Stay ConnectedWelcome to the #1 podcast for commerce teams, executives, and entrepreneurs.
Join host Stephanie Postles as she sits down with commerce leaders on the front lines of digital innovation. With guests from established enterprise companies to D2C start-ups barely out of infancy to everyone in between – you’ll get the inside scoop on what’s Up Next in Commerce.
New episodes come out every Tuesday and Thursday. Up Next in Commerce is created by Mission.org.
Ecommerce has come a long way from its early days as a separate part of the company that you set up and just hope to see returns on. Now, ecommerce is pivotal for just about every organization — but there is one faction of businesses that still lags behind.
There are $17 trillion dollars worth of B2B payments made every year. Yes, trillion with a T. And half of those payments are still being made manually. Clearly, there is a massive shift that still needs to happen in the B2B space, and Deloitte Digital is helping make those digital transformations a reality.
Paul do Forno is the Managing Director at Deloitte Digital, and on this episode of Up Next in Commerce, he helped us understand the struggles B2B brands are facing and how moving them into the digital space could spell a massive change in the ecommerce industry. Paul also dives into some of the major trends he’s keeping an eye on in the ecommerce world, including how ecommerce continues to scale around the globe, most notably in Latin America. Plus, he shares some tips for businesses who are overwhelmed by the amount of channels and platforms they suddenly have to play in. Spoiler: he says do less. Tune in to hear more!
Main Takeaways:
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
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Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce
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Word of mouth is still the best marketing tool, even in today’s digital world. And in this time of the ecommerce boom, brands are constantly working to build buzz for their products. Whether that’s through ratings, reviews, social posts, or unique ad campaigns. But there’s one highly coveted strategy that’s been bubbling to the top of the stack, and every ecommerce leader knows it is the way of the future. User generated content.
And a company called Yotpo is here to help with that. Yotpo is one of the top platforms that companies such as IKEA, 1-800-FLOWERS, Chubbies and more lean on to help them build communities, generate UGC, and create loyalty programs that yield the kind of engagement most brands only dream of.
On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, I asked the co-founder and CEO of Yotpo, Tomer Tagrin to give us an inside look at how Yotpo is generating 5X more engagement and content creation than is typical. Plus, we also dove into the future of loyalty programs and personalization. My one-sentence takeaway: definitely start leaning heavily into loyalty and maybe let off the gas a bit on personalization. Why? Tune in to find out!
Main Takeaways:
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
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Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce
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Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The world of ecommerce is constantly changing — this last year being a prime example. How people shop in 2021 is radically different from how they shopped in early 2020, so forget about thinking about comparing today’s world to a decade ago. Although that is fun to see how much has changed. Now, it’s all about keeping up with your customers, which is why for our first official roundtable episode of Up Next in Commerce we wanted to bring on two people who have been on the cutting edge of the industry for years.
Ashima Sehgal is a Software Development Manager at Amazon Music and Jon Feldman, a Senior Marketing Leader for Salesforce Commerce Cloud. These two go way back to their days working together on ecommerce implementation at Restoration Hardware, which was a journey in and of itself, and while they remain close friends, they sit on the opposite side of the fence when it comes to certain aspects of the future of ecommerce. We get into all of it in this episode, including discussing whether shopping at the edge is the future of the industry or just a passing fad, and how to get buy-in when selling a new implementation. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did!
Main Takeaways:
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
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Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce
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Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Interacting with customers requires a level of finesse and talent that is beautiful when done well, and a tough sight when done poorly. There is give and take, and you have to flow through various movements and ups and downs to reach a satisfying end result. It’s like a dance. A tango if you will. At least, that’s how the folks over at LivePerson see it.
Alex Spinelli is the CTO and EVP of product, technology, and operations at LivePerson, and on this episode of Up Next in Commerce, he broke down what that dance should look like, and how A.I. is taking the lead.
As Alex explains, LivePerson is a set of tools, technologies and platforms that enable businesses to have conversations with customers through messaging channels, and to detect where customers may be getting stuck or frustrated. Then, with a small immediate intervention, LivePerson’s A.I. routes that customer to a human who can make the buying process easier. It is a way to get to a better end result more often, and it works. Businesses using LivePerson have seen double-digit-percentage-point improvement in conversions and higher NPS scores than ever. But the power of A.I. doesn’t end there, and Alex dives deep into where we are headed with A.I. as a tool in retail, including the blended in-person and virtual experiences that seem to be overlapping more than ever before. And Alex gets into the nitty-gritty of the ethics behind A.I. and how everyone will have to be more involved going forward when it comes to defining their limits, wants, and needs. Enjoy this episode!
Main Takeaways:
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
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Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce
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Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
By now we’ve all heard about the thousands of businesses that pivoted to ecommerce in the wake of the pandemic last year. What we haven’t heard as much are the lessons both companies and consumers have learned in the process.
On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, I was excited to dive into those lessons and more with Israel “Iz” Moreira, the co-CEO of Doughp, a company that sells edible (and delicious) cookie dough. Prior to 2020, Doughp relied heavily on its brick-and-mortar stores and the foot traffic they delivered. But Iz saw potential in expanding the company through ecommerce channels, and, luckily, laid the groundwork for the infrastructure for that pivot even before COVID-19 forced Doughp to shutter its retail doors. With a now fully-online company, Doughp has started to centralize and increase its shipping capabilities and has seen success, but it wasn’t a cake (or should I say, cookie dough) walk. Iz explains some of the hardships Doughp faced on its journey to ecommerce success, including how little information-sharing there still is in the business world when it comes to cold shipping. Plus he dives into the recent revelations he’s discovered about whether free shipping actually matters as much as you think it does. Enjoy this episode!
Main Takeaways:
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
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Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce
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Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
If done correctly, a two-headed strategy of driving sales on Amazon and your native website could yield huge dividends. But what does that kind of strategy look like, and how can you create a scenario where one builds off of another?
The answer lies in assortment and pathways into the brand experience. Ben Knox is a bit of an expert in this area and he’s here to share his expertise. Ben earned his stripes working on Red Bull’s ecommerce strategy, and now serves as the SVP of Digital at Super Coffee. According to Ben, brands need to come up with an assortment strategy that allows customers to get what they want, when and where they want it, but also leads them back to the type of brand experience you want them to have. He also details how beneficial a subscription model can be, if done right. Plus, he gives some tips on how to get the most out of your texting strategies and what is going on in the wild west of customer acquisition.
Main Takeaways:
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
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Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce
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Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Innovation is risky business, especially if you’re a hardware startup. But it’s not just risky on the part of those inventing a new product. The early adopters of that product are putting a lot on the line, too. Which is why certain industries, like retail, have remained mostly the same for decades. Retailers only want to bring in something new if the operational cost of installing and using the innovation are minimal, and if it doesn’t require a massive overhaul of a retail space. This is exactly what Lindon Gao found out when he started exploring this space.
Lindon has been on a mission to disrupt retail since his first application for a smart security tag was accepted by Y Combinator, and while that hardware didn’t take off, Lindon kept going until he landed on an idea that stuck. Today, Lindon is the CEO of Caper, a company bringing smart cart technology into the retail space with increasing success. In fact, Caper’s tech could be coming to a store near you, as the company recently agreed to partner with America’s largest grocery retailer, Kroger, to bring smart carts into chains all over the nation.
On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Lindon talks us through how Caper is finally bringing change into the world of grocery, and he explains how smart cart technology could have ripple effects on ecommerce, personalization, and the entire customer journey. Enjoy this episode!
Main Takeaways:
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
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Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce
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Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
When people scroll through Instagram these days, they can’t avoid the ads and the influencers pushing products. And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, more and more often, ecommerce is taking place in channels other than on a brand’s website, which is why so many companies are looking for ways to optimize how they execute commerce at the edge -- this means meeting customers where they are. Paloma has one way to do that, by turning messenger platforms into sales channels, which creates a more personalized shopping experience for customers, and a .5-to-10x higher conversion rate for brands.On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, I was joined by Kelsey Hunter, the Co-Founder and CEO of Paloma, to give us the inside scoop on why brands should be investing in conversational commerce. In the last year, Paloma has helped partners convert $9 million in sales, and she explains how that happened by simply diverting ad traffic away from a website and into a chat instead. Plus, she discusses the future of conversational commerce and how the low barrier to entry into the ecommerce industry is forcing everyone to adjust quicker than ever before. Enjoy this episode!Main Takeaways:Website Woes: Moving forward, a brand’s website will become more of a secondary piece of collateral when it comes to driving conversions. It will still be critical to have a fast, highly-efficient website experience, but more of the interactions and conversion efforts will be focused on other channels where customers are spending more time.Get To The Party: The worst thing a brand could be doing right now is not experimenting with and setting up processes in Facebook Messenger and other messaging apps. Customer service and the customer experience are two of the leading drivers of conversions, and ignoring a channel that allows you to provide a proactive and personalized experience is a huge wasted opportunity.Far Out Future: The future of commerce is being written right now with shops that are opening with simple Instagram product posts and telling customers interested to go to a PayPal link. More new brands are foregoing the traditional channels and website launches, so the barrier to entry is much lower. As more competition enters the market in this way, traditional brands will have to keep up with their own easy, personalized commerce options.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Welcome to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postals, co-founder and CEO at mission.org. Today we have Kelsey Hunter joining us. The founder and CEO of Paloma. Kelsey, welcome to the show.Kelsey:Thank you, Stephanie. It's so good to be here.Stephanie:We're excited to have you on. I was just thinking I'm like, "How do I know I'm actually talking to Kelsey and not a chatbot?" She's put up a virtual screen and it might not even be Kelsey back there. I'm not sure.Kelsey:I have a history of pretending to be a bot, so.Stephanie:I actually, I read that. I read that you spent a little bit six weeks pretending to be a chatbot to learn how they worked.Kelsey:True.Stephanie:That's fun jumping off point. Tell me a bit about being a chatbot. What's that life like?Kelsey:It is wild. Let's see, I was working at a startup in New York that we offered mobile commerce solution for brands and publishers. So I was really deep in the mobile commerce space when the messenger API opened up. And as we're getting side projects, of course then, decided that messenger would be a good place to try to test things out.Kelsey:And before even building anything, I pretended to be a bot just to see how it would work. That's what sparked all of this. It was like, "Oh wait, if you can talk to people directly, people will talk to you about themselves." I'm asking people questions, they're telling me way too much information. That was really the spark for me. Then I said, "Oh, why are we making assumptions online? We can just ask people and they will very happily tell you things to help figure out what they should buy and why."Stephanie:That's cool. So you were doing this at another company. And then you're like, this is the business in and of itself. And that's how you went to create Paloma?Kelsey:Yeah. It was a totally side project outside of the company that I was working with. But all of the pieces tied together for me. That company is called Button, and when I left Button, I did a little bit of other experimentation in the channel. Actually, worked with a team to build a open-source software, to help people call Congress on Facebook Messenger, which was one of the first software tools that was like a MailChimp for the space, which is really cool. But brought it all the way back around to commerce and launched Paloma at the end of 2017.Stephanie:Cool. So tell me a bit more about Paloma. What is it? What does it do?Kelsey:Paloma helps brands turn Facebook Messenger into a sales channel. Essentially, we work with a lot of D2C and ecom brands across every product, category, audience, price point, and we help them drive traffic into messenger instead of their website where their customers get a more personalized shopping experience, that's powered by our software. So what that might look like for a furniture brand would be, they're running Instagram and Facebook ads and they can set them to open up a Messenger conversation instead of opening up a website landing page.Kelsey:And once in Messenger, our conversation, we'll ask them questions like what room do you want to design? What are the colors in that room? Do you have cats, dogs? Any other kind of style preferences. And then we'll dynamically route the customer to the right products based off of what they've shared. By helping the customer make the purchase decision, we're effectively seeing anywhere from two to 10X increases in conversion rates. And that's a little bit of very cap on, on how that works.Stephanie:That's awesome. I feel like just thinking about, I follow all these influencers on Instagram and they're always selling stuff, which normally I'm like, I want a lot of this. But if you respond to them, they definitely can't keep up. If you're like, does that size, would it fit me? Is that Off-White? Is that Real-White? It seems like there's a lot of opportunity everywhere to have a chatbot set up that personalizes the experience and also helps it scale.Kelsey:Exactly. And what you just described is one of the reasons that we see so much opportunity in that space. And the reason why customers messaged in the first place is because when it comes to online shopping people don't shop on websites. That's just where they transact now. But they're making decisions by what you're talking about, watching influencers, DMing folks, talking to friends, watching YouTube videos, TikToks.Kelsey:So you're basically piecing together all these different parties to figure out, should I buy this? What's the right thing for me? Whereas if you walk into a storefront, for example, you can get all of that figured out in a matter of minutes. You can talk to an associate, they're going to ask questions. Everything that you just described can happen there. There's nowhere like that online. And that's where messaging channels open up that opportunity for the brand to be part of that purchase decision process. So instead of leaving it up to all the third parties, the brand can do it themselves and they can scale it through these kinds of automated conversations.Stephanie:Very cool. And how do you go about setting up the responsive? Is it very custom based on the product? Like, do you work with a brand early on to be like, here's probably what they're going to ask you or they're telling you. What does that look like behind the scenes?Kelsey:We definitely curated a lot to the brand, a lot to the product type and to their customer demographic. So for example, Facebook recently published a case study of the work that we do with Wallow, which is a brand that sells titers, strollers. Basically goods for families and their kids. So they're really great products, but it's actually not so much about having a lot of skews. They don't have a ton of skews. It's more about why should somebody buy this Wallow stroller and how is it going to fit into their family and lifestyle?Kelsey:So essentially what we do is we'll work with them, look at the products that they sell and try to understand their customer type. In their case, a lot of their customers will buy for themselves, but there's a pretty good chunk that are gifting. So for example, the first question we ask is, is this for you and your family, or is this for a gift? Who are you gifting for? And then as customers answer these questions, we can speak to how it will fit into their lifestyle. How old is your little one? Are they eating solids yet or not?Kelsey:We don't actually need the customer to ask questions because by us asking questions first, we can preemptively answer how the value prop works for them. How it fits into their life. So we can say, "Well, they're eating solids is getting very messy. This high chair is very easy to clean." And so you're effectively accomplishing both along the way. It's basically just a really good sales conversation.Stephanie:Yeah. I mean, that's really smart and I think it's a different mindset where a lot of times, when you think about chatbots, the consumer has to initiate the conversation. Has to think of the questions. And it makes me even think about when I'm hiring... I'm trying to think what I was hiring. But they're like, "Oh, do you have any more questions?" And I'm like, "Well, what do people normally ask you? Like, what's the normal questions because I don't know what to ask you."Kelsey:What should I ask. Yeah.Stephanie:If I'm buying a house or whatever it is, what are the top 10 questions you get? And so that's great being like, we'll do all the work for you. Here's some of the questions that we know will start a conversation. So it's actually less work and less cognitive load. Where you can get to the end point and still leave being like, I know what I'm talking about now with this product.Kelsey:Exactly. That's 100% right. And it's actually a really classic UX design issue. Which is actually my original background. Basically, when it comes to any digital interface or any interface at all, if you don't know where you can go, you're not really likely to do it. You're not going to walk up to a pitch black tunnel and be like, "Yeah, I feel confident walking into that."Kelsey:That's like an open free from bot conversation or like you get on a customer support call and it's like, "What can we help with?" And you're like, "Well, depending on what I answer, what's the likelihood you'll have any idea what I'm asking?" It's not great. So we find that structuring and providing a really clear interface for the customers to navigate also makes a huge difference.Stephanie:We talked about this a lot on the show that shopping is moving to the edge. Everyone is shopping on Social, they're shopping on Amazon, Walmart it's everywhere and not always on the website anymore. Do you think that websites are going to become like a secondary thing, where it's like, yeah, it's a nice to have. But people are actually on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Going directly to Amazon, they're not really going to always go right to your website.Kelsey:That's exactly right. It's going the way of retail. And that's not to say it's going to go away. It's just that it's not the primary anymore. We see a website as like the catalog and it's a transacting location. In a lot of cases that's useful, but it's not necessary anymore. And we see that with how new sellers are starting today. Especially with COVID, everything accelerates so rapidly. But one of the really interesting trends is, you've got new shops opening up just with Instagram pages and saying, "Hey, DM me for this product and I'll send you a PayPal link."Kelsey:I think those kinds of very low tech indicators of the fact that that's where the market is heading. And, I think you're 100% right. The website's really not necessary. And there are tons of great antique shops I follow in New York that are doing just well without it.Stephanie:Yeah. That's cool. So what other trends are you seeing among sellers right now? Maybe anything new popping up and you're like, pre-COVID we actually weren't really seeing this and now there's a big trend to just opening an Instagram page and selling through DMs. What other things like that are you seeing?Kelsey:I think that's huge. I think that I'm really interested in these future QVC type of models. But that's just because I grew up watching those. I don't know, did you ever watched the knife show?Stephanie:I did not watch that, but.Kelsey:The show was wild.Stephanie:Well, there's a [crosstalk].Kelsey:I think it was on a lot when I was in college. We'd always end up like late night. The knife show would end up on at very late hour and it was just like, "Hey, here's some knives and we're just going to cut all sorts of stuff with these knives." Like the silliest thing. It was so funny, but-Stephanie:[crosstalk] the Blender show. It wasn't called the Blender show, but where they [crosstalk] random things in the blender and I'm like, [crosstalk].Kelsey:Exactly. The same kind of stuff.Stephanie:How much time do we have on our hands apparently?Kelsey:It was so silly. It was like cutting shoes and weird things like that. The humor of it, I think it was really fun. And I think that online, we're seeing a lot of that, like humor come into commerce in a way that I think it's really fun. And that's really what it should be. So I like things like that. But I do think that the new selling methods are probably what some of the most interesting things to me is just, what's the version of opening a store today versus before. And like the barrier to entry is just so low now. It's pretty phenomenal. So I'm excited for that.Stephanie:Yeah. Cool. And how do you advise brands to being proactive when it comes to starting conversations versus being reactive and just taking the inbound? Because if I'm thinking like, I'm a new brand, I don't have any inbound. What's the way to be proactive and like reach out to people with your product?Kelsey:What's really nice is that these channels are often first, which I think is really important for there to be a great customer experience. If we want these channels to succeed, if we want these brands to succeed, we need to make sure that we're being really mindful of the consumer. But what's really, really nice about Facebook Messenger while it is tough to work on another platform, play by someone else's rules sometimes, but there's a ton of great benefits there.Kelsey:And one of them is the acquisition funnel.…
Full show notes at the publisherImagine this: it’s Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year and you’re a brand with customers on your website pushing the buy button, but instead of moving them down the funnel, you stop them and interrupt the buying process to ask them, “How are you feeling right now?” Seems like a crazy thing to do right? Especially in a world that is dominated by closing sales and doing everything possible to get a consumer to hit buy. You’re literally pausing a conversion, making a customer examine his or her activity and second guess making a purchase. Nevertheless, that was the strategy Bearaby put into practice this past holiday season and the results might just surprise you. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Kathrin Hamm, the Founder and CEO of Bearaby, tells us that that mindfulness experiment, while risky and not advised by her industry peers, paid off in big ways. Bearaby was able to gain insights into consumer behavior and gather data that helped predict whether or not a customer was likely to return a product or not. And, most importantly, Bearaby was able to build more trust with customers and foster a more authentic relationship centered around mental health and the customer’s well-being, which in today’s world goes a long way toward creating a loyal base of customers. Kathrin also explains why adding more mindfulness and behavioral queues into the customer journey could have a positive impact on return rates, overall customer satisfaction, and your NPS score.Main Takeaways:Do You Need This?: So many brands are trying to optimize for sales and push people through the funnel, but what if you took a step back? At Bearaby, by introducing mindfulness into the buying process and asking people how they feel throughout the process of a sale, the company was able to build trust with its customers, understand the behavior of people who returned products, and increased the overall net promoter score of the brand. Making it Work: As a small, independent, DTC business, being agile and having the ability to accelerate a product are assets. But when you expand and begin to take on retail partnerships, your internal processes need to adjust. Rather than thinking a month of two ahead, you need to fit into a production timeline that is already planned two years in advance. To do that, it’s critical to have the right backend operations in order to analyze data and manage inventory so you can meet the needs of your partners. Stop Selling, Start Connecting: Most brands see social media and SMS messaging as tools to sell products and get information to customers about deals or products. But what if you used those platforms to be a resource to your customers and offered them help in ways unrelated to your products? Bearaby took this road when establishing itself on social media and found that sparking natural conversations led to more curiosity about the brand overall, and subsequently led to sales with truly engaged customers.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hello everyone and welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, Co-Founder and CEO at Mission.org. Today on the show, we have Kathrin Hamm, the CEO and founder of Bearaby. Kathrin, welcome.Kathrin:Thanks so much for having me.Stephanie:Tell me a bit about Bearaby. I was looking at your website, I saw how amazing your weighted blankets look. They're knitted, they're awesome. I have a couple other weighted blankets, but they are nowhere near that, so tell me a little bit about the company and how you thought about creating it.Kathrin:The idea of creating Bearaby was really when I had sleep problems myself. I used to work for the World Bank as an economist, and I was just traveling a lot. I just had moved from Washington to the Middle East, and then from the Middle East to India, all within two years. I was traveling a lot and I was never a good sleeper, but this constant travel and jet lag really put me over the top. So I was just looking for a natural sleep solution. I tried many different things and at some point I came across this really simple concept of a heavy blanket that's supposed to be 10% of your body weight, that you put on top of you in an equal way, and it's supposed to help you calm, relax and sleep better.Kathrin:The concept itself is not new. Weighted blankets have been around for more than 60 years, especially for children that have sensory disorders. I ordered one of these blankets into India, and I tried it on a Saturday afternoon, and I napped for four hours. Which never happened to me before, and I was just sold on the idea. I'm like, "Okay, that's it. I can move on with my life, I just get this blanket and things will be good." The next night I woke up again and with the weighted blanket, but I was sweating and it was really hot.Kathrin:I think that's when I realized that all these weighted blankets are made with these artificial filling materials, so usually you find 20 pounds of plastic beads in it. Obviously it makes you hot, like an oven, but it's also really not good for the environment. At that point, I was really just searching for a product myself, and I realized there's nothing out there. Even though the product has been around for such a long time, somehow no one had really innovated on the concept. That's where the idea started to make something different and use innovation and design and at the same time try to come up with a product that's addressing these needs while being sustainable at the same time.Stephanie:That's awesome. So this was back in 2018 when you launched your company and you still had your day job and you launched it on Kickstarter, right?Kathrin:Yes.Stephanie:Tell me a little bit about that thought process. What was in your head when you were like, "Okay, I have a full-time job, I'm in India, and I'm going to go on Kickstarter."Kathrin:I think I'm naturally a risk-averse person. I know other entrepreneurs are like, I had my idea and I knew I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and I just went for it. I went the other way. I'm like, "Let's try it as a little side hustle and see it more of a project at the beginning." So I really mapped out in a business plan, so what do I need to have first? How do I think about the product? How do I think about the IP? And at some point you come to the funding, and when you do the numbers you realize that it actually takes a lot of money to launch a product or a brand, and you don't know in the early stages if people even will like it.Kathrin:It's when I realized that I think crowdsourcing is a good way to fail really fast or get feedback really fast. So we put together a short video, with the initial idea, and within a month, we had more than quarter million dollars already on the Kickstarter campaign. And the feedback I got from people is that this is just a product that more people are looking for, and I think that gave me then the next confidence boost to say, "Well, it might be not only a project, but this might be a real business idea that I can start exploring."Stephanie:That's very cool. So, what did it look like after you had that money in your Kickstarter account, and you're like, "Okay, this is real." What did it look like after that?Kathrin:Well, the money didn't last really long. So I actually emptied out my whole retirement funds. After I had had left my job. I think at that site, I really believed in the product and I knew I was onto something that I wanted to bring to the market. So the next step was the manufacturing. At that point, I had a prototype that I actually had developed together with my mom who's a really avid knitter. And we came up with the idea that instead of using any plastic or glass beads to make a product heavy, it's like a knitted rug. And if you use layers upon layers of fabric, you actually also get to a heavy blanket that comes up to 20 pounds.Kathrin:There was a small piece of a blanket. And then I went around and I just had a list of different manufacturers. I think I had a list of around 40, and I just picked up the phone and were talking to people. "This is my idea. Is it something that you could help me produce? Could you help me make this?" And I think one of the issues was that most people didn't know why do you even want to make a heavy blanket? We've been working in the industry since 30 years to make a light product, a light blanket. So I think that was an issue. Then I also obviously didn't have any credibility in the space where there's like, "Okay, even if we're trying to make this, how many units would you take?"Kathrin:And I'm like, "Maybe 100." And then I think they already hang up the phone.Stephanie:[crosstalk] thinks.Kathrin:So I got a lot of nos at the beginning. Yeah, I just realized that nobody had done this before, even with apparel that said we have similar we don't have these machines bedding, we don't have these machines. So I actually went back to the drawing board and without before I actually launched the Napa our product, I first had to come up with a machine to make the weighted yarn that we're using. I was working with a manufacturer in Germany, a machine maker. At first was creating the yarn to then go into the final production.Kathrin:So that took me quite some time to really figure out that supply chain piece. And yeah.Stephanie:I think most people would have given up when they found out they had to make their own machine. That's wild. What was your mom saying during that whole process?Kathrin:They thought I'm crazy. Because I left a pretty solid job that I studied for a very long time for. I have a PhD in economics. And then suddenly in my mid 30s I'm telling my parents, I'm leaving my job because I want to sell these heavy blankets that nobody had heard of on the internet. So, even my friends thought this is just a phase or maybe like a midlife crisis. And when you have these dinners with friends, where everyone is sharing like, "Oh, I got a promotion." Or, "I'm on to the next step." And I had for a very long time, I had nothing to share where I'm like, "I'm about to build a website. It's not there yet, just give me a couple of more month."Kathrin:And everyone was like, "Oh, yeah, that's very cute. Good luck with that Kathrin."Stephanie:Yeah.Kathrin:Yeah, it was sometimes not an easy time. Especially like the first year.Stephanie:Yeah I can imagine that's such a fun story. So now, you're partnering with big brands like West Elm. You've got celebrities who love your product. I saw Rachel Zoe and others love it. So how many blankets are you selling today? Yeah, I want to get into the partnership piece after that. But yeah, what does the world look like today?Kathrin:When we launched in December 2018, we just had our website, and we got an article on Fast Company. I think just five months later, where they were describing that this is the most sustainable weighted blanket in the market, and it was just a category that people got notice of and that was the time where it's like, this is a sleep solution and there are these weighted blankets and then we came already in a market where it was a product that was different, it was something you want to keep on the couch, something designed worthy and not something that you might want to hide in your bedroom.Kathrin:Then we got a call from West Elm just literally a week later. Actually first it was an email, and at that point I thought, "Probably it's not real. Maybe someone is scamming us." But I thought, "Well, doesn't hurt to just jump on the call and have a conversation." And yeah, I ended up speaking with the buyers and they were excited about the product, they were excited about a category, and we're looking into it also for some time and they liked the idea of having a sustainable option that also fits with their interior design. While they asked me where's your showroom, and at that point, we're like, "It's actually my living room. So we don't have a showroom yet."Kathrin:But they still took a chance. And we were a very small company at that point. And they helped us work through the process of getting on boarded with such a big partner very early on and working on the color collections. I think we learned a lot from a design perspective and that now we've expanded the partnership, we're now also in Pottery Barn Kids with our kids collection and it's turned out in a really beautiful partnership which I never had expected or hoped for that early in the stage of the company.Stephanie:That's amazing. Have you already sold some blankets? Were you doing DTC before West Elm approached you?Kathrin:Yeah. So we started B2C as a primary channel. That's just for the reason that I wanted to educate people around the product, because I felt a lot of people still didn't fully understand what are the medical benefits of the product? How do I choose a product? I also wanted to create something that's different from other weighted blankets where it's really [inaudible] and into something, it's healthy to talk and there is actually joy in napping. So this branded experience, I knew I could only establish on our own website. So we didn't think about any other channels at that stage.Kathrin:Really we're focusing on how do we communicate that we're different? And how do you communicate the heaviness of the product without people being able to touch it?Stephanie:Yeah, that's tough. So how did you show that value on the website?Kathrin:I think that's still one of the most asked questions that we're getting why people are figuring out what's the best choice for them. We came up actually with a customized quiz, where we work with a sleep scientist, where people just ... we didn't keep it too long. But just a couple of questions that give people a guidance. Were this is the right product, there's a recommendation that comes out at the end of it. And then we also have a detailed section that goes into the fabrics, the different options that we have and how it makes you feel.Kathrin:But I would say it's definitely an advantage for us to have West Elm as a partner because if people are still unsure on, we don't know what a weighted blanket feels like, I can tell them, why don't you hop on a bus and go into the next West Elm store and to see and test it out there on the couch there when you come and you can try it out, and most of the people actually really go right away and enjoy trying it out.Stephanie:Yeah, that's really cool. So how did you go from being DTC to then all of a sudden, you're going to be ... you have to expand your stock, you have to start selling nationally. What did you have to do behind the scenes to make it work with West Elm?Kathrin:It's really a process that we needed to prepare for from an operational standpoint, because when you are a smaller brand and let's say you have shorter planning cycles. So when we have an idea, we're saying, "Oh, we would like to come up with this color, we want to try this." It us…
Full show notes at the publisherSometimes, it’s best to get back to the basics. Whether you are talking business or just general human interaction, it’s easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of overthinking things when really all you need to do is keep it simple. Ellen Bennett knows this more than most, and she’s built her company, Hedley & Bennett into an undeniable success by sticking to that principle. Hedley & Bennett produces high-quality kitchen wear that has been featured in more than 4,000 restaurants and cafes, adopted by celebrity chefs like Martha Stewart and David Chang, and is used by hundreds of thousands of home chefs every day. But the story started much more modestly. Ellen began with a true grassroots approach, selling aprons out of her Mini Cooper, talking to and pitching every chef she knew, and working her connections to keep growing her business.On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Ellen shares the story of how she hustled to build Hedley & Bennett and all of the early struggles she had to work through to keep the train rolling. She gives advice to any young company dealing with production or shipping mishaps, and she explains how you can go about expanding through creative and authentic collaborations. Plus, she explains what it took to shift the company from exclusively selling B2B to now selling more than 80% DTC. Ellen brought a level of energy and ambition to the interview that didn’t disappoint, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Main Takeaways:Howdy, Partner: One way to expand your product line without taking on the entire risk and expense of production, testing, etc., is to form a partnership with companies that already make products you are interested in selling. By partnering with Madewell and Richer Poorer socks, Hedley & Bennet was able to expand its product line and grow its audience and customer base without having to add to or adjust the supply chain. Pick Up The Phone: As a young company, any mistake could be a dagger to the heart. But, things happen and sometimes you have to swallow the cost of a mistake for the overall good of the business. The best way to do that is to be honest, take responsibility, and do it one-to-one. Make the hard phone call instead of hiding behind an email. Your customer might be upset that their order was messed up, but you will build respect and trust when you show them you’re making a personal effort to make it right.From B2B to DTC: It may seem obvious, but moving from almost exclusively selling B2B to having 80% of your products sold DTC is a massive shift. Tune in to hear what that looked like for Hedley & Bennett, and advice for any company considering this move.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Ellen Bennett:Great. Hi guys. My name is Ellen Bennett and I'm the founder and CEO of Hedley and Bennett.Stephanie Postles:Hey everyone. And welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder and CEO at Mission.org. Today on the show, we have Ellen Bennett, the founder and CEO of Hedley and Bennett. Ellen, welcome to the show.Ellen Bennett:Thanks for having me.Stephanie Postles:Yeah, I'm very excited to have you on. You're the first person with a outfit change that we've had before getting on. So it's a good day to have a new thing occur on a podcast interview.Ellen Bennett:I love color and I brought a light yellow cat and I had a dark yellow hat. So I just changed to a dark yellow hat in case everyone's wondering, what the hell is she talking about?Stephanie Postles:Yep. This is working for me more now. So now I'm ready to get into it. So your company looks awesome. I saw that Hedley and Bennett, you guys are creating handcrafted aprons and you're in over 4,000 restaurants and coffee shops, which is wild and crazy. So your story seems like one that I want to go back to the early days. Like before, you're in all these restaurants and coffee shops, how did you start? How did you even get into this industry?Ellen Bennett:So I used to cook professionally. I worked at a two Michelin star restaurant, hated our uniforms, and I wanted to make them better. I wanted to make people feel empowered and awesome. And you hear, oh, she has an apron company and you might think frilly, curly aprons, but I need you to stop what you're doing right now, go to our website to hedleyandbennett.com and check it out because you'll understand pretty immediately that we are the polar opposite of that. We are a really awesome collection of colorful, very well-made, very high quality products, which are kitchens, gear and aprons.Ellen Bennett:And it began with this idea of just make a good apron for the restaurant world, make the perfect apron. And it quickly evolved into this giant community of chefs that also felt like they needed that same product. And it was just me out of my house, out of my mini Cooper, running to farmer's markets, talking to chefs, really doing a very grassroots marketing approach to everything because frankly, I didn't have any investors. I didn't have any outside capital. I had me, myself and I against the world and my product. So I began with that and just built off of it, reinvested every penny I made back into the business and grew it chunk by chunk brick by brick. And it took time, but I believe that the good things take time. So I've been happy with our journey. We are eight years in now.Stephanie Postles:Awesome. So for anyone who has not worked in the restaurant business, which I have but I've not been back in the kitchen. I was like server, bartender, shot girl, hey. What makes a bad apron and what did you hear when you're going out and interviewing people and kind of doing that market research to create what you have today, which is an awesome, but sturdy looking apron. I saw one on your website with really cool pockets, but it was very trendy, but also look [inaudible]. How did you get there and what were you wearing before we were like, this sucks?Ellen Bennett:Yeah, totally. So before Hedley and Bennett was born, aprons were very much just a commodity as something you didn't think about, you didn't look at, it was just a very, very thin piece of material probably made out of polyester with a strap that wrapped around your neck. And that hung probably below your boobs, like really not fitting on a man or a woman or whoever. And it also had like shoe lay strings around the waist. It didn't adjust in any way and that was it. There was nothing else to it. And what I did with Hedley and Bennett is we made it a whole world. We made it a community. We made it mean something. And from the get-go we had people like Martha Stewart and David Chang and Nancy Silverton. And if you watch any show on TV right now from Top Chef to any show on the food network you will see this little red and on the chest and that is the heavily amended apron.Stephanie Postles:Wow. Okay. You [inaudible] right to the crazy success story now. Now, [inaudible] how did you get in front of Martha Stewart? How did you secure all these partnerships like that, that's crazy.Ellen Bennett:Believe it or not. And this is the 80 year old within me. I always say I'm like an eighty year... I'm secretly an 80 year old man, because I do things the old school way sometimes. I believe in really high quality always. And from day one we made a product that really worked and I've always listened to our customers deeply. Do you know what an NPS score is?Stephanie Postles:Yeah.Ellen Bennett:Yes.Stephanie Postles:Net Promoter Score.Ellen Bennett:Yes. So our NPS score is 80. And that's very high above industry standard, which ranges in the 60 camp. And we are constantly at 80 plus. And the reason we're in that camp is because we've never skimped on the quality of details. The fabrics that we use are everything from Japanese denims, to Italian chambrays to materials that you can beat up again, and again, and again, and this thing is going to last you forever. So you have the craziest chefs out there in the world wearing our products for so many years. Believe me, I got feedback throughout the years. So these kinds of guys, they just love the quality. They loved that it had a point of view and that you could have your own vibe. You didn't just need to be wearing a white apron. Why not have yourself have an identity in the kitchen that was more than just strap a white apron on.Stephanie Postles:Yep. But how did you get in front of them? Did you send them free samples to try and show them quality? How did you even get in front of these top shows?Ellen Bennett:A lot of it was word of mouth. So one chef would take it to an event and another chef would see that little red patch on the chest and be like, "what is that?" And then they'd say, "oh, there's a girl, her name's Ellen." They would call me the quote unquote apron lady. "Oh, you got to contact Ellen. She's making awesome stuff. These were the early days of Instagram. And when I went and met with David Chang, for example, in New York, I was introduced to him by a chef I met in LA. The chef from LA was like, "if you're ever in New York, let me know." And I of course let him know. So I reached out before I showed up to New York and I was like, "chef, I'm coming to New York. I'm so excited to come see your spot."Ellen Bennett:I was very interested in what he was doing and I happen to have aprons with me. So I obviously was going to show him when I was in New York. And he said, "yeah, come by my restaurant." I stopped by, I showed him aprons. He bought some from me and then he's like, "well, how else can I help you?" I was like, "you know what, I'd love to meet a few other chefs who do you know?" And he's like, "oh, David Chang is a good friend." Like, "can you reach out to him right now for me? I'll come over today." And he was like, "yeah, sure." And so then that chef emailed David Chang. He responded in like an hour later. I was standing inside Momofuku, convincing David Chang to buy aprons from me. And David was like, "I don't know who you are."Ellen Bennett:He was really nice, but there was nothing about Hedley and Bennett that existed the way it does now in the industry. But I was so excited at the idea of getting him aprons that I was like, "all right, do you need it on consignment? Do you need net 60? What do you need? I'm going to give it to you, but I'm not walking out of here without you wearing Hedley and Bennett. Because, I promise you're going to love it." And I had enough conviction in my product that I knew once he actually had his team wearing it, they would love it. And sure enough, David Chang and his restaurants have worn Hedley and Bennett for six plus years now.Stephanie Postles:And did they buy that day when you-Ellen Bennett:They did. They ordered 50 aprons, custom aprons from me. And he's like, "I don't even know how you did that, but all right, I'm excited." And I was like, "yay." And then I took a picture with him, put it on Instagram. Just using what I had, honestly, it was like focused on what you have and not what you don't have. And I was like, I have myself, I have this great product and I have a new customer. I'm going to talk about it. It was very basic, but I kept doing that again and again and again. And the flywheel just started spinning.Stephanie Postles:Yeah. That's such a good reminder too, about asking your current customers or your network for referrals. I think a lot of people feel awkward and uncomfortable about doing that. Especially when you make a sale to someone to then be like, and now I'm going to ask for that extra thing. But I found that usually people always say yes, like "yes, I'll try and find someone else in my network to help you. Yes. There's someone else that I know," but they wouldn't think about offering that up right from the beginning. But when you ask it's like all these doors open, I think not enough people ask though.Ellen Bennett:I agree. And one of the things that I've always championed within our organization is never treating people like a transaction. So when you are being friends with people and you actually care about them, and you're not just caring about making that sale, people are willing and much more willing to help you. And also if you are excited about what you're doing and you genuinely are there because you're trying to help in some capacity, I've just found that everyone is willing to get on that bandwagon. Like when that chef reached out to David Chang, he's like "this girl she's got hustle. She's figuring out. She's got this business." They appreciate when people try. And so you just kind of want to help people that are out there going out of their comfort zones.Stephanie Postles:Yeah. I completely agree. So how did you go about, getting back to the earlier days, like you're not a designer, you didn't have background in that. What was it like getting into that industry and trying to figure out, how do I get a product manufactured? How do I pivot that when I have feedback? Somethings going wrong. What did that look like? And what were some of the lessons from those early days?Ellen Bennett:I had some orders go south very frequently at the beginning. And they were very expensive as a tiny, small business. One of them being Bryan Voltaggio he ordered the biggest order I'd ever gotten. I think it was 150 aprons. And we had a mishap in sewing land and the sewers just didn't get it done in time. And we were on them and we were hounding them and they had a restaurant opening. And so you can imagine delivering 150 aprons after the restaurant opens on the other side of the United States is not right. And we had to just suck it up and make it right. I refunded part of it. I overnighted stuff. I covered the cost of it. I called the assistant and spoke to her personally and said, "I'm so sorry. This is what occurred. It's on us. We really messed up and we're going to make it right." And just owning your mistakes, especially when you're a small business hiding behind emails, this is where my 80 year old man comes out, pick up the phone.Ellen Bennett:There's nothing like human contact, especially when things go South. Do not try and resolve a problem or a deeply rooted issue on an email, have the balls to call the person and fix it. And people really appreciate that. For as technologically savvy as we all are, human connection will never surpass an email. I mean the other way around. So, that was a lot of what I did at the beginning when things went South. I would pick up the phone and call people and be like, "tell me what happened. How can we make this right. We'll take care of it." And we bid it many times where we covered costs on stuff.Stephanie Postles:Is it usually delays type of issues that-Ellen Bennett:It was delays, or there were errors on the fabric, or maybe it was a new fabric we were testing. We didn't test because we didn't even know to test fabrics. And so it may be a bled on their clothes. You name it, it happen…
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