A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. In episode 158 is a recap of Jason’s 2018 Holiday store visits in NYC as well as some Amazon news.
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We’re in the peak of the holiday season, which means Jason is going to be visiting stores. This year he went to NYC and visited 33 new or updated store concepts. If you’d like to follow the tour yourself, here the Retailgeek NYC Retail Map.
Some favorites this year included:
- Nike
- Dyson
- Allbirds
- Amazon 4 Star
- Casper
- Covergirl
- FAO Schwarz
- Glossier
- Google Hardware
- Macy’s (especially the B8ta shop-in-shop)
- Showfields
Some disappointments included:
- Restoration Hardware
- Saks
- Apple
- Away
Amazon News
- Bloomberg article had a great piece about the 1099 amazon delivery network
- Amazon extended delivery window
- Amazon new air hub in DFW
- WSJ article on CRAPfest
- Amazon Go in airports
- Small format Amazon Go
- Opening Amazon Go in UK
Other News
IBM sold its commerce platform (Websphere) to HCL
Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.
Episode 158 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Monday, December 17th, 2018.
Happy holidays everyone… talk to you in 2019!
Transcript
Jason:
[0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 158 being recorded on Monday December 17th 2018 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host.
Scot Wingo.
Scot:
[0:42] Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason it’s been like 10 days but your life has changed a whole lot since we last talked so you you had a birthday happy belated birthday.
Jason:
[0:55] Thank you much it’s depressing the type that even bigger number into the the elliptical machine at the gym when I am frequent occasions when I use that.
Scot:
[1:05] WG&R on verify so go ahead and round down.
Jason:
[1:10] Yeah I don’t want to only be cheating myself and I feel like my my I don’t know if the math actually works out this way but in my mind I mean year older so it should be more impressed.
Scot:
[1:22] And then you have an exciting new gig or title something like SVP of digital Commerce retail payments and chief strategy officer.
Jason:
[1:37] I think that’s exactly my title I’ve had to go to jumbo size business cards for the three people that still use business card.
Scot:
[1:44] Or hang out 3 like a like a tweet storm you have a business card storm.
Jason:
[1:48] 1 of 2 of 3 of I like that.
Scot:
[1:50] But in all seriousness you are now the chief Commerce strategy officer tell us what’s this entail and the upwardly-mobile thing what’s going on.
Jason:
[2:03] That was a lie the very least would like to think of others agree but yeah it innocence for the last six years have been working for
a particular agency that was originally razorfish and then you know we merged with Sapient and became sapientrazorfish.
But that agency is part of a much bigger a holding company called the pupusas group and so essentially,
took a new role at the group level so you know hopefully I’ll get to keep working with a lot of the.
The colleagues and clients from from sapientrazorfish that I’ve always enjoyed but I’ll have more responsibility and work opportunity to work with.
A broader selection of group clients across a bigger geography and.
Like most of these holding companies were a little more Silo then we should be done to best serve customers and so a big part of my job is to kind of.
Pull together all the the capabilities within the group to better serve our Commerce clients and so.
[3:15] That should be fun and you may know it was important that I get that promotion on my birthday because.
When you have a birthday on LinkedIn you get a lot of well-intentioned well wishes.
[3:34] And annoyingly LinkedIn won’t actually send you emails with your mail from LinkedIn though just sending you an email each time you get something saying,
go to LinkedIn to read this one sentence can the message and so basically on your birthday your email is is,
put under a denial-of-service attack by LinkedIn and so that also happens when you change your your job and so I felt like,
smart to do both on the same day so that like I might email would only be down for one day.
Scot:
[4:05] Cuz it’s me you give me like a bull in a china shop in there tearing down silos and making people work together.
Jason:
[4:14] Hopefully it’s a little more carrot than stick
wouldn’t be the first time I was inadvertently a little overly aggressive so I shall Endeavor to find the right balance there are a ton of
of great capabilities and in groups in pupusas and it’s it’s,
as far as I’m concerned I went from the the 32 pack of crayons to the hundred pack of crayons and so you know it’s going to be fun to paint more colorful pictures.
Scot:
[4:47] I know it’s hard to put a number on it but would you say over 80 to 90% of getting this new gig is related to the podcast should we thank listeners for their contributions.
Jason:
[4:59] Possibly that’s slightly conservative.
Scot:
[5:02] We forget individual performance I think the the pr halo effect from,
this kind of cited ever that we have this is probably responsible for most of your career trajectory hear the last at least 58 weeks.
Jason:
[5:19] I feel like that’s absolutely true I feel like the listeners absolutely would have put me over the top but you alone are so influential with all the the leadership in Paris that I feel like just you putting in a good word,
was was enough to drive the new promotion so thanks very much to Scott and thanks very much to all the listeners for supporting me.
Scot:
[5:40] I said you listen up French dude Jason needs promotion and he doesn’t need one of these like.
Everyday sea-level gigs he needs to be a double sea level and they came up the new tunnel ccso your CC level you like c-squared level.
Jason:
[5:58] Etsy I like that c-square that’s how I’m that maybe it’s cuz I’m more sort of exponential growth than I am linear growth I like that I like that alot.
Scot:
[6:08] I didn’t go to the sea level meeting cuz I’m c-squared level.
Jason:
[6:13] Exactly I feel like the one negative ramification as we are now going to have to do a deep dive on the Peter Principle.
Scot:
[6:20] Well you hit the ground running and you have been in New York I’ve been watching your tweets my favorite is your Covergirl tweet that was a little.
It’s surprising and shocking to see on the cover of Covergirl so congratulations on that.
Jason:
[6:37] Yeah I feel like that would be
more than any person needs to be thinking about but then I got in a Twitter conversation today with with some of our favorite journalist talking about the latest trends in women’s fashion and
now they’re all super excited about seeing me where like flare denim at dinner cropped flare Denim and interrupt this year so
so sorry for all the Twitter followers that had to read that.
Scot:
[7:07] Yeah that’s going to be good with there will be pictures I will take them and post them.
Jason:
[7:12] But in all seriousness it is sort of a annual tradition than I have around my birthday is I pick a city that has a bunch of retail going on and I like to do a bunch of store visits around the holidays is is,
people will know or might imagine.
There’s a lot of in addition to the sort of all the Evergreen retail there’s a lot of popups that they Brands open around the holidays and if you’re a retail and you’re going to watch a big new flagship it wouldn’t be uncommon that you try to get it launched.
In time for Holiday Inn so usually it’s a good time of year to see some new new retail Concepts or at least see the evolution of some.
Some retail Concepts so this year I went to New York City for a couple days and I walked about 14 miles and visited 33 stores.
Scot:
[8:02] Give us give us the highs the lows The Good the Bad the Ugly how whatever kind of format you want to do.
Jason:
[8:10] So I mentioned 33 stores there were 11 that really jumped out at me as.
As irrelevant and interesting for for one reason or another there were kind of for that I.
I’m putting in the doghouse that were disappointing for one reason or another and then you know the rest I kind of characterizes middle of the road,
the reason I pick New York this year was specifically was because Nike had just opened the new store on Fifth Avenue at flagship store called House of innovation 0:01.
And now there’s been a lot of buzz in our industry that this was a super Progressive omnichannel digital first retail store and so I had read a lot about it and I wanted to make sure I had a good.
Good first-hand experience so that was kind of the anchor that pulled me to New York and then I put together a list if anyone is super masochistic.
What I tend to do is put all these things in in Google Maps which little-known feature of Google Maps is great for custom maps.
And it works on all that the apps on all the different mobile platform so I can actually put a link in the show notes to my Google Map and you can you can see why these doors are if you happen to be visiting New York and one.
Want to check any of them out but so jumping into that Nike store I felt like it really lived up to the hype.
[9:35] So this is a big store on Fifth Avenue you know some of the most expensive real estate in North America.
It’s a 6-story store and some of the Marquis experiences they talked about are these kind of.
[9:51] Blend of digital and experiential.
So for example they have a great Reserve online fry in-store experience you can if you live in New York you can shop on the mobile phone,
I find some shoes in a size you want to try on and someone will pull those shoes and put them in a locker.
Waiting for you and so when you get to the store you can use the mobile app to unlock the locker try on the shoes if you decide you want to buy them you can do at self-checkout on the mobile app and so essentially you can.
[10:30] Get stuffed Asian in dressing room try it on.
And buy it without ever having to have any interaction with an employee if you don’t feel like you needed employee.
[10:41] And said to me that was like an interesting sort of.
Improvement in the frictionless reserve online try and store experience another Marquis Ranch they had is this mannequin shopping so you knows is a lot of folks might know.
Apparel that you put on mannequins tends to sell dramatically better than the apparel that’s just on the racks or on the Shelf.
But it often can be tricky to shop the outfit on a mannequin cuz you see something on the mannequin and you don’t necessarily know.
What model that is or where you can go get that particular Peril in that you’re the one thing the store can do is they can put the exact apparel on the mannequin on.
On an end cap or display right next to the mannequin but then that creates all kinds of problems for the store where the inventory is fragmented some of its out on that is custom display and some of its in line in the rack and,
when someone does a boat is order or something else now they can’t find the apparel because it’s floating all over the store.
And so what Nike did is they actually put a QR code on every mannequin and you can scan this QR codes with the Nike app and it opens up.
[11:52] At the digital experience with all the.
The apparel that’s rest on that mannequin and again you can click on any of those things to have them sent to a dressing room in your size you can self-checkout or you don’t get help from a sales associate but it,
it’s kind of a cool digital way to shop the look on mannequins in the store.
Scot:
[12:16] I’ve seen some of the shoe stores are now doing some of the 3D printing word out of separate experience.
Jason:
[12:29] Yeah no no no Nike is all in on customized and custom products so.
[12:36] Nike actually has a Big 5 store in Tribeca did the bottom floor is totally dedicated to customization and it supposed to custom shoes and custom jerseys so I can round the World Cup.
[12:46] Like embroidering your name on on your team’s Jersey and stuff like that in real time was huge and this.
House of innovation takes that even a step further in this store you actually can have your your shoe models custom ink.
I mean you literally wait for the ink to dry and then they give you.
That the completely custom product in the store so the ground for the store is totally dedicated to custom.
They have all these kind of experiential components to the floor where you can see like.
The embroidery shop they have all the people like sewing on the machines and you can watch him making the custom product they have the die shop and you can you know these that you can look through the glass walls and watch all the people handcrafting.
Your custom products and they have a bunch of digital stations where you can work with a sales associate and design your own shoe from scratch or.
You can pick a custom-designed shoe that was designed by an influencer that you’re aligned with so that could be a celebrity or it could be.
You know some some talented independent designer that Nike had partnered with so if you don’t want to just.
Pick a random design from scratch you can you can rely on the talent of someone else to still make a shoe that’s kind of unique in that everyone doesn’t have and that isn’t available at Foot Locker.
[14:12] Yeah so they’re definitely in on custom.
They also at another store we’ve talked about it with Nike is this Nike at Melrose which is in Los Angeles,
and it’s big spin is it’s localized so they pay close attention to what people shop for and that store and change the assortment really rapidly.
In response to the the Nike Shoppers in in Los Angeles and so the bottom floor which is a sub-basement for and this this store is called Nike Speed Shop and it is essentially is dedicated to the best-selling.
Products in New York City and again,
yui you walk in on you see like that you know fastest selling items while the changes you know quite frequently depending on what the popular items are and you you can scan a QR code and how many of those items popped into a,
a self-service Locker for you so again there they’re kind of leveraging the the crowd generation and the the seamless.
Self Service experience you can self checkout for anything in the store so you don’t you don’t have to get in line at a particular cashier they have self-checkout station throughout the store where you can like get bags and things like that.
The.
[15:27] So overall I’d say like this store does a better job of seamlessly integrating digital in a physical environment than almost any other store have been in and it’s pretty exciting for that.
The downside is.
Most of these experiences are not ones that Shoppers are already used to and so the sales associates are having to do a heck of a lot of Education that teach people how to use all these amenities in the store.
And it’s kind of a cannon to when Banks first ride rolling out ATM machines you know they had to staff the self-service ATM machines with the last app to teach people how to use them or you know when the airlines you step to teach people how to use.
That the digital boarding passes you know the Hope Is overtime everyone learns how to shop that store and use those amenities and they can cut back on the amount of staff that they need to train customers but then on the flip side.
[16:18] Fifth Avenue is like one of the the highest tourist traffic shopping areas in the United States and so.
You know the frequency of visit is probably a lot lower it’s probably you know the one and only time a bunch of these people are going to shop that store so I think that the.
[16:37] Education think could be an ongoing Challenge and one of the sort of pet peeve or suggestion I would have for Nike is the.
All of these digital experiences are totally dependent on you having the Nike app which I.
I hate having that app dependency because it’s really hard to get users to download the app and to help users get their password and to get users to consistently use the app.
And you know these days with Progressive web apps we could have all the same experience on a web experience.
All these QR codes that are all over the store the the Apple phones now natively Sant scan QR phones in the app in the the camera app so you know you could have.
Given the customer 90% of the same functionality with an iPhone with no app in it and Nike intentionally chose not to do that so when you scan any of those QR codes.
That work in the Nike app with the the iPhone camera for example instead of giving you the the digital experience it takes you to the iTunes Store and tries to get you to download the Nike app so.
You know they’re there I can understand their goal to try to get good penetration of the app but I’d rather see him give him more seamless experience to the customers.
Scot:
[17:51] Yeah cuz the apps are pretty beefy and you know you’re in the store on cell and is 4 Wi-Fi never really works it’s always get glitchy and yeah.
Talking to it and it just kind of creates a lot of friction.
Jason:
[18:07] Yeah I know and you know getting their stores that are worse like that Amazon go stores that you’ll see a huge queue outside these doors that require an app to shopping.
Yeah they they call him frictionless doors cuz it’s just walk out technology and the irony is they just move the friction from the the cashier to the front door to the store.
Scot:
[18:26] Yeah it is one time that which is good.
Jason:
[18:28] No totally true. I mean I overall super favorable impression on the Nike store or I’ll be excited to watch it continue to evolve as always anything new it’s pretty easy to find a,
a few refinements and and you know hopefully Nike works for those overtime
if you go to that Nike store literally right next door to that Nike store is a Dyson Factory Store and I haven’t seen this store talked about very much but this to me is a great store,
in terms of experiential retail so
like obviously Dyson is super premium product like that you know tend to be at at very premium price points to their competitors in the marketplace
and so it requires it’s already considered sale it requires a lot of explanation and demonstration about why the products are better and so this Dyson store does
a really good job of,
immersing you in all their products they show you exploded you know versions of all their product so you can see the inside and you can see all the craftsmanship and design in the products and Wyatt’s.
[19:32] Better and more expensive and then they do all kinds of clever things to let you experience the product so that the world’s most expensive hair dryer as far as I know and so in the back of the store
they have a Blow Bar where you know if you want you can go in and have your hair styled and they’ll blow it out and dry it using that Dyson product info,
you know you get this kind of great story that you you went shopping on your vacation on 5th Avenue when you got your hair done at Dice and then you got to experience this,
this one-of-a-kind hair dryer and and hopefully it sold you the hair dryer if you want to buy a vacuum.
[20:12] They next to all the vacuum displays they have like a complete assortment of.
For treatment so they have carpet and tile and hardwood and they have a funny wall of.
Different desserts that you can pick so you can you can like literally grab a beaker of dirt or a beaker of confetti or rubber balls or whatever you want to test and throw it on whatever kind of floor surfaces you want an,
and literally vacuum up those those products and so I just to me it’s a great example of experiential retail and really.
Helping customers understand the value proposition in kicking in this,
this a psychology we called the endowment effect where you feel like you already own the product in the store and and you feel like you have.
Remorse if you walk to Home walked out of the store without taking the product.
Scot:
[21:06] Did you take advantage of the dry bar the blow dry bar.
Jason:
[21:09] I did not I do like sometimes it’s funny I try to go in and test products that are maybe not,
not targeted at me but I did not have time to get my my sending unit 3 centimeter hair.
Can and I kind of think it would have dried in the time it took for my hair to get off the base into the chair so maybe when it worked anyway.
Scot:
[21:34] Yeah that have I think they’re sold out of that hair dryer that I mean it is very expensive but it’s quite popular it’s kind of the the bee’s knees.
Jason:
[21:43] Yeah I actually am thinking about getting hair extensions just so I have a reason to get one of those hair dryers.
Scot:
[21:49] I think you should definitely do that before then our attic so so we can all I’ll see you with your I think I’m imagining a mullet I will look.
Jason:
[21:57] Not that hard to imagine there’s probably some of your book somewhere.
[22:03] Not not true so hit a couple other stores on 5th Avenue and maybe we’ll talk about it later but then I shot down to Soho in Tribeca
and Albert just had a pop up
there for a while that do I frankly was not a very interesting store and they just open their first.
Permanent store and I think they also did a terrific job I call Brazil courses a.
A shoe brand that’s that’s doing particularly well but very similar to Dyson.
They did a beautiful job I call the visual merchandising in this store is great but they really did this Rich storytelling about all of the materials that are used in all the Auburn products and they really kind of immerse you in the war of the products.
And just you know much more so than like walking into a Footlocker and seeing a wall of sneakers you feel like you get an origin story for every material that then is used in every shoe.
You know and you know they just made the product feel really aspirational and they try to use sustainable products in the shoe and they like you know really made you believe in the purpose and I just thought it was really,
well design store from a visual merchandising standpoint like they’re not relying on a lot of digital technology in that store but I felt like.
[23:30] That’s for combined with some of the other stores that I visited that are kind of newer I’ll call them digitally native Brands although that’s debatable in the case of all birds or Dyson,
and I really felt like like some of the best retail we’re seeing right now is from these new emerging brands.
And an Auberge was another good example and a huge progression from their prop up to this permanent store so definitely congratulations to them on that.
Scot:
[23:55] They do a lot of really cool kind of seasonal exclusives in City exclusives like.
Jason:
[24:09] Yeah and exclusive that are
the trigger scarcity is a huge play across a bunch of these brands in a bunch of these products and really really smart you know again
in a world when you’re a teenager that has to act cool amongst your thousand followers on Instagram you know.
Getting the same product that’s available in every mall in America you know does not fly very well but being able to get you know something that’s exclusive or scares
you know that’s super well and we’re seeing that and you know all of these these you know unique
limited edition shoes from Adidas and supreme and g-star and all birds and all of those brands are seeing them in the super young kids toys all the laugh out loud surprise toys I know you buy a bunch of these Star Trek,
Kinder surprise toy or Star Wars excuse me that was a horrible,
not for a DM but a horrible swppp.
The I don’t know it maybe it’s Friday and in some super weird creepy way that we don’t want to get into.
Scot:
[25:15] Klingons.
Jason:
[25:17] Yeah but yeah scarcity I think is super smart are you are you a big all birds guy.
Scot:
[25:24] I think I have one pair but if I like him.
Jason:
[25:30] And that store is now like literally across the street from the Amazon forest our store we we’ve talked about that’s or a lot in the past I did go back to that store I was interested to see how it involves since I was there on the grand opening
and obviously that’s a story that’s.
Allegedly completely curated by customers and so I walked in there in a very curious to see how much of the assortment had really changed since the last time I was in and I was pleasantly surprised that.
A lot of it had changed like all the feature displays that you see when you walk in the front of the store were prominently featuring,
different merchandise than they were at the Grand Opening and even a lot of the product categories.
In the store had changed or evolved and so you know my my early indications are you no props.
Amazon for living there promise on on sort of.
Frequently and rapidly changing the mix in that store based on on customer curation.
Scot:
[26:31] I wonder if they do it or if they just kind of like close down and reshuffle for a day or if they’re just kind of like nibble away at it, like you know 2% a day.
Jason:
[26:40] No it’s a great question and I I don’t know the answer.
But yeah I would have to live there or visit a lot more frequently 10 notice that but I did I took a ton of pictures the first time I was there and I retook all those pictures and so on.
I’m probably going to do a deeper dive in comparing the two sets of pictures but anecdotally it definitely felt like a lot of stuff at churned and obviously we’re much closer to Holiday now and they’re all these right.
Seasonal products for holiday that are selling really well so not surprisingly those products all moved forward.
You’re secretly I feel like that store is first and foremost designed to sell Amazon branded products and those are kind of the Evergreen product that did not change.
Oh, there’s some new product since last time I was there so that the first time I got to see the microwave in person.
Scot:
[27:29] I’d like it.
Jason:
[27:30] I was surprised it’s smaller than I was anticipating it does not feel like I feel like that was a load capacity microwave them then I have so I would have been a little scared to.
Scot:
[27:43] Talk out at the gym have Alexa make you some popcorn.
Jason:
[27:46] I did not I was pleased to see that it was plugged in so you could infect talk to it but you like they did not give you product and give you a chance to actually.
Cook anything in it and I’m curious if the demo unit even had that hopefully it did not have them element in it but who knows.
Scot:
[28:03] The at this is a little bit off topic but the switching of the storm made me think of everyone’s in retails favorite store in York stories did you get swing by there.
Jason:
[28:14] I did not swing my story I always love to go to this is story about the it just wasn’t geographically convenient with all these other stores I did go to Macy’s.
Macy’s is now a minority owner of story and I was curious to see if they had a disa story iteration in Macy’s.
And if they did I was not able to find it but the.
Beta who’s been on the store has has the shopping shops inside of Macy’s and I went to that Macy’s expecting.
Then I go down to the basement where where they historically have put a lot of these Concepts and I was actually constantly surprised the beta store.
Is like prominently featured at the front door in like one of the highest traffic entrances and so kind of smart around the holidays since a lot of the beta product is.
Is very holiday gift friendly items but that all of the pods in the the beta display inside the Macy’s were really hopping and it felt like.
The exact same experience you’d get if you walked into a dedicated beta store and then.
Scot:
[29:22] Call Diem one of our interns just handed me a note make sure we reference episode 139 when we had beta founder the boo on telling us all about that.
Jason:
[29:33] Yeah absolutely and if you do remember that episode of Yuri wissen he’ll tell you a story about how he called me early on in the evolution of that concept and I gave him some stupid advice,
is his version and my version is I told him that in the long run,
that he would be funded by a bunch of retailers and he would be shopping shops inside of a bunch of these stores,
and your side note almost all the betas are now in Macy’s and so I’m saying I’m right here saying I gave him bad advice you can judge for yourself.
Scot:
[30:06] He is not a c squared executive Teresa CEO.
Jason:
[30:12] He just has the one one see you in like Risk a bunch.
Scot:
[30:14] Yeah it’s your on a whole nother like you’re in another orbit like.
Jason:
[30:17] Yeah he would tell you this lame story about how he left his cushy job at Google to take this big entrepreneurial risk and worked really hard to build something and all that but you know as opposed to just like telling other people what to do and then running before they actually do it.
Scot:
[30:32] Helios One C drop the mic.
Jason:
[30:36] Potato potahto exactly.
The also sort of in that that area I visited the Casper store you know again
another great kind of showroom a store that has a bunch of experiential components like they have all these,
design house vignettes where you can in fact,
close the door and sweep on all these various mattresses but they even had they actually have and they have a cool branded term for it that I’m going to not remember unfortunately
at the back of the store is is actually dedicated to a service where you essentially can rent a in isolation pod with a bed in it and take a nap,
and if they’ve done like a really good job of creating this like super relaxing atmosphere and you know it.
The hustle and bustle of a busy City you can come and take a timeout and catch up power nap and then kind of recharge I looked at that thing and said man like these guys up to be partnering with we work like you ought to have one of these.
Nap stations in all the the work on demand.
Scot:
[31:50] If it’s at Casper ride to go people are always surprised how many skus they have I think everyone kind of Associates in with kind of essentially
once you a mattress live really expanded the offerings have got some pet stuff now right and they’ve got pillows and sheets.
Jason:
[32:09] Yeah betting and so that they have all that but also I thought you’re going is they have a variety of different.
Material treatments on the mattresses so there is a pretty good diversity of mattresses you can buy a different price points and so you can imagine,
people wanting to to actually try those out in the United States they talk a lot about how you know retail and trying is an important part of their.
Their growth strategy that that you know they like the pure digital experience and obviously they’re kind of original Innovation was the ability to make a UPS shippable mattress and bypass the store but in the long run like
you know the total addressable Market of people that are willing to buy a mattress sight unseen is much smaller than the,
you know all the households in the US and so even these retail showrooms have been,
become a big part of their growth strategy I can’t remember if I threw it up on social media or not but they also have kind of a
social photo booth in the store and that’s why I took a picture in the Casper store and to me the,
that these these instagrammable scenes inside of retail stores is another strong retail Trend like we talked on the show little bit in the past.
There are these dedicated Concepts to instagrammable moments like the ice cream factory in in San Francisco and idea here is.
[33:38] Pay a significant amount of money I 20 to 40 bucks to go into what amounts to a bunch of like unique photo sets to take your your selfies and all these you know unique and interesting ways.
And there scarcity because that museum goes away after a couple of months and it creates a cool,
sort of photo that you can share on on Instagram in a bunch of retailers have jumped in on this action and so the the Casper score was one,
you mentioned earlier that cover girl had a pop up in Time Square and they had a great social photo booth so you got to go take,
a glamour still Anna and impact video in the store and so I use that that glamour photo booth and put my shepherd girl picks her up,
it’s super smart as they capture your email address which you give them in order for them to send you the photos and you you share those photos on your social channels and amplify it and become an influencer for Casper CoverGirl,
or a bunch of the other retail brand so I feel like that was a common trend.
[34:46] Also up near 5th Avenue Rockefeller Center FAO Schwarz reopen.
So that you know they were longtime icon on 5th Avenue their space is now being used for Apple.
They went out of business but a new company bought the brand and they reopen the toy store in what used to be the NBC Experience Store in Rockefeller Center.
And I.
Scot:
[35:13] Does it have the f e o clock in like that same kind of vibe that the old one.
Jason:
[35:17] Yeah it totally does it has all the iconic displays that the old store has it has the cost you and Toy Soldiers dancing outside the store and taking selfies with everyone and again another one of these instagrammable moments.
And you know a round holiday in Rockefeller Center this was the busiest store in the area and had a shoe deal 9 to get into the store and so again like,
you know creating scarcity just buy,
you know you go to Rockefeller Center to check out what’s going on and look at the ice rink and see the Christmas tree and blam there’s a huge line of people waiting to get in somewhere and it instantly makes you want to get in there too and it it it.
It seems like there’s definite evidence that the debt brand still carry some weight with consumers and at least around holiday.
Seems like it was doing terrific.
Scot:
[36:07] Did a baby geek get like a drivable little Rolls-Royce Wraith.
Jason:
[36:13] She did not I have as I think documented on some of these other shows already made the mistake of buying him some drivable Vehicles like only two.
How to get home and come to my senses and realize that I’m now paying for a separate City parking space for my son’s truck my three-year-old son’s truck yes.
Scot:
[36:33] Five of them in one city park.
Jason:
[36:35] Yeah that’s true I probably could fit more but we don’t need to tell him that.
So glossy are is another great digital brand is doing really well in the beauty and cosmetics base and they open the store in Tribeca again.
These guys do a lot of custom assortments instead of the whole store is really a showroom and you shop the store you you,
you know try Cosmetics you pick stuff that you want and then you go to a will call window and actually pick up your custom,
serrated bag with your name on it of your Cosmetics you can do that online and they have a a pick up station at the very front of the store for for online orders or or you know they have an in-store pickup station,
for folks that have shop the in-store experience and this door was hopping like there was a line at almost every display for people to check out,
and again a big chunk of the store was dedicated to both them like doing your makeup and glamming you up and taking an Instagram photo in you know a bunch of staged.
[37:42] Scents that they had and so you kind of Sharon amplify The Experience so another good example of that.
Google has a pop-up store in Chicago and New York called Google Hardware I visited the one in in Chicago earlier and talked a little bit about it on the show The New York one is sort of a,
bigger better laid out version of the exact same store
again a great place to experience a lot of the Google hardware and get you know live demos and some real-world vignettes but the whole you know downstairs of the store again is dedicated to,
taking cool photos of you in a unique environment
and sharing those on all your social platforms with all your friends and so for Google it’s a double win there
they’re getting you to take advantage of this social photo booth experience or catching an email all the same things as all the other retailers but they’re also getting to demonstrate some of the unique features of the Google pixel
camera and as a speaker called best shot so essentially
they put you on this way cool interactive swing set and take a bunch of pictures of you and the AI in the Google Phone app,
looks at all the photos they took of you and pics of the two or three best photos and shows you though so kind of a double win there.
Scot:
[39:01] Did you agree with the ones I picked.
Jason:
[39:03] Yeah it seems optimized for obvious thing so you know I picked the ones where you’re smiling and looking directly at the camera and that are in good Focus I don’t know that I took enough pictures to.
To pick up beyond that what it’s it’s criteria were but definitely the the photos it recommended were keepers.
And yet it just a cool well design kind of theatrical set like it’s in there cases funny cuz you walk up and it looks like a really Bland background with a bunch of wood paneling and a swing and you sit on the swing in there I have this doesn’t seem like all that interesting of a,
have a background but then the guy triggers the display and as the swing starts moving,
all of the wood panels drop down in there all these colorful animated things moving around and it becomes a Thun Thun set for a photo so it’s just fun. Watch the surprise and Delight moment when.
When that happened to other people as well.
[39:58] And then the 11th of my my favorite retail stores is a new store.
In kind of the upper end of Tribeca called show fields,
and to me this is a similar concept 2 Beta so this is a a Marketplace store it’s a permanent store that.
Emerging Brands can rent a Pod in all of the pods have facilities for live demonstrations they all have digital signage,
until you got a bunch of like digitally native products you know that each had their own kind of,
shop and shop inside of this Schofield space then I guess the one thing that was different about Schofield from beta is,
the beta store is staffed by Beta employees and all the displays are largely self-service except for the beta employees most of the Schofield vignettes were actually staffed with branded employ so when you went to each of India,
you are likely to get a representative from the brand that was in that vignette talking to you.
Yeah so it seems like the the.
Marketplace at vacation of physical retail is continuing the happened so Scott. You may have been right that marketplaces are a thing.
Scot:
[41:23] Yeah the other they’re catching on.
Jason:
[41:26] Yep. So we’re super deep into the show project more time than we intended on the store visits super quick,
for they were a little bit of a letdown for me Restoration Hardware has this great reputation they move their store to the Meatpacking District,
is there a flagship store New York went to the store it’s a beautiful piece of visual merchandising and has tons of their product in it,
but I just really think that it’s a hard store to shop there’s no way finding others no way to know what inventory is in the store I could keep that a lot of folks have a Restoration Hardware is.
You know you want to try this furniture before you buy it,
they have a website with all these different formations of all their products but no one on the website can you find out which store has the products you want to try,
and you just kind of have to pop into the store and you’re going to see one sofa that represents a family of 10 and not get a very good story about the other nine so,
I just feel like it was a lost opportunity for a Restoration Hardware to take their retailing a little further than they had in the past and it seems like they stuck with.
[42:31] Beautiful visual merchandising and architecture but not really anything new or interesting and customer experience so that was a disappointment to me,
on 5th Avenue there’s a the original Saks Fifth Avenue they made a bunch of hay earlier this year about doing a huge remodel to their Beauty Department which of the second floor of the store
are you walking the store on the ground floor and they’re all these signed same check out Beauty 2.0 on the second floor and they really hype up this beauty 2.0 concept.
Until you know it frankly raises your expectation that they are
inventing a better way to shop for cosmetics and beauty and you know when I got up there and Shop did it felt like a very traditional department store Beauty experience to me like the.
The again the fixtures in the visual merchandising might have been a little nicer but you know you work at like all the exponential stuff going on at Sephora or an Ulta or the ability to shop based on
a use case or need instead of exclusively by brand you know they’re all these opportunities to kind of reinvent Beauty and to me,
like sacks raised expectation by calling Beauty 2.0 in it it to me it was Beauty 1.1 Maybe.
[43:46] I hit up about for Apple stores in New York City and you know I continue to have this,
this impression when I walk in Apple stores that they had become to me super boring and the problem I think is
did they have curated down they dramatically diminished the amount of third-party product they offer in an Apple store and so,
you know it’s almost all first-party product you know most of us know all of Apple’s product before we walk in the store so we’re not going to see some new Apple branded product at school or that we want to see you except maybe once a year
and you know that the stores always super busy but it’s also always super busy because there’s a bunch of people in line at the Genius Bar to get help getting their iTunes password so they can download the Nike app for the Amazon Go app
it that stores really become a customer service door and they’re just really isn’t a lot of.
Serendipitous Discovery or surprise and Delight like you know I just don’t feel like I have a reason to go there and find anything that’s going to be exciting for me I don’t know,
Scot do you still go to an Apple Store when you’re in a a new shopping district.
Scot:
[44:54] But Jason it’s a town hall don’t you just go there to meet people diet ice cream
I used to I used to get the most joy out of kind of a few know looking at they had a kind of robust drone section and all these wacky accessories like
Golf Club thing you can play with and I save if they’ve taken that stuff away I do think it’s Dimension
a part of it is once they get into the headphones Beats that’s a big section out.
Jason:
[45:23] Yeah they kicked over all the third party headphones out and yeah.
Scot:
[45:26] Yeah so so it is a bit of a bummer because like you I think I pretty much have every product covered so there’s no new Apple product I really need to discover.
Jason:
[45:37] Same same deal so if I forget to pack a power supply I might pop pop in the Apple to get a replacement but
yeah I miss the surprise and Delight moments I hope I hope they find a new way to bring those back and then last store in this is sadly for me cuz I really wanted to be excited.
[45:57] My raspberry award is going to a digital native brand that folks on the show are probably familiar with all the way which is.
Kind of a great digital suitcase that’s doing really well.
And the reason I’m disappointed is I had visited their pop-up store and thought it was fabulous right so,
you listen to the founders talk about the away brand and they say like hey we recognized early on we do you want to be about selling suitcases we wanted to be around selling aspirational experiences and destinations and so you went to the pop-up store and it was,
merchandise to be all these exotic locations that you wanted to go to and it just so happens that there was a luggage in each one of those locations that you could check out and it made you want to buy the luggage so that you could go to,
to Milan and you know have the experience,
and I thought that was really smart and it it you know the you know their presentations at Shopkin and shop at Oregon places like that you know they told the story that really kind of match the retail environment so,
now they’ve opened a permanent store and I and you go me and I like the pup I’m expecting you know some big stuff out of the permanent store and I feel like the permanent away store took a giant step back and it’s a bunch of shelves with suitcases and no storytelling and,
and none of that destination merchandising or aspiration like it did have kind of a a like.
[47:23] Unremarkable Cafe inside the store but mostly it was you know it it felt just like your typical Mall luggage store that just happen to have a bunch of away suitcases on.
Scot:
[47:33] I am a proud owner of a real of masochist.
Jason:
[47:37] Do you get yelled at every time you get on the plane that you have to take the battery out.
Scot:
[47:40] I know it pops I got the later generation that works pops right up.
Jason:
[47:44] Yet so
I think that’s most of the products but there is a slight slightly unfortunate thing that one of them are key features if they have a smart suitcase that has a big battery in it that you can use to charge a lot of your gadgets
and there must have been some bad experience on the airline somewhere because like it’s now built into the FAA announcements on a lot of planes
but if you have an away branded suitcase you must take the battery out before you come on the plane
and again away his design the suitcase to allow that so it’s not a big deal but I’m online from a brand or erosion standpoint it’s.
Anime be favorable maybe negative that every single time you get on a plane they make an announcement saying like you have to do something with an away suitcase or you’re not safe.
Maybe it helps that they’re reminding everyone that there’s this new pool suitcase call the way.
Scot:
[48:31] Yeah it’s not nearly as bad as when they said if you had a Samsung Note they would just like grab it. Off the plane.
Jason:
[48:38] Exactly incident I guess the last take what’s a bunch of great retail I do feel like a bunch of the new emerging brands or are the ones that are really moving the ball forward a lot of the
the start of.
A long time retail Brands I feel like I’m seeing glass Innovation out of them even Nike you know I mean arguably they been in retail since 1990 but as a major retailer
like they’re moving the ball forward and and you know the Saks Fifth Avenue’s of the world not as much.
That one other kind of antidotal take away I have talked a bunch of times on the show about electronic shelf labels and you know I would point out of the 33rd
three stores I visited four of them now I have 100% electronic shelf label so you know potentially we’re starting to see the
the slow Evolution to this more real-time updatable Dynamic pricing retail environment so I hope we see more of that.
Scot:
[49:37] Well we just give me the last show of the year so we want to give you guys kind of the double bang for your buck so in addition to Jason’s detailed report we’re going to do,
quick 10-minute news run and it wouldn’t be a Jason Scott show without.
Jason:
[50:01] The news your margin is there opportunity.
Scot:
[50:10] Cool so briefly the big news for Amazon right now here we are in the heat of pizza delivery time is not surprisingly deliver you were in it so there’s been a bunch out around delivery.
[50:23] I can see light interesting stuff on Amazon Jason by frequent Amazon order this time of year for estimator and
it’s really interesting they’re kind of my Prime orders are defaulting to to de-flea a message in there that says
choose one day and you’ll get your item tomorrow and it’s really it’s a really weird user experience like why
why are they making me choose it there’s no extra cost I did notice a day I didn’t order and it did that and I chose it and then it did this interesting math over on the side where it said your shipping charge is $20 and then
Midas out the shipping charge almost to make me feel like you know I was getting 20 $20 worth of value it felt like some kind of an A B test there
but that’s just been pretty unusual one here in Chicago you’ve probably already always had kind of same-day delivery in and next day
but that’s pretty rare North Carolina so you know I’m definitely seeing that they’re using language like.
[51:27] Using our express shipping partners and stuff like that so and around this area I’m seeing a lot of the Prime vehicle so I will talk about that little bit
so since it’s been pretty interesting as a user
the Bloomberg had a friend Spencer super over there I had a great peace out today about the Amazon delivery Network and you’ll notice he’s there around delivery.
[51:55] Very intimately familiar with these various platforms most famous and well Love’s truck platform is from Europe in is the Mercedes Sprinter
and so Amazon in September a news article came out that they had ordered 10,000 of these thousand and what they’ve done very rapidly is they have out the field but it feels like a lot of them
they have set up people in their own businesses these 1099 businesses
I am they will guarantee your route though rent the truck to you very inexpensively and this article had some really interesting case studies profiled someone that had a 42 and 70 drivers they’re doing 250 deliveries per day per driver
I am making $1,000 a month in profit so
if you’re interested in that kind of thing will put in the show notes and I definitely recommend you read that and then you saw one to Jason.
Jason:
[52:53] Yep so inside notice there’s a slight irony to me the same time you’re seeing all these Amazon branded Sprinter Vehicles showing up it’s also the time of year when UPS and FedEx don’t have enough trucks until you start seeing a lot of Enterprise rental vans
with with UPS drivers getting out of them in the course there’s always the problem of,
people thinking they’re not not legitimate UPS drivers when they roll up in the in the unmarked white van.
[53:21] So you like people going in different directions there is an interesting thing that Amazon did this year you know there’s always this battle for free shipping amongst retailers and who’s going to lower their,
their threshold for free shipping and what they’re going to charge and so you know Walmart does free 2-day shipping for any order over $35,
Target came out for holiday and said hey free shipping on anything and you know it’s always curious,
Target made this better shipping offer than Walmart would Walmart match him in Walmart didn’t,
and I I kind of thought that was interesting and that would be the end of it but then Amazon surprised is all about coming out with a new offer for this holiday that they were offering free shipping,
for the holiday even without a Prime Membership in this this is not their 2-day shipping but that it was interesting that Amazon was getting more promotional around holiday we’ve all been watching to see if that might Force Walmart.
To react so far we haven’t seen that but now they’re extending this free shipping and they’re starting to really promote their,
they’re cut off date so you know I think tomorrow is the last day to get free slow shipping from Amazon but as you pointed out they’ve beefed up there.
Their same-day delivery options in a bunch of markets and so you’ll be able to continue to Christmas shop up to the 24th in a lot of markets and still get them.
[54:47] As you mentioned Chicago was one of the first so I for a long time I’ve had this experience where,
you order something that’s available with one day delivery and then in the cart it defaults to 2-day delivery and it goes you can get it’s Tuesday you can get this on Thursday for free or you can cook this to get it Wednesday for free,
cuz even though it says same day it usually is after the the early morning cut off so you get it the next day and so you know you constantly have this thing where of course why wouldn’t I pick,
to get it a day earlier for the same free price of a new thing I just saw this week on on my own Amazon experience in Chicago
is there launching some new service called Amazon weekly delivery and it seems like they’re trying to incentivize me to bundle more of my purchases
and have them delivered one day a week instead of on an ad-hoc basis and so it almost feels like Prime Pantry for.
Non-prime Prime Pantry items so I have to dive into that and get a little more details but that was a new GUI I had never seen before.
Scot:
[55:54] What’s the incentive.
Jason:
[55:56] Yeah so that was part of the problem it did not like it was a new button I could put
to put it on my weekly delivery which to my knowledge I didn’t have a weekly delivery but it did not seem like there was any monetary benefit to do that so it was again it was weird it was like
free same-day delivery get it on Monday standard 2-day delivery to get it on Tuesday or put it in your weekly delivery on Wednesday.
Scot:
[56:21] They will there be there always playing around with incentives for slow shipping so I’ve noticed now they seem to have detected on my pretty heavy Prime now users they’re offering me kind of somewhere between 5 and $10 for slow shipping at all do in a prime now single use coupon,
iPad audible coupons Whole Foods
variety of different free song a free app to put around look like a thousand things on that side.
Jason:
[56:49] Yeah no for sure and I agree with you I think they they seem pretty smart about seeing which offers you’re most likely to accept and then turning up the volume on those offers.
I do an audible and I keep getting more and more audible offers on or better offers on that regard stuff
definitely get that you link to an article this morning about Amazon’s new air hub
in the Fort Worth airport so that his listeners that will probably already know they have a big air Hub in Cincinnati now they’re adding a second big Hub in Dallas
and again you know these guys are getting more airport capacity and more planes and and it just seems
totally obvious that they’re their bulking up there their internal delivery capacity and you know it it’s it’s hard to imagine it’s not a competitive threat to our friends at UPS.
Scot:
[57:48] Amazon names are fulfillment centers after the airport so for a long time there are us tracking this and Phoenix had the most so they would do like PHX and
when they open the second one they Rebrand the first one to one and then they start new muriatic so Phoenix had like PHX 1 2 3 and 4 in the Dallas for long time didn’t have anything there then suddenly when the span of like four or five years David have
all the way from DFW 1 to 6 and then and then they expanded out the rest of the day of the Houston and Sentra so
no it’s it’s a it’s a huge state for Amazon so I imagine you know that that’s going to be a busy Hub and then it’s interesting cuz they diagrams for the kind of have a book helps Earth Day
kind of building the supply chain that looks
it’s kind of a hybrid of like what Walmart Walmart does to get stuff to a store and what FedEx UPS do so they have this kind of benefit of Products near you and then if it goes out then it goes to this other level and another level up there it is really fascinating how they’re the kind of layer to supply chain,
elements on top of each other maybe we’ll do a show where we get a supply chain Guru in to explain that privately digested.
Jason:
[59:05] Yeah and I would add just one thing like these are not just hubs where they’re like shipping Goods to then drive them to your house this is mostly about moving Goods around between the various for filming Center.
And there
they’re just getting crazy Advanced like I literally think we have a pop-up fulfillment center in Chicago right now so it appears Amazon his rented
all the parking under Millennial Park and they like literally staged a temporary fulfillment center in downtown Chicago for holiday.
Scot:
[59:36] Brickell lots of machine learning lots of data.
Longtime listeners will enjoy this article because it’s pretty much a topic we spent a lot of time on a I didn’t think there is much you in there but it is paid gated tarp a waltz
and it really talks about introduces the concept of crap can’t realize a profit and that you know it makes it sound like news that Amazon’s pushing back on manufacturers to to change their packaging and figure out how you solve this problem of
you know that these items that are too bulky you too heavy to low asp2 to make money who’s a good read good summary of of kind of what Amazon’s doing but,
I kind of made it feel new and and we know that they’ve been doing this for years.
Jason:
[1:00:26] Yeah I didn’t think I’d almost argue that there’s a slight trim the other way there that I feel like Amazon’s been progressively getting more and more aggressive about targeting crap and more recently liked
in last few months and feels like they they may have loosened things likely in some category.
Scot:
[1:00:44] Yeah yeah and then there was a smattering of Amazon go you touched on it and your your trip reports what are.
Jason:
[1:00:54] Yeah so they’re there is some rumors that one of the use cases for Amazon go could be airports and that is one of the categories where it seems like you could,
Amazon go would be a really good fit so I really fast grab-and-go Self Service experience in an airport and as we talked about like a lot of the go merchandise is food and so you think about,
man what happens a lot of airports you have a limited time to get something to eat before you get in the plane and you know you’re not going to get served anything to eat on the plane now and so
seems for a lot of reasons
the Amazon goes strength online really well with that airport use queso that that made a lot of sense I won’t be surprised to see that deploy and deploy fast they also open their first.
[1:01:45] Small for my Amazon go store so this is like a hundred square foot store and it is kind of like a self-contained shop and Shop,
where you know you can have a bunch of quick grab convenience items,
in a you know Anna is self-contained pop up store format and you know from the first time I saw I go one of these cases I always thought of was like the hotel.
Gift shop for the hotel snack shop kind of thing where it doesn’t make sense to staff the store with the
a person but you know you can sell a lot of snacks to the guess that just check in and they’re going up to the room and so this the small-format store seems like a perfect fit for a potential Hotel use case for exam.
[1:02:30] And then I think go is now going to the UK so we’ve seen like three new new retail for mastering Amazon open up in in London in recent times and now they’re going to get their first ghost tour.
Scot:
[1:02:42] Cool it’s everyone laughed when they said they weren’t there could be thousands of these so you put 10 in each airport and 50 in each City and boom you’re there.
Jason:
[1:02:52] Exactly so they are not sitting still there doing a lot of interesting stuff it’s been fun to follow them.
Scot:
[1:02:59] Awesome so I know we’re up against time but there is that concludes our Amazon news there was one big news item that I wanted to pick your brain on and is there she might this kind of slid under my radar I’m sure you were really
you’re attracting it but there was this announcement that IBM sold a bunch of software stuff to this company called HCL I don’t know who that is and the ones that made the headlines I saw where I was he Lotus Notes and just some kind of,
old stuff that seemed
then I saw a kind of kerfuffle on LinkedIn where several of the smaller e-commerce platforms were really kind of riling up retailers and saying you know,
where you going to do now that IBM no longer supports websphere which is there their kind of you know their e-commerce platform that a lot of the largest retailers are on and.
Turns out that they have sold that whole platform to this company HCL what I’m sure a lot of our listeners out there
I’m sure if they’re on websphere they’re they’re painfully aware this but I was a little shocked about that what do you what do you make of it does this mean IBM
just as getting out of the retail game or why would they sell it and then what do you think it means going for.
Jason:
[1:04:14] Yep it’s even potentially more confusing than that so it’s totally cut me out of left field the,
you know if you’ll get the last call at 5 to 8 years in retail there have been these three Enterprise platforms that have emerged as sort of the most competitive,
platforms for launching your e-commerce site so you know IBM has had Webster Commerce which is one of the products they sold the ACL Oracle has that a product called atg was originally stand alone company Oracle bottom,
there’s originally a German stanaland company called hybris the sap bot
and so you know if you were a big retailer or you wanted to you know be selling hundreds of millions of dollars online,
you likely were going to pick one of these three platforms to launch your website and and you would likely have a shootout between two or three of them,
and you know that pay a company like razorfish millions of dollars to to implement it for you and and pay the vendor,
you know hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars a year in maintenance on that platform and so in some ways like totally shocking IBM which you know.
[1:05:27] Arguably had the biggest retail market share of those three platforms.
So the entire websphere business to HCL HCL is a very large integrator and so you know frankly from my standpoint,
whatever traction IBM had in the marketplace that platform is totally going to lose now that a single integrator,
because you know all the other integrators in the world are not very likely in to be promoting and implementing a platform,
it’s owned by one of their competitors so you know usually when an integrator buys a platform it’s kind of the end of life for that platform and it just becomes,
an in-house piece of Ip that that that integrator uses you don’t becomes much harder to see other third parties.
Integrate that’s an IBM had this Rich echo system of integrators that were aggressively selling their stuff so there’s a ton of customers that are on it it’s but yours was super fragmented about this.
[1:06:31] They sold the on-prem version of the software 2hcl at the moment IBM still owns,
the cloud version of the software which is the newest version but the cloud version is based on the on Prim codebase so if you’re one of the few customers that bought the,
Cloud version of IBM or you were thinking about migrating now you have to ask yourself.
Is HCl going to keep updating that code base so that IBM’s Cloud version continues to stay.
Competitive or contemporary or what’s going to happen there IBM owns a bunch of other retail software that a lot of retailers still rely on most famously they own order management system called Sterling.
It’s still doing really well and they did not still sell sterling so in the old days.
You know I didn’t had a lot of success getting people to use their o&s and their web platform together because obviously most most businesses need order Management in and then you conversate.
Now those things are getting split up so at the moment there’s a lot more questions than answers.
I probably already taking too much time but the one thing I will say is in my mind all of these Enterprise platforms are losing momentum and losing customers and so you know the likely reason I’m selling it is.
They just feel like the super expensive enterprise software is kind of end-of-life because.
[1:07:54] To me what’s happening is the very largest e-commerce sites are are all largely on custom and house built stuff.
And increasingly the biggest customers that were on these Enterprise platforms are.
Writing more the software themselves and using less of the Enterprise platform and negotiating to Payless licenses for that software.
Everyone wants to move to the cloud and none of these products are particularly graceful at offering a cloud version,
and then every new business that’s been born every new brand that’s been born in the last eight years that was more likely to be digital natives,
probably started doing e-commerce on something like Shopify or Bigcommerce and they’re actually finding that those those platforms continue to meet all their needs even as they scale and so
you know even if you outgrow Shopify
once you’re used to paying $10,000 a year for your eCommerce platform you know it becomes really hard to pay for a you know orders of magnitude more for that you know and then orders of magnitude more on top of that to implement it just became
a tough value prop for these old Enterprise platform so
a lot of us in the e-commerce software space have a lot of nostalgia for IBM at the you know they were definitely King Of The Hill in retail for a long time but you know I do
probably selling them because you know it was becoming a financial loser for them and and it does not seem like that’s where the growth is going to be in retail.
Scot:
[1:09:23] Feels like Financial.
Kind of yeah she’ll games though too. Maybe a negative phrase but maybe I’m just wanting to show Wall Street more SAS Revenue so that’s probably why they kept that piece
but you know you can’t possibly
do well if you’re not enjoying the underline code and if I’m an integrator I don’t want to make this a surgeon that are so seems like there’s instant misalignment there that
possibly work out well.
Jason:
[1:09:50] No I think there’s multiple layers of misalignment now and to your point like
you know if you had a long in the tooth version of IBM and you were debating whether you should upgrade to the latest version or go to the cloud version you know I can guarantee you the day after this announcement you added some new players to your consideration set.
Scot:
[1:10:06] Who wins Miss.
Jason:
[1:10:09] Well yeah so in the in the short run on the the low end you know I think those
the smaller platforms are are winning a bigger share of a,
the e-commerce dollar so I think those got the shopify’s in Bigcommerce is continue to kind of get away from the bottom and it the top again you have more people building the stuff and so they’re all these tools out there to help those companies
build their own things that are all these toolkits of microservices that you can buy to expedite your own development and
that’s a really fragmented space right now I can’t point to one and say oh my gosh.
Commerce tools is the one or Symphony Commerce is the one you know there’s a lot of these players but it seems like ultimately
that that kind of native cloud-based microservice toolkit
retailers that want to build a little bit more of their own custom platform at a more economical price point is likely the way that this is going.
Scot:
[1:11:14] If only people had a chief Commerce strategy officer they could call too bad no one is earned that title yet.
Jason:
[1:11:22] Yeah I heard those guys.
Scot:
[1:11:23] There is only one there is one.
Jason:
[1:11:25] Few and far between.
That’s got that’s slightly more than a good place to end it we should have ended it about 30 seconds ago
but we completely overused are a lot of time so I apologize to witness for the extra-long episode but hopefully people found it valuable and it’s a great way to
kick you into holiday season so
as always if you had any questions or comments feel free to jump on Facebook and leave us a note
if you struggle through this entire episode we’d love it if you jump on iTunes and give us that five star review and man I sure would like to thank all the winners for 4
a great year and wish everyone a happy holiday.
Scot:
[1:12:09] You think someone happy holidays we will be back in 2019 with a lot of fresh content for you and we really appreciate appreciate you listening to the show and leaving us those reviews.
Jason:
[1:12:22] Until next time happy commercing.
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