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They say that a goldfish grows to the size of its tank. But what if that small fish is ready to launch into a bigger pond? That is the situation Sea Bags has found itself in recently. With a rabid following and millions in revenue, the Portland, Maine-based retail store has outgrown its initial eCommerce setup and is ready to grow into a major totes and accessories brand thanks to growth fueled by personalization, storytelling and an incredible social media presence. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Laura Hnatow, the Vice President, Marketing & Ecommerce at Sea Bags, explains how she is helping to expand the eCommerce platform using a cross-platform social media strategy, and she digs into the re-platforming experience she is leading to help Sea Bags utilize tools like A.I. and M.L. to grow their business both online and as they expand to brick and mortar locations. Key Takeaways: Content, social media and UGC utilization are critical in building and maintaining an active and engaged customer base Re-platforming offers an opportunity to utilize new tools such as A.I. and machine learning to introduce new forms of personalization in product offerings as well as marketing strategies The power of storytelling is the most important tool in your toolkit to differentiate yourself from the competition 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 the show. Laura: Hi, thanks for having me. Stephanie: I'm really excited about you joining me today. I just was browsing through your website, Sea Bags, and I wanted to buy like about five things. Laura: Oh, that's flattering. Stephanie: Yeah. It's awesome. An awesome product. I'd love to hear a little bit about what Sea Bags, in your own words, and why you joined it. Laura: Yeah. Sea Bags is a company based in Portland, Maine, that manufacturers bags, totes and accessories from recycled sails from sailboats. We gather those sails one at time from the boating community all around the country, and bring them back to Portland, where we cut them down one-by-one. Each sail is a little bit different, therefore each bag is a little bit different from the next. People come to visit us in Portland, where they can actually see the bags being made on the waterfront, at our building that actually overhangs the water, with the hum of lobster boats outside, along with the sewing machines and the seagulls. It's really a great experience in quintessential Maine. Laura: The reason why I joined Sea Bags... It was almost seven years ago at this point. The opportunity was presented to be by the current CEO. It was the story effectively. The whole story about the brand. It was so compelling. I've worked for a number of brand manufacturers before, L.L. Bean and Cuddledown. They all had great manufacturing stories to tell, but this story was so much more authentic and rich. It was that authenticity that made the story so easy to tell. They also had built the brand up on these three core tenets, that drive the business every day. It was this very defined mission behind the company, of being made in the U.S.A., sustainable in product and practice, and also committed to giving back to the community generously. Those three things guide all of our decision-making in everything that we do. With such a clear mission and mandate, in terms of how we were going to grow the business forward, to me it seemed like a no-brainer to join that team. Stephanie: Yeah. That's very cool. What is the story behind Sea Bags? I think it started with the Founder's dad. Right? Laura: Yeah. Many years ago, the original founder, Hannah, her dad, he was in the sail bag-making industry, for the actual bags that hold sails in between seasons. He made a recommendation to his daughter, "You should try to figure out what to do with these old sails. They're just going to landfills." She crafted the first ones. It's our current COO, Beth, who actually grew the business from there. She partnered with her and then grew the business to where we're at now, with the help of our current leadership and CEO. Yeah. It started as a hobby business, and now has really ground to be a lifestyle brand. Stephanie: That's amazing.The one thing I really liked, which I didn't know before, was I didn't realize that sailboat sails actually can't break down. So when you guys say you're focused on sustainability, you really mean it. Nothing would happen with those sails, if you didn't transform them and give them a second life. Is that correct? Laura: You're absolute right. Yeah. Predominantly sailboat sails are made out a material called Dacron. Dacron has an element of plastic fiber in it. It's that resilience that lets the sail hold up to the strength of the wind and actually propel a sailboat forward. But it is that strength in the fiber and how it's made that makes our bags so durable as well. Because of that inability to break down in the landfill, we knew that that material, itself, would be perfect for a bag. They wear like steel. People have gone into our store to show off, "Here's my bag. I brought it 15 years ago." They wash it regularly in the washing machine. They look great. Yeah. They do wear really well. Stephanie: That's so cool. How do you convey that uniqueness to your customers, especially through an online experience? I saw some really great videos that you all had on your website, which I thought were amazing. Is that part of the way that you convey that? Laura: Yeah, absolutely. Storytelling is one of the things that we do best. Like I said, that's why I joined the brand, is this rich story. We do a lot of content creation on our team. It's easy to do content creation when you have a lot to work with. Building really great video content... We have a new line of products all the time. We have new partners that we're collaborating with regularly. So being able to stitch together different videos, content pages on the website. We integrate a lot of user-generated content into the website and our marketing. Laura: So things like customer testimonials, but also customer images. We have a very rich user-generated content campaign, called our Sea Bag Citing campaign. It's a hashtag. And customers in that campaign will tag us and show us all the places they take their Sea Bag. It's really a great opportunity for us, because when we see a great picture, instead of us having to go out and stage a photo shoot, we've got a really authentic image of somebody vacationing using their bag in the environment that it was intended for. Stephanie: Yeah. I was very impressed when I saw your social media following and how engaged people were and the really great photos they were tagging you all in. I definitely see the world of online sales seems to be moving to social media and building a community. How do you think about building that up, and creating relevant content, and keeping those followers engaged? Laura: Yeah. I'd say it's one of the things we're really good at, but it's also probably one of the things that's the most challenging in what we do. Because people spend a lot of time on social media, but everybody's competing for their attention. I have a social media team with multiple partners on it. I've tasked them with making sure, across all the platforms, that, number one, we're showing different content, to keep different types of people engaged. And the other thing is that we're hitting the breadth of content that I'd like us to do. Laura: They have a filter that they put all of our content through, to make sure that we're showing the right variety of, and frequency of, things like behind the scenes images, testimonials, new product launches, PR news that we're doing. We're trying to make sure that we hit the breadth. And also, we're tailoring it to the specific types of platforms. Obviously Facebook and LinkedIn are not a synonymous platform so we make sure that some of the content goes on one location and we speak to those audiences a little bit differently. Laura: I think customers want to be invited to participate and we do a lot of that with either surprise and delight opportunities, where we ask people to come and bid on something for a chance a win to a wristlet. A wristlet is a small item. It's not like a vacation getaway. But that alone... people love the gesture. They love to participate. It's really interesting. When somebody does win a prize, it's funny how authentically and genuinely thrilled for the winner the other customers are. It does become very communal. They're like, "Oh, my God. I'm so happy for you. Great job. You're going to love it." Laura: Then we also find that customers... Getting back to this idea of engagement. This is delightful for us. Customers sometimes answer on our behalf. We'll get comments that say, "Do you have this bag in this color? Are you ever going to offer this again?" Before we can even comment, we'll have other customers saying, "Yes, they have it. You can go to this page." It's almost like we've got these brand ambassadors stalking us right within our social media. That is so flattering. It really does speak to a highly-engaged social media following. Stephanie: Yeah. That's amazing. Having people who are working for you and your brand without even asking. Laura: Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie: It's a key strategy, if you can figure it out. Laura: It is. It's great. Stephanie: Are there any new emerging digital channels that you are excited about or focused on right now? Laura: I think in terms of new channels, I don't think there is one. Social media really is where we're spending a lot of our time as a channel, in terms of trying to grow audience and engagement. We are playing around with some things like influencer marketing, which is important. I think some people might not call it new and emerging either. We're doing quite a bit in just dabbling in lots of different spaces. There is a lot of overlap. I think video is probably where we found the most success, in terms of developing content and distributing. Video specifically for Facebook has been fantastic for us. We're repurposing a lot of that video content again. We like to recycle. We put it in a lot of places. We're trying to incorporate it into the site. We use it for things like Instagram Stories. It's been really fruitful, so that's been really fun. Stephanie: Very cool. Any key strategy that you have when it comes to guiding a customer through that buying journey while utilizing social? Laura: It's interesting. We have a really defined and fine-tuned digital marketing strategy. We work with a great partner that helps us distribute all of our paid advertising. That would include paid social. One of the things about paid social that I think is challenging for people... I do chat with folks who say, "Facebook doesn't really work for us." I am always surprised to hear that. I think part of it is, it's the type of content that you're putting out in terms of advertising on Facebook advertising. Making sure you have the right mix of video, and static ads and then dynamic remarketing ads are really important. Laura: I think the other thing, too, is how you measure it. Of course, there's different attribution models. Last click attribution and first click attribution. Of course, Facebook measures the performance differently than some other folks might measure it. We base it on Facebook's measurement. When you base it that way, you'll see that the programs themselves actually perform much better than if you base it on the other attrition models out there using Google Analytics. Stephanie: That's interesting. I definitely see Facebook stepping their game up with the launch of I think it's Facebook Shops just yesterday or the day before. Laura: Yeah. It's so interesting. The landscape is changing quite a bit. I was actually talking about this recently with the CEO, because we see organic shifting quite a bit. We're doing a lot, in terms of SEO on the website and building organic content. We have a blog that we try to regularly publish. It's made a big impact on our SEO, but then all of a sudden when you have the search results pages changing to favor, again, more ad space? You do immediately see a falloff in your organic search results. Paid search all of a sudden is also doing much better, but you're also spending a lot more money perhaps than you had intended to. Stephanie: Are you guys doing any quick pivots to try and bring back the organic searches? How do you think about that when things change so quickly? Laura: Yeah. I don't think there is a quick pivot with organic. Organic is a long game, as always. The pivot that we're doing right now, and I wouldn't even call it that. We are looking at our digital strategy on a daily basis and really refining things. So if we see something taking off, we are chasing it. A great example is shopping at one point was doing very poorly. We didn't know why and watched it for about a week or two. It was right when things were headed down to a flat line period at the end of March. Everybody was in kind of a lull. Then all of sudden things turned around and a lot of e-commerce folks were seeing a spike. As soon as we saw that spike, we chased it. I think that's the thing. You really have to be on top of it and know when to chase it and keep increasing your budget. Laura: We've increased our budgets in area like shopping more than we've typically been comfortable. I would say the same goes for Facebook Prospecting. We found that Facebook Prospecting is performing incredibly well for us. We do a lot of prospecting with video ads for Facebook as well, and those are very productive too. Stephanie: Very cool. Did you have to adjust any messaging when it came to acting fast on that? With everything going on with the pandemic, did you kind of change how you target people and market to them? How do you think about that? Laura: We changed the messaging. Yeah. We definitely wanted to make sure we weren't being tone deaf to what was going on. We definitely pulled down any ads that had anything to do with travel-related products. We have a great travel collection. We pulled down all of those because nobody was going to be traveling. I think the thing that we did more so than the actual ad strategy was our product strategy changed a little bit. We wanted to look at our product from the viewpoint of how we could add more value to it, to help solve problems for people who were now stuck at home and still had life to conduct. Laura: The example I'll give is Easter came around and people were kind of caUght off guard by the idea that, "Oh, our Easter family celebration is not going to happen. The Easter egg hunt is not going to happen. I have a grandchild. How are we going to commemorate this holiday that is very important to a good portion of the population?" We quickly partnered with a local chocolate company that had just laid off most of its workforce. They were able to bring back five of their employees to help produce chocolate to put in our Easte…
Full show notes at the publisher“What will my customers like and buy?” The timeless retail question today is answered with enterprise-grade purchasing, inventory, and sell-through analytics for big box sellers, but not SMBs. SMBs have long made these decisions with their guts and intuition. But what if a marketplace powered with those same analytics could enable small shops to purchase with the same information? Faire has discovered this opportunity is worth $1 million in sales per day, and growing. Faire is a wholesale marketplace that helps retailers find and buy wholesale, while also connecting makers with physical stores or businesses. and it was built using a data-first model that evens the playing field for those small shops. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Marcelo Cortes, the Co-founder and CTO of Faire, joined us to explain how the company got started and the steps it took to reach the billion-dollar valuation it boasts today. Much of the success is thanks to Faire’s ability to analyze data and iterate based on what that data tells them, but it is also built on a sense of community between makers and buyers, who have been able to find each other in a world filled with outside noise. Key Takeaways: Implementing personalization throughout the buyer & seller journey is key when setting up a two-sided marketplace You need to have a message people understand quickly that really resonates with them Being able to iterate quickly and build on the go allows you to be more nimble and capitalize on data you are collecting to create a better business and experience 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: Hey everyone, and welcome to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles. Today, we have Marcelo Cortes joining the show, the co-founder and CTO of Faire. Marcelo, how's it going? Marcelo: It's great. It's great to be here, thanks for inviting me. Stephanie: Yeah, thanks. It's fun having someone, you said you were in Toronto, or a little bit north, right? Marcelo: Yeah, that's right. Our office in Canada is in Kitchener-Waterloo, which is about an hour from Toronto. Stephanie: Cool. Do you ever make it out to the San Francisco area? Marcelo: I do in normal times, I go very often. I usually go there once a month. Stephanie: Next time you're around, you'll have to stop by our studio and we can do an in person interview. Marcelo: Yeah, that would be great. I hope that can happen soon. Stephanie: Yeah, I hope so too. Fingers crossed. I would love to hear a little bit about Faire, and your background and role at Faire. Marcelo: Yes, of course. Faire was founded in 2017. Me, Max and Daniele are the co-founders, the original co-founders. Jeff also started the company with us, but he left and came back after a few years. Faire is a wholesale marketplace. We help retailers, basically mostly physical stores, brick and mortar, find products to buy wholesale. Then on the other side of our marketplace, we have all the brands or makers on our platform that are selling products, and we help connect those makers with the physical stores. Stephanie: Very cool. The makers reminded me, in a way, of the Etsy makers that normally would never be able to have their products in a large retailer, like a Nordstrom. Is that accurate? Marcelo: Yeah. We are somewhere in between Etsy ... I would like to say there is a little bit of intersection with Etsy, but a little bit a level above as well, where we do have smaller manufacturers or makers that have a small operation, but we also have some more sophisticated ones that have warehouses and things like that. Stephanie: Cool. How did you think about creating Faire? How did that idea come about? Marcelo: Yeah, it's an interesting story. Max, who is our CEO, back in the day after he graduated from school, he was working on bank consulting. He was always an entrepreneur by heart, so he was always trying to do businesses on the side. A friend of his asked him if he was willing to try to build a business of selling a product or distributing a product in the United States. The product was actually a physical umbrella, a rain umbrella that was manufactured in New Zealand, called Blunt Umbrellas. It's a very cool umbrella. It has cool shapes, cool colors, doesn't break with wind. He was like, "Yes, let's do this on the side." Marcelo: That's when he learned how the wholesale industry works, especially in North America. He searched on Google, how do I start selling products, or how do I distribute products wholesale like everybody else does? Basically, there were a few ways. You can go find sales reps or hire sales agencies to have all the sales reps trying to sell your products. You have to go to trade shows. He did all of those things. Eventually, he got this company to be successful distributing the product in North America. But at the same time, throughout all this process, he couldn't stop thinking that there's a lot of areas here that could be improved with technology. This whole market is really in the dark of technology. Marcelo: Years later, we met at Square. We all worked at Square together for four or five years each. Combining the expertise we had there with dealing with small businesses with this idea of, how can we really add technology to wholesale distribution, make it better? We finally came to the conclusion that ... we found the data that's available online as well on products, and on makers and on retailers, we could put it all together and build this idea that could add a lot of value to everybody in the industry. Stephanie: That's awesome. Were there any technologies or insights that you gained while you guys were at Square that you took into the business when creating Faire? Marcelo: Basically, there isn't anything .... technology that's advanced. There were combinations of many smaller things. For example, the fact that if you think of a small store, a brick and mortar store that might have one to five locations, which is usually our target audience, they're trying to compete with much larger brick and mortar stores, big buck stores, or with eCommerce. They have no data. If you think of Walmart, they have data on all their products. They know what sells well where, what time of the year. The little store, they're buying products basically all by intuition. They see a few products, they look at it and they have to make a decision whether they're customers are going to like it or not. Marcelo: We realized that we can actually build something that will give them the ability of having the same type of tools that much larger businesses, or big buck stores, or eCommerce platforms have, to make much more well informed decisions on what products are going to work well in their stores. On top of that, another thing that we learned a lot of course at Square is how to deal with underwriting the small businesses. We helped Square do Square Capital, which is the landing program that they have at Square. Part of that process, we learned a lot about how do you decide how much credit to give to a store like this? That's also part of what we do. Marcelo: As a store comes into our platform, we give them the ability to buy products that they can pay 60 days in the future. We give them credit to buy products, and we allow them to return any of those products if it doesn't work. So, basically- Stephanie: Yeah, that's huge. When I saw that you all did that, I'm like, wow, I don't know how you make that work. But not only giving store owners credit and saying you don't have to pay me right away, and you can return products? I haven't heard of anyone else doing that. Marcelo: Yeah, that's how we are combining and adding technology to this ecosystem to make those things possible. We have to do our job well to be able to offer these value propositions. We have to make sure that we are recommending the right products to the stores, and guiding them into buying the right amounts as well. We can't just let them buy way more than they would be able to sell. We should be steering them away from products that we don't think are going to perform well in their store. If we do that part of the job well, the other part is also making sure that the makers or brands that we're onboarding on the platform are also very high quality and good, so that, again, the products that we are selling have a much higher chance of performing well in stores. Stephanie: How did you build that platform to cater to different types of clients? I can see the one person in Arizona making bracelets versus the larger person who's used to fulfilling large quantities, because maybe they've sold on other platforms before, and then different sized retailers. How did you build a platform that caters to all of them? Marcelo: Yeah, it's a very hard problem. That's another place where technology is used to our own advantage. We need to be very good at serving customers differently, and providing a completely customized experience to different types of stores. That's what we do. That's why data science is so important for us, and we have a very strong data science team tackling this problem of ranking and personalization. The reality is, we really treat each customer differently. Every different store that comes to our platform, they have a completely different experience. If you are a store that sells gifts, you're going to see a lot of gifts. The more we learn about you, the things that you like to see, the search that you make, the products that you sell and you buy from us, the more accurate we get at serving you products that will connect well with your store. Marcelo: But what we can't have, for example, in our platform is that you are a store that sells apparel mostly. You come to our website and all you see is candles, or back products or things that are completely disconnected from your business. From day zero, we have spent a lot of time and effort making sure that we have data, and we are very data driven, and we are building a very custom experience for every different person that comes to our website. Stephanie: Yeah, that seems super important because it can be really easy to get lost when there's tons of products, and you're automatically seeing the wrong one to start with. How do you gather that data on, especially a new customer who's never bought from you before and they're coming on for the first time, how do you have any data to even know what to show them? Marcelo: Yeah. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes we can't do it and we have to start with products in different categories, and then start to learn as they navigate the website. But there are things you can do in advance as well. Even a brand new customer ... they usually have a reason why they came to your website. A lot of those reasons are they were recommended by somebody, they clicked on a link somewhere. If they come from an ad, it's very easy to know what's the ad that they clicked on, and we at least have some idea of what caught their interest. Obviously we have too this mark into serving things or products that are related to what are where they came from. If they clicked on an ad for a candle, we're going to show them similar types of candles, or of course that same candle that they clicked on. But we are also trying to show, oh, here's some apparel categories as well, or here's some best sellers in a different category. Marcelo: Again, we have to show relevant data, and then show enough of other types of data that we can give them a chance to tell us more about who they are and what they are interested in. Stephanie: Got it. Then most likely, I'm guessing you encourage that sign up process, so then you can learn more and more about them. Then you can recommend products even further after that? Marcelo: Exactly. As they sign up, we have some quizzes. We ask them for more information. We keep adding and changing how we do that, of course. But we will try to do a Netflix style, like, what are the types of products that you're interested in, or categories? How big is your store? Things like that. The reality is, we are in 2020. Every little store, brick and mortar store, they have a presence. Once we learn who they are, what store they are, we will find if they have a website, and we will learn more about them by looking at data that we can see online. Publicly available data that's on the internet as well. Stephanie: Got it. Yeah, that's so cool. I saw that you leveraged machine learning and AI to recommend and show these retailers what's going to do well in their store. How do you know what would do well in San Francisco versus Washington DC? What do you utilize to help teach the retailers what they should and shouldn't buy? Marcelo: Yeah. That's obviously part of our secret sauce. There isn't- Stephanie: You don't want to share that with me? Come on, Marcelo. Marcelo: No, I can share it for sure. It's just ... there isn't a very easy answer. It's not like, oh, if you're in San Francisco it's for sure that you're going to sell candles very well. But there is a lot of input and a lot of signals that we gather. I can give you some examples that make a lot of sense and they're very obvious. For example, we have so many stores on our platform today. There's a lot of correlation. Remember I told you Max was selling those umbrellas, Blunt Umbrellas? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yup. Marcelo: Even from his time selling those umbrellas, he realized and he learned very quickly that there are correlations between products as well. If there is a store that sells well the umbrella, there are some products that will also sell well in that store. They could be completely different categories of products. It could be a watch. It could be a sunglass. But the customers that are usually interested in this Blunt Umbrella, which is a high end umbrella, are also going to like and very likely buy products that are in a similar style, or similar type of high level upper cost product. Marcelo: Imagine now instead of one umbrella, we have millions of products that we sell, and we get data back from these stores. We know what's selling in each one of these cuts because they're buying it again from us. So we start to be able to correlate things. You can have a gift shop in New York, and you're selling three products that are very similar to a store in San Francisco. Now you add the fourth product, and that product performs very well in your store in New York as well. It's very likely that that store in San Francisco will also have that fourth product performing well. Stephanie: Got it. That's really cool. Have you ever thought about running on the side a point of sale system that you can put in the store, so then you don't only have access to the stuff that's sold from Faire, but then you have access to their entire inventory and catalog? Then you really have full insights into what's happening in that store, what sells together. Then you can even recommend things at, I guess, a better pace? Marcelo: Yeah, 100%, we have thought about that. Stephanie: Are you doing it? Did I already uncover more secret sauce? Marcelo: Maybe. What we do…
Full show notes at the publisherFor those not in the know, The Mars Agency is an independent agency that combines the best of technology with the best human intelligence to provide solutions to businesses throughout the world of retail and eCommerce. And one of the Martians who leads the charge at Mars is Amy Andrews, the SVP Business Development & eCommerce. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Amy walked us through all the trends she’s been seeing in the eCommerce industry, including the changing consumer behavior, the rise of omnichannel experiences, and why companies that can crack the code of using voice plus video technology could see a huge payoff. Key Takeaways: There is an opportunity to merge eCommerce and influencer content in order to make a more relevant and personalized shopping experience The amount of data in the eCommerce world is overwhelming and can lead to losing the humanity of the work, which Mars tries to avoid by having a blend of the best technology and the smartest humanity Voice shopping still hasn’t reached its tipping point, but there is data that shows that voice technology is growing in the world of eCommerce 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 back to Up Next in Commerce, this is Stephanie Postles, co-founder of Mission.org and your host of this lovely podcast. Today we're joined by Amy Andrews, SEP of business development and eCommerce at the Mars Agency. Amy, how are you? Amy: I'm doing well Stephanie, how are you doing? Stephanie: Doing great, yeah as great as can be. So, when I heard of the Mars Agency, I saw that you called your, was it your customers or your employees Martians? Amy: We call our employees Martians, very lovingly. Stephanie: Oh man, I love that. I was trying to think of a name I wanted to give our employees, but nothing comes close to that. Tell me a little bit about the Mars Agency and how all that came about. Amy: Sure. So the Mars Agency has been around for over 45 years, started by an amazing woman, Marilyn Barnett, and really our focus has been on marketing to shoppers over that last, almost half a century. And Marilyn was really a pioneer in this space, she used to be when she started kind of the grocery model who would hold the box of laundry detergent as people walked by. And really just, yeah, and talk about women in business. She was just such an interesting leader and saw that as a marketing opportunity for brands at retail, and started the Mars Agency. And we have a long history in shopper marketing, and shopper marketing is really just marketing to shoppers so, as that has evolved and how people shop has evolved, we followed them and led them to all those different places. Stephanie: Got it. So are you working with large brands to kind of teach them the trends in the industry and how to market to, like you said, the shoppers, is that how to think about the Mars Agency? Amy: Yep. We work with a lot of large consumer package good clients so, like Campbell Soup, Nestle Waters, several others across top retailers. So Walmart, Target, and for me in the eCommerce space, Amazon is definitely a huge player. Stephanie: Okay, cool. And what is your day to day look like there, what is your role look like? Amy: So I lead our eCommerce team, which I mentioned some of the retailers but we really work across all eCommerce retailers and digital platforms. If you think about things that some of you probably use more recently than others like Instacart and other delivery services. We help brands market to their shoppers in those spaces, and really anywhere that you can buy a product online. Which used to be physical stores would convert it online, or your kind of Amazon, Pure Play retailers, and now as I'm sure you've experienced definitely, there's a lot of different options to buy online as you're scrolling through. Instagram you can shop now and kind of always be almost we're moving towards one click away from a purchase in any environment so, that's really what my team focuses on, for our clients, how do we help them market and ultimately sell more online? Stephanie: Got it. Has everything with COVID-19 kind of adjusted your strategy of what you're advising your clients to do? Or what kind of shifts have you made when it comes to that advisory role? Amy: Yeah that's a great question. I think we have seen a lot of data as this, sadly continues for us. But it has definitely had a huge impact on the eCommerce space, particularly for grocery, since a lot of our clients are the CPG packaged clients. We've seen online grocery projections in the last couple of weeks reach what we thought they would be in 2025. So there's been, yeah huge growth in this space, and a lot of new users to this space so, we know that's out of necessity, but again as this kind of continues, we think that a lot of these people, like 60% of people tried a delivery service for the first time in the last six weeks. That's a ton of new people who are buying new groceries online and, yeah there's been a lot of experience as I'm sure you've heard with, not being able to find what you want, or having slow delivery time- Stephanie: Yeah. Being out of stock of my favorite matcha tea, very disappointing. Amy: Out of stock, yes. Which is a little bit easier to deal with than toilet paper but- Stephanie: Yeah, I guess. Amy: I guess it depends on where you are on both with your supply but, no we've had ... Yeah, a lot of people are having to make different choices and having to try things but as this continues, I think people are forming new habits, and even new preferences, so it's definitely influencing how we're advising our clients and where they should invest. I think what's also interesting is because of a lot of those issues, a lot of our clients and a lot of retailers have just put their marketing on pause, to make sure that they can get things in stock, and for retailers to make sure that they're not price scourging or kind of promoting things in the wrong way that would send the wrong message. Amy: So I think what will be interesting long term is, some retailers and brands kind of catch that, and once they have products in stock, once, even Amazon this week has fixed some of their Amazon Fresh delivery issues. As those things start getting worked out, I think they'll be a lot more interesting marketing opportunities, especially as you think about all those new users, either to a retailer or to a brand. I don't know if you bought a different tea brand when you couldn't find yours. Stephanie: I did, I did. Amy: Yeah, a lot of people are having that experience right, so then it's like how does that new brand try and keep you and then how does your old brand try and get you back? So we're definitely working with our clients on all those types of questions. Stephanie: Got it. Do you think clients should be turning off their marketing budgets? As you mentioned, a lot of them are doing that right now, do you think that's a good strategy, or should they till be maybe thinking of ways to experiment because this is a whole new world, it might be actually a good opportunity to kind of experiment a bit without offending people if possible? Amy: Yeah, no, I think ... Yeah, I think it is a bit of both. I think initially, not just marketing but a lot of businesses and industries, just kind of paused to figure out and make sense of what was going on and determine what they should do next. And I think that was, probably a smart move at the time, just to not make any rash decisions. But we're definitely partnering with our clients now on, what is the right way to market. I think one of the trends that we'll see is probably a lot more regional and geographic differences. Like we in the Bay Area are still sheltering in place for another month. So, online shopping here will be very different than other states that are opening up. Amy: And, marketing to those people might be very appropriate now, and I would definitely recommend testing and trying things in that space. Stephanie: Got it. Amy: So I think it's going to have to be a combination. Stephanie: Yeah, completely agree. Do you see the companies you work with coming to you with similar struggles? Like other themes that you're hearing and any advice around some of those struggles that they're experiencing? Amy: Yeah. I think a lot of the marketing struggles, or just some of the struggles on a more macro level of just the unknown, especially in terms of timing and how long it will continue. And then we kind of have some of the same issues in terms of data, you know there's so much out there, like when you turn on the news, you see so many different stories and different points, sometimes it's kind of hard to determine what are the right guidelines, or what's the right data that you should follow. So, we're really treating this as an ongoing conversation with our clients. And it does differ by geography, it does differ by category or industry. So, I think taking a really custom approach and being able to adapt now, and have a strategy where you're also able to easily adapt moving forward, is going to be really important. Amy: We typically do annual planning with our brands, and we've already been talking, you know we're already in the stages of re-planning but, I think re-planning will be something we do all year now, I don't think it's kind of the pre COVID plan and the post COVID plan, I think it's going to be continuing to adapt. And the brands and retailers that are able to evolve in that way are probably going to be the most successful. Stephanie: Yeah, completely agree. It seems like a good time to kind of pivot in certain areas, cut projects that aren't, maybe as necessary, and thinking in a completely new light based on everything that's happening. What kind of things do you see being cut or changes be made in these re-planning sessions at these companies? Amy: I mean, the big question now, which the Mars Agency is tackling with our clients is, what might come back in-store and what might not, in terms of marketing and planning around that? There's the kind of legal or even not legal, but kind of the official guidelines or restrictions side of things, in terms of how people shop and how many people can enter the store at what time. But then I think there's also a very real consumer behavior piece of it. So, one thing that has happened in stores and that a lot of our brands being food brands, we've done is, things around sampling and trying new products. And whether that's a cooked piece of food outside of a wrapper, or a sealed up new product, I think in both of those cases, I don't know if for myself, and if I think about other shoppers, I don't know how eager we're going to be to take either one of those samples now. Amy: So, we're trying to rethink things like that that have been really traditional vehicles to encourage trial, how do we think about that in a new way? Either if that's a re-plan in terms of, what do we do with those dollars and invest them in something else? Or what I think is maybe more creative and exciting is, how do we think about sampling in a new way? Or how do we think about demos in a new way? And that's where we really see the in-store and the eComm world kind of colliding, and really creating some of these omnichannel is the word that we use a lot. Stephanie: Yeah. Amy: Omnichannel experiences, so that we're moving towards that anyway, and I think COVID has been an interesting tipping point to, as you said, kind of pivot and think about these things, and push ourselves to think about them even more differently now, to deliver the best shopper experience. Stephanie: Yeah, it seems like it could be with everything bad that happened, maybe a good forcing function to kind of push some brands into the eCommerce world who maybe weren't fully utilizing it before, or not at all. Do you see them being able to adapt to some of these changes that you're recommending them or being able to shift something that they've always been focused on selling in-store, always focused on someone having that in-person experience, like you said, whether it's a sample, a demo, have you seen them be able to pivot on to eCommerce, or being open to that, or even having the technology to do it? Amy: Yeah. I mean I'm pretty optimistic, so I think yes, I think all brands can do this and adapt and pivot and do so relatively easily. I think that was a big question before all of this, and the crisis was just how quickly should each, brand based on their category, be moving into this space? And a lot of brands were over-invested in eCommerce because they felt that that was going to be the future so they're a bit of a step ahead. And that doesn't mean that other brands can't catch up but, I think COVID has just been a kind of internal tipping point for a lot of organizations to think about how they're treating eCommerce and maybe prioritizing it a little bit differently. Amy: So, yeah for brands or companies who weren't thinking about it before, I would definitely say, now's the time. And, because the whole industry and the whole world is really shaken up, it's a great time to think about how you're treating eCommerce differently, and then within the eCommerce space, what we can be doing differently there as well. Stephanie: Got it. Is there anyone that you ever looked to in the industry, where you maybe point your clients in that direction of being like, hey, here's an industry leader when it comes to the checkout experience, or the shopping experience, or the unboxing, or anything like that? Anyone that you guys kind of look to as like a leader in the space? Amy: Yeah, that's a great question. I think there are a lot of examples of brands or retailers doing, I would say pieces of the puzzle really well. The one that comes to mind for me as someone who is creating a really holistic, best in class experience, is actually a retailer. I think IKEA does a phenomenal job in this space, in terms of just digital experiences. They have different digital technologies, and apps and platforms, and AI, and all of that, that is really just helping recreate the experience of going to an enormous, huge physical retail destination, I mean, I can't think of a more traditional shopping experience than kind of browsing through those huge displays in IKEA. Stephanie: So many levels, at least here in Palo Alto. Amy: Yes, definitely. I think of like a huge retail footprint that they've had to translate into a digital experience. There's one now where instead of IKEA saying, what's the best .com site or digital catalog? They are thinking what's the best shopping experience? And now you can as a shopper, walk through an IKEA store, through virtual reality, and pick different products, and then also using AI to see them in your own bedroom. So I think they've just done a great- Stephanie: Oh wow, that's awesome. Amy: ... Job. Yeah, I think I've just done a great job of thinking about it a little bit differently, and kind of doing it in a fun way that that's the biggest piece for myself as a shopper as well, that's sometimes…
Full show notes at the publisherHow do you build a successful eCommerce business that has attracted nearly 5 million visitors in a month? For Jerry Hum, it took a few failures and a couple of stumbles out of the gate with his cofounders before finding the winning combination of users, demand, and products all in one. Jerry is a co-founder and the Executive Chairman of Touch of Modern, a members-only e-commerce website and app focused on selling lifestyle products, fashion, and accessories to men. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Jerry takes us through his early struggles and how he found the secret sauce to making his eCommerce platform one of the most popular among male shoppers. Plus he explains what metrics other eCommerce pros should be looking at, and gives some advice to other entrepreneurs. Key Takeaways: For a multi-brand company, customer retention and lifetime value is the critical metric to look at Build the primary platform where your primary customer prefers to buy Combine marketing engagement and transactional data to prevent high engagement high cost marketing yielding low sales volume --- 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: Hey everyone. This is Stephanie, your host of Up Next In Commerce. Today we have Jerry Hum. The co-founder and executive chairman of Touch Of Modern. Jerry, how's it going? Jerry: Pretty good. How are you? Thanks for- Stephanie: [crosstalk] good. Yeah, how's it going? So you're in a loft right now, right? In SF, living the quarantine life. Jerry: Yeah, in San Francisco. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: Yep. Stephanie: How- Jerry: [crosstalk] for a little longer than most other folks. Stephanie: Yeah. So what's your day look like with being sheltered in place and... I think San Francisco is even stricter than Palo Alto where you guys [inaudible] allowed to do even more than we are. Jerry: Yeah. Well, we actually started preparing for it a little bit earlier actually, just as it was making news headlines and most companies were still up and running. We were planning kind of contingencies and all that planning and seeing how work from home would be like if we had to do it. Luckily we came up with a plan just in time. We actually went into it before even California started making statements about it. So I think we are kind of in a pretty decent groove in terms of keeping the business running smoothly and all that. In terms of a day to day, I'm actually surprised as to maybe how engaged people have remained. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Being that we have to do it all through technology. I actually started thinking about it, why is it that work from home is almost a little bit easier now than it was in the past. And I think it's because when it's the only option then you just do it. Right? Stephanie: You have to make it work. Jerry: Yeah. It's not like if half the office is doing one thing and then... Or not like half the office. If most of the office is at work and a few people are work from home then it's actually more difficult because the people in the office are like, "Oh, I'll just wait for that person to get in or something." But if this is the only way that every one is communicating then it's actually fairly smooth. Obviously everything takes a little bit more time and all that. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: [inaudible] day is actually longer than usual. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: All things considered, I think it's working pretty well. Stephanie: Good. Yeah. Hopefully it will all come to a close soon. How have you all handled... I mean has there been any struggles, I'm imagining taking photos of your products and things like that? That's probably a very in-person type of thing that [inaudible] people have perspectives on and all want to help. How are you handling things like that with your business that seem pretty hard to do virtually? Jerry: Yeah. So luckily, some of our folks have set-ups at home. Stephanie: Good. Jerry: Yeah. Because usually, photographers, this is not just a job. It's also a passion and a hobby. Right. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So we've been able to make due... Obviously at a reduced capacity. Yeah. Stephanie: Yeah. Well, good. So maybe that's a good point to dive into what is Touch of Modern. If you were to explain it to the listeners and give us some background. Jerry: Touch of Modern is the only shopping destination that men visit daily. And we offer a [inaudible] mix of remarkable products across all categories and that you can use everyday.This could be anything from a flame thrower you can strap to your wrist, or the newest exercise gadget, or anything in between. Stephanie: Are women allowed? Because I was on there and I was like, "I want to buy some of this stuff." I would buy... Maybe not a flame thrower but there was some good stuff on there that I'm like, "I want this." Jerry: Of course, women are allowed. It's just kind of more... A little bit more of our differentiator. Because most E-commerce sights out there are catered toward women. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: [inaudible] we're not the only one but one of a few that really cater to men. Stephanie: Got it. Yeah. It looks awesome. A lot of the products. I was afraid to hit buys right away. How did you come to create the idea of Touch of Modern? And I think I read it was the third... The third times a charm. That you had done three other things, or two other things before that until you got to Touch of Modern. What was that like? What was that journey like? Jerry: Yeah. I'll give you the long story here, maybe. Stephanie: Good. Jerry: [Four] founders, guys from New York. The business actually was a peer-to-peer experienced market place. And this is kind of similar to what Airbnb has now. Obviously they built that on top of their existing business but we were trying to start from scratch at the time. That was extremely difficult because you're telling folks to change their lifestyle. Right? If you need to suddenly offer a cooking class, that's not a easy thing to do if you don't have the customers for it. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Or the time for it. And then we're telling customers to come on this platform and book stuff. But if you don't have the activities, what is there to book? Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So it becomes this chicken and egg problem. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: It came out of our own need because we were guys from New York, you're kind of looking for interesting things to do all the time, just in the city. Right? The second business was called Raven. Well, the first one was called [Scarra 00:05:24]. I don't know if I mentioned that. Second one was called Raven. That was a slight variation on the first. And that was we took out half of the equation because we realized, double sided marketplace, super hard. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: We started offering activities that already existed. This could be like hang gliding. This could be sky diving. This could also be day at the spa. Right. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: We also layered on a recommendation algorithm where you could like stuff. And based on your activity, we would offer you a daily feed of different activities and things that were new to discover in your area. We got a lot of engagement out of that. People found really cool things. If you look at my feed versus somebody else's, it would be really different based on what we like. When we looked at it, it was like, oh this is a pretty accurate description of things I'm interested in and my hobbies and such. Right? Jerry: And that was difficult because people would then discover stuff but they wouldn't actually book it with us. They would just call directly [crosstalk 00:06:29]. Stephanie: Wow. Jerry: What we learned from that was, well, we need reason for people to transact. Right? And we need maybe something to make us relevant for right now. So the second generation of that business was actually arranging events where we built a mobile app as the early days of... Not the iPhone but when apps started getting the more complicated... Better than just the kind of beer pouring app. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Those simple things. Right? So we used Geofencing to create this thing where if you went within a certain perimeter of something going on, we would tell you about it. We'll alert you and be like, "Hey, like... Street fair over here or something over there." And that was really cool because there wasn't another app like that. At least that we know of... That we knew of at the time that was doing that. Also at the time, a lot of folks were moving to San Francisco. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Probably even more so than they are today. A ton of messages from people saying, "Wow, you're really helping me discover the city. Every weekend we pull this out and, you know, see what's going on." Especially because San Francisco is the type of city that always has something going on. Stephanie: Yeah. Like on the side streets, you're like, "There's a whole festival going on right now." Jerry: Yeah. So that was really cool but again, a lot of these things were free. So it wasn't there wasn't a real business model there. There's just a ton of engagement. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It seems like you guys are kind of ahead of your time with that. Because even when I'm hearing about that now, I'm like, oh, if you would have kept going with that one, Airbnb probably would have acquired you. Jerry: Yeah. Right. Stephanie: Oh, if you kept going with the Geofencing thing, Google would acquired you because I worked for Google Maps before this. Jerry: Oh, yeah. Stephanie: They're still trying to figure out how to show you where the festivals are, where the farmers markets are based on your location. So maybe you guys are just ahead of your time with everything. Jerry: Maybe. That would be the positive view of it. So I think the lesson we learned from that was... Incredibly hard to scale location based things. because you could sell out all the tickets to this one show or a certain percentage of it but there's unlimited margin and you're constricted by the location and therefore we couldn't justify the kind of business mechanics that were necessary to actually make that sustainable. I mean, it raised a ton of money. Right? And so this isn't going to get like... Where it wasn't like, hey, we're going to get to a billion people and then it's going to work. It's not like that. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So we were like, what were we good at and what were we not good at? We were really good at getting people engaged. Really good at discovery aspect of things. We just needed something more scalable to be the thing that we featured. And realized that, hey, products... You get scale with products. Right? Mass distribution and all that. There's real margin there because that's kind of built into the modal that [inaudible] already exists. Jerry: We had always kind of liked products, just as the people that we were. But we didn't want to touch it because we didn't want to deal with real world problems of moving things around, shipping, [crosstalk 00:09:46]- Stephanie: Yeah. Logistics. Jerry: Yeah. Logistics. Right? After going through the struggles of the first two business, we realized that things are not really... It's not rocket science. Right? This has been done. We started thinking about what kind of unique angle we could take at it. I remember we were in the living room and we're talking about speakers for some reason and who made the best speakers. Dennis had his idea. Jon had his idea. And then Steven, who's real audio files, was like, no, these are the best speakers. He knew all these brands that we didn't even know about. We knew the mass market brands but not the kind of stuff that he was into. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: He had all this knowledge. Okay, you win that debate. Right? And we realized that we have this thing that we geek out on. Right? Jon was really into cooking and he had these really expensive knives that he would keep in this [inaudible] that he would have to take out and show us. Dennis was really into outdoor activities and all the gear that's associated with that. I use to be an architect when I was in New York so I spent way too much money on furniture. So that was my thing. Right? And so everyone had our own thing. No one out there was catering to this desire or whatever it was that ties all these things together. Right? Jerry: So we just started sourcing things that we thought were cool. Hey, if we think it's cool, other people are going to think it's cool too. Right? It wasn't like a men thing. It wasn't even necessarily a discovery thing. It was just these were the things that we thought were cool. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Through that process, right away it kind of hit in a way that the other two businesses did not hit at all in two years. Right? Where day one we started getting real transactions and kind of buying activity. Right? Stephanie: How? How did you get buying on day one? How did people even find your website or know where to go? Jerry: We did not even have a website on the very first day. We actually... What happened was Dennis, who ran marketing, would just start running ads and would go to a landing- Stephanie: Okay. Facebook? Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: Or what kind of ads? Okay. Jerry: Facebook. Earlier in the days of Facebook too. I think a lot of what we did, now, can't be exactly replicated but there's probably some learnings to take from it. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So we basically just collected emails and say, "Hey, there's this thing that's coming soon." Right? I think [inaudible] probably remember years ago there was tons of these types of things that are just coming soon and you're like wow [crosstalk 00:12:39]. Stephanie: Yeah. That was the strategy back then of just like just put up a landing page and see if people want that fake product that you could create. I remember books where they would suggest that and I'm like, that's a good idea. Jerry: [crosstalk] that is more less of a pit. I mean, we were creating it. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: I'm not talking about like, let's just run ads and see if people like it. We were just building it at the time, that same time we were running ads against it. And basically we had an idea of what that metrics needed to look like in order for a business to work. Right? We just made assumptions down the whole funnel. Right? If we acquire an email for this much, and if this percent of folks convert, and assume a certain order value, and certain repeat rate then this is what our business would look like. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: And no data for anything outside of what it would cost to acquire an email. Basically, we knew the cost of that. Then we started sourcing products and building the website behind it. Then we just went down the funnel and firmed our assumptions. Sometimes they were better and sometimes they were just different. We kind of just proved it out from the top down. Stephanie: Got it. That's really cool. Has it always been a member's only platform? Has there ever been a time where people could just go to the website, the app, and just see the product…
Full show notes at the publisherIn the world of eCommerce, one of the biggest challenges the pros come across is selling something to a customer who physically cannot experience the product at the time of purchase. For Dmitri Siegel, that was one of the hurdles he has had to overcome as the Vice President of Global Brand at Sonos. Dmitri cut his teeth in the world of eCommerce at Urban Outfitters and then moved on to work for Patagonia. And while the number of products he was selling was reduced with each move, the challenge of building a platform that could connect with target buyers remained. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Dmitri explains all of the lessons he’s learned in facing those challenges, including the importance of culture, what a successful brand and website redesign looks like, and what some of the most important metrics are when you’re judging the success of your eCommerce platforms. 3 Takeaways: On any project, culture and collaboration is important — you have to be able to personalize and succinctly summarize your goal on paper so everyone knows what they are working toward Optimizing for margins per session can guide you on what to focus on when adding to your site In times of crisis, brands are given a clean slate to reinvent themselves, accelerate projects, and scrap things that haven’t been working For a more in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. --- 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: Dmitri, how's it going? Dmitri: It's going as well as it can. I'm enduring. How about yourself? Stephanie: It's going well. It's bright and sunny, and even though we can't go anywhere, at least we get to hang out here, right? Dmitri: Yeah. Stephanie: So I'd love to hear a little bit, Dmitri, about your role at Sonos. What is your title, and if you can give me a little bit of background on what you do at Sonos. Dmitri: Sure. I'm the vice president of global brand for Sonos. It means I oversee all of our brand creative and marketing, product marketing. I oversee all of our digital experience and physical retail experience, so our web site and our physical store displays as well, and marketing operations. So kind of all the touch points that you have with our brand except for the product itself. Stephanie: Got it. And how did you get into that role, because it seems very wide ranging whereas a lot of people are like, I only control the web site or I just have this one vertical. It seems like you have a lot under your purview. How did you move into that role? Dmitri: I had kind of a crazy pivot in my career early on. I was at Urban Outfitters and I was the digital creative director, and this was about 15 years ago. It was very early days for e-commerce. And my boss left, and we were interviewing people to run DTC, and there just was nobody really that had much more experience than I did. And so I kind of made the dumb youthful move of being like, hey, I think I could do this job. And my boss at the time, Ted Marlow, was like, all right, well, we'll give it a shot. And so I went from really running creative and the web site product to running the whole business, and they were so good at operations and merchandising and finance and all these things that they felt like they could teach that to me. And so I just had this opportunity to run a P&L and run operations, and that gave me the sort of balanced background between those two things. Dmitri: And everywhere I've been, I've sort of since then, I've just sort of had that balance of the e-commerce business and creative side, and it just came out of basically someone taking a risk on me early on in my career. So yeah, it's been an interesting, interesting journey. Stephanie: That's awesome, really fun to hear about someone betting big on you like that. Was there anything where when you jumped into that role, you're like, I actually don't know anything about this- Dmitri: Oh yeah, so much. Stephanie: And what did you do in those moments if so? Dmitri: So much. Stephanie: And what are some examples of that? Dmitri: I mean, at that time, merchandising, I looked at everything as what would be beautiful, and so understanding this one might be beautiful, but it's low margin and nobody's buying it. That was an important thing to learn. And I also, I remember really early on in sight merchandising saying, oh look, we should put this in the upper left hand corner because it will sell more, or I think we should put this in the upper left hand corner, it's my favorite product or whatever. And I remember the merchandiser at the time going, you know what? I could sell a lot of old flip flops if we put them in the upper left hand corner too. You're not some merchandising genius. So understanding that, just learning the way that shopping actually happens in that medium and the mechanics of it, very humbling from that point of view. Dmitri: But I think having a learner's mentality is important at any stage in your career, I still have that feeling. There's so much that I don't understand, there's so much to learn, and most often honestly from the people who report to you or who are in your own organization. I think being promoted young into that role, I had to very quickly get comfortable with the fact that people who worked in my team knew more than I did and just being humble about that and learning from them, so that's part of what makes it fun to go to work, so. Stephanie: That's great. Have you seen your role at Sonos change since when you started because of the environment or consumer buying behaviors to where it is now? And if so, what are the biggest changes that you've seen? Dmitri: I think that I came in early on to really get the digital side of the business going faster, and we did a lot of the sort of fundamental blocking and tackling of re-platforming, redesigning the web site, but I think quickly realized that this is really a holistic business and a multi-channel business, and what's happening in the product marketing, for example, has just a huge impact on all the channels, including e-commerce. And I think some of the stuff in this field is very optimization oriented, and it's actually not as impactful sometimes as what your naming a product or defining the core benefits of that product that would actually help it in every channel. So my role has definitely gravitated more to the general brand and product messaging overall, and how that comes to life in e-comm is the harshest test of it, the best place to test that. But it's not the sole focus any more. Stephanie: Got it. Yeah, how do you think about bringing a product that's ... You really need experience. Nice speakers or great food or something like that, how do you bring that experience to life on a web site? Dmitri: It is challenging. I mean, the core benefit of Sonos, sound, is invisible, so you can't see it. And if you're listening on a laptop or on a phone, you're not going to experience the quality of sound that we go for and that we create. But really, I think every product has that challenge. I mean, I like to think that Sonos is more complicated and more difficult, but I think you always have to just be really, really rigorous and relentless about what the value is for the customer and then illustrate that in words and pictures in a very slavish way. And I think it has to be like a pop song. There's no guitar solo, there's no 15 part middle part. It's got to be really to the point and verse chorus, verse chorus. And I think that rigor is really, it's true for us probably more so because it is an invisible, ethereal, emotional kind of thing. But I think it applies to just about any product. Stephanie: Yep. Yeah, I agree. One thing I saw on your web site that, I don't know if it just hit home with me, but I thought it really made me think about the experience was when I was scrolling, I saw the speaker on the page and it had little sound bars bounce off the speaker, and it made me be like, oh, cool. And it gets you kind of in that music mode and just thinking about, I wonder how that sounds now. I'm assuming that was intentional, and if so, was that your project? Dmitri: Yeah, so we actually have an entire style guide of how to show sound and how to talk about sound. What are the words that you use? What are the circles that emanate from the speaker, and is this stereo sound or are we showing the tuning of the speaker? And our brand design team, I think in some of the ways that ... Oh, God, this is a random story, but I remember going to a creative summit for McDonald's, and they had an entire session on the Coke and how to make the Coke look delicious and thirst-quenching. And then there was the burger session, and that sound is that for us. We have to be really consistent and relentless again about how do you make this thing look like it sounds great? Dmitri: And there's actually different ways we do that. So in above the line media, for example, we use this very bold waves of sound coming out of the speaker that really grab your attention. When we're doing an education piece like what you saw on the web site, we want to me more articulated about what the sound's actually doing in that moment, so ... And then we have to package that up as a tool kit so that marketers all over the world and partners can show it in the same consistent way. And it's true that repetition and that consistency that I think you actually build a sound brand. Stephanie: Yeah, very cool. And how did you come up with that style guide? Was it a huge project that took a lot of buy-in and everyone had a different idea, and then did you have to train your retail partners or other people of how to interpret it? Dmitri: I think everything always starts with listening and listening to your partners and understanding what they're actually going to use basically and what they really need. And so the style guide was sort of a culmination of a lot of projects where we would have conversations about, God, I can't see the speaker in this shot. I wish there was some way to call attention to it, or the sound of the speaker is so ... You have five speakers in the sound bar, but I can't really tell that from what you're showing me. So hearing a lot of that, and then trying different things and saying, well, this really worked, or this didn't work, and then compiling it ultimately into a style guide. But we didn't set out with a white sheet of paper. It's more listening to the needs and solving the problems of the marketing organization and the go to market organization overall. Stephanie: Got it. Very cool. And I think I saw y'all just did a whole brand redesign with the colors and all that. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, because I don't see many brands doing that. It's usually like, I pick my corporate palette, and it's blue, and it has to be blue for the next 100 years. How did you think about changing that? Dmitri: Yeah, this redesign, it was the coolest one I've ever been a part of because we were able to do the site and the brand redesign at the same time. So often those are two separate projects and maybe even two separate teams where you have the brand design team that goes and comes up with this really cool, hip, exciting brand identity, and then you have this web design team that's like, I can't use any of that. I don't know how I'm supposed to get that to work on the web site. Because we're all one team, we were able to really work on it simultaneously. So we would do some brand exploration, and then we'd be like, okay, maybe the product detail page with that, okay, settle on some core messaging, does that work on the home page, and go back and forth between web design and brand design simultaneously. Dmitri: And we just have a really good team that is really collaborative, and we all had that mission in the end, we want you to see an advertisement, go to the web site, and have it be totally consistent. We don't want these disconnects where the ad sells you something and then you get to the web site and you're like, what kind of ... I thought this was that kind of company, but it's this kind of company. And so that process was really digitally driven. But a lot of times, if you just approach a ... Like we just redesigned the web site, you don't get that sort of high-level brand thinking and strategy to it and communication hierarchy and stuff. And also, you just don't get the sizzle of brand to it. You sort of can get a very functional thing, and we're a premium brand and we command a premium price point. Dmitri: And I think if people show up at your site and it looks like an out of the box thing, then they're like, I don't know if they're really going to deliver on the experience side, so ... It was really cool to balance all of those. And then as far as the question related to color and our brand identity, our product is really black and white. That's the design philosophy of the product itself is that it's really bold, high contrast black and white. And our brand identity was the same way. It was very bold black and white. And what ended up happening with that is you couldn't really see the product because everything was black and white. Dmitri: And then also our category, all of a sudden everybody was just really severe black and white. And so we just, we didn't have a great context to show the product. We weren't standing out in the market. And so our brand is more about the lifestyle of the experience of your home, having high-quality experiences with music and content. And so once we started bring the color in, it just, the product could really pop out, and also just our brand looked really different in the category, so ... We didn't choose a brand color. These colors will keep changing over time, and they're more in a digital, kind of almost a seasonal fashion kind of usage. But this definitely feels right for our company and our product. Stephanie: Yeah, no, that's a great way of thinking. Are there any best practices you learned when trying to work with multiple teams to update the brand and update the web site? Any dos and do nots or places where you're like, oh, this went wrong, but this went really well, and ... Yeah, any guidance for other companies who are listening right now, like maybe that's a good idea to do both? Dmitri: I mean, you really have to build trust in your team, and it's about culture I think first. We couldn't have done that kind of project four years ago. I think our culture is at a place where we trust each other, we're collaborative, we have a shared goal in mind. We're willing to be honest with each other about what's working and what's not working. So I think you have to have the right culture to do that. I think also, when I very first got out of college, I taught school, public school. I was- Stephanie: How cool. Dmitri: An art teacher for a couple of years, and- Stephanie: What grade? Dmitri: It was junior high and high school, so- Stephanie: Okay, that's kind of a hard age to teach. Dmitri: It's very- Stephanie: They can little meanies. I was, anyways. I was a meanie. Dmitri: I mean, when you have 30 kids in a New York City public school, and you have no carrots and no s…
Full show notes at the publisherFor more than 15 years, Dylan Valade was working at his own company designing some of the coolest eCommerce and technological projects in the world. One of his world-class clients? PUMA. So when the sports brand approached Dylan to join their team full-time to lead their global eCommerce division in Germany, it was a tough choice. But ultimately Dylan was excited about the opportunity to completely revamp the eCommerce platform at PUMA and turn it into a leader in the industry. Today, Dylan is the Head of Global E-Commerce Technology, PUMA. On this episode of Up Next In Commerce, Dylan explains what he was focused on during those initial steps of the transformation process and how being a change manager is like being a time traveler. Plus, he discusses how eCommerce is changing and what he thinks is up next in the industry. (Hint: Get ready to see even more automation.) 3 Takeaways: Your data needs to be useful and accurate measures of what is real, otherwise you will not be able to effectively grow or change in the ways that best suit the business ECommerce is about meeting the customer where they are at, and in today's world, that means providing a platform optimized for a world safe-at-home Digital eCommerce disruption will come from countries where the population is more comfortable with change For a more in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. --- 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: Dylan, welcome to the show. Dylan: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Stephanie: Yeah, we were just saying you're in Germany right now. How long have you been there and what brought you out there? Dylan: Moved to Germany a little over three years ago and Puma brought me out here. Puma had been a client of my digital company in the US and asked if I would switch teams and go internal, so that's what I did. Stephanie: Very cool. So was it your own company that you were running in the US? Dylan: Yes. Yeah. Stephanie: Can you tell us a little bit about that and how you started that? Dylan: That started out of just an interest in computers and the web and I began picking up clients in Colorado when I was there mostly for skiing, and snowboarding, but I did a little computing on the side and just sort of picking up clients and business. And I ended up doing that for 15 years. So it was a long period of my life and was really good opportunity because I got to work on all the most interesting projects that we could come up with. Dylan: And Puma came along in that time and doing to do some work for them for their global eCommerce team, which was based in Boston at the time. And then they did a reorg and shuffled the group back to Europe where corporate headquarters are. And in that time I moved to help rearchitect the way we do the technology. Stephanie: Okay, cool. And have you been there for a couple of years or how long has it been now? Dylan: Yeah, since 2016. Stephanie: Okay. And what's that change been like moving to year out from ... you said Michigan, right? Dylan: From Michigan. It's drastic. Stephanie: Yeah. What's the biggest change? Dylan: They are many. But first when you make the decision to move, it's a big choice. And so I actually had kind of dismissed the opportunity, but it was my wife who said, well if I woke up 20 years from now and we didn't do anything differently, I would regret it. Stephanie: Yeah, that's great. Dylan: Let's try it. So- Stephanie: And did you have kids at the time? Dylan: We had two kids and then we've had a third since we got here. Stephanie: Oh, great. Congrats. Dylan: And then after that ... Yeah. The change is pretty consistent as you talk to other ex-pats that the first six months are awful. Stephanie: Like I want to go home. Dylan: It's just, yeah, you've appended your whole life and then you've got all of the different government documents that need to be signed and notarized and you've got all these different appointments and you don't know how to get your haircut. You don't know where to go grocery shopping, you don't know how to pay your taxes. Like just all of the little things that you just know don't work anymore. And then you also don't have family and friends to talk to in your time zone, which is tough. Stephanie: Yeah, that's hard. So you went out there for Puma. What is your role look like now? Has it changed since you've gotten out there? Dylan: It has. So I arrived as a one person team, focused specifically on the eCommerce technology and then as a specialist for that. And the role was ... they said come in, figure out what we can improve and then begin the change, start improving what you can. And in that time a lot of the changes have been pretty successful. And so now we are at a point that would just keep expanding the scope and just adding more and more tools to what we do and more people to the process. So it's just grown in scale. Stephanie: Dylan, what's your philosophy or idea around change management? Dylan: That's a good question. Actually, I've got a couple of notes here as I look back over it. So my philosophy with change management is that you're really focused on mentality and time. So the mindset that the person who's bringing the change has his ... Is at a completely different point in time than the person who needs to adopt a change. Dylan: And so I got this input from Puma's change management program where we were taught that if you're the change agent, you're traveling from the future and you need to come back in time and, help everyone else realize that that something important is. And then based on that, you've got to be persuasive enough to say within the timeframe you've got to make a change or else. Dylan: And then that's where you get into how much time. And so if you look at what's happening in the public right now, we have a current crisis, which is, it was months, weeks, and days. The previous big effort is climate crisis, which it doesn't have people perishing every day. So it takes a lot of effort to keep the focus on it and pollution is part of that, but that's not something that's sensational. Dylan: So you have to be able to show visually that there's progress and what the steps are. So I like to give people the first step, and then show that progress over time, make it very visual and then that's how we report whether it's working or not. Time is really important. And another good advice that I got from a business consultant about 10 years ago was that about 50% of small businesses fail before we get to the five or 10 years. Dylan: And in that time, you only have 260 weeks to make whatever you are going to make happen to be successful. So you can't just say, I'm going to start this new initiative or shut this business and it's going to be successful. You have a bunch of changes in between. And then when you start breaking that down, then you're in weeks and if you're already 18 months in, you only got 185 weeks left to close. Okay. It's really ... this is coming fast. Dylan: But starting to think like that, makes it always urgent, which is kind of important if you really want to change anything. So getting that mindset and mentality of time in sync with the two parties is important. Stephanie: Yeah. I like the idea of having it visual as well. I think I saw this, I don't know where it was trending maybe probably on Instagram or something. Where it showed how many days left you have with your parents or like with your kids or something up until they're 18 and it put it in maybe like, I don't know, hamburger emoji or something like that. Stephanie: And then here's how many, days you have left until they go to high school or something. That was this whole thing and when it put it visually it's like, "Oh man, I don't have that much time and I've got to hurry." So, I like that idea a lot. Dylan: And the visual part is why the Kanban approach has been so popular. And then when you have a Kanban board, you actually see the work, whether it's posted or it's digital. To be able to really see it, you can focus on it and you can focus on it over time. That's the hard part, is how do you keep focused for enough time to make the change happen? Dylan: And the other thing that you would need is a coalition of the willing, you've got to have a partner in crime. You can't do it alone. And so that change has to be something that gives you joy personally, even if it's some sort of sick joy that you actually like web servers and making them faster and that type of stuff. But you have to care about it enough that everyday you're willing to get up and do it and you don't need to be talked into doing it. Dylan: And that when you come into contact with anyone who might be able to help you, you can quickly explain it in terms they understand so they can get behind you, and that's a big part of what's required and what I do. Stephanie: Got it. And what are some of the biggest changes that you made while you're in your role right now at Puma? Dylan: The biggest focus for me was getting to a modern software development approach. The way most companies in general but eCommerce and retailers seem to emerge is that there will be someone who has an interest in technology and they get control of the website and then control of the sales online. And then that either lives in kind of a marketing team or IT or some sort of a external party completely some vendor. Dylan: And what Puma had done was basically built up a whole bunch of those all around the world. And even if you have a common and starting technology stack, you end up changing that pretty drastically over the years as you move from country to country. Dylan: So that was where we began. Just with Commerce Cloud being the first major item and so focused on how to make Commerce Cloud fast, how to get the people working around it working together, especially across the national borders. And then you have the one piece which is just the actual technology, like make commerce cloud fast. And then there's, how do you bring all of the people involved together who are external, internal, so they're working on the same projects and that they have the same understanding. It was clarity around what's being built, the timing's understood and that the budget is properly tracked and when you see something's not working, stop doing it instead of just continuing on. Stephanie: Got it. That sounds like a huge challenge, especially if you're doing things globally. What kind of problems did you encounter when you were trying to bring all those teams together and people together, especially if you're trying to align marketing and sales and IT to all come together and work on the same project together? How did you decide what systems and tools to implement and how did you decide what was the priority? Dylan: The focus was, where's the money and the money's coming from ... or the future money is coming from digital. And so what's going to be needed in the future isn't what we need for right now. And so the approach that I took was, okay, what's working right now, I don't want to break, but the things that I know have symptoms of bigger process problems will be the ones that I'd want to focus on first. Dylan: And the time it was taking to get a new enhancement or a bug fix or something live on puma.com was longer than I thought was possible. So I said okay, this is where we should start, and in order to do that, what would make sense is also bringing the websites to a more modern technology set of technologies. Dylan: And at the time, Salesforce was working on this new architecture for their commerce system, so we offered to take the beta pilot route with them and build it together. And that basically extended what we were doing to a much wider scope than I had originally anticipated. So we basically rebuilt puma.com using Commerce Cloud, their new reference architecture. And that meant a full redesign of the site and new integrations though the tools, analytics, everything. It was a lot. Stephanie: Wow. Very cool. Dylan: In hindsight ... I would say in hindsight, the analytics piece was the one that I underestimated. People are very reliant on the data and the reports that they have. And when you start screwing around with the tools that they're using and the interfaces that they're using to collect that information, the reports will change. And even if the reports were wrong before they trusted them. And so when we made these changes, everybody's report is no longer accurate. And what we learned again later was that the reports weren't right the first time. Dylan: So there was a whole lot of discussion around who's got the true source of data, who's responsible for maintaining that. So then now as the new features introduced in one country and it might impact another, whose job is it to make everyone else aware? So a lot of the questions became, I'm focused around the communication when you start to really centralize services. And that was a big step for us. Stephanie: That hits home for me. Back in the day I worked at Google and there was a lot of issues around data and a BI team would come in and give people all these fancy dashboards and things like that. And people would be quoting numbers to find out that maybe those numbers weren't right. And people had weird filters on, or the source data wasn't even correct. And it turned into a whole thing where every time a new analytics project was being launched, they started figuring out how many people they need to staff to even keep that running, and if it was worth it and ... Yeah, that's a challenge. So was there any- Dylan: I wish you- Stephanie: Go ahead, I'm sorry. Dylan: I was saying I wish that you would have been there then on day one to help me, know that that was coming. Stephanie: I don't know if I'd signed myself up for that project. I saw too many engineers struggling and too many marketing people upset. No, it wasn't the happiest environment. Using metrics and data is a tricky thing, one thing I can think of is like when people would go off of impressions and everyone starts quoting impressions as being the best thing to find out. Maybe you actually don't want to use that number. Or another funny thing I heard was, I think there's this one company that goes around and they're saying that they serve up like a million custom landing pages every single day. So they're like the best company when it comes to personalization to find out that really they're just changing the name on the landing page and they're calling that personalization. Is there any metrics that you've seen maybe not Puma, but previous companies use or other competitor companies using, where do you think those metrics might be leading them down the wrong path? or they're quoting it in reports and they're using it as their north star and they shouldn't be. Dylan: Impressions is a perfect one. Anything that is, I guess what I would put in the vanity metric category, all the metrics that we focused on in the 90s and early 2000s because that's just what was available, since it was just a step up from server lo…
Full show notes at the publisherYou hear it all the time — brick and mortar stores are on the decline. And we all know why — the internet. Digital and eCommerce have become the go-to shopping method for millions of people around the world and it might soon the method of choice for the majority of the population. But how are we going to get there? And what kind of innovations will we see along the way?
Join host Stephanie Postles as she interviews leaders in the industry who are on the front lines of this digital innovation. From Puma to Sonos to Touch of Modern and everyone in between, start-ups and enterprise companies are focusing on eCommerce more and more, and we have the inside scoop. New episodes come out every Tuesday and Thursday.
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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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