A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 145 is an overview of the week’s industry news including Amazon, Walmart, and new iPhone’s coming from Apple.
Subscribe:
Amazon News
- Amazon (briefly) passes $1 trillion market cap
- J-Crew selling on Amazon
- New Amazon Ad tracking pixel
- Amazon Go opens third store (with more announced openings in IL, CA, and NY)
Apple News
- New iPhones being announced 9/12
- iOS 12
- Ipads/AppleWatch
Other News
- Instagram Shopping App
- Kylie Cosmetics coming to Ulta
- Walmart Premium Outdoor Store
- Who will win holiday toys?
- Kroger Simple Truth expands to China
Upcoming:
Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.
Episode 145 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, September 5th, 2018.
Join your hosts Jason “retailgeek” Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
Transcript
Jason:
[0:25] Welcome to the jason and scot show. This is episode one hundred and forty five being recorded on wednesday, september fifth, two thousand eighteen. I’m your host, jason retailgeek” goldberg. And, as usual, i’m herewith your coast, scott wingo.
Scot:
[0:41] Hey, jason, welcome back, jason scott, show listeners.
We’re sitting here in early september and thought we would update you guys on some e commerce news in between our releases of some great guests that we had when we were in detail east on jason. I want to start off,you had a tweet, and i didn’t understand really what you’re talking about.
So your little grumpy, you’re usually happy tweeter, so i wanted to pick your brain on this one, so that the tweet says, i’m so tired of talking about the r o i of a i based personalization client, quote, what’s the r o i ofpainting my house.
Me, it depends, is your last paint job one day old or ten nailed. What color do you want to paint it?
End, quote and seen so tell us what? What does that mean?
Jason:
[1:26] So first of all, i’ve been watching my twitter analytics. And it turns out that when i’m cranky and i just rant about something that annoys me in the moment, it gets way more engagement than the like, superthoughtful, ah, well prepared tweets that i do.
So now i’m just i’ve just decided to try to be cranky. Jason. So that’s, what that’s really all about?
Scot:
[1:45] So it’s, not a it’s. Not ah, fake account. It’s. Really.
Jason:
[1:49] It is the real me, although you did call me out. My my son did do some tweeting earlier this week, and you correctly identified that, too. Ah, which is pretty funny.
Scot:
[1:58] I think it was like left. Parentheses. Right brace at e. I was like, what is going on?
Jason:
[2:05] Yeah it was either my three year old or the president united states one of those too probably.
Scot:
[2:09] Yeah.
Jason:
[2:10] Ah but like so that i think what happened there and this comes up a lot of,
people are super well intentioned but like a client will reach out and they’re trying to sell some initiative internally like hey we really want to do this new aye aye personalization initiative,
and we need to pitch it tio our senior executive our board of directors or whomever and so i get all these well meaning queries what’s the arli of aye aye based personalization,
and i get why they’re asking the question but it’s an unanswerable question in my mind because a,
yeah based personalization is a tactic like you could do it well and it could generate a way better customer experience that had a huge improvement or you could do it super poorly,
on and have a negative experience and have it you know have ah negative return.
[3:03] And it’s not a binary thing where you weren’t doing personalization before and now you are right so you know everyone’s starting state and in st,
are wildly different on dso that’s kind of ah i think you you slightly mis read my quote like,
if you ask what the r o i painting your house is like the first thing i want to know is is your last paint job a day old there is a ten years old right because if you currently have a really crappy paint job.
The are lies probably hire for repainting it. Then if, you know you have a super fresh paint job and are you going to sell your house right away? Because then there’s going to be a monetize herbal value for painting it?
If you’re planning on living in the house for ten more years, the return is gonna have to be your personal satisfaction from that improve curb appeal, and you can have a four year old repainted or you going professionalpainters repaint it because that’s goingto dramatically affect the outcome.
That’s goingto ah influence that return. And so, ah,
i guess i’m i was just slightly ranting that people want this super simple number and, you know, if you google our ally on a base personalization, you’re going to get some, like,
ah, be cg report that says that you get an eleven percent left if you do a i base personalization,
and so that’s, you know,
it obviously totally absurd, but lots of people you know, go to their board of directors and say, hey, we’re implementing this new tool because bcg says, we’ll get eleven percent more sales.
Scot:
[4:33] Maybe it would make you less cranky if you just said eleven percent.
Jason:
[4:36] Yes, that’s, exactly what the poor account manager asked me the question. Want this for me?
I just wanted that bcg study on. Instead, i gave him, ah, stupid metaphor about a house, and then i outed them on twitter.
Scot:
[4:52] They loved it. And hopefully they don’t listen to the podcast because you get a double dose.
Jason:
[4:56] Exactly.
Scot:
[4:58] Well, i guess we should move on. Hopefully, hopefully, they weren’t listening. It wouldn’t be a jason scott show without.
[5:12] Use your margin.
[5:20] Well, it happened aah! Little bit last week and some this week.
Amazon is flirting with a trillion dollar market cap.
We’ve been kind of watching this race here on the jason scott show for a while, apple has been pretty squarely in the trillion dollar club now for about a month it’s kind of flirting with one point, one trillion, and i’m sure,
with some new iphones there on tap, we’ll talk about the minute that that will’s further cement that,
um, but amazon, when their stock price gets over it’s right around two thousand gets two thousand five or seven or ten something like that right in just over two thousand it gets into the trillion dollar mark.
So it’s been flirting with that it’s closed over in a couple days as we’re recording this it’s underneath it.
Um and, you know, i think who knows when they announce q three results?
We may see it kind of stay there if they have a solid q three, so i was thinking, i have to go back and look at our holiday ah,
guess is i was thinking amazon will get there first, but apple beat him, but it is interesting now that we have these two companies and, you know, kind of in the trillion dollar club.
Jason:
[6:28] Yeah, it’s, super interesting. And i saw. I don’t know that it’s meaningful in any way.
But i saw this pretty funny analysis today on like jeff bezos, personal net worth has increased sixty seven billion dollars. This year is a result of that.
That stock climb. So that’s eight million dollars an hour, that his net net worth is increased.
Scot:
[6:48] Yeah, and there’s all these, you know, there’s, a lot of politics now, kind of surrounding amazon and there’s.
All these folks that say, you know, jeff basis, they kind of take his net worth and divided by hours or something like that. So it’s just tons there, like he makes eight million dollars a second, and he pays his workers fivedollars an hour.
All that sounds kind of hooey, because, you know, jeff bezos has put all his capital at risk, and he sells very little amazon stock, so it’s all paper money until he sells it.
So i don’t know. It’s apples emerges.
Jason:
[7:22] Yeah, i mean mostly only sell stock for rocket fuel, right?
Scot:
[7:25] Yeah, absolutely, yeah, most of it. Or, if he’s going to buy a newspaper like a newspaper, like the washington, like the washington post.
Jason:
[7:33] Yeah, a lot of newspapers, exactly.
Scot:
[7:34] Yes, yeah, so that that’s interesting to see, you know apple and amazon there, right in that trillion dollar club.
Jason:
[7:42] Yeah, for sure. Be interesting to see, like when they are safely over it, and it sticks. And if anyone is able to join him?
Ah, i did see that j crew is the latest kind of director consumer brand.
Ah, that has announced they’re going to start selling their product on amazon, in addition to selling direct to consumer.
Scot:
[8:07] Yeah, that’ll be good, it’s. Funny. You know, i’ve kind of over the years. I think i’ve pitched everyone on this, and i’ve heard, ah, more, quote, i’ll never saw an amazon in, quote.
Then i’ve heard, yes, i want to sell on amazon so it’s, kind of gratifying to see these walls come crumbling down.
Jason:
[8:25] Yeah, i will say that what is interesting is at the moment, and they’re the latest of a number of brands that, like at one point, would have said, will never be on amazon. And now they’re selling on amazon.
The majority of those brands are doing it at a point of distress.
Right? And i think j crew’s, like, pretty clearly a distress brand. That’s, that’s looking for cem for, you know, an infusion of life by potentially selling through these marketplaces.
What, what we haven’t seen yet are like, you know, companies that sold direct to consumer are like cooking with gas growing really fast, and then are deciding, like amazon is the next distribution point.
So it’ll be interesting to see, you know, when and if we get some of those examples as well.
Scot:
[9:10] And i think they’re there. I think a lot of the d m v b s are on amazon.
They just don’t make a big deal about it, like these guys are doing. It clearly kind of send a message to their shareholders that’s, like, we’re doing something, but,
you go look at the mattress category on amazon, i think could be surprised by what you see there and,
ah, you know, some of them, yeah, but no boast made a conscious decision not to, but you’ll find all the mattress guys were there, and, you know, other categories have, ah, lot of the direct consumer kind of guys are onamazon.
Jason:
[9:40] Oh, to be clear, i agree, and i think i know there’s a bunch of digital native brands on amazon.
And in fact, i would argue it’s, the second most popular distribution channel besides direct to consumer for those young brands, it’s, much more popular than selling wholesale through traditional retailers.
Ah, but i guess what i was more saying is the ones that were holdouts and for what, for a good or bad reason, said initially, and we’re not using amazon is part of the strategy, like a warby parker or bonobos or someonelike that.
We haven’t yet seen one of those go. You know what, we’re drilling really fast. We’re trying to reach more customers, and we were wrong about staying away from amazon. We want to add amazon. I just i don’t feel like ihave a good example of that scenario yet.
But if a listener thinks of one, definitely drop us a line.
The big news, though, in my little corner of the advertising world, is the amazon is piloting.
I think, technically, beta testing a new program where they’re offering a amazon tracking pixel for for brands to put on all their own properties.
So they can get a multi channel, multi touch attribution model for all their there at amazon media. And understand. Like what?
What? Actual sales on amazon are are occurring as a result of their various marketing activity.
Scot:
[11:10] Yeah it’s kind of even a broader theme and we talked about allowed in the show i think we were we’ve been really early on this that you know we kind of have said that this is going to get,
out of another billion dollars kind of offering for these guys and if you track it out it will be his biggest facebook by i think twenty twenty two ah,
the mainstream media has picked up on it leased the business press so there’s been a lot of articles in the wall street journal and the new york times loved don’t really add anything but this was really pretty interesting so iwould just want to throw this quote out there our listeners,
they interviewed the new york times had a peaceful linked to it in the show nuts.
[11:47] Talking about um you know, just amazon moving in on the market and they had a quote from monica mcgurk and she is,
the chief revenue and e commerce officer that’s nice title at kellogg’s that’s so cpg on and she said we can reach the right consumer at the right time using their wealth of data to target,
other traditional digital platforms do not have the level of purchase data that amazon has on their customers,
so you know that’s pretty powerful in the same article had some quotes from verizon and,
geico and you know so pretty interesting and even i think some car liam’s that are you know amazon, with their wealth of data, is starting to get some really interesting signals from people on where they are.
The purchase funnel. And i just don’t think you get from other ad platforms.
So it’s going to be be interesting to see where amazon takes this. And, you know, i think we’ve predicted it’s going to be really big business. I think this is what takes amazon from a trillion to the next.
You know, several hundred billion dollars of market cap is, you know, this. This becomes another big pillar and a big business for them over time.
Jason:
[12:56] Yeah i agree and i feel like it works really well as one of multiple revenue streams i actually think that’s a much healthier place to be than to be ah ah a pure advertising based business model like a google or afacebook in the long run,
but it is you know i remind people like for the majority of of history the majority of marketing has had really lame kp eyes and success criteria right like,
most most marketers are their success criterias how many people saw that the,
the marketing that they did or at best like how many people remembered my brand or you know, unaided recall or these kind of,
silly,
synthetic success criteria on and then you know you’ve got a platform like amazon where the success criteria is,
how much stuff you sold and what was the gross margin for the incremental stuff you sold right and so you can really look at the spin on that platform through much.
[13:58] Clear set of green eye shades than you can you know certainly that that super bowl ad that you bought and even more so than you can like,
top of funnel brand awareness advertising that you might do on a platform like facebook and so it is,
it is very different and i do think marketers get kind of giddy about like having these more tangible r o i kp eyes,
you know, it is to me slightly different form of advertising like i do think there is some value in some top of funnel brand awareness advertising.
But i certainly think it’s much more valuable on these platforms, like facebook, google, amazon, where you can, you know, way more actually targeted.
And just put the content in front of an audience that’s likely to want that content vs that ad. You run on the super bowl that you know, ninety nine out of a hundred people have have no interest in your your toenail funguscream.
Scot:
[14:54] Yeah, and if you’re calling about a year ago, we had darrell juvenile on there and that’s episode eighty six on one thing, that really kind of stuck in my mind from that episode was they talked about being able tomeasure downstream from amazon.
So not only could they get to your point that you’re omar margin of what they were selling on amazon, they were advertising their products on.
Then they were seeing kind of a bump in sales at target, walmart, costco, other places like that where their products were, because, you know, as we you know, you have a little bit of, ah, disagreement on this.
But, you know, there’s survey date out there that shows that amazons become the product search engine.
So, you know, you have an outsized impact by advertising an amazon, because not only are you gonna sell more stuff on amazon, there is downstream benefit out into the physical stores as well.
Jason:
[15:44] Yeah, for sure, and, you know, the site, the more mature platforms like google and facebook, they’re actually spending a lot of time trying to come up with that that multi channel attribution and tell you like, howmany people are showing up in a store as a result of their advertising,
and they have to use really in perfect methods to do that like that, like, upload your own point of sale sales data, and we can match it up, you know, for the small percentage of your shoppers that,
that are known customers when they buy stuff at the cash register,
you know, amazon has has more than four hundred grocery stores, what you could imagine them adding an attribution model where,
you know, they told you how that that media you’re buying on their platform drove traffic in whole food stores, for example, like theirs, lots of interesting things that you could you could see play out here.
That doesn’t remind me of one adjacent piece of news that i’ll just briefly mentioned here there were there was also an article that got a lot of people slightly perturbed.
It came to light last week that google had been buying personal data from credit card companies to do some of this this in store attribution on behalf of their ever.
Scot:
[16:58] On dh that’s. Uh, so, i guess, that’s. Just controversial because it’s tracking you, mohr and everyone’s freaked out about all that.
Jason:
[17:06] Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s all the personalization fears, and you know how much of your personal behaviour do you really want google to know, like they, you know, in their own ecosystem, they know a ton, andnow they’re, you know, one one gap that they had versus amazon is amazon.
See stuff you buy? Google usually doesn’t on dso.
More recently, we’ve seen google partner with a couple of big retailers like wal mart and target, who, for particular use cases, will share their sales data with google.
And now we’re seeing that google is going out and buying, you know, credit card sales data as well, the kind of augment that database and and build that big,
in my world. That wasn’t shocking at all, like, i mean, we’ve all known that that data was for sale.
And so, like when it became a big news item you’re like, oh, people are upset about that interesting.
Scot:
[17:56] And you guys are getting a ghost. Where have you been today?
Jason:
[18:00] Uh it’s it’s not open yet so they did just this week open a third ghost door but they’re all still in seattle so they’re all in downtown seattle on the one that just opened two days ago i have not been to yet,
what’s interesting about it is that it’s the biggest go store so it’s about twenty one hundred square feet,
which is ah an average sized convenience store it’s not a huge store but why that slightly interesting is the very first ghost door that’s you know in in the day zero building is,
eighteen hundred square feet and so then they opened a second one in seattle that was actually smaller it was fourteen hundred fifty square feet and they’re a bunch of ah pundits are maybe i should say a few pundits theywere like ah,
amazon’s having trouble with the technology and they’re having trouble scaling in and they can’t they can’t even make it work in eighteen hundred square foot store so they’re having to downsize,
to the smaller stores,
which didn’t seem very accurate to me at the time and then you know two weeks later after all that that came out like they opened the third store and,
what a shock it’s the biggest one right and it turns out more there’s a variety of factors you used to pick a a store location and do a lease and you know you you have to take the size space that’s available that means herecriteria.
And sometimes they’re going to be a little bigger. Sometimes they’re going to be a little smaller.
Scot:
[19:26] Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see what they used extra three hundred square feet for, you know. Will it just be more of the same, like more prepared food? Or really introduce a new area?
Jason:
[19:35] The thing i’ll be particularly curious to know so that eighteen, the first door had a kitchen and they prepared a lot of food in there, right? And so one of the nice i think they’re number one selling skew is this b masandwich that’s made on premise, and you can grab it and have for your lunch.
The second store does not have a kitchen, so presumably there they’re driving prepackaged sandwiches from the other store or from some co packing facility somewhere.
Um, and, you know, you is easy to imagine that the food’s not going to be his fresh and that it’s not quite as good an experience when the kitchen isn’t connected to the store, and so i’ll be curious,
if that third store has a kitchen again or of the you know, they’re trying to have a centralized kitchen that feeds the number of stores and, you know, i’ll certainly be curious to see how the chicago store when it opens,which they haven’t.
I’ve been to the site it’s under construction, they’ve announced the location, but they haven’t announced yet like any details about what actual size that is or when it’s scheduled to be opened, so i just have to drive byoccasionally.
Scot:
[20:39] Do they security run you off when they see you milling around out. So.
Jason:
[20:43] No, i mean it’s, it’s, it’s, literally in the willis tower building, which used to be the sears tower.
So it’s, a pretty public space and it’s it’s on the ground floor.
And, you know, just the windows, air, all newspapers off. So, you know, you can’t.
You can’t see it. But it’s. Not like you see a lot of robust activity from the outside, or guards or anything.
Scot:
[21:03] Yeah, cool that’s, our amazon news summary. And then i know any geek worth their their street credit is excited about next week.
Jason know, you and i are on pins and needles, because it’s going to be new iphone week next week. Or do you looking for?
Jason:
[21:24] Yeah well you know so i feel like a lot of the mystery has gone these days that you know, apple is amazing compared to most companies at keeping like these private development efforts under wraps,
but even for them has become next to impossible and you know apple in particular like to manufacture a lot of the phone so they can ship him shortly after the announcement so i feel like most of the major stuff has beenleaked,
and you know so now you watch the announcement to see like the ten percent that was a surprise or that they got wrong in the weeks,
but based on what has been leaked ah it’s not super exciting for me it’s it’s what like i think apple has historically called kind of s year where they increment the,
the previous products rather than a dramatic change like the iphone ten was last year,
so i think it’s going to be faster,
going to have a little more memory you know, i don’t know what your experience has been but like one of mine pain points is not that the phone isn’t kind of performance or that i’m doing some,
ah advanced math on the phone that needs more horsepower they’re going to offer you and i both have the ten they’re gonna offer a bigger screen size in the ten,
which yeah i don’t know what i’m going to do you ah i possibly will get the bigger sizes just tow.
Have something more different. But what are you thinking about?
Scot:
[22:51] Yeah, i think the operating system will probably the big new things, so the less talk twelve will come out,
it’s, one of these it’s, kind of like an s release itself and there’s gonna be a lot of just kind of tuning and performance improvements and that kind of stuff.
Um, yeah, i’m, uh i’m kind of there’s, not a lot of e commerce stuff going on.
You know, last time we had this, who had apple pay for webs, that was a nice little nugget on the commerce side.
The only thing i can see that has a little bit of e commerce angle is some of the e r stuff is coming on, so this will be a generation on air kit.
I know you’ve speculated about three d cameras, and are we gonna get one of those? So, you know, i’ll be watching for any surprises around that.
Jason:
[23:36] Yeah, i think from a period commerce standpoint like, you know, the,
the rear facing camera, the camera that you, you know, see that sees you when you’re looking at the phone is a three d camera in the in the iphone ten that’s what they use for the face, i’d,
and their couple retailers that kind of leverage that right away for some interesting e commerce experiences, warby parker can scan your face and use that scan of the face to recommend frame specifically for you, whichis pretty clever.
What would be really exciting is if that back camera ends up being a three d camera at some point, i haven’t seen that b a rumor yet for this phone, but that feels like the kind of thing,
that they could sneak in, and that could be a surprise announcement, and if that were the case, you can imagine, like all the furniture guys would be super excited.
All the apparel guys would be excited because there’s a lot of experiences that could be enabled with that that camera could be used for really accurate measurements of where to place furniture, art or,
what size apparel the wear is.
I’m with you, like, clearly, like a bunch of the things i’m excited about our inn, o s twelve.
[24:46] The like i hear that it’s just going to perform way better, and so you know, even if you keep your old phone, your old phone is going to be snappier because it’s it’s much more efficient,
one features the camera now has native q r code scanning, so you know, for folks that are having to use a third party q r code scanner for any any use case you khun, you can now use the built in camera, so that is slightlycommerce e,
and this isn’t commerce e at all, but the the feature on most excited about in the phone going back to jason cramer ginny,
they have a new feature called instant tuning, and what this what you do is when you get some annoying notification on your phone that you never want to get again,
today, what you have to do is figure out what app made that notification drill twelve menus deep into the settings things scroll through your three thousand aps tto find that app,
and figure out how to have a change notifications so that app doesn’t, um,
notify you in the future, and in this new os they have this feature called instant tuning, which essentially means like you can click an x on the notification and that apple never notify you again, which i’m eager for.
Scot:
[26:02] Yeah, i love the feature. Where, when you have to, do, you know, dual off that the it’ll automatically just kind of copy the codes, so for you, and you can split it. Summer. I spent a lot of time entering the stupidaccess codes. Consulate.
Jason:
[26:16] Yeah, so i agree with you i’m excited to slash i i guess i more recently have mixed feelings, so the the feature for folks that aren’t super from there would do authentication,
so you type your password to get into some account and then as an extra security measure, they send a six digit code to your mobile phone and you have to type that six digit code in, so that verifies that you both,
are holding the phone and have the passwords.
So you have, you know, two factors of authentication.
Two factor authentication is way more secure in text messages is one of the common ways to do two factor authentication and so,
in os twelve there, automating that like you no longer have tto,
switch over to the texting and remember the six digit number to type it in like the browser can literally like automatically detect the code from text messaging, which so like you, i’m excited about that comma.
All the security gurus have told me that,
using the sms text message for your second factor of authentication is next to worthless because it’s, so easy to fake your identity and hijack your sms messages,
that the security professionals really don’t recommend using sms messaging as that that second factor and two factor authentication so.
Scot:
[27:38] One. So we’re all just kind of like going through the motions. Makes me feel good. I feel so much better.
Jason:
[27:39] Sorry yeah, sorry to burst,
we’re all doing more work for no extra security exactly.
Scot:
[27:47] Cool the there’s. Rumors of some watch upgrades and ipads.
The one thing that’s interesting. So apples, definitely doing something around.
More of a pr are kind of, ah, area.
They’ve got a bunch of patents. There aren’t. Cos i don’t think we’re going to see anything here but there’s, a lot of rumors going around that they are working on a pair of, you know, of a our glasses of some kind, so thatthat would be the big one more thing, if there was gonna be a surprise, i think.
But i think that’s further off, and, of course, they’re working on a, you know, a kn automated car, but again also far off.
Jason:
[28:25] Yeah, don’t i like, is boring, but i probably will.
Ah, depending on what they look. I get one of the new ipads, like, i think they’re going to have a lot smaller vessels. And my ipad’s, which i used fairly frequently, are kind of long in the tooth, and they definitely haven’tbeen getting the same updates that the phones have.
Ah, and i kind of want a pencil and don’t have. Ah, ah, i like the small format ipad, which had they haven’t out heretofore, offered a pencil for. So if they make a smaller pro, which the speculation is that they will. Ah,that could be an exciting upgrade for me.
Scot:
[29:00] Awesome, cool couple lightning around things. Just make sure no one saw some of these news items.
Instagram, which is owned by facebook, has been flirting around with some shop bubble kind of options, and now they’re going to roll out an app that really let’s brands,
published their catalog and the instagram picture kind of oriented way, and then consumers khun just shop using that app.
S so that’s going to be interesting. Are you hearing much from clients about the effectiveness of selling industry, um, over it, channeladvisor, we’re not really hearing much about it, but maybe we’re not talking to the rightfolks. It seems like it would be kind of really segmented in the fashion area.
Jason:
[29:39] Yeah, so there’s, certain categories where influence or marketing is disproportionately affected, i would argue, influence marketing’s, getting more effective across a bunch of categories,
but it, you know, it’s it’s, totally dominant in fashion and beauty,
and so definitely in those categories, people are excited about the richard commerce features.
Come on. Instagram is emerging as, ah kind of the darling of the social of the north american social media platforms for discovering customers with buying intent.
So it’s kind of ah, taken over for pinterest in that regard.
So i think people are excited about it, you know, comma there’s, there’s, certainly no one that i know of that’s making a fortune on it yet, or, you know, is, um, you know, i don’t think there’s a grand slam case study justyet.
[30:32] Ah related to that influence our marketing thing though,
ah you know i know all the westerners the show know that we like to spend a disproportion amount of time talking about the kardashian family um so kylie jenner who has a very successful cosmetics line,
has just announced that they’re going to start distributing that product which was originally a pure direct to consumer play through ultra,
um so through a wholesale channel and that’s interesting to me because there’s this there’s this really.
[31:09] Important divergence of influence or marketing like theirs what i’ll call traditional influence or marketing or you go find these people that have a huge falling which kylie certainly does,
you know kim kardashian certainly does and you pay them a bunch of money to say something about your product,
and that advertising a super expensive and increasingly ineffective right because everyone knows,
that kim kardashian’s a paid spokesperson for that whit bomb and doesn’t really have any personal affinity for that whip on and so that kind of paid mega influencer stuff i’m not very,
excited about and have never particularly liked but what’s working much better are these influencers,
that are making their own products and turk turning themselves into a brand,
on dso kylie cosmetics is certainly one of the best examples of that like arguably her her net worth has has surpassed some of her sisters because,
of this line and so you know now this is an example of a digital, native, vertical brand that hit some critical mass.
And now they’re expanding to other wholesale channels and for our earlier conversation.
Kind of interesting that the next channel they chose was olga. And not, for example, amazon.
Scot:
[32:26] Yeah, yeah, it’s going to be interesting to see. Do you know if it’s going to be stores and online err are just stores?
Jason:
[32:33] So that is a good question. I would expect that it stores and online.
It is absolutely true. There are some cosmetic brands that give distribution rights to olders and sephora’s for in store, but not online.
So there is, ah different assortment that those retailers have online offline.
But i would, i think, that’s more and more rare. I think you know, older, generally doesn’t want to sell anything in the stores that they’re not allowed to also promote online. So i’m going to assume it’s everywhere.
Scot:
[33:03] Yeah, another kind of ah na names on news.
There was an interesting kind of ah, kerfuffle with walmart. Soso walmart acquired moose jaw back in the day about a year going guess now on dh then they just launched a kind of a store within a store concept. Andwhat walmart’s doing here?
It’s quite classic mark laurie is, you know, they really want some of these kind of premium outdoor brands things that you would find it like an r e i or a back country.
But those brands say, you know, we don’t want sohn woman.
So what they did is they acquired ms jo, which is a place where all those brands cell. Then they opened up a moose jaw store within wal mart.
Well, some of the brands were having none of that. So several of them there’s one called black diamond and a couple others were like, no, we never agreed to sell our stuff on walmart. Please take that down.
So kind of a clever way of getting that product honey on wal mart. But i don’t think the brands were really on board with that one hundred percent.
Jason:
[34:03] Yeah although i do think some of the reporting on it kind of misses the bigger point right like so there was this like,
i don’t know what the conversation was with black diamond and why wal mart thought that they could sell it and then black diamond got upset and said they couldn’t.
[34:22] But what what’s interesting is that most of the brands that moose jaw cells are not on this premium portal on wal mart right like him very clearly wal mart didn’t try to sell them so i know you read these articles andit’s almost like,
oh my gosh they tried to take all the products they have permission to sell through moose jaw and sneak them onto the wall mars mark site,
and that’s not actually what happened,
if you go to moose jaw and you moose jaw dot com and you go teo like outdoor jackets,
you’re going to see like forty brands of jackets that they sell including all the aspirational brands in the outdoor space the you’re going to see patagonia north face and um all of those those aspirational brands,
if you go to the moose jaw shop in shop on walmart which is to me kind of awkwardly called the premium outdoor store,
and you you go on outdoor you’re going to see like two brands and one of them is the moose jaw house brand,
so it’s not like they tried to sell all that stuff and only black john diamond stopped them like the majority of brands that moose jaw cells,
like clearly told wal mart way don’t intend to be part of that, and wal mart didn’t put them on there, so i don’t know what was different about black diamond that caused,
them toe to be,
the subject of all these articles.
[35:51] You know, i think the leveraging that the brands that wal mart owns on their site, you know, is interesting and ah,
but but the shop and shop feels a little weird to me, like the way you get to this moose josh shop and shop wal mart is you go to the guided navigation and you say i want to shop for a peril on.
Then you say, you know, they’re under the apparel there’s a bunch of choice is one of them is outdoor apparel, and a different one is premium outdoor apparel, and when you click the premium outdoor peril, you get this,like moose jaw curated selection.
But it’s it’s, you know, the much narrower assortment of moose jaw stuff that’s allowed to be sold on wal mart.
So, you know, it’s, a it’s, potentially better shopping experience, but do shoppers really want to self select between average outdoor apparel and premium outdoor apparel? I’m not i’m not so sure they do.
Scot:
[36:40] Yeah, and, you know, i guess if you’re intrigued by that stuff, you could go over to moose jaw, so it drives kind of within family traffic.
I don’t know, it’s, hey, you know, you, you miss every time you don’t take a swing.
So i think it’s interesting to see him taking some swings of this stuff and tryingto you know what, what, what, what i would do if i was them, as i would say, the brands.
Jason:
[36:57] Yeah, and they do.
Scot:
[37:00] Look, we’re selling your stuff on warrant. You misunderstand our customer, our online consumer, wants your stuff, that that’s the thing i’ve never understood, like why brands have such a like, oh, my god, i wouldnever associate with wal mart.
Jason:
[37:12] Yeah, no, i i tend to agree. And if i were walmart, i’d be using the search query data and things like that to be making those cases,
you know, again like, to me, it’s, a little bit of, ah, you really start splitting hairs when you’re like, ah, selling via amazon’s, not erosive to my brand.
But selling on wal mart is and selling through jet, maybe is. And selling through moose jaw, which is owned by walmart, for sure, isn’t like the the lines just get really bored there.
Scot:
[37:45] And i have ten out list.
Jason:
[37:47] Yeah, and all by the way, all your stuff is like unauthorized versions of it are being sold on every market place in the world. So what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Scot:
[37:54] And i saw last year stuff at costco.
Jason:
[37:58] So i feel like a little bit of that. Is people still acting like the old world economy in the new economy?
I will agree with you. I do admire walmart seeming willingness to test, and one of the things that’s interesting to me is,
ah, moose jaw ends up being a shopping shop that’s in the walmart, earl, they’ve watched some other new brands like all’s well home, which is there, like premium home goods, and they watch that is a complete separatestandalone site on its own.
Earl. So you actually camp all swells a walmart invented brand that you can’t buy on walmart dot com, but you can buy from the separate sites.
So could it be there, you know, trying to figure out what the consumers want and do it that way. And i like, i certainly think that’s the right approach.
[38:45] Ah, so speaking of wal mart, like one of the big categories that they’re all in on, and that there’s been a bunch of news lately is ah, walmart, target and party, party, city air, all dramatically expanding their toyassortment,
as we start to approach holiday season and, of course, poison ruses and in the market.
So they’re all fighting toe to capture that.
That additional market share that used to be owned by by toys, arrest. So that’s that’ll be an interesting battle this holiday, period.
But we’re seeing things like thirty percent mohr toy skews than they’ve carried in past years.
Scot:
[39:22] You have seen it. I spent a lot of time in my local target and walmart. And they’re they’re definitely kind of bulldozing certain areas and putting up more shelves for choice. It’s going to be be interesting to see whatthat looks like.
Jason:
[39:34] Yeah, it’s. Interesting, like you have a utah me unique use case like you’re looking for these constrain toys, like the star wars toys that go out of stock pretty quick.
And you’ve always had the smart strategy to goto, the less pop your retailer. So when everyone’s in line at toys r us, you were in line at walmart.
Now, if wal mart becomes a primary destination, like, you know, maybe party city, that your new new hookup for star wars toys.
Scot:
[39:59] My my secret sauce is kmart there’s one k mart, left open in.
Uh, no joking. They always get a nice, plentiful set of toys, and no one else is in there. But me and a couple of little old ladies hanging out, they’re not in the star wars where they’re out there getting urine and stuff.
Jason:
[40:17] I like it. They could get you a star wars sweater.
Scot:
[40:20] I may occasionally not one over on my way to the star wars while it’s totally accidental.
Jason:
[40:25] I forgive you s oh in other news speaking of all these these retail own brands and what i call own brands which in my mind is ah evolution of what used to be called private label,
one that really caught my interest is kroger has a very successful brand called simple truth and it’s actually the the largest best selling organic food brand in north america,
on dh to my way of thinking very wisely kroger has started to sell that simple to truth brand in china and hong kong on the various team all sites.
[41:07] And to me that’s really smart like it it turns out it’s really hard to be a retailer in one market and expand globally,
so you know best buys a super popular concept in the u s and they open stores in china and it doesn’t go very well and targets you know very popular in us and open stores in canada doesn’t go very well wal mart in brazilthere’s tons of examples of,
retailers that are very successful in one market,
legal in germany trying to come to the us and when they try to expand globally,
it’s very difficult but this new model of retailers having desirable owned product brands,
you know creates a new global expansion opportunity it’s much easier to expand your popular organics food brands internationally than it is your retail concept internationally so i uh,
i don’t think kroger will be the last retailer we see that, you know, takes there.
They’re pop your own brand and tryto use that as the new tip of their spirit for their global expansion.
[42:13] Um, and hopefully that is a interesting topic to end on because it’s happening again, we have run out of our allotted time,
but as always, if we missed something or you want to continue the conversation, please jump on facebook and you can correspond with us there.
As always. Have you enjoyed tonight’s show? We sure would appreciate you jumping on the itunes and giving us that five star review.
Ah, there are a number of e commerce events coming up, so i think it’s next week is the shop dot org’s show in las vegas, so i will be there all week. I’m doing a couple presentations.
Eso if folks are interested, i would love a catch up and say hello. It shopped at ord on dh, then, because i can never get enough las vegas.
I’ll be going back to las vegas in october for grocery shop, which is a brand new show focused on food and see pg e commerce, which i’m pretty excited about.
Scot:
[43:14] Awesome. We look forward to some detailed trip report from those on.
Then we have a couple guests coming up, and then we need to get some listener questions out.
So definitely jump on. The facebook will be collecting some listener questions and trying to work that in, as we have a couple of guests coming on the show tio to answer your burning questions about retail e commercepayments, or whatever’s on your mind.
Jason:
[43:37] Terrific scott until next time, happy commercing.
Ben Tannenbaum says
hi, big fan of the podcast . . . Quick minor note. I like reading the transcript, but the words get cut-off on the right-hand side of the column. Is there any way you guys can resolve this so it is more user-friendly for readers?
thanks!