] my gosh.

Brian: [00:09:22] Yeah, yeah.

Phillip: [00:09:23] Bradford and I go back a ways.

Brian: [00:09:26] Oh, you do? Okay, cool. He was the guy I was trying to introduce you to, but it didn't work.

Phillip: [00:09:30] Yeah, I didn't... I couldn't make it.

Brian: [00:09:31] Yeah, VP of Buyer Experience at eBay and a bunch [00:09:40] of other stuff. He's like the GM of eBay and eBay for charity. He's worked a bunch on like the certification, like refurb, certified refurb, and like certified authentic sneaker programs. Well, sneakers, luxury goods, etc... Yeah, super cool stuff. So his [00:10:00] session was called The New Normal: Top Tips on Using Data to Fuel Personalized Experiences. So again, in that personalization track, I thought it was really this was a phenomenal session, actually. He talked about good friction and he talked about what it meant to [00:10:20] personalize selling through customer service. Things that we have adored as topics for many years now. He was like, all in on it. And eBay is making move to personalize customer service reps, which is really [00:10:40] cool, industry-focused, knowledgeable, someone you can actually talk to and spend time with. So I think that that personalized experience through data was, was super, super cool. Talked about [00:11:00] how 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. 67% get frustrated when this doesn't happen. Things like that, where stuff that we covered in our report Service is The [00:11:20] New Storefront, so it was really cool to see him sort of rep that track of thought and see eBay making moves in that direction.

Phillip: [00:11:30] So it was so interesting. I haven't spoken to Bradford in seven or eight years [00:11:40] now. So prior to the eBay days, Bradford was, I think the CEO of a startup called Bezar, which was a sort of a design-focused marketplace, early days, something similar to, I mean, not quite similar, but in the vein of what a material bank would be today. Material [00:12:00] Bank has actually come up on this show before. I think maybe one of the first episodes we ever did with Ingrid on the show was us covering going to the Material Bank Design Studio a few years ago for Future Commerce, and we did that with Ingrid. Do you remember that?

Brian: [00:12:18] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:12:19] It was in Chicago. [00:12:20]

Brian: [00:12:20] Very cool. It was.

Phillip: [00:12:21] At IRCE. All roads lead freaking back.

Phillip: [00:12:26] But Bradford... Yeah, he was a really interesting founder early days. [00:12:32] It's so interesting how many folks from traditional design backgrounds actually wind up in [00:12:40] eCommerce and then they get into the side of the business where it's just talking about how do we apply design, how do we apply design to this sort of what is no longer really a Wild West but more of like a Mild West of design aesthetic? [00:12:58]

Brian: [00:12:58] {laughter} The [00:13:00] mild west.

Phillip: [00:13:01] The mild west in eCommerce. {laughter} The mild west of eCommerce. There's a show title for you.

Brian: [00:13:07] I love it.

Phillip: [00:13:08] Also, a RICE recap. Alicia is not going to like us putting those two things together. We'll make it work.

Brian: [00:13:13] What's wrong with that?

Phillip: [00:13:15] It's a mild, mild west. That's what eCommerce design is in 2022. Literally [00:13:20] came up with that on the spot.

Brian: [00:13:21] That's just Will Smith all over again, but not as cool.

Phillip: [00:13:29] {laughter} Mild, Mild West. That's amazing. So you keep my design principles... Okay. Anyway.

Brian: [00:13:35] Where are you going with that? I feel like you're going somewhere funny.

Phillip: [00:13:38] I don't know.  All right, all right. Let's switch gears.

Brian: [00:13:40] One more thing about [00:13:40] Bradford. His home was actually featured in Architectural Digest, which I thought was pretty cool.

Phillip: [00:13:47] Yes. Capital D designer and probably one of the most decisive, platform selection processes I've ever been through. Basically, it went like this. "We love you guys," so [00:14:00] this is back in early days in the agency at Something Digital, and he's like, "We love you guys. You're rock stars. If it came down to personality, we would absolutely go with you. But our investors said this Magento thing isn't going anywhere, so we're going with Spree Commerce."

Brian: [00:14:17] Ooh. Those investors...

Phillip: [00:14:19] Well, the investors [00:14:20] were looking at the Bonobos of the world and saying, you know, that's what the cool kids are doing. Which, by the way, to this day, he'd be very middle-class founder, probably on the Magenta one, still trying to apply a security patch and figuring out how to get off of open source [00:14:40] onto Shopify. That's probably where he'd be right now.

Brian: [00:14:42] I mean.

Phillip: [00:14:43] If he had chosen to do open source. {laughter}

Brian: [00:14:46] What's Glossier doing? Because weren't they on Spree as well?

Phillip: [00:14:52] They were on Spree as well. They all were. I think Warby was on Spree for a spell after being on Magento for a minute. It's all, it's all, it's all, it's all gravy.  [00:15:00]All right. Sorry.

Brian: [00:15:01] I'm feeling very old now. That's what I'm feeling.

Phillip: [00:15:04] This whole episode exists for us to try to get all of the organic Bradford Shellhammer reviews, all the SEO searches. We're just trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel for anyone searching on [00:15:20] Google. All right, let's switch gears.

Brian: [00:15:23] What else? So also, I got to introduce Marta Dalton.

Phillip: [00:15:29] Oh, amazing.

Brian: [00:15:30] I know. She's a legend. That's what I said to everyone in the room as well. She's been at Coke, Unilever. She's spoken at many, many a conference. [00:15:40]

Phillip: [00:15:40] Many. So sort of has like a prolific speaking track and speaking career these days in talking about like implementing eCommerce at a scale that very few can even fathom.

Brian: [00:15:51] Yeah, totally. And she's now Amyris, which is it's like biology, clean [00:16:00] beauty, performance materials, flavors, and fragrances. It's quite, it's quite the...

Phillip: [00:16:09] Real stuff.

Brian: [00:16:10] Yeah. Legit biotech, really cool stuff.

Phillip: [00:16:15] Very interesting. And we actually caught up very briefly [00:16:20] on Thursday night. Martha and I had never met her in person prior to that. Had you met her before in person?

Brian: [00:16:26] Briefly. Yeah, I had met her, I think at some B2B conference, actually.

Phillip: [00:16:32] That sounds right.

Brian: [00:16:33] I want to say in Chicago.

Phillip: [00:16:35] Everything.

Brian: [00:16:37] I actually love Chicago.

Phillip: [00:16:39] I really I yeah.  [00:16:40]You know what I would have said before this week? I love Chicago. A bike accident and getting lost on a bike a couple of times and not being able to get an Uber or Lyft in Chicago kind of soured me this time around.

Brian: [00:16:52] Man. I told you, you got to take cabs. Cabs come back. No second.

Phillip: [00:16:57] I don't believe that that's true. But okay. If [00:17:00] we again, like the scale at which Marta's experience is informed is something that, like very few get to ever work in. The first time we ever met her was, I think, running an RFP under Unilever. And I don't [00:17:20] know if you... You were involved. Absolutely right?

Brian: [00:17:22] Yup.

Phillip: [00:17:22] You were involved in that. We both had this conversation of the qualifying to move to the next round was can you can you connect 24 plus ERPs to a single front end? And we were like, you don't really do it that way. And I think [00:17:40] they did it that way. I don't know.

Brian: [00:17:41] I think they did it that way.

Phillip: [00:17:42] I think they did it about it. If anybody can do it.

Brian: [00:17:45] I got to spend like like two nights out with Marta and that was so fun. She is actually super, super fun.

Phillip: [00:17:54] We actually just as a shout-out because I don't know if we'll get there, but we also hung out with prolific [00:18:00] podcast consumer and super fan of Future Commerce, Bree Keating came over to spend some time with us and   I actually got to break bread with Bree and we sat down and really just had such a great time the whole of the night. We had what an incredible [00:18:20] dinner that salon was. But sorry I interrupted you and we're just adding color on top of everything. What was the sort of Martha talking track these days?

Brian: [00:18:29] Yeah, finding opportunity in micro-segments, which it was so good. It was just an absolutely data rich presentation with some incredible graphics. [00:18:40] I would highly recommend checking out her slides afterward. Or like on the site, you can actually go see all the slides and I believe they'll be posting videos as well. Her session was definitely worth getting after you've [00:19:00] got... She talked about the different types of customer segments everything from starting at the uninstalled, churned, one and two buyers, win backs, faders, underperformers, nurturers, and loyalists, and like how each [00:19:20] segment operated and different ways of approaching them. What first plans for execution and engagement? How to analyze these different segments, modeling examples of like probability [00:19:40]...

Phillip: [00:19:42] Hold on. I got to scoop my soup brain now back into my skull. There's a lot there.

Brian: [00:19:48] So much there. She did a bunch of work with dynamic yields on just so much data.

Phillip: [00:19:57] Mcdonald's company. My favorite.

Brian: [00:20:00] I [00:20:00] believe.

Phillip: [00:20:01] I know they spun back out. Yeah. Would you like some fries with. that? Dino size is my fries.

Brian: [00:20:09] Mcdonald's spun it back out because everyone just wanted to add fries anyway.

Phillip: [00:20:14] It's so true. It's so true. The micro-segment at McDonald's is like, you [00:20:20] know, I'm sure there's like unbelievable micro-segmentation. Dynamic yield is very well accustomed these days.

Brian: [00:20:26] It was just like they were like, how do we get people from a small fry to a large fry?

Phillip: [00:20:31] Yeah it's the product cohorts are pretty interesting. That was actually an interesting [00:20:40] sort of like failed case study. I think we had covered it in The Senses about six months ago when the spin out happened and it was like they basically acquired the tech and the team and tried to do predictive ordering it drive-thrus, which a lot of companies are doing right now. And that is such [00:21:00] an interesting use case but cool so she's making the speaking circuits along with some case study and some winds from dynamic yield and sounds awesome actually. Dynamic Yield if you ever want to sponsor Future Commerce, we're here.

Brian: [00:21:16] Yeah it was very good. It was a very good session. [00:21:20] I was very lucky to be able to sit in a room and actually absorb all this content because I don't usually get to absorb that much content when I go to these.

Phillip: [00:21:30] Oh, it's so true. Yeah. When we go to a show like this, we're often in meetings a good amount of time, running around podcasting or hanging out at a booth. We're [00:21:40] in the expo, so yeah. What else? What else?

Brian: [00:21:44] Okay, so then I got a session called Understanding and Responding to Shopper Promiscuity: tips and takeaways for marketers and CX leads. Again, another [00:22:00] really phenomenal session. Reminded me very heavily of our episode with Richard Kestenbaum about passive shopping and brand loyalty...

Phillip: [00:22:13] The Persuadables.

Brian: [00:22:14] Yes, the Persuadables. Exactly. Exactly. So Rebecca [00:22:20] Brooks, who's the CEO of Alter Agents, and has been focused on commerce for a long time. She gave us some great insight on [00:22:36] basically there's no brand loyalty left. Most [00:22:40] shoppers are fairly promiscuous now, and information is the key to winning customers. And then being narcissistic about your brand is the way to fail. If you are overly narcissistic about your brand, that's going to cause [00:23:00] you problems in the age of the promiscuous shopper. [00:23:04]

Phillip: [00:23:04] So there's this really interesting thing is that there's the language we use I find really fascinating when it comes to loyalty. In fact, the word loyalty I think is kind of inherently a little off-putting to me, like we all know [00:23:20] what it means. It's an industry term of art, so sure, we'll say loyalty, but loyalty, the presence of loyalty implicitly suggests that there is also disloyalty. And if disloyalty is your default state, what does that say about how we think about and verbalize [00:23:40] the relationship that we have with the customer? I have often said that customers are promiscuous. But I think that that's also... We had talked about it, I think on the show, Brian, some time ago, a piece of research that I [00:24:00] did last year with Rightpoint.

Brian: [00:24:01] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:24:03] And we talked about it was called Seeking Out and Stocking Up. And my original thesis here was to try to measure the promiscuity of a customer. And what we actually found was promiscuity certainly [00:24:20] has a connotation to it.

Brian: [00:24:24] They didn't want to answer anything about that, did they?

Phillip: [00:24:26] In particular, it was like it already is kind of a little off-putting in the way that you want to like now hear this like business centric content. What we actually came up with was a measure, an index of experimentation [00:24:40] because promiscuity, I think at its core, tends to speak to sort of the state of not wanting to be monogamous with a brand. But an experimenter will absolutely become monogamous if they find something that [00:25:00] is unexpected, it meets their needs and it somehow entices them in a way to continue to come back for more.

Brian: [00:25:11] I'll tell you...

Phillip: [00:25:12] Lock that crap down. We have a family-friendly podcast here, so you got to lock it down.

Brian: [00:25:19] She leaned [00:25:20] in hard on this one. She talked about her time observing apes.

Phillip: [00:25:26] I'm sorry. What?

Brian: [00:25:27] Yes. The habits of apes. And she leaned in. She leaned right into it.

Phillip: [00:25:38] And how and how promiscuous [00:25:40] apes are.

Brian: [00:25:40] Yes.

Phillip: [00:25:41] Oh, fantastic. Apes?

Brian: [00:25:45] Apes.

Phillip: [00:25:45] Like what kinds of apes?

Brian: [00:25:47] I don't remember what kind of apes.

Phillip: [00:25:50] Is a gibbon an ape?

Brian: [00:25:53] Hey, you know, man.

Phillip: [00:25:55] As promiscuous as a gibbon.

Brian: [00:25:59] There you go [00:26:00]. So, moving on. What else? The last session that was a part of my track was amazing. It was Neighborhood Goods did a little bit of fireside [00:26:20] chat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This was super. Well, it was just nice to sort of break up the day. I had been single-speaker monologues prior to this. And so [00:26:40] to get a nice fireside chat from Matt Alexander was awesome.

Phillip: [00:26:46] And was Ashley Shelton Konger there as well?

Brian: [00:26:48] Yes. Ashley was the one who interviewed him.

Phillip: [00:26:51] Amazing.

Brian: [00:26:52] She was great.

Phillip: [00:26:53] We had them for reference and we'll link it up in the show notes. But there was a video t [00:27:00]hat we did some time ago at the Future Stores in Miami where we interviewed the two of them. I think it would be actually pretty interesting to sort of do a supercut between the pre-pandemic, Matt and Ashley, and the post-pandemic Matt and Ashley [00:27:20] and how Neighborhood Goods might be thinking about the way that they're building their business. And also, I would say pre-economic environment shift, right? So like having a very capital intensive... Actually, you know what's really interesting was the [00:27:40] day that I sat down to interview Matt and Ashley at the 2020 Future Stores in Miami, which I think was around February sometime. That day was the day that Brandless announced that they were declaring bankruptcy. And I remember asking, [00:28:00] I think, I don't know if it made it into the final show, but if that was like a signal of some sort of instability in the direct to consumer movement.

Brian: [00:28:09] And what did they say?

Phillip: [00:28:11] I don't remember.

Brian: [00:28:13] I don't remember either. I watched... I don't remember.

Phillip: [00:28:14] We've done like 350 of these things. How would I remember? I have no idea. I do remember the things [00:28:20] that I did. I remember asking a very smart question.

Brian: [00:28:25] We should get Matt back? I think it'd be fun. He's the fun guy.

Phillip: [00:28:28] I'd love his take on the indirect to consumer era because they were their first route. Route to market, right?

Brian: [00:28:35] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:28:35] Having a place where customers want to find and be inspired by things [00:28:40] that they didn't know that they wanted.

Brian: [00:28:42] One thing that I loved about what he was talking about was finding markets that were not your typical markets. I think that's huge.

Phillip: [00:28:53] Instead of New York, LA, and Austin.

Brian: [00:28:55] Right. Well, and they did have one in New York.

Phillip: [00:28:58] They had one in Austin was there, [00:29:00] I think their flagship. They had one in Dallas, I believe.

Brian: [00:29:02] It's not in Dallas. This is the fun part. It's in Plano.

Phillip: [00:29:08] Oh, Plano. Plano. That's right.

Brian: [00:29:10] Yeah. So that was like that kind of caught me. Caught my attention because that's like saying if you put a store in, let's say Enumclaw, and you said, "Oh, yeah, we have a Seattle [00:29:20] store," it's two completely different ideas.

Phillip: [00:29:29] You tell people you're from Seattle.

Brian: [00:29:31] Yeah, exactly. I tell people I'm from Seattle. Exactly.

Phillip: [00:29:34] Like when people say, "Where are you from?" I say Palm Beach because they've probably heard of it in the last five years.

Brian: [00:29:40] But [00:29:40] I mean, to be fair, you're from West Palm Beach or more specifically...

Phillip: [00:29:44] It's like 600 yards away. It's like the same thing.

Brian: [00:29:48] I know. That's what I'm saying.

Phillip: [00:29:50] And actually, I'm not from there, but let's move on.

Brian: [00:29:54] That was my day. That was my day. It was a fun day. I got to see some incredible content. [00:30:00] I got really lucky. It was great.

Phillip: [00:30:02] Good for you.

Brian: [00:30:04] Yeah. How about you? You said you had a couple speaking spots.

Phillip: [00:30:07] Yeah, I actually was on, I hosted or led as a moderator two panels.

Brian: [00:30:13] Which I couldn't attend because I was moderating, which I was sad about.

Phillip: [00:30:17] I know...

Brian: [00:30:19] Tell me about it.

Phillip: [00:30:19] We had [00:30:20] a packed room, no seats left, turning people away for the first session. And that was really awesome to see. It was called What's Hot Now in Venture and it was focused on, well, what's hot right now in Venture, which is to say it's [00:30:40] a little bit spicy out there.  [00:32:40]

Brian: [00:33:31] How [00:33:20] spicy? I'm curious. I'm actually very curious because I just listened to a podcast where there's still a lot of dry powder [00:33:40] out there. Apparently. That's what I heard.

Phillip: [00:33:41] Ha ha ha. Yeah the question here was, you know, sort of in the title actually to be be more exacting, it was What's Hot in DTC: VC investors Weigh In, and right up front it was well, VC is not really doing direct to consumer. And that [00:34:00] era has kind of come and gone. But let's talk about what venture is trying to solve for right now and what I actually heard as recurrent themes over and over... Oh, I didn't even tell you about our panelists. Panelists were great. We had Rachel West from RevTech Ventures and  [00:34:20]RevTech, I had not heard of them before. RevTech has a number of funds, one in particular that I think Rachael is a general partner of what is an underrepresented minority founder fund [00:34:40] and they deploy it much slower than other funds. It's a little smaller, too. And she's a real strategic partner. She's a founder herself. She has a brand herself that she operates and just such a quality person. And we also had Sonia Nagar from [00:35:00] Pritzker Group Venture Capital, and Pritzker, of course, was all the early-stage DTC. Anything you can think of from Honest Company, and I believe... Well, let's just look it up because I don't want to get it wrong here. They have a lot of credits to their name. And [00:35:20] a lot of you know, a lot of exits. They have been around for a long, long time. And while that's loading... So they basically talked about, hey, listen, venture happens on a time horizon that's a little different to the shifts of the market. Obviously. So especially early stage [00:35:40] where I think RevTech is really focused is like really early stage and Pritzker also I think does multi stage but you know, is saying yeah, like growth stage is going to be is kind of a nightmare right now. The valuations are a lot more sane. So [00:36:00] things are sort of normalizing and probably have normalized to some degree and may not change much after this. But still deploying early stage all day long. That's not slowed down at all. And the idea being there that, hey, if you're a growth stage series B or beyond, your time horizon is so [00:36:20] much shorter than early stage venture. You know,  [00:36:23]early-stage venture is ten years. We're looking for outcomes a decade from now. So they're not worried about the current market environment. Now, it could be that like in 2009 or 2008, post what I'm hearing is called the GFC, [00:36:40] the Great Financial Crisis. Post GFC, a lot of these funds, their LPs couldn't make capital calls. And so it could be that there's some volatility out there still that we're just not aware of yet. But anyway, they're basically just sitting there and spilling [00:37:00] the tea and giving you years and decades worth of knowledge and where venture sort of sits in the ecosystem and what are the kinds of things that might be driving early-stage investment still. And the thing I asked, [00:37:20] I really liked this sort of question of back and forth was, you know, what gets basically a same day term sheet now? Like what's raising on a deck alone? And the response was, "Well, anything that's Web3 you can pretty much raise on a deck alone, especially if the team [00:37:40] has some experience there." And then a multi time founder, even if it's DTC, even if it's sort of like trotted out eCommerce tech, a multi time founder who knows what they're doing and has a couple of wins under their belt will get a [00:38:00] bet almost every time. [00:38:01]

Brian: [00:38:01] Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder if that the Web3 thing is still true after the past week?

Phillip: [00:38:16] I think so. Again, I think everybody [00:38:20] knew that the hype train, you know, this this Gartner hype cycle thing is actually kind of brilliant because they do follow very similar, like strikingly similar patterns. You know, we're in the trough of disillusionment and we're only at the beginning of it. We saw a lot of crypto people in the last two weeks really just capitulate.

Brian: [00:38:40] Bandwagons [00:38:40] are gone.

Phillip: [00:38:40] Yeah.

Brian: [00:38:42] They're not gone.

Phillip: [00:38:44] Certainly, they've been silenced by the scoffers. So we're in that phase now where I think there's going to be a lot of quiet building because there may not even be people that want to admit that they're building. NFTs aren't trading like they were, but I think we all knew that that [00:39:00] was a racket to begin with. Now is where we find the real utility. In fact, Thursday I could not attend the first in real-life live event that I could have attended with my Poolsuite pass. So I'm an executive member [00:39:20] of Poolsuite, which is a lifestyle and a sort of experiential brand. And yeah, they are, they're doing live events and they're sort of like Studio 54 meets, I don't know, Modern Dance Club sort of a vibe. They did one, I believe in the UK, [00:39:40] I think probably London and they did one in New York last week, Thursday, and just had some really stringent requirements around like being able to RSVP. Like you RSVP and you do not show up. You will be barred from ever attending our events again.

Brian: [00:39:56] So this [00:40:00] is interesting. First of all, the first takeaway here is you skipped the Poolsuite party to come to the Future Commerce salon.

Phillip: [00:40:08] So that tells you everything you need to know.

Brian: [00:40:11] That really...

Phillip: [00:40:12] Everything you need to know. It means that I had a prior engagement. That's what that means. Yes. But it also tells you [00:40:20] to that I think that there are novel utilities for what we consider like OG Nfts. Now I think that there's something that needs to evolve on top of that.

Brian: [00:40:34] So yeah, there are some interesting plays at hand. RareCircles is something that's really [00:40:40] interesting to me and upcoming Sponsor of Visions, the loyalty play, we'll bring that word right back. But we do need to think of another word, especially if we do as an industry, start to use Web3 for this. This is a good time to change like nomenclature.

Phillip: [00:40:58] Yeah, that's true.

Brian: [00:40:59] And so [00:41:00] maybe we can talk to RareCircles about that.

Phillip: [00:41:04] Favoritism.

Brian: [00:41:06] Favoritism. I mean, we don't want to just say engage customers.

Phillip: [00:41:14] Allegiance? That doesn't have its own weird connotation.

Brian: [00:41:19] Yeah.  [00:41:20]World War One's going to start if you stop buying from your company.

Phillip: [00:41:26] All right. So yeah, there's so much to be said there, but that's where a lot of early-stage is going right now. And yeah, I think at the end of the day, to [00:41:40] coin a term from creator Dave Chen, it's just amazing that businesses ever even create anything. It's really hard to make something in this world.

Brian: [00:41:54] Your other session. Yes.

Phillip: [00:41:55] Lastly, in my last session, or the second session that I hosted, [00:42:00] I had mentioned actually in our prior show, I was actually subbing in for our friend of the podcast, Kristen LaFrance, who just could not make it. I believe she was fighting a bit of a cold. She just couldn't make it out to the show. So what a bummer. [00:42:20] But we really did have like a really great time. We had two founders actually. We had Jamie Norwood, who's the founder of Stix. And Stix is this amazing brand, that was not on my radar. I feel like I typically I've got my ear to the ground on this kind of thing, but Stix actually [00:42:40] is sort of a women's health company and sexual education platform and does everything from like one-time-use products like a pregnancy test or a UTI test to [00:43:00] ongoing wellness, something akin to prenatal vitamins. They do a wonderful job with education, really just impressed with Jamie as a founder and just wonderful conversation that we had there. And I had mentioned this to Gefen from Couplet [00:43:20] Coffee. Gefen Skolnick might be one of those people who is the least, at once the most, I would say like enigmatic founder that I've ever met, and also sort of a person that like just intimidating [00:43:40] as an engineer. And then she went on to go found a coffee company that has like a glittery package. Just like such an interesting vibe that they've created with Couplet.

Brian: [00:43:50] Nice.

Phillip: [00:43:51] And Gefen, of course, has this story about working at Tesla and having this amazing job and feeling like she had made it and then struck up a friendship [00:44:00] with Jen Rubio, who coaxed her to go and do something more with her life. Jen Rubio, of course, the founder of Away. But the whole session was around building a business that creates specifically a retention-ready acquisition [00:44:20] plan. And. I think that that's sort of like this loaded and sort of packed concept where I think it's really interesting that there ever was an era where we just said we're just going to get them to convert and not worry about retention yet. Like [00:44:40] that seems very foreign to me. I can't even believe that a business like that existed. But there was a whole era of businesses that that was sort of the truism. Now it's thinking about retention first before you ever approach conversion. And a lot of the conversation for Jamie and Stix, was really focused on education [00:45:00] and in particular having really, really, really expansive content that talks very frankly about a lot of challenges in women's health. So not just ailment-based, but just all of the sort of gender roles that come out in [00:45:20] society weighing in on modern topics and just helping women make more informed choices around how they manage their own care. I thought it was really inspiring, but they spend a ton, a ton on SEO and they spend a lot of time trying [00:45:40] to build authoritative content. So like right now she had said that they, you know, because they have a lot of UTI treatments, they want to become an authoritative voice around alternative medicine, homeopathic approaches, natural medicine, and food-based approaches, and clean eating with [00:46:00] regard to trying to address the challenges around the UTI. And that doesn't if you're telling your customer how to solve the problem without buying a product, I think that that's pretty interesting and novel. Of course, SEO is not new, but I just thought it was an interesting way that they found to [00:46:20] use that actually for retention purposes. You know, a lot of that really is just trying to help women also connect with each other and create like a forum for helping women help women. So I thought that was really interesting. And [00:46:40] then [00:46:41] I'd already mentioned something that was really novel that Gefen had mentioned about being able to drive retention through packaging and being able to stand out on the shelf and being immediately identifiable that your product is there and reminding you to purchase it. And it's sort of  [00:47:00]this interesting arbitrage opportunity that like not all packaging has gone gonzo yet. And so a glittery package stands out among all of the brown bags that sit on a coffee shelf. Not many coffee packages have rainbows and unicorns on the front. And so [00:47:20] that's pretty great. Also, it's specialty coffee. So there's some serious nerdery about the quality of the coffee.  [00:47:30]The other thing is that again, when you're talking about community, Gefen puts on these amazing events [00:47:40] in LA. So she was talking about this wanting to create a meetup specifically for folks in the queer community to come together around art and community and specifically [00:48:00] it being a sober event. So no alcohol, but they'll serve cups of coffee.

Brian: [00:48:06] We did that actually the sober events back in December.

Phillip: [00:48:16] Did we? I don't remember.

Brian: [00:48:16] It was. It was at the nonalcoholic [00:48:20] bottle shop.

Phillip: [00:48:21] Oh, that's. Oh, my gosh.

Brian: [00:48:22] Yes.

Phillip: [00:48:23] Thank you.

Brian: [00:48:24] Yeah, it was a great event.

Phillip: [00:48:26] It was a great event.

Brian: [00:48:27] Yeah. I had a great time.

Phillip: [00:48:29] I watched the video. I was not there. Yeah.

Brian: [00:48:31] I wish you could have been there. That was so funny that, like, I was there and you weren't there.

Phillip: [00:48:37] That's true. I should have been there. Yeah, going [00:48:40] on five years for me. So I would have really liked to have been there, actually. We put out a spirit guide on that, right?

Brian: [00:48:49] We did.

Phillip: [00:48:50] Jesse, on our team, Jesse Tyler, our creative director did this annotated overview [00:49:00] of a lot of the beverages that were available at the Spirited Away Store that we did that event.

Brian: [00:49:05] With Douglas Waters. That was it was an awesome article, actually.

Phillip: [00:49:09] What a great and yeah, the content that came out of that was really wonderful. I have a great video too of that event, but we'll link it up in the show notes, our link to our spirit guide. But I thought that this [00:49:20] was really novel. It's like if you happen to be part of the queer community in LA and you're looking for a different type of event, follow Gefen on Twitter. I think it's @chiefgayofficer on Twitter. And she's hilarious. She's amazing. Brilliant, brilliant. And I have to now try a cup of coffee. And [00:49:40] that's really the bulk of the content that I was able to witness with my eyeballs. I did not get to a main session, which is a bummer. We will have a bit of a recap from our team who did attend a lot of that and did some social. If you want to catch up on some of it, you can actually go check out our social media. It's Future Commerce pretty much everywhere. [00:50:00] But on Twitter in particular, there was a thread that unpacked a bunch of the sort of main session content.

Brian: [00:50:07] Yeah, it was great.

Phillip: [00:50:08] Yeah.

Brian: [00:50:09] Also that the scare cam was amazing.

Phillip: [00:50:12] Oh yeah. Shout out to Kaylee who has a schtick on social media of scaring people [00:50:20]. She'll, like, sneak up on you and scare you. And she did a really awesome thing for Future Commerce where she scared people at the show and then it was sort of tagged, "Don't let the future sneak up on you." So it was a lot of fun. We had a team, if you count us, we had a team of six on-site and I kept hearing [00:50:40] from people all over the show floor like, "You guys are multiplying. How many people do you have at the show?"

Brian: [00:50:47] Just wait till we bring some swag. And it's going to be awesome.

Phillip: [00:50:49] Oh yeah, the swag is amazing. It comes in this week. We might have to do something around swag. We're going to have to drop some stuff pretty soon, but we'll more about that later.  [00:51:00]Overall, what was your feeling of the show? You've been to six or seven of these over the years. Give us some perspective of size and scale versus prior years and overall tone versus last year. Last year was a complete bummer.

Brian: [00:51:15] Well, last year's was a necessary [00:51:20] sad moment.

Phillip: [00:51:23] A reset.

Brian: [00:51:24] It was a bit of a reset. So last year it was sort of a shell of what it was. It was the first event, major event back after COVID. I mean, it was guaranteed to be a challenge to run the show [00:51:40] after that event, or I don't know what the timeline was here, but Retail Touchpoints took over and they rebranded it to the Retail Innovation Conference and Expo, which I think is awesome. RICE is so much easier to say than IRCE and also kind of cooler than Retail X, [00:52:00] in my opinion. But the show was back in much fuller force than last year. I wouldn't say that it's back to its like peak glory of like 15,000 attendees or whatever it was. However, here's what I will say. I [00:52:20] had a great time at the show. I had a lot of great conversations. I think it was very well attended by both merchants and by vendors, and the content that I got to experience was very good. I think Alicia did an incredible job of like [00:52:40] trying to get some fresh voices in. I think that that was one of her goals. I think she accomplished it.

Phillip: [00:52:45] Yeah, absolutely.

Brian: [00:52:47] Yeah. And so in my view, I actually had an incredible time at the show.

Phillip: [00:52:52] I did, too.

Brian: [00:52:53] Yeah. So thank you. Retail Touchpoints for keeping the magic going in Chicago, which, by the [00:53:00] way, I know that you were a little eh Chicago. I am just this hype on Chicago's ever.

Phillip: [00:53:06] I love Chicago. There's just something really special about that city that I did not experience this time around. Because it [00:53:20] was really hot. It was hot. And I crashed a Divvy bike.

Brian: [00:53:25] It's always hot when we're there.

Phillip: [00:53:26] It's true. That's true.

Brian: [00:53:29] But you did crash your bike. That puts a damper, and you smashed your phone up and smashed your bike up.

Phillip: [00:53:36] Yeah, dude, I have... The road rash is healed for [00:53:40] the most part, so it wasn't so bad. It looked a lot worse than it actually was. Long story short, I wasn't goofing around or anything. My front wheel went into a pothole and I went over the front. {laughter} That's how it happened. But it could have happened to anybody.

Brian: [00:53:59] I [00:54:00] would say you may have let the feature sneak up on you there, Phillip.

Phillip: [00:54:05] That's great. That's it, everybody. Thanks for listening.

Brian: [00:54:08] Yeah, it's over. It's all over from here.

Phillip: [00:54:11] You can't get better than that.

Brian: [00:54:12] My gosh, it was great. Was an awesome show.

Phillip: [00:54:15] I heard from a few people. [00:54:20] So I'm going to give you the negative side first. I heard from a number of people that the show was so small that they did it all in just a couple of hours. I'm like, "You did it all? You mean [00:54:40] you walked every aisle of the Expo Hall?" Yes. The Expo Hall was, I would say, 30% of the size that it has been in its heyday. Once upon a time.

Brian: [00:54:54] I would say maybe even 25 to [00:55:00] 30%, I would say.

Phillip: [00:55:00] Yeah, it was quite small. And if you know the size of the expo halls at the McCormick, we were on the side next to the traffic circle, which is objectively a much smaller venue, although it is a cavernous venue.

Brian: [00:55:16] It is.

Phillip: [00:55:19] It is a giant venue. [00:55:20] They will be moving it back over to the other side, it looks like, next year. And the footprint size looks like it's almost doubling. And that's just based on the floor map that I looked at for next year.

Brian: [00:55:32] That plays into something else I heard. So there might have been a couple of complaints about the size. I heard several [00:55:40] vendors say they were going to renew.

Phillip: [00:55:43] Oh, that's the other thing is everyone was renewing. Listen, there's something that I witnessed that I saw. There were actually people walking around 100% of the time on the Expo floor. It was slow at some times, but [00:56:00] there were always people there. And that was not the case in the last two or three shows. There were definite lulls or even dead times in prior years. This was not the case and I was blown away at the activity. I kind of prefer to have the footprint with no gaps. [00:56:20] Right.

Brian: [00:56:20] Yeah. Smaller footprint. No gaps.

Phillip: [00:56:23] There were no like no man lands of, you know, a bunch of vendors that didn't just show up and someone's on an island over by themselves. They kept it really tight. Most everybody came and the people that were complaining were typically, and I hate to be reductive and I don't want to judge anyone's motives, [00:56:40] but they're the kind of people who purchase an expo pass only and go around and they try to pitch their service to all the vendors there. And those are the people complaining that they didn't have a good show. It's because, yeah, it's a numbers game for them and their conversion rate is going to be low because the sample size is small.

Brian: [00:56:59] Right, [00:57:00] exactly. You know, I think the other thing is like the people that just walk the floor and don't care about the content at all like they're not really doing the show. That's just one little aspect of the show. And if that's all you came for, then like, that's cool. Like a lot of the great vendors were there. [00:57:20]

Phillip: [00:57:20] Oh, they're all there.

Brian: [00:57:21] Yeah, they're all there. They're all there. Exactly.

Phillip: [00:57:23] They're all there. I mean, some of them were in different positions than I would have thought that they would be, given the size of the show, pretty prominently placed around the entrance were, you know, some of the usual suspects. I mean, you definitely had the [00:57:40] email marketing platforms and such.

Brian: [00:57:44] You know who took a big stand at this event? And I think it was a good move on their part. Acumatica. they sponsored my whole track. They were front and center at the entrance. They [00:58:00] had a great booth. They had a ton of people there. I think they probably cleaned up on the show. I think that they made a really smart move by taking the opportunity to be a sponsor in maybe what is a kind of a reset of the show. Really smart.

Phillip: [00:58:20] Do you know [00:58:20] who else was there? I was really surprised by... Shopware.

Brian: [00:58:25] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:58:26] They are sponsoring this episode of Future Commerce, by the way.

Brian: [00:58:29] Hey-o.

Phillip: [00:58:30] Shopware was there with a dozen people. A lot of people were there.

Brian: [00:58:35] Yeah. Our body Matt.

Phillip: [00:58:35] Ben Marks who will be featured prominently [00:58:40] on some content coming up soon. But we're in this ecosystem now where I think only the strong are going to survive the next couple of years. I think the smaller mid-tier, you know, venture-backed SaaS products that [00:59:00] haven't reached a critical mass yet are going to have a really tough time of 22, 23, maybe 2024 and they may be technology businesses, but eCommerce as a whole, I think, will be seen as contracting, even though the market size is quite large overall. So [00:59:20] I think this is the new breed. I remember looking around ten years ago at a show like that and there were still a bunch of cash register vendors and a lot of payment terminals. And so and there was a ton of the long tail [00:59:40] of all the little niche payments companies that licensed or had some flimsy gateway that was marketing only in front of a larger... You know what I'm trying to say.

Brian: [00:59:58] Yeah. I [01:00:00] had so so much more to say about this, actually, because [01:00:05] I feel like there has been consolidation in our space already. We're looking at, you know, an interesting moment in economic times. It [01:00:20] could be easily argued and I think I might buy this that we're in for a little bit of a recession. Maybe big, maybe little. Who knows? But what's interesting is that our [01:00:40] industry is going to need to figure out how to focus their money. Because the play here is going to be well, yes, you do need to cut costs. But also, if you want to stay strong in this industry, you still have to acquire [01:01:00] customers. And so how can you do those two things at the same time, save money and acquire new business? And I think that that's going to be the biggest topic of conversation for maybe some upcoming shows like how [01:01:20] to do more with less. That's going to be the big conversation. [01:01:24]

Phillip: [01:01:25] Yeah, I couldn't agree more having done eCommerce now through the two economic crises that post 911 I was doing eCommerce as a freelancer [01:01:40] and then post GFC, which I'm going to start using because I love it. I love me an acronym, Great Financial Crisis. I was working as an engineering team lead at a brand. So I've been through this [01:02:00] before. And you're right, a lot of the messaging is going to shift away from experiential and growth, things that people spend money on during the fatted times and during the lean times what do you do? You save money, right? So we have to get into cost-cutting mode. [01:02:20] Who's going to drive the greatest value? This is where... Let's make one. Let's make a new prediction. [01:02:28] This is where the Shopify era of stacking a lot of monthly fee and margin erosive month-to-month agreement type solutions will fall by the wayside because [01:02:40] there are too many middlemen. And they're all seen as like sort of marginally effective and maybe not worth all the time in the hassle. And what will emerge is, first, a consolidation of those vendors into greater suite solutions. [01:03:00] Bolt Commerce has already gone down this road. Yatpo before it. We will see more of these Shopify app roll ups. WeCommerce is doing that to some degree and like more of a PE operational model. But I think they'll become more like the Yatpo model where they are integrated into an experience [01:03:20] engine. You want one hand to shake fewer contracts, longer commitments, higher value that you can hold people to over time, and extract greater value so that you can cut costs and improve efficiency and reduce overhead. [01:03:34]

Brian: [01:03:34] Well, and it makes more sense for these SaaS players as well. Like closing ten deals [01:03:40] is way more laborious than closing one deal.

Phillip: [01:03:44] But Shopify said there is no closing of a deal. It's clicking and clicking into an agreement and then having a $100 charge hit your card.

Brian: [01:03:54] Sure, sure, sure, sure. Well, if you pay for like their down market service, [01:04:00] most of them, if you want enterprise pricing, you have to call and talk to somebody.

Phillip: [01:04:03] That's true.

Brian: [01:04:04] Yeah, that's true. So, yeah, no, I think that you're probably right. I think the smart merchants, though, will it's not about cutting costs for cutting cost's sake. It's about investment in things that [01:04:20] are going to be able to do more for them at the same time as like maybe keeping their staff the same or whatever, you know what I mean? I think that there's going to be a lot of like reallocation of dollars. And so  [01:04:40]that's going to be the name of the game is like showing off why. That's like for vendors that are that are listening. The name of the game for the next 12 months is going to be showing why someone should change and switch their dollars to you. And it's going to be because they're saving money and they can do more. [01:05:00]

Phillip: [01:05:01] Yeah. And why do you why do companies go through layoffs? They need to achieve operational efficiency. They need to cut costs.

Brian: [01:05:13] Layoffs. Who's talking about layoffs?

Phillip: [01:05:15] Oh, there are layoffs. There have been layoffs all over the place.

Brian: [01:05:20] Well, [01:05:20] no, there haven't been layoffs all over the place. Let's put it in perspective really quickly. The actual employment has not changed all that much. Let's not blow it out of proportion.

Phillip: [01:05:38] But I mean, that's [01:05:40] probably true.

Brian: [01:05:41] Yes, it is true. I was just looking this up.

Phillip: [01:05:44] I'm saying in our sector, in particular in our sector, the SaaS technology area is already in the midst of layoffs. We're already seeing it.

Brian: [01:05:57] Well, we saw shuddering with Fast, [01:06:00] but most like a lot of the great talent from Fast got snacked up real fast.

Phillip: [01:06:06] Snacked.

Brian: [01:06:08] They got snacked up.

Phillip: [01:06:09] They got straight up snacked up.

Brian: [01:06:12] They got smacked up real fast by other vendors in the space. Fast was a cautionary tale. [01:06:20] But for the people that were working there, I think that they were able to, a lot of them found employment quickly. The good ones.

Phillip: [01:06:26] Yeah. I'm actually going to pull something up here while we're talking there's a number of, you know, both brands and the [01:06:40] SaaS variety. Actually, you know what, let's hold that over for another conversation. I feel like there's a really long conversation to be had.

Brian: [01:06:46] There is a really long conversation. That's why I said I want to talk about this more later.

Phillip: [01:06:51] We're already deep into late fourth quarter of the show. We do have our Visions report coming.  [01:07:00]This year, Visions is transforming. Vision used to be an annual trends report that we've put out every year. Visions is a new content property that's all-encompassing here at Future Commerce. That is the home for our biggest ideas. And [01:07:20] we have new video content coming in the next few weeks. We have a brand new, at this point, it's 80 plus pages. Eighty mind-blowing, data-filled, incredible takeaway, I would say, culture-defining, modernity-measuring, [01:07:40] and consumer-understanding report that we've ever put together before. So that word salad, if you liked it, there's a whole lot more that's out there for you by the time you listen to this. Visions.report is a place where you will be able to pre-sign up for the report. [01:08:00] Go get it. If you want to be the first to know when the report comes out, FutureCommerce.fm/Subscribe. And if you want more episodes of this podcast or any of our other shows, including Step by Step, Decoded or Infinite Shelf, there is something for you, whether you're an operator in a brand, a developer, or [01:08:20] you're trying to bootstrap yourself to understanding more about this in your early stage in your career and you're trying to understand the landscape we've got something for you here at Future Commerce and you can get those as well. FutureCommerce.fm. Thank you for listening to the show.

Brian: [01:08:35] Thanks for listening.

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