A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 147 is an overview of the week’s industry news including Amazon, Apple, Recode, Shop.org, and holiday forecasts.
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It’s a news-a-palooza this week including including Amazon, Apple, Recode, Shop.org, and holiday forecasts and more. Scot and I get together in person in Chicago to discuss all the news an implications.
Amazon News
- Amazon Go opens in Chicago and Jason has a trip report
- Bloomberg reports Amazon may have plans to open 3000 Amazon-Go stores
- Amazon Storefronts is a new feature for small businesses to curate collections
- Amazon has launched a new AI based visual discovery tool, Amazon Scout
- SnapChat and Amazon have partnered on a new social shopping experience, using visual search
- Amazon launched 14 new Echo devices
- Amazon and Good Housekeeping partner on Mall of America Pop-Up
Apple News
- Iphones ship with new commerce features
- Background NFC Scanning
- Native QR Scanning
- Augmented Reality in web-browser via ARKit 2.0
Other News
- Holiday forecasts are beginning to come in
- Deloitte: 17-22% ($128b-$134b) (19.5% midpoint)
- Internet Retailer 15.5% ($120b)
- Forrester (preliminary) forecast 14-16%
- Adobe acquires Marketo
- Farfetch (luxury e-commerce marketplace) has successful IPO
Event Recaps
- Code Commerce in New York. All the interviews are available on YouTube (thanks to @DelRey)
- Shop.org in Las Vegas. Interesting new vendors:
- Seek – Augmented Reality in Mobile Browser hosted solution for retailers/brands.
- Hero – Connecting online shoppers live with associates in the physical store.
Upcoming:
- Groceryshop October 28-31, Las Vegas
Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.
Episode 147 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Monday, September 24th, 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 Scott show
this is episode 147 being recorded on Monday September 24th 2018 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo.
Scot:
[0:41] Hey Jason welcome back Jason Scott show listeners for long-time blisters you may detect something different in the audio today.
Jason and I are actually physically in the same room together this only happens about,
maybe one in 10 episodes maybe one in 20 but I am in Chicago for the B2B show called B2B next that started this evening and then is ramping up tomorrow and I’m giving a talk about,
winning the away game for B2B companies and Jason lives in Chicago even though he rarely is here so it was fortunate we were in the same city at the same time.
Jason:
[1:15] It’s super fortunate I’m just finding out now that you didn’t exclusively come to Chicago to see me so I’m a little hurt but I am thrilled for your company and companionship none the less.
Scot:
[1:27] Yeah I can Chicago to see you… And do a quick cake.
Jason:
[1:31] Yeah I mean I feel like if I knew Scott wing it was coming to Chicago I would throw a trade show just to get you to do it.
Scot:
[1:37] That’s thank you I appreciate it we should do a Jason Scottrade shift I’ll be our next one of our 2020 goals.
Jason:
[1:45] Yeah if you’re any of our friends in the trade show industry don’t worry Scott’s just joking.
Scot:
[1:49] Will have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches it’ll be within the range of 6 Starbucks.
Jason:
[1:58] I like that last part a lot.
Scot:
[2:00] Call somebody excited to be here because there’s an Amazon go store and I am going to stop by tomorrow morning if it’s not raining but I heard you have already been.
Jason:
[2:10] I have indeed I’ve been super excited to touch you because I feel like this,
week is just busting with exciting e-commerce news that Amazon go store actually opened last week,
and I was out of town so some of that Amazon go stores are in locations that are open 7 days a week this particular one,
is in a busy downtown area during the week that’s kind of dead on the weekend so the store wasn’t open over the weekend so today was my first chance.
To go shopping and compare and contrast it to the Seattle locations.
Scot:
[2:47] Brickell what were the the pros the cons the differences the similarities.
Jason:
[2:52] So I have a feeling most Shoppers would feel that they were very similar to the Seattle one is a reminder just walked out technology you have to use an app.
Scot:
[3:04] JJ Watt hashtag JJ Watt.
Jason:
[3:05] #Jay Watts you have to use an app to get in the store you cameras watch you throughout the store you grab all your purchases at this convenience store format,
and then you just walk out and Amazon automatically charges your account for your purchase at so that’s the original promised the first store in Seattle had a very visible,
kitchen until like the majority of items they sold we’re actually not National brand food products they were.
[3:34] Sandwiches and in meal kits that were made on site on the premise.
And they also in that original store later got a liquor license and started selling alcohol,
they open the second location in Seattle that did not have a kitchen and I and many others assume they use the one kitchen as sort of a hub-and-spoke and deliver food to,
go shuttle locations from that kitchen so I was really curious to see what they do in Chicago when they open their first store and once again there is not a public kitchen so either they have.
A private kitchen somewhere else in Chicago and they’re delivering the meals in or,
and I did seem slightly farfetch but they’re delivering the meals from out of town,
and restocking on the I was kind of curious if they had the date that they were made on the sandwiches and they they have the date their best consumed by.
Which most of the sandwiches that were available when I was in the store where best consumed today so.
Scot:
[4:36] You could fly them in on that Fleet of Amazon Prime planes.
Jason:
[4:40] It’s always remotely possible and since the store just hoping you can imagine there’s a kitchen coming somewhere else that isn’t live yet or maybe it already is why there’s no there’s no I could have been his one way or another store has more.
Gondolas in the original store so there’s more aisles in the store which since they’re watching you with a bunch of cameras in the roof I imagine the aisles are a little harder to do because they potentially block lines of sight.
It has two entrances.
[5:12] So that adds a little bit of complication you walk through kind of a Subway style turnstile and scan a QR code on your Amazon Go app,
to get into the store in the very first or when you were running the app and you grabbed purchases you could kind of see on the app I running,
shopping cart you could see what Amazon thought you had it when you put something back you could see it disappear in real time from your cart.
In this store and I did two shopping trips you don’t get any real time does ability to what you’re taking you walk out of the store and frankly the second you walk out it’s not clear.
If you been charged at all and then a minute later this receipt pops up that says pending and then about 3 or 4 minutes later,
you get an itemized receipt that shows you what you charged and I don’t know why the difference but I bet the.
The scenario here seems a little problematic you could potentially being a cab on your way away from the store and find out you were.
You are Miss charge for something.
Scot:
[6:14] Sounds like human intervention in there this is one reason I can think of you to have a pause like that you know of some kind of Mechanical Turk like check that’s going on somewhere.
Jason:
[6:24] Potentially it the original store,
they actually have Windows and you can see a video observation area where a bunch of guys in red shirts are watching video and this was like,
even when I was an employee only mode none of that is visible in the store now that doesn’t mean it’s not there it just means they they didn’t choose to build a.
A window in that first or is in an Amazon owned building so you imagine,
it’s cheaper and easier for them to do exterior things where they’re just a tenant in a in an office building.
In the Chicago store so unclear they have an army of people watching I did two purchases and both were accurate,
I bought a web we just walk out technology technology coffee mug for my wife some Amazon go.
Scot:
[7:15] You’re hopeless.
Jason:
[7:16] I am I am Amazon go chocolate for for Stephen and I got the beam on a sandwich because,
we heard that’s the number one skew and I thought this would be a super exciting gourmet sandwich and Jeff if you’re listening the sandwich wasn’t that good I was so disappointed.
Scot:
[7:34] Too much Mayo not enough a Sprouts what what was off.
Jason:
[7:37] The bread to be my ratio I thought was way off it was way too much bread for two little feeling.
Scot:
[7:44] It’s interesting that there’s been a fair amount of traffic on Twitter around people that have gone to the store and initial reaction is oh I’m not worried about grocery stores I’m worried about 7-Eleven.
At is a kind of what you think through this.
Jason:
[8:00] So I think there’s two categories that are potentially at risk one is 7-Eleven or just hit more generically non gasoline convenience store so it turns out,
that 80% of convenience stores sell gas and that’s a special reason to go there that the Amazon go doesn’t have so it is a competitor for those doors,
but.
Those those kind of sore tennis sell a bunch of prepackaged food in National Brands and there’s a little bit of that in this store so there’s National brand drinks and there’s a few different varieties of chips but the assortment.
Bike is probably like more Amazon made stuff it probably feels slightly fresher and more healthy than.
Scot:
[8:45] It sounds like an old Bon Pain or those are called or a Marks & Spencer in the UK where they’re saying yeah kind of.
Jason:
[8:50] So I was actually going to say like a pretty amazed you or maybe sort of grab-and-go pre-made sandwiches like.
Scot:
[9:00] Where I’m from we call it pret a Manger you get the fancy French talk.
Jason:
[9:04] I work for a French company so I’ve learned like for French words and you just heard 3.
The other ones not suitable for our general audience podcast in some ways.
It feels like the primary use case for this store is,
office workers grabbing lunch and not being gone from their desk that long and so you can imagine that that was the original problem that Jeff was trying to stuff for was getting Amazon employees back to work quicker,
and yes I could be the Subway sandwich that this is more a threat to.
Scot:
[9:39] Yeah one of the writers so internet retailer is here in the city and one of the writers was saying in Chicago it is a huge problem to go out for lunch and his it’s a four minute longer walk to the Amazon go store
but it took him 2 minutes to get in and out and all the other places he walked by we’re at the 30 minute wait so it is you know we’ve had arguments with some folks on Twitter that talk about,
it’s not really convenience and then one of the things I think long-term they’re going for is there going to be less labor a better one that goes to one says it’s got like three times the labor of any other store they’ve ever been in.
How to get Amazon’s just Staffing that early days to get people,
trained and download the app to help kind of jump start it but I think long-term I think the labor will be very low on these.
Jason:
[10:27] Yeah I think you’re right like the you are out customers are definitely outnumbered by Amazon employees at the moment.
That’s because there’s some new things that customers are having to be taught and so you know we we were talking earlier it’s
it’s someone analogous to an ATM machines first launched and Banks would staff a human to stand next to the ATM and teach you why in the short run that that didn’t make sense why why.
Put a person next to the machine trying to replace a person but once I want to learn how to use ATM machines they were able to get rid of those trainers in the airline’s did something very similar with,
electronic boarding passes where they had a lot of help initially so at the moment.
They remove the friction of standing in line to pay but they had this new friction of having to download an app before you can even get in the darn store so that a lot of people standing outside the store in the rain,
helping you install your your app now luckily Amazon’s from Seattle so that people are familiar with standing in the rain,
presumably they imagine a future when everyone already have the app install the and or it’ll become more familiar and so they won’t they won’t need all that labor to explain everything to everybody.
Scot:
[11:42] Brickell and then last week you were at shop.org which unfortunate had to miss due to some hurricane issues but give us a little trip report from shop.org what was interesting there it was in Las Vegas this year your favorite City.
Jason:
[11:56] Sorry one other thing I forgot to mention on the Amazon go they just want to ride their super quick they did add alcohol to the Seattle store and there’s been a lot of talk that’s another,
friction point because now you have to have another human you know you’re supposed to just be able to walk out when you’re done but now you have to have a human when you’re walking out they can check your ID,
and Zoe you know we talked about the pros and cons of that this store does not have alcohol so that that may have been some decision or maybe that it takes longer to get a liquor license.
Scot:
[12:28] This may seem unrelated but in my city of Raleigh we were a Goldilocks City for a lot of different things because we have just like a million million at people
Ivory digital City and all that good stuff we have all of the different kind of Transportation model so we have all the lime bikes the birds and all that stuff I’ve tried all of them and what’s interesting is they all have,
if you’re over 18 to use this and I’ll have a driver license scanning mode where else can the front,
Idaho Ciara and they scan the back and they’re saving that data as you saying I am over this age I don’t think that works for alcohol but,
I kind of think there could be some way to do that and you have to work with the local alcohol real people but you know,
Amazon really good at kind of saying alright let’s take a room of people and put them somewhere in a back alley in Seattle not in front retail space and just like
you know we fly all these drones out of remote locations why not have a lot of the stuff pushed to a cheaper location somewhere like maybe the people in the Amazon store they’re standing around maybe they’re standing somewhere in Seattle for the Chicago store if there’s no reason to have to physically be there.
Jason:
[13:35] Telepresence for doing a d Checkers and in fact you can imagine that use that same teleprinter sentence for delivering alcohol at some point and I D Jackson.
All kinds of boys like that I have zero doubt that Amazon can solve the technical problem of doing,
inaccurate age verification at your point it will probably take slightly longer and be slightly harder to get the,
the Bureau of Alcohol to agree that that’s a suitable approach.
So you would ask me about shop.org we had surgery on last week and we did talk a little bit about some of the content with sucharita so she gave,
a presentation about marketplaces that was super interesting I know that’s a topic that you sometimes have a personal interest in.
I did some stuff on on the areas where artificial intelligence is actually getting Traction in retail in Commerce and got some decent feedback,
but one of the things that jump. Org has added in the last couple years is an innovation section so this is a,
less expensive portion of the trade show floor that’s cheaper to exhibit that’s enticing,
newer younger emerging companies and so it’s one of my favorite parts of the shofar to walk because I’m generally familiar with most of the,
vendors that have been exhibiting shop.org for many years but it’s fun to see some new you know sometimes crazy stuff.
[15:04] Answer this year two companies kind of jumped out at me there’s a company called Shiro.
Which is really focusing on the problem of digital.
Digital Shoppers getting the equivalent,
personal experience of an in-store Shopper and so along the lines of the ID check you just talked about these guys are essentially,
creating a telepresence solution so that store staff when they’re not helping an employee customer in the store,
can I have live chats and create video content for customers that are shopping the website.
I’m so it’s sort of a way to have a more human interaction with web Choppers that’s whatever Jean the in-store labor force and that’s,
part of the genre of omni-channel that I think is really smart and interesting so I like that.
Approach and then there was a company called seek and and I suspect we can talk a little bit more about this in general terms later but,
Sikhism,
augmented reality company for mobile phones we’ve talked a lot about how augmented reality is probably much more important than,
virtual reality for Commerce in the short run and what seek is really focused on is.
[16:28] Apple in OS 12 just launched some new features that now that you do good augmented reality in the web browser no app required and so seek is.
One of the first companies with a tool set that retailers can,
license on the cloud to have good a our experiences in a mobile web browser without having to get an app downloaded and I think that’s really smart and obviously there.
Timing their company launched with the the release of this new product last week.
Scot:
[17:02] Brickell and then last but not least I think you were going to New York to go to recode did you were you able to make it to that to see mr. Del Rey.
Jason:
[17:10] So sadly so I have a ticket I had a client call me in another Direction at the last minute but I did get an opportunity to watch,
a lot of Jason’s interviews on YouTube and they’re they’re uploading all the all the speakers to YouTube so if you’re interested you are,
they’re all available in a couple that stood out to me the founder of Shopify who seems like.
He’s sort of up to his his public visibility in the last few months that you used to be kind of a rekluse that didn’t,
do a lot of public presentations he had a good conversation with Jason Delray I had sent Jason all kinds of specific questions I wanted to ask about shopify’s size and Market penetration which I notice.
Jason didn’t get a chance to ask but he did talk a little bit about who’s probably the Marquee you know Enterprise customer using Shopify which is Kylie Jenner,
interview back into some of his answers you don’t think he he was saying that over the last 2 years,
Kylie Jenner sold 900 million dollars worth of product on the,
maybe two and a half years sold 900 million dollars on Shopify which is in a pretty good scale we normally think of Shopify as a long tail solution for very small Merchants but that’s a pretty good size.
Scot:
[18:39] Yeah I think what makes it work is I think it’s not a huge number of skews right I think there’s like,
two nail polishes and tendus too. So I think she just has like in a quantity of Brazilian of 50 skews which doesn’t put a cart through too many of its Paces Paces you don’t need a fancy content management system
you just need scalability in robustness on the check outside.
Jason:
[19:00] Yeah I know I totally agree there are some boxes that that checks that shows that they have good elastic availability for these peak days but you’re right like there’s a lot of things that you would exercise in the catalog with a million skews in it that.
[19:14] That particular site isn’t isn’t demonstrating scale on it at all,
I had asked Jason if you could ask who some of the big catalog we can go there but it was interesting cuz he what he talked a lot about hey we started trying to solve for the small business customer,
and a lot of companies as they grow try to move up market and he he’s claiming the day over we don’t want to do that they don’t want to abandon.
Their core market so they want this new product Shopify plus which is intended to be more upmarket but they explicitly,
launch that with a new team and a new office in a new city and sort of partitioned it.
From the original offering so it really Leverage is the quote the court code base and add some new capabilities and services but his promise for.
[20:10] How he was going to expand their Market rather than a band in the the low end of the market to move up was,
The Silo this the Shopify + offering and he talked a lot about how in his mind,
front and commerce experiences are actually pretty easy and he’s a coder you mentioned a lot of the original Cody Road,
is still in the platform and hasn’t needed to change for the front end but they’re like 90% of the ongoing development effort they’re doing are all the post order code in.
Complex water management and integration to to Legacy Erp systems and one of the big features they just launched for Shopify plus is the ability to manage multiple Warehouse locations for exam.
Scot:
[20:57] There was you I saw some people kind of kind of gasp on Twitter because I don’t think that those numbers were public that Kylie had that he revealed
I mean she had talked about in 2017 we talked about this on episode 145,
what was out there that they were dude they did 300 million in 2017 so it means they probably did for 5500 maybe even 620 18th so you know I don’t think a lot of people would have guessed,
what was that big so kind of added her Revenue I don’t know if she was aware of that or happy or sad or she’s probably more on Instagram than following what’s going on too.
Jason:
[21:33] Exactly where she I think she left Twitter so so he was safe I don’t know yeah but that was the first time I heard some confirmation from a third-party Source oh.
That was interesting another talk with Jen Rubio and Jen was actually at shop.org but then she she was also interviewed by Del Rey she’s one of the two co-founders of a way which is,
terrific example of a digital native vertical brand in the luggage space.
Scot:
[22:01] Yeah and I have my birthday present was away luggage to this is my first trip using it and I have to say I’m very pleased right now.
Jason:
[22:06] Nice so I feel like it gets really high marks we may need a product review from you the one thing I’m always curious about is I think a lot of the way luggage has the option for a smart battery built into the luggage,
and there’s a lot of controversy now about the airlines not letting you certainly not letting you check that but in some cases,
making you take the battery out to even carry it on which frankly doesn’t make sense to me.
Scot:
[22:32] Yep so it’s checking it you can’t check it with the lithium in there and they now pops out so I think they’re V1 was fixed and now it meaning it could not.
Jason:
[22:40] The ball so it’s easy to pop out and put in your lap.
Scot:
[22:41] Injectable that makes a lot easier to charge to like lifting your suitcase up onto the.
Jason:
[22:48] Well I look forward to buying something electricity from you at Future shows that we travel together.
Scot:
[22:52] Absolutely just at yeah I’ve got a milliamp hours of plenty.
Jason:
[22:57] So we’ve heard a little bit about a way one of her investors what was on Earth from Comcast best Adventures was on her show earlier,
this year but one of the interesting comments that she made the Jason that I thought was really clever so they have a few stores at the moment one in SoHo in New York,
in one of the kpi that they have for the store is.
How many times people upload Instagram pictures from the store.
In a way that sounds cheesy and sort of superficial but as we’re in this world where,
sort of Assortment and low friction shopping is moving out of brick and mortar and onto the you know these big online marketplaces one of the main roles for brick-and-mortar is around experiential environments,
and one of the ways you know you’ve accomplished a exponential environment is when people shopping in the store,
want to memorialize their trip to the store so I actually thought that was a kind of clever and smart metric to be looking at,
maybe we’ll do a deeper dive in some other show but there’s this big trend of these instagrammable spaces the for example the Ice Cream Factory in San Francisco there’s a couple temporary ones you just opened here.
Scot:
[24:19] Yeah I have a I have two teenage kids and every time we go on a trip we have to include their the things they want to do or these instagrammable places that they’ve seen on Instagram so.
What time it was this bubbly ice cream thing and then it was raw cookie dough then it was let’s see it’s rolling ice cream is big now.
Jason:
[24:40] No answer I mean on the way.
Scot:
[24:42] The food is very instabul in which is a huge part of the experience.
Jason:
[24:46] And that sounds somewhat silly on one hand but it it makes a lot of sense and you know it someone reminded me in the old days like to differentiate yourself you just had to be unique amongst your 200 code students,
in your high school class or ever did your high school class was,
but these days you have to be unique amongst your ten thousand friends on Instagram and so you know it is harder to differentiate yourself and so these these opportunities for,
more digitally native Shoppers to have a differentiated experience and share it you know makes a lot of sense so that’s a smart thing for for retail designers to be thinking about.
Scot:
[25:25] Packaging for a way was really interesting that comes in a cardboard box what you expect,
but then the bag is in a really nice kind of a cloth bag and then when you open it there’s a whole experience around there’s a little booklet there global travel pack that comes with it,
and then they train you on how to use it and then there’s a little book about,
it is very much pitch is a Lifestyle brand of you know the things you can do with your way and then they promote hashtags that you should,
do while you’re going and you know it’s almost kind of like the beginning of an adventure around travel and and going to see things so it’s pretty well done your versus you’re just like you know.
Popping open a Samsonite or something and you know it’ll be just fall out in this kind of experience.
Jason:
[26:10] The premise of her shop.org talk was.
They build the brand less about talking about the features and benefits of luggage and trying to sell luggage and then said they are,
they start from the perspective of selling travel experiences so the store,
is less about here’s how to demonstrate all the things in the luggage you can of course do that but the luggage is in vignettes of aspirational trips to Bora Bora in Amsterdam,
and it’s it’s really about reading to me in for you having this fabulous vacation and oh by the way,
you need this luggage to get there as more so than it is features and benefits of the Prada.
Scot:
[26:51] Absolutely cool thanks for the trip reports I think that was some good stuff like I got trips happening and it wouldn’t be a Jason Scott show without.
[27:16] So a lot to cover in Amazon news we talked to Jason give us his live report from the Chicago Amazon go store and then a friend of the show we going to get him on here Spencer soap.
Yeah he he broke a story where there have been internal talks and I’ll Circle back on this about.
Amazon potentially opening 3000 Amazon go stores by 2023.
Jason:
[27:46] I think I might have been like 20/21 I thought it was a relatively short.
Scot:
[27:51] This is funny because we’ve been talking on Twitter about you. Just feels like.
There are they are opening stores at a pretty good pace and it feels kind of prime now when they they decided with prime now it’s go time and then suddenly there was 40 to 60,
Prime storage pronounce doors to 3000 is a stretch just kind of getting that real estate I’ve heard a lot of skeptic say it’s impossible while they do that and it figured out how the end of the alcohol sign 3000 Lisa’s that fast
so I think it will be.
I think what could be happening here is your encourage the Amazon meetings to do a lot of brainstorming to write press releases from a future State and I think maybe there’s some of that that kind of came up so I’m not sure.
Yeah it feels like damn it nailed the format yet I think they’re probably won’t get a couple more figure it out but you know,
when they do on a scale these getting to 3000 I don’t think that’s impossible.
Jason:
[28:48] Yeah I’m sort of in the same boat I’m up to mine so for sure.
Part of the Amazon methodology when they first pitch new idea they write the six-page memo.
Attached to that memo is they write an aspirational press release that they want to be able to issue when the things been successful so for sure there is a press release for Amazon go stores that talks about a mask deployment so.
Scot:
[29:12] We just open the 3000 store.
Jason:
[29:15] So that would that would be the exact Spencer one possibility is someone just saw that press release and misunderstood its purpose.
The the other side of my brain says Amazon actually is pretty good at keeping secrets and they don’t tend to have a lot of unintentional weeks so the fact that this was weed.
Partly I believe that probably wasn’t completely unauthorized and so,
is that because they really are preparing for scale and if so you know I was surprised cuz I wouldn’t have thought they nailed the format.
[29:53] But you know or is it potentially I had fake I don’t know but what I will tell you is,
it’s absolutely possible possible to open that many stores and Retail in that time. And retailers have done it,
in the nineties I work for Blockbuster entertainment we opened a store every 12 hours for my entire 10 year so once you get to a certain scale,
like these things are really Temple dies then the the advanced teams are you know just 6 weeks out in front cutting deals on leases and everything Cascades from that and so it.
Absolutely possible if they decided to just penciled out and that they needed a big footprint of stores they could run 3000 stores by 2021 now.
3000 stores if this is really can me competing with a convenience store 3000 stores actually probably isn’t enough to have a real meaningful business and now that Amazon’s a trillion-dollar company.
[30:52] You know if there’s a million-dollar p&l for each of these 3000 stores like.
Arguably isn’t a big enough business to get in to be really material to Amazon so we’ll have to see.
Scot:
[31:04] Do you think he’d stores doing a million dollars but what is convenient store to get to take gas out.
Jason:
[31:09] Yeah I’m trying to and I don’t have specific knowledge that this is an estimate based on other types of small format stores,
and I would imagine that in the those convenience stores there’s a huge standard deviation cuz there’s going to be some fast Runners that are easily 10 million dollar stores.
If you have 3000 there’s there’s going to be some snow our stores in there too so to me,
you know a million to a couple million per year for many kinds of restaurants would be very good.
Scot:
[31:41] So million at 3000 is 3 billion so each million is 3 billion so if they did five that be 15 but that’s a needle mover for them to hunt.
Jason:
[31:53] You never like to talk about Revenue you always like to go with the big number.
Scot:
[31:56] Well then there’s a multiple there that yeah so yeah so that that’s.
Jason:
[32:06] That’s going to be interesting to watch that would be to meet someone fascinating if that’s the brick-and-mortar format that gets.
Scale the fastest versus the books or the or you know some information of the grocery pick-up for some of the other things they’ve done.
And a new store format won’t will probably talk about in a minute but another piece of online news that we saw from Amazon this.
Weaker last week was this new Amazon small business store fronts,
and so I thought you might have a POV on that but the gist of it is it’s a way for small business that’s a 3-piece seller on Amazon to offer a curated collection,
of products and have their own sort of landing page and in some ways you’d be where some of our listeners might not,
Amazon used to have a Amazon webstore which was essentially.
Competed with Yahoo web store and let us small business run their own website on their own URL that’s not what this is.
Scot:
[33:13] Yes in a lot of people depressed confusing these things.
That’s the problem one of the main problems with Amazon webstore was it had the initials a w s s cousin to the cloud computing AWS,
PSO2 Amazon used to have a thing where they would go out and run a store for people it was the downgraded kind of technology that.
Your Target and all those guys ran this to me is just really giving a little bit of content to the store owners desk and be types so they can tell them or their story,
and they’re highlighting some of them and,
part of the press release was really starting to thump their chest and say over 50% of the items or the units sold on Amazon or from third parties and there’s an integrated TV commercial as well I haven’t seen it running.
So it feels like a didn’t get like a huge I haven’t seen on NFL games are in that kind of stuff which of the big spots
I’m so don’t know where they’re running it but I did see the online version so but it is you
if your 3-piece seller it is pretty cool to have an Amazon you know out there used to be kind of this dirty secret that some of the stuff you bought from Amazon list of these third parties now Amazon’s kind of put you more front center so it felt like a big.
If something is change they’re pretty dramatically and how they’re thinking.
Jason:
[34:32] And so I I think you sort of app we described it but I have heard people,
sort of think of it as a Etsy competitor which is not really right Amazon does sort of have another offering that’s more competitive with that seat and then the Jason Delray did Ash Shopify,
if they considered it competitive and he had the the sort of typical competitor answer it feels like a little bit of a trap to me.
Scot:
[34:59] It’s a trap.
Jason:
[35:02] Pictures of Admiral Ackbar.
Scot:
[35:05] Black bar on it yeah yeah I don’t know if it’s true or not I mean it is very hard for.
Jason:
[35:13] Going on Amazon I would use it likely wouldn’t make that my only destination on the web like me Amazon has one channel for most people shouldn’t be there exclusive Channel.
Scot:
[35:24] When your Kylie Jenner you can have your own store and not worry about Amazon and you know also comes to you and I’m sure she had a lot of power in their relationship.
Promosi small business out there and you start on Amazon and then you’re lucky if you get anyone to your website so so yeah yeah I think it makes a lot of sense for four people to embrace it and and,
rapper on it a lot of people that’s because some of the ones that are highlighting do you have more of car that Homespun handmade kind of provide to him like there’s this handmade Candle company that was both on the front page of the store fronts and on the TV commercial
I hope those people have a lot of inventory because it felt like they’re going to sell out of those handmade candles pretty darn fast.
Jason:
[36:04] Yeah I was always a problem when you highlight the small businesses right.
Scot:
[36:08] Couple of quick things Amazon has been obsessed with visual shopping and they’ve done several kind of things around that so,
the the first one is they’ve had they had something called visual shopping where you can kind of like pick some colors and stuff then they deprecated that,
then they have active on the homepage if you look at the top bar
I’m always logged in this Prime and I think this is available and non-prime to it’ll say new and interesting finds and that’s kind of like a Pinterest so you could put together a little you know of Jason’s Board of interesting finds of cool gadgets I’m so Scott a Pinterest board, feel to it
that I’ve always thought of new and interesting is kind like their Pinterest competitor have a new one called Scout if you go to amazon.com Scout and it’s more of a Instagram meets machine morning to see thumbs up thumb down some stuff
and then it’s supposedly going to learn about what you like and don’t like and and.
Pretty quickly after 5 to 10 ups and downs you’ll get to some interesting new products that that it learns that you may want
so then so that kind of feels like Pinterest Army sorry Instagram so they’ve got.
[37:15] Pinterest and Instagram covered the other big visual thing out there is Snapchat and actually just today announced integration with SNAP,
where are you can go and take a snap of the picture and then Snapple use I assume they’re using the machine learning a library that Amazon has for Parker
Mission so you see a cool celebrity you see Kylie on your way home tonight you take a picture of her sneakers and it will identify them and then show them to you over on Amazon which feels kind of like an affiliate type model so I’m sure there’s a rough share there
but it is pretty interesting that snap is the front end of an Amazon kind of the backend which is Young so now they have an integration on the snap sides the good kind of,
the three visual shopping Technologies covered in a way to different business models which is pretty pretty.
Jason:
[38:02] No I I would agree the Scout thing was kind of interesting to me I’ve heard some people describe it as Tinder for shopping.
Scot:
[38:10] Apple swipe right.
Jason:
[38:11] Yeah you go get products and go hot or not and they’re broken at in the category so you know you you decide you’re looking for,
home furnishings and then you can say lighting and you get 5 chandeliers and you say like don’t like don’t like in as you’re doing that,
the assortments getting curated to visually 2/5 chandeliers that match your taste in so it’s it’s pretty fun and fast and immediate and they’re promising,
more categories to come it’s slightly reminded me of you go old school on Amazon when they used to mainly sell this,
stack of books and video.
[38:52] The recommendation logarithm was based on what you bought but of course you could buy a book arm or watch a video that you didn’t like and so they act they used to have an interface where you could look at all the stuff you bought and go back and say you liked it or didn’t like it,
and sort of refine your own recommendations and so if you want to invest some time you can improve it in my mind this felt like,
how much more evolved visual version of that so that it’s interesting to invent new ways to shop and,
Amazon’s always been great for the spearfishing but like you know browsing and Discovery has been the Gap so it’s it’s interesting to see them try new things and it seemed interesting the snap one to me.
[39:36] Is a very interesting because a lot of social networks have tried to integrate Commerce and they generally try to do it in a bran friendly way,
and like it’s not particular brand friendly to say and we’re going to sell everything on.
Amazon right like when when you want that feature so this is like the Pinterest wins feature which is a visual search capability but then connecting all of those visual searches to Amazon,
no other retailers ever going to buy an ad on your platform and so part of me wonders if snap was only able to do this because they sort of are in the Challenger position,
Instagram feels like it’s getting more of the momentum and so this was,
a a big move snap could make but potentially the risk of alienating a lot of other advertiser’s.
Scot:
[40:27] Yes snaps been under pressure and there.
Their head of Partnerships left recently and he is a big yeah she was an internet analyst I’ve known for a while and,
I imagine they may have been building some stuff out they realize how hard the backend is and they kind of got the front end working and they just decided to marry them together instead of having to go to all that.
One thing that occurred to me as you’re talking about they are stuff earlier is Amazon does have an AR functionality and it used to be buried in that so you’d have to go kind of down the sub menu at the hamburger menu down three levels in the camera app now and then update,
you have,
you have your normal scan barcodes but now you can search with photos is is kind of promoted to a very high level up inside the camera and then also you can do smile codes
and then last but not least you could do if you had room so it’s right in the camera now so they’ve they’ve upgraded the AR View and in the Amazon that up into the camera,
which is pretty nursing another part of this visual search is Dave and Kurt are going to take out your Amazon app hit the camera button there’s a lot of cool new stuff inside of there to play with now.
Jason:
[41:32] Yeah I know it’s very cool,
another big an Amazon announcement as if they didn’t have enough is they had a president last week and they launched I want to say 14 new products with Echo embedded in them.
Scot:
[41:47] Yeah and I was really excited for you cuz I know you are really big on the Amazon button e things and they had an amazonbasics microwave and it has a button on there where you can order more popcorn.
And I just envisioned you and having that installed by now have you bought and installed one of them.
Jason:
[42:05] So the challenges I have a 3 year old son that’s where and how to talk to all the Echoes and.
Would constantly be running the microwave if it was too in closer to the ground so I feel like it’s probably a bad combination of might like Echo cook popcorn with nothing in the microwave will be happening a lot in my house.
Scot:
[42:26] I saw a lot of people scoff at this but you know the the microwave is a challenging thing so every every microwave you come across is different,
and yeah sure if you’re going to do a minute heat up or something it’s not a big deal but for my microwave whenever I want to defrost something or whatever I have to take out the little guy and there’s this complex you know,
non-intuitive side of things you have to do where is it be really cool to say
you know Alexa you know heat up this pizza and it just kind of knows that okay you need the heat at 50% and so it’s I think there’s actually something there
that that actually is a time-saver to be able to say that for the microwave and have it kind of decode oh you know I need to go 50% power so the cheese doesn’t get all rubbery or whatever it is that did microwaves do,
so I don’t think a lot of people realize that that it’s doing that behind the scenes there’s there’s a fair amount of complexity as I read more about it,
in there about what it’s going to do with the voice that. I think it’s pretty interesting.
Jason:
[43:21] No I I think there is some very real world use cases a lot of the space saver microwaves don’t have a numeric keypad anymore and so you know now you have this.
Awkward,
dial that you know is sort of variable speed that you have to use to set microwave for 3 and 1/2 minutes and so like voice is the perfect way to have a minimal space footprint but still have no easy low-friction access to,
you know all of those features that often don’t get used in the microwave because they’re too hard to find.
Scot:
[43:53] When when I was excited about is in my car I can I can put an echo dot in there and.
It takes a little works at to connect it to the Bluetooth every time is it’s not like Auto connected to the Bluetooth,
but it’s a really cool Auto interface but you know I don’t think my OEM is ever going to have Alexa and the dash certainly they’ll be some people that do that
some people are brought into the Apple ecosystem some people are building their own so one of the projects I was excited about was called Echo Auto so it’s kind of like an echo.
But I think the Bluetooth going to be more persistent and smart and connect better but also has it kind of lays flat and I think you can velcro it to your dash and it also has eight little microphones on top so you know they’re saying that it’ll be able to hear inside of a car better,
sex can be a pretty interesting auto experience that’s why the one I was most excited about,
but sadly I know you can’t pre-order it unless you have an invitation so all the Amazon people listening I know I would love an invitation I don’t know about Jason,
Jason Jason would probably love an invitation to.
Jason:
[44:56] For sure without doubting you for your fancy Fleet of automobiles I’m just going to say that your OEM probably wouldn’t add an Alexa interface unless and until Jeff Bezos divested blue origin.
Scot:
[45:10] Yes.
Jason:
[45:11] But there were a bunch of other products they improve the core products so they did another iteration of like the view in the. The View has a is a smaller footprint,
overall but a bigger screen so I have a couple of the 7-inch devices and use them in my house and so now the,
10 feels more appealing they have a clock which it’s an analog clock and I.
I don’t have a place to put this but I really want this,
so it is a traditional analog clock that looks like a standard kind of office wall clock,
when you set timers which is one of the things I’m most frequently do with the echoes in my house they have sort of stealthy LEDs around the rim of the clock,
that show you the progress of the timer so you can see him visually how much,
time you have left in a timer but the feature that I think is most cool which is super lame is when daylight savings happen,
the hands on the analog clock actually moved to automatically change your analog clock for daylight savings.
Scot:
[46:17] You give me staying up you’re going to get this or you have to stay up till 3 a.m. my time does it still 3 a.m. in Chicago or is it to him.
Jason:
[46:23] I couldn’t tell you because I have no analog clocks and all the digital lens automatically adjust.
Scot:
[46:27] You can stay up all night watching and waiting to see what it does like this it just doesn’t stand still for an hour and our plastic depends on if we’re going forward or backward this is this is we’re going to do a live report.
The world’s best book still nothing happening.
Jason:
[46:45] Rest of it we have some grass growing.
My big thing I felt was interesting about all these releases is you know we talked about it CES this year that Alexa was embedded in like five thousand devices are 4,000 devices into,
there was a school thought that they made these initial products to see the market and they’re happy to sell these core products but that,
they were you know trying to be very appealing to oems to get embedded in a lot of other products and so it’s somewhat surprising to see them.
Expanding the line of first-party products that they in bed in themselves and arguably.
That could make it less appealing for other microwave ovens to license the tech or.
They could make that the must have desirable feature that then entices other opm’s to take the future.
Scot:
[47:37] Yeah I got a fire watching the video that they were.
There’s been a couple microwaves actually integrated with with Alexa and I get the feeling they’re underwhelmed and I think they wanted to say here’s where the bar needs to be you no have it,
be able to talk about different recipes and talk about you know defrost my vegetables and have it understand that stuff. I think they’re frustrated that allow that Williams to do that kind of thing.
No some of the commands for like Alexa run the oven at 50% power which is I think they were trying to make more of an intuitively than than though instead.
Jason:
[48:10] No I think I think you could have hit the nail on the head with that I did feel to mention one other interesting product they have them or audiophile.
Alexa now so you can I get an Alexa with a.
Remote subwoofer which more directly causes us to compete with like the Sonos is of the world.
Scot:
[48:31] Recode pregnancy.
Jason:
[48:33] I teased earlier in our Amazon segment that we were going to talk about another new retail format from Amazon and that format is a pop-up shop that Amazon and Good Housekeeping,
just opened at Mall of America.
So this a curated assortment of products from Good Housekeeping and they all have smile codes which you mention which is Amazon’s proprietary 3D barcode and you scan any of those smile codes,
to be able to order those products from Amazon.
Scot:
[49:08] Cold sores a kind of touch and feel and then you can’t really buy from there you have to buy them online.
Jason:
[49:12] Yeah my sense I have not visited yet Mall of America for a long time with the largest mall in the US it’s so realize that status but it’s this huge huge destination Mall in Minneapolis.
Scot:
[49:25] I’ve been there Camp Snoopy as big giant thing in the middle.
Jason:
[49:28] Yeah that’s an amusement park in the middle of the mall I I’ve spent weeks Sweeping in that mall we don’t we don’t need to rehash those.
Scot:
[49:35] So we’ll save that for another podcast.
Jason:
[49:36] Those stories but so an interesting new new partnership as Amazon you know partners with more these curators create you know novel newcomers experiences.
Scot:
[49:50] Okay that was Amazon news and looking at 9 Amazon news
I like to keep track of everyone’s holiday forecast cuz we’re sitting here knocking on the door of October and so we Deloitte was out our good friend Casey and they are at 17 to 22%
incest pretty robust with a 19 and a half midpoint internet retailer came out this week at 15 and a half
and then sucharita was on and she talked about how they haven’t formalize our forecast but she was thinking kind of
14 to 16% and she kind of highlighted that the the Grinch this year could be these tariffs and there is,
creasing noise even since we had to treat on like literally 3 or 4 days ago you know Walmart is really kind of banging the drama and there’s a lot of people out there saying,
hey this this could be a pretty big head when coming in the holiday so we’ll have to see how that plays out.
Jason:
[50:42] There’s a part of this could be a scare tactic but they’re saying in some categories that does terrorist could drive 10 to 25% pricing keep creases in some category.
Scot:
[50:52] And it’s all the dollar store but what are they going to do.
Jason:
[50:56] Yeah that would that would obviously.
Scot:
[50:56] Scot a dollar 15 store doesn’t have the same ringtone.
Jason:
[51:00] It doesn’t but if you shop at our store you’ll find a lot of not. I don’t already sorry spoiler work yeah.
There was another big acquisition in my world,
on Friday I want to say and that was that a Dobby has been very active lately and Acquisitions we talked about their acquisition of Magento the e-commerce platform on Friday they acquired martello.
Which is a big marketing automation platform that particularly excels in the B2B space.
Scot:
[51:38] That was a was a big deal in it how do you think that’s going to is that kind of tying into Magento one report I saw so now that adobe owns Magento there’s a lot more Wall Street people talking about it,
I’m in every report I read is not very favorable towards Magento and it talks about them as a share loser to Shopify Bigcommerce,
now a lot of that’s anecdotal so do these Channel checks and there is kind of hearing you know if they’ll be at these still be at the shop.
To hear Rumblings Aid you agree with the B is this some kind of a very trying to stitch together a cloud in an interesting way because sales horses gut you know
Cloud for everything they’ve got you Noah house Cloud car Cloud marketing Cloud sales Cloud 9 Stein cloud.
Is Adobe playing catch up what’s going on.
Jason:
[52:27] Infernus to Adobe I’m not even sure I would say they’re playing catch-up they me depending on how you look at it,
Head Start of lead sales for Salesforce from day one was Cloud oriented with a single product right so they they,
yeah unquestionably dominated the cloud CRM model in eventually put a world of hurt on the,
the traditional on-prem CRM folks and they’ve expanded to have what they now call is a marketing Cloud right so their marketing cloud,
then they added exacttarget which was their sort of direct marketing thing and they since added a bunch of pieces to the the Salesforce marketing cloud.
So they printed to me and where that actually is at sorry to be complicated a second Cloud for sales.
Scot:
[53:18] Is Commerce club.
Jason:
[53:19] It’s a Commerce cloud and said they’ve Salesforce about to Commerce put Solutions,
demandware and Cloud trays which is more B2B so that’s in the Commerce Cloud Suites you got a bunch of these marketing activation tools in the the marketing cloud,
Adobe has probably had a marketing Cloud longer than Salesforce and also through acquisition they acquired a bunch of,
they would put their analytics Solutions in their CMS solution their campaign management solution and they have a bunch of customer data product,
so I would actually argue adobe’s had a more comprehensive.
Suite of capabilities and what they call the marketing Cloud then Salesforce.
[54:09] One of the tools in that sweet is called campaign manager and that probably is not the absolute strongest product in the sweet and it’s primarily focused on b2c,
outbound Communications and so Marketo bolsters that capability and sort of experience and in the B2B.
I would agree that that in general Magento is a share loser to some of the cloud-based Solutions most notably Shopify but I would say,
an area of strength for Magento has probably been on the B side of Commerce in so you could look at that from Adobe and say,
hey the marketing cloud has been pretty successful and well penetrated in the The Big Brand b2c space. Between Marketo and Magento.
Probably bolsters their treads in the B2B space and you know potentially on the longer tail a little bit more.
Scot:
[55:07] That was way deeper than I was.
Jason:
[55:09] Yeah I’ll see a lot of my Adobe friends in my travels this week so that I’m sure they’re going to tell me if I got that wrong.
Scot:
[55:15] Quotes of this was also a big week because we’re both Apple Fanboys and lot of new stuff out there’s new watches and phones and you had a fun Journey on your phone’s I’m sure listeners would love to hear about.
I had one where I I did the whole get up at 3 and was disappointed cuz launch day was the 21st and then I got to like 28th October 5th ship date,
but being good under-promise over-deliver I got my Apple my new phone today.
Came in 5 days earlier which was exciting and I was frantically installing and upgrading and so I got the x-maxx and I’m really happy with it it’s got a longer battery doesn’t feel ginormous I feel like I’m back to that plus format.
I also have a.
Pixel 2 and it feels like it’s almost the exact same format as up until 2 so it’s been good and then I also got the new generation 4 watch sadly it does not have the ECG yet it’s coming soon,
but the thing they did those genius there is they got rid of the bubbles and it just feels like the data display is,
in a 50% larger so there’s a lot more information on the watch which is which is kind of neat and it seems like the battery life there is dramatically improved tell us about your your phone experience.
Jason:
[56:31] Well first let me just paint a word picture for our listeners
during this entire podcast on our face-to-face and Scott has mainly been playing with the Amazon VR feature on his giant Max phone and flashing his humongous Apple watching me.
So I have some serious Apple Envy as we sit here I’m sad to say I had to replace my Apple watch 3 months ago so I did not pull the trigger on a Gen 4,
I knew after I.
Scot:
[57:00] Is your screen cracked.
Jason:
[57:01] No not yet but it may be by the time I get home tonight.
Scot:
[57:05] Girl accident.
Jason:
[57:07] After I saw it I was going to have some screen envy and I I certainly just watching you and having some screen Envy,
luckily there’s a 24-hour Flagship Apple Store about 300 yards from where we’re sitting right now so I can fix it on the way home and I don’t think they’re in a constrained Supply situation I think you can walk in and buy a watch.
Scot:
[57:28] Sounds like a fun trip that we can report on next week.
Jason:
[57:31] So I got up in the middle of the night in the middle of shop.org to place my.
IPhone upgrade order at the earliest possible moment and I also pay a little bit of extra money in this Amazon upgrade program because you generally have.
Preference for the new stuff.
Scot:
[57:50] The Apple subscription program.
Jason:
[57:52] Apple subscription program includes AppleCare so if you’re going to buy AppleCare anyway it actually and you were for sure going to replace your phone every year,
it actually does a pencil out to be a decent economic deal but the main reason I do what I don’t want to get anyone is because,
I want to make sure I get that new phone day one because frankly all my clients on day two are going to be disappointed if I show up without the new Apple product.
Scot:
[58:20] You have a secret it says retailgeek right on your laptop you have to I mean you at the bar very high.
Jason:
[58:25] Yeah so I got up early,
finish my pre order was promised a launch-day phone I was traveling on launch day I sent that and it signature required so,
I sent a signature required form to be put out in my house while I was gone somewhere justix went awry on that and the the phone didn’t get there so I came home Friday night to a sorry we missed you.
Scot:
[58:52] Sad.
Jason:
[58:53] The saddest worst customer experience although it’s my fault it still is the most disappointing customer experience you can possibly have your want your phone was here but now it’s not.
Scot:
[59:05] Wow wow wow.
Jason:
[59:07] So jump on the UPS website change the delivery address to some UPS lockers very close to my house,
and get it rescheduled for Saturday delivery so now I don’t need a signature or sometime Saturday UPS is going to drop this at a walker that’s half a mile from my house so I’ll get it into the day Saturday still in time for my trip this week.
Saturday 6 I get the exciting note that is in the locker walk over to the locker the locker opens and is empty.
Want Walmart so that was very disconcerting turns out the driver made a mistake.
They delivered it to the locker wait tonight and so I I did in fact like my phone,
moments before we started this podcast but unlike you did not have time to activate it yet so I also got a big capacity Max and then and I’m excited for that as well.
Scot:
[1:00:08] So you know we ordered about the same time and you pay all that extra for the subscription I got my phone earlier.
Jason:
[1:00:13] Yes I mean the main takeaway from this whole story is Scott is better than Jay.
Scot:
[1:00:17] It just luck of the draw.
Jason:
[1:00:21] But I will say there were a couple things they were either surprises in this more the OS X launch and the hardware or that I just don’t have missed during announcements but there’s two kind of,
relevant features to Commerce,
so we did mention when the OS 12 operating system was iOS 12 was launched that there’s a new improved AR library in it called AR Kit 2.0 what I missed,
is AR Kit 2.0 that you do AR in the web browser no app required and so I’m that’s the capability that are friends at Sea car using,
to watch that so in general I don’t recommend retailer spend a bunch of money on an app,
because there’s a lot of friction to getting users to download the app I do IKR experiences for a lot of in-store retailers and so now I get the best of both worlds my retail clients can implement,
the in-store AR shopping features without requiring an app so that that’s actually very exciting,
and then the Easter egg in the hardware is the phones that you’re holding the access model so that excess in the excess Max which is not how Apple want you to say it by the way they want you to say 10s.
Yes in 10s maxed and coming soon 10 r.
[1:01:46] All have an improved NFC chip over the previous generation,
and what’s exciting about this new NFC chip is a,
it has a passive reader in it so the original phones with NFC chips they can really only be used for Apple pay and you couldn’t use them for other experiences,
now we have a complete implementation of NFC,
and one of the things that means is for example a store could put an NFC tag in every fact tag in the store,
and if you just wave your phone you don’t have to launch an app or do anything you just have to have the phone unlocked if you just wave your phone over that tag.
You will go to a web page that can have supplemental product information for all those pages so now we can have NFC tags that we put in our house to like,
trigger scenes for virtue we can use them for shopping all sorts of capabilities in the NFC stack that we didn’t used to have now with this new hardware we did so I actually bought.
In NFC writer in a bunch of tags to start playing with us and they came even though I didn’t get the phone so.
Scot:
[1:03:00] What are the most fun apps and if you look on Twitter
iOS 12 I think comes with measure so you can go measure all kinds of random stuff there’s always funny people pictures of people measuring like their cat’s tail and all kinds of interesting thing so it’s a it’s a cool way to experience they are.
Have a lot of fun measuring stuff.
Jason:
[1:03:19] I will say this some of the third-party measuring apps that use it still better than measure but it’s fun to have a native Native program.
Scot:
[1:03:27] Call any other fan boy stuff.
Jason:
[1:03:31] Nope nope that was it again I think there’s going to be another announcement with some iPads and then there’s probably at least one model of iPad on my list for that so I’m.
Scot:
[1:03:43] One thing that we watch Pretty closely is the stock market to see what’s going on in IPOs and there was an e-commerce IPO this week There’s a European luxury Marketplace called farfetch
and they went public on the New York Stock Exchange and
this one was interesting date they price a little bit below the range but they end up raising 875 million which is not too shabby and the stock,
October 50% on on diepio day does farfetch Marketplace lol you probably haven’t heard of evaluation of 6.2 billion,
be billion there revenues are about 400 million a year which we know that’s a very good multi,
but they’re growing north of 50% year-over-year so that’s why they are commanding a really good multiple there so it should be interesting to see what they do with those phones or largely European
I’m in focused on luxury you can imagine more International expansion and maybe even a push into the US that’s what I would do where I European luxury Marketplace.
Jason:
[1:04:43] The Ed suddenly found a lot of excess capital.
Scot:
[1:04:47] And did not this time I thought it was interesting we’ve talked a lot about a rvr on the show we did a deep dive you and I are kind of hobbyist on this and what did we miss in VR at least is that killer app,
so I’m a big Elon Musk fan and he announced kind of surprisingly a SpaceX,
project funded by a Japanese billionaire where they are going to go on a moon travel servngo launch from Earth on the bfr
the big Dokken rocket and they’re going to take that puppy and circle the moon and then come back and he announced on Twitter I use a mouse with air quotes because.
Alive not a hundred percent sure he’s serious about this but he generally is like you know what he says he’s going to solve things that are not flamethrowers but they really are they did that,
the boring companies real most the stuff that you think is a joke
end up being real he did say they’re going to live stream in 4k you were going to have series of cameras mounted on the spaceship and they’re going to
Live cast of er to imagine of your experience where you.
[1:05:57] Be on the spaceship and looking around as it goes around the Moon bee that could be the killer app and I’m I’m curious to see what headsets he’s going to work with and know you’ll on,
probably would decide the ones out there aren’t up to spec so maybe they’ll have to be a boring headset or a SpaceX headset or something that comes along with it so they’ll be fun to watch and kind of out there,
pretty super geeky.
Jason:
[1:06:21] You and I could be at the geekiest launch party ever for that product as weak sit in a dark room with her.
Scot:
[1:06:27] If you see the only sold two of them and it’s the same guys that bought the Fire Phone.
Jason:
[1:06:35] Exactly there is a retail tie in there that the Japanese billionaire you know I think he sold like,
8 seats for this first flight in the Japanese billionaire bought all 8 he’s a retail billionaire and he runs a company in Japan called Isuzu which is like a big,
fast running apparel retailer in Japan and I think he said he’s giving away the other seven seats two artists to create,
like art rendering the the cool experience of being in space.
Scot:
[1:07:08] Brickell nail salon close or something.
Jason:
[1:07:10] Don’t don’t know but I like to see retailers being the first first tourist to orbit the Moon.
And with that it is happening again we ran out of time even on our extended length in person podcast,
but in the highly unlikely event you didn’t get enough of Scott and I on this episode jump on the Facebook and let’s continue that conversation and as always if you enjoy this episode or just to put us out of our misery,
now would be a great time to jump on iTunes and give us that 5-star review you know who I’m talking to you’re the last Wisner that hasn’t done it
now would be a great time.
Scot:
[1:07:54] Thanks for hanging in there everyone and we appreciate you staying for this Marathon Jason Scott show where we get to cover a lot of fun topics hopefully you enjoyed it.
Jason:
[1:08:03] Absolutely in until next time happy commercing.
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