A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 164 is industry news, live from the ICSC AOC trade show in Austin.
Subscribe:
Jason & Scot gave a presentation at the International Council of Shopping Centers Open Air Centers show in Austin Texas and got together afterward to record a news update.
- Amazon Project Zero – New brand protection program
- Walmart Earnings. Same store sales up 4.2%, E-Com for the quarter up 43% (up 40% for the fiscal year), guidance for next year is that e-com will grow 35%. Profitability of e-commerce continues to be a challenge for Walmart, and they expect that to continue. Walmart stores offering “Online Grocery Pickup” (OGP)_ grew from 800 to 2100 stores this year, and is expected to grow to 3100 next year.
- JCPenneys Earnings. Revenue down 8.4%, same store sales down -4% (vs. 4.3% expected). They announced the closure of 18 stores, and said to expect more in subsequent years).
- L Brands Earnings – Victoria’s Secret same store sales down 7%, will close 53 stores.
- FedEx launched a new delivery robot, SameDay Bot
- Stamps.com dropped it’s exclusive deal with USPS, a possible precursor to an Amazon partnership (or acquisition).
- Target launched Target Plus, a new invite only marketplace to expand Targets online assortment.
- Marketplace software vendor Mirikl announced a new $70M fund raise, reflecting investor confidence in the marketplace model.
Jason will be at ShopTalk in Las Vegas next week and will moderate two panels:
MONDAY, MARCH 4, 2019 TRACK 4, SESSION 4: 2:50PM – 3:30PM
TOPIC: Selling on Marketplaces
- John Evons, VP, Global Direct-to-Consumer, KEEN
- Bridget Davies, VP, Revenue & Seller Growth EBay
- Jordan Bass, Head of eCommerce, The Wonderful Company
TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2019 TRACK 2, SESSION 5: 3:35PM – 4:15PM
TOPIC: Creating a Single View of the Customer
- Charlie Cole, Chief Ecommerce Officer, Samsonite
- Steve Miller, SVP, Marketing & eCommerce, JOANN Stores
- Greg Fancher, SVP & Chief Information Officer, Express
Jason and Scot will be giving a joint presentation (and recording a live show) from ChannelAdvisor Connect in Austin on April 8th and 9th.
Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.
Episode 164 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, February 28th, 2019.
Join your hosts Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
New beta feature – Google Automated Transcription of the show:
Transcript
Jason:
[0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 164 being recorded on Thursday February 28th 2019 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host,
Scot Wingo.
Scot:
[0:40] Alright alright alright hey Jason welcome back Jason Scott show listeners
we are joining you live live live in the same room which rarely happens and we are here in Austin Texas at the icsc OAC conference.
Jason:
[0:57] That is a mouthful very impressive specially with Matthew McConaughey standing right behind you.
Scot:
[1:02] Yeah yes sir this is a conference that will you put her on and I have all it I’ll let you introduce the conference.
Jason:
[1:09] So I think icsc is a Trade Organization for shopping centers and this particular event is about the,
open-air centers which is like,
a strip malls and power centers and lifestyle outdoor malls so it’s a bunch of real estate people from retail companies and a bunch of.
Individual property owners that own these these properties that host them all Z’s my senses this category Mall,
tends to be less aggregated in the big Regional malls where you name the three big mall operator.
Scot:
[1:46] Yeah I guess so it’s a sold-out show about 500 folks here and fair
yeah it’s pretty interesting we were here doing a talk I don’t want to say too much I think we’re going to try to turn it into kind of a visual
but video presentation so we’re going to try a new form out with that but we were asked to come give kind of a live version of the show and we talked about you were always the folks to get to get in front of a bunch of retailers and Tom they’re going out of business if so that was exciting.
Jason:
[2:14] Yeah I put a bunch of them on a slide that said you don’t want to be here.
Scot:
[2:18] And then I saw some people storm out so I think Mission achieved we think we just killed.
Jason:
[2:24] One way or another.
Scot:
[2:26] I wish we have a lot of one and dones here with a Jason and Scott show Roadshow.
Jason:
[2:35] Exactly we are the ultimate one-hit-wonder but I had fun chatting with you and in a rare occurrence we budgeted an hour for the presentation and took exactly an hour.
Scot:
[2:45] Yeah yeah if we could just be as good on the podcast that would be amazing but we we nailed it.
Jason:
[2:51] I like to think when we go long we’re just making our audience more.
Scot:
[2:55] Yeah we’re giving them more content for their their dollar.
Jason:
[2:57] No I mean they have to stay on the exercise bike longer.
Scot:
[2:59] Truth absolute yes do not get off the the cycle will work time constraint here cuz I’ve got to hop on a plane next week you or in Las Vegas that shoptalk I’m super envious this is I’m going to miss this year shoptalk unfortunately.
Jason:
[3:11] It will not be a true shop talk without you to be my my co-pilot but I am looking for to go of course it’s been a,
Erasure the last couple years it’s sold out this year it’s at the Venetian I want to say that more than 10,000 people last year so expect it’ll be.
A big shindig and I’m moderating to panel so I’m doing a panel on Monday in the afternoon at like 2:50 on selling on Marketplace has.
Scot:
[3:40] What that’s my topic.
Jason:
[3:41] I feel like this would have been your panel has you gone but they’re trying to channel,
You by inviting me and so I can have the halo effect but we have a couple sellers that are.
The telling marketplaces so we have keen is on on the ship which is a great Footwear brand from,
from my old Hometown Portland Oregon and then Jordan bass I don’t know what this guy did wrong in life but this is will be,
the second time he’s been on a panel that I moderated and Jordan Reed’s e-commerce at the wonderful company so I always like to.
Wonderful company owns a Fiji Water so I like to spend.
30 40 minutes talking about the Fiji Water girl with him and then I like to get into the details about how they’re able to Shell the pistachios and just sell the the unshelled pistachios are the shelled pistachio.
Scot:
[4:31] Can you have you been on your panel to.
Jason:
[4:33] I do incident in addition that you sellers are we have Bridget Davies who is the VP of Revenue and so our growth at eBay so we’ll get to hear from from eBay’s perspective about how Brands and should be thinking of amusing.
Using Marketplace.
Scot:
[4:48] Cool and then decide for marketplaces what are you talking about.
Jason:
[4:51] Yep sit in on Tuesday I have a panel called creating a single view of the customer so talking about.
Kind of aggravating Gator dated to get that 360 degree view of the customer and how you do personalization and data capture and in all those kinds of things and so we have.
Three retailers on on the show we have a.
Charlie, who has been on the podcast so I vaguely remember that show because I think we did it in the middle of a party and there may have been some drinking.
Scot:
[5:22] There was some inviting I remember Charlie is pretty outspoken so I think he’ll ask me a fun panel I’m going to call I’m going to call it now.
Jason:
[5:29] Yeah I think so too and Charlie runs e-commerce at Samsonite which is of course Samsonite but also to me and and i e bags,
incident we’ve got Steve Miller’s that’s VP of marketing and e-commerce at Jo-Ann stores in so that you know they have an interesting perspective on,
on a digital in End customer capture so that that’ll be interesting to talk about and then,
we have a Greg fanshare who’s the the CIO at Express and express as one of the most interesting,
long-running customer Affinity programs in the apparel space so he’ll be an interesting perspective as well.
Scot:
[6:07] Free call and then we are back together here in Austin actually April 8th tonight we’re going to do another live version of the show for a channel advisor connect so we should start thinking about doing the sides when you get back from Vegas.
Jason:
[6:19] Do you think I will Channel advisor just pay for us to keep this room at the Fairmont so I can just leave my stuff here.
Scot:
[6:24] Probably not this is a this is a pretty fancy I don’t there is a Residence Inn I’m so maybe maybe they’ll store your bags over there.
Jason:
[6:31] Oscar.
Scot:
[6:33] Cool well it wouldn’t be a Jason Scott show without some
Amazon news new your margin is there opportunity,
quotes of the day Amazon announced a new program for Brands I wanted to kick this one over to you Jason cuz I wanted to get your perspective on it
tell us about Amazon Project zero.
Jason:
[7:03] Finally I get to be the one to do some Amazon news I feel like that’s always your thing.
Scot:
[7:07] Since you’re taking my panels I’ll give you the whole Amazon news thing too but I’m going to talk about digital fact tags going for it.
Jason:
[7:17] Project it was kind of interesting so this is a new program that Amazon just announced this week and it’s a,
program by invite only for select Brands and it apparently gives them these brands of the ability to flag and take down a counterfeit listings.
And so.
Without any intervention from Amazon or any appeal process a brand that’s in the program would have a self-service tool where they could.
Identify a counterfeit copy of their product and take it down so for example of Vera Bradley was mentioned as one of the.
The pilot customer so they they saw counterfeit handbags on the on the site they could take him down and that’s the part.
In the short run that I’m most interested in and there’s probably the most buzzed-about and there’s some pros and cons to this this program,
this is part of the bigger counterfeit program anti-counterfeit program they don’t actually have a program.
[8:22] The weather trying to get Brands to serialize their product and literally like Prince a unique.
Serialize barcode on every product and so Amazon’s offering that if you,
go to this expense when you manufacture your product to put this authentic Asian serial number on each product the Dell validate those serial numbers when they bring them into,
the Amazon fulfillment center echo system and so they’ll the only allow products with valid serial numbers to come in so this is.
Kind of a systemic way the Amazons offering to help Brands keep only authentic products on the site but the reason that’s not super interesting in the short run is for a brilliant benefit from that they have to be willing to print this.
Spinning a serial number on a package that you need freeze packages.
In incremental expense normally they just awesome print the package in huge bulk and then they have to put it on every single package in the channel so it wouldn’t be just on the,
set of goods they’re sending Amazon they have to print it on,
everything they sell at Walmart and Kroger and everywhere else and so I have not heard of any adoption for that other than small.
Scot:
[9:40] So I’ve been at this for over 20 years now and eBay has gone kind of around the horn on this a couple times where that does program called verified rights owners,
the song is a bureau and they they went through a phase where you can kind of like go and solve your room and then the brands way over reach to know they would just kind of go knock out any third-party seller that was selling stuff without any kind of
way of validating that it was not even talked to be counterfeit and then they had to kind of like to swing back and
I’m in the telecommunication to see if Brands Conover reach on the sand and it just because a third party is selling a Louis Vuitton bag doesn’t mean it’s kind of it
and you know you have to think it’s a little kind of murky so it’ll be interesting to see I do think,
my my easy prediction is going to be a lot of overreaching going on early on with this third-party sellers will go through an outrage phase
gmv will go down in these categories in Amazon will then kind of have to swing the pendulum back to some Middle Ground so we’ll see how that happens for third-party sellers,
I do think I’ll be a short-term negative for third-party sellers.
Jason:
[10:44] Yeah I mean I think there’s a couple of ways to look at this somewhat cynical so.
Light at the moment most brands would say there’s not enough tools to protect the brand on the site right and so there’s a.
[10:58] A complaint process but it feels very slow and,
sort of automated and things take a long time to percolate and you don’t necessarily ever see any action in a bit and an even to event Avail yourself of those limited tools you had to have a formal relationship with Amazon which in most cases meant you had to be selling products.
[11:16] Through Amazon and so you know some of the brands that most don’t like the counterfeit stuff on Amazon have also made the decision not to sell on Amazon themselves and since they have no relationship with Amazon
Amazon doesn’t make those tools available to them so some some people would say that some of these brand protection tools one of their their secondary purposes is to entice Brands to,
to participate on the platform and so I’ve heard a lot of people speculate that that’s one of.
The main reasons that Nike for example participates on Amazon is to Avail themselves of the Amazon brand registry so this is more powerful tool presumably as far as we know you have to be in Amazon,
brands are selling on Amazon platform to use it so that’s another enticement to some of those those holdouts and you know per your point,
brands are almost certainly going to over-reach lots of Brands don’t like gray Market product even though that’s perfectly legal to sell on the,
on the side or they don’t like product that doesn’t comply with Matt,
pause price policy even though they don’t really have the right to take that down so pretty likely as they invite more people in the program people were over reach you and I were speculating a little bit.
Maybe Amazon even already knows that and doesn’t care like there’s a.
[12:34] A hypothesis would be then Amazon wants to improve some machine learning to improve the automated detection of these counterfeit things and said the first thing you need is a big data set,
listings that have been identified as counterfeit and so one would thing you do if your Amazon you hire a bunch of people.
Look at the listings do the research figure out which were fake and which ones weren’t flag all the ones that are fake and then you eat all that data to a machine learning algorithm and eventually you have a really smart system to identify counterfeit and if you were Amazon and didn’t want to pay all those,
to do that work you could sort of outsourced to the brain by temporarily giving them the tools to Flagstaff themselves,
knowing that they would eventually Miss use the tools and you have a great excuse to take the tools away from them but in the interim you have built a good dataset you could use to train a machine Learning System.
Scot:
[13:24] Another another signal is the product reviews so I’ve seen many product reviews especially in the health and beauty category it seems to be where I I see it most we’re pretty significant number of reviews will say this is not really from,
Brand X it’s is fake and then so you know that’s another interesting signal so maybe if a brand comes in and then does Mark that and they’ll get,
yep the machine learning could get smarter and no okay up books like these reviewers are right that this is a counterfeit or or if it’s not taken down though they’ll learn the opposite.
Jason:
[13:54] Yeah and if you’re not a regular selling Amazon like you you’d be shocked how deep are this goes like the the fraudsters are super sophisticated now in the black hat tactics are really evil so for example,
they’re not likely to write a bunch of negative reviews about your their competitive product they’re actually more likely to write.
Positive reviews that they know Amazon will flag is fraudulent about their competitors products.
And figure takedowns and things that way knowing that Amazon’s is very slow and not very good at responding to those complaints about accidental.
Scot:
[14:29] Cool so also in the news Walmart had some earnings so walk us through the highlights there.
Jason:
[14:35] Yet so I think it was overall a good quarter for Amazon their same-store sales for Walmart their same-store sales were up 4.2%.
Oh that’s that’s not a huge number but by retail standard that’s a very good number again you know there’s a lot of retailers the same start negative same-store sales,
so 4.2 is reasonably healthy across such a big number that they have and I’m more relevant to our listeners there econ was up 43% for the quarter.
[15:06] Cousin hit their 40%.
Increase for the year which was their guidance last year so they basically hit it exactly now that issued new guidance for next year and they’re,
predicting 35% eCommerce growth so still a big number still bigger than Amazon certainly bigger than than that industry overall,
but but like many e-commerce sites their rate of growth is is probably decelerating and as we’ve talked about on the show,
a lot of Walmart’s e-commerce growth is really tied to this grocery program they have right and so you know unlike traditional general merchandise e-commerce where you know you you put the listing up once available to everyone at Shops at walmart.com,
when you put eggs up for sale in a particular store,
does eggs are only available to Consumers that our shopping within a close Geographic proximity of that one store then so it’s e-commerce sales it’s it’s it’s listed as e-commerce but you almost have to think of it as same-store sales.
[16:09] You know that when they they add more stores there their growth seems really high but the reality is is because they went from a store that wasn’t selling groceries online to a store that now is and so if you look at it through that lens,
Walmart is a little more than halfway through making grocery even available on all their store so they announced that they’re at 2,100 stores have online grocery pickup right now,
they have 4,000 stores they said by next year.
[16:37] 3100 store so that’s about the same amount of growth next year they had this year so if you were a investor or Speculator its it seems pretty safe.
They added a thousand swords of grocery this year and that drove this is big 40% growth number,
they’re planning on adding another thousand stores next year that if they hit that stores.
Probably going to you know not be that impressive did they cheat 35% growth and they have one more year and them but what you be really worried about is how they calm.
Ecommerce sales after that final year when they don’t have more more stores to open,
and then the other thing is interesting to me is they also announced that only 800 of the stores do they have home delivery and you guys are all heard me talk about I think curbside pickup a bigger deal than home obviously a lot of people do want home,
so the only 800 of the 4,000 stores do home and Walmart has used a variety of.
Internal and external vendors to do home delivery so they have this thing called spark delivery which is kind of using their own employees to deliver,
and they’ve done some mixed press on that it doesn’t seem like it’s a huge piece of their delivery Network they partnered with a lot of the third-party delivery firms.
[17:51] To do that delivery and that they’re only at 800 stores they said they want to double that next year given that they’re leveraging Partners you expect that means they’re going to lean into their Partners even more.
About a week before their earnings deliv announced that they were actually stopping their Walmart partnership.
And it first you would assume oh my gosh Walmart my stove fire them for some reason but the the word on the street is that deliver actually turn to Walmart off,
because the.
Delivers using a gig workers and the workers were so dissatisfied with the deliveries they were getting from Walmart that they started refusing.
To get them and that the fundamental complaint is.
Hey you’re doing worker you take in order to deliver groceries you go to the store the order is not ready you have to wait a long time you have a bunch of downtime.
As the deliv driver talk about it.
It’s a bad experience for the delivery drivers and a lot of inefficiencies on Walmart’s part and then on average the customers that are most ordering home delivery are the ones that are farthest away from the Walmart stores which are.
[19:01] If you’re very far from Walmart store your super roll and it said expensive long delivery thing so it sounds like.
There’s still some some optimization than improvements.
To get home delivery nails at Walmart but it seems like the curbside pickup is going quite smooth and then I guess the last big talking point is,
despite the fact that he Converses growing huge it’s a significant contributor to that top-line growth it’s not a contributor to profitability and in fact Walmart talks about having a loss on their entire e-commerce business and given that there,
Thomas make 10 billion dollars in an incremental capex expenditures between now and 2020 they’ve actually said you can expect.
Those losses to increase in potential accelerate in so.
They’re talk about like a strategically one of the few things Walmart needs to make progress on that they haven’t is.
Getting profitability on that e-commerce sales.
Scot:
[19:58] Girl has any Wall Street analyst, picked apart the the growth to see how much is incremental and how much just kind of moving from the offline to the online, part of The Ledger.
Jason:
[20:09] Not that I have seen and I like to be honest I haven’t even seen that you would think at the very least people would start a back into a same-store sales,
number and I haven’t seen that yet now you you get a lot more of the investor Communications than I do for some reason there’s some.
People perceive that you’re like smarter and more economically successful.
Scot:
[20:30] We’ll get we’ll get some of our interns on this for maybe a few drops of
also this morning JCPenney announce there are things I thought there’s a couple interesting things there that the stock surged and I was like oh they must be out of trouble but really it turns out to be one of these less worse than books. So Revenue was only down 8.4% year-over-year I think there was concern out there
as we heard this kind of continuing drumbeat of the back end of Q4 was slow
we’ve had more bankruptcies we got Payless Shoes is kind of have they filed or their tottering on the brink of filing so a lot of people are really concerned about JCPenney so this ended up being kind of a new idea positive in that it wasn’t as bad as people that kind of imagined,
same-store sales in 219 were only down 4% versus,
proceed 4.3 that’s like at a point swing compared to Walmart which is pretty interesting Avenue CEO I won’t even try to say her last name do you know how to say it Joel Soul Tallahassee while I will try Soul Town
and so she made two announcements that were interesting and there’s there’s this other weird thing that happens in retail now when you announced store closures or stock pops because there was like Yay work closing stores,
obviously you can’t like enough the endgame there as is.
Jason:
[21:48] Add trendline doesn’t doesn’t go forever.
Scot:
[21:49] Yeah so she knows they’re going to close 18 of the main stores and nine of their home and Furniture footprint
I and then she declined to give 2019 guidance and then said no pretty much telegraphed expect a lot more store closures so
you kind of said something to the effect of we’re evaluating all the stores there’s no sacred cows all that kind of new CEO stuff,
kind of an interesting whipsaw there is so so I see we had Ron Johnson and he left at 13th and there was a guy to co since then so she’s like the third since Ron Johnson.
Jason:
[22:22] Yeah they had the original CEO come back after Ron Johnson and then they had and I’m I’m going to say the name wrong Marvin.
Scot:
[22:31] Marvin and I he was big on appliances were one of the first things that you’ll did was yank all the appliance stuff out so you know it’s interesting to watch these gyrations as he’s trying to figure out what what they want to be when they grow up.
Jason:
[22:46] I didn’t even know you were allowed to just take a pass on offering a guidance.
Scot:
[22:51] You can’t have soy Amazon only gives 1/4 of guidance they don’t give annual guidance and it’s more of the trend these days not to offer.
Jason:
[23:00] Incident in rounding out this foreclosure news L Brands which is the parent company of Victoria’s Secret and.
A bath one by.
Thank you very much I was desperate to say their competitors name.
Scot:
[23:20] You’re the marketplace guy and now I’m the retail.
Jason:
[23:22] Exactly I love,
so they also had a tough quarter or same-store sales in Victoria Secret was down 7% then after closing 53 stores and of course they’ve been in the news lately for,
seemingly not being in touch with the their customers in the marketplace always being accused of that so obviously,
they they have a particular image that they try to sell their customers they don’t necessarily have super inclusive sizing the a
like absolutely do not have super inclusive sizing of models selling their stuff,
and as there’s been more backlash to that the the management team’s response has been pretty like from my perspective.
They have a legitimate point for their brand they need to find a much more elegant way to measure message.
Scot:
[24:16] Yeah at some point you face an existential crisis in you change your mind on those things will be interesting to see if feel feels like they’re up against that with 53.
Jason:
[24:23] Or your successors change change.
Scot:
[24:27] Absolutely.
Some interesting news in the Des kind of delivery category So Yesterday FedEx released a new robot delivery system this one is pretty cool,
a little background so Amazon. I think it was three weeks ago they announced that they’re also testing a little robot delivery there’s looks like a little Moon kind of a Rover because it’s got six wheels I don’t think that there
they can like scissor up or anything like that it just think it is a really good traction on a flat surface.
Jason:
[24:59] Pick one perfect neighborhood in in like a Seattle suburb that has a perfectly smooth sidewalks that I can go on.
Scot:
[25:04] Or on Mars so is there does your two options so craters and and a sidewalk in Seattle so out of Memphis FedEx is announced a new robot and its really cool it’s called the same day and they partnered with the Segway folks to there’s a
kind of famous scientist in Cayman and most people know him for Segway but he also before Segway
he took the same technology that is in Segway that allows you to use as gyroscopes things to create a balancing system
create a wheelchair this is been really huge for four people are disabled this wheelchair can go upstairs so you using the same technology for this robot and in the video you know they show it kind of numb going through some pretty
rough terrain and then it can kind of effectively climb up stairs so really cool video there a lot of press for them rarely do you have,
delivery on on things like the night shows but one of the one of the Jimmy is the Kimmel or one of the other guys they said they had it on there I’m so
really good PR for FedEx they’re going to roll it out in Memphis and then quote-unquote other cities so they haven’t announced those yet
did you have a pretty nice list of brands that are launching it with so Pizza Hut Target Lowe’s and AutoZone and if so this is kind of this interesting the last mile delivery problem
using robots to do that other interesting thing about the robots that I saw was there using a lot of autonomous vehicle technology so these things are connected they have a little bit of a lidar camera kind of thing on it.
[26:31] I’m there. I dug into this pretty good and I couldn’t get a lot of details on that so I can be interesting this to learn more about
what that looks like cuz I think there’s some pretty meeting problems for these things you is there a human just driving this remote from a central location or is it actually autonomous there hasn’t been that I saw a lot of detail on that aspect of it.
Jason:
[26:52] Yeah that’ll be interesting when I know we had a lot of attitude yes this year’s just even a side effect of a lot of these lidars is they,
they’re really bad for camera so you can imagine ironically the the FedEx robot taking out all the the ring doorbell.
Scot:
[27:13] Yeah and another something about lidar as you can shine laser pointers I didn’t confuse it.
I’m taking meds and someone trying to steal a package by confusing the FedEx robot with a light iron so interesting to see what what happens from these things
I bet you know seems infinitely safer than drones in the lot easier to test these out then you haven’t had that pee involved in Lacosta,
also in Shipping News a couple of quick ones
stamps.com is interesting so everyone knows kind of the front end stamps.com but the biggest chunk of stamps.com is they went acquired all the shipping companies that are out there shipstation ship works.
Jason:
[27:52] And by shipping companies you mean software vendors that help people ship stuff.
Scot:
[27:56] Yeah for colic smbs and like eBay sellers in Amazon sellers stamps went on this kind of acquisition spree in is accumulated a lot of the large package shippers using the stamps.com software
then they have this connection into the USPS just called in Deca they had an exclusive relationship the USPS and they would effectively get
sales commissions or I don’t know the right terminology there
did eventually get a revenue Sheriff’s whenever you would buy you $3 for an overnight kind of a delivery from from the USPS if you miss one of the many stamps platforms they would make like a nickel or something like that
the shipping so many products that ended up being a really big.
[28:39] Part of the revenue will they announce the week ago they were ending this exclusivity Arrangement will USPS and you know the market freaked out but was really interesting is reading the tea leaves on that the CEO of essentially sad you know there’s.
[28:54] So much going on Amazon and set the bar at 11 so we need to have much higher service levels that we offer and then there’s a fair amount of speculation that
this is an interesting if you were going to go do a deal with so so a couple of things you have together if Amazon we’re going to
you know open up their shipping Network for anyone to use it like a FedEx UPS,
that’s one if in the second half if you wanted to do a deal with them
then this is the first step of what you would do if there’s a lot of speculation that stamps.com is going to be a front-end into more of a Amazon Logistics kind of solution
and you know that that’s going to be pretty fascinating.
[29:39] Sidebar I’ve been I’m going to road trip so I don’t usually do a lot of road driving I file a lot like you do
and I have been blown away by the number of Amazon Prime trucks so I went on a three-hour drive from Raleigh to Washington DC and I literally saw 20 Amazon
trucks Emmys on the road it’s just like startling how much Amazon Logistics is going on out there then in our area I’m sure in Chicago we see the prime trucks I don’t get anything from FedEx or UPS to my house anymore from Amazon that’s all direct Amazon so they’ve definitely kind of started trimming out certain zip codes that must have high Prime density
and are doing deliveries through
that that smile van program where they have this 1099 networks they built up so big moves happening under the under the surface in the world of of delivery.
Jason:
[30:25] Yeah I believe so you won’t see the bands as much in Chicago because Chicago was an early Market where they build out a.
A network of actual Amazon W2 delivery people and so they’re there full-time Amazon employees but they don’t use the mark Vance so the majority of my packages get delivered by an Amazon employee,
one of the easy ways to tell by the way is if you go in till like the mobile app and you look at your orders when Amazon delivers a package they take a photo.
That UPS or FedEx won’t you if you have a photo as proof of delivery than you know it Amazon for some pride delivered it.
The Vans are mostly reserved for those there’s third-party companies.
That that are franchisees of Amazon Fulfillment of you will end in Chicago we have a blend of flex drivers and.
Amazon W-2 employee so we don’t have as many of the franchisee.
Scot:
[31:24] And then the last hit bit and this is back into the world of marketplaces there’s a company out of France called Miracle m i r a k l and just want to send them a shout out they just announced 70 million dollar round and what they do is they go primarily to retailers but they also work with some malls in a lot of other
other places where you can have a Marketplace so think of it as kind of a Marketplace in a box of so you can kind of say hey
let’s say I don’t know hey JC Penney you want to add a Marketplace here’s the software and all the components you need to integrate that in with your existing shopping cart functionality
full disclosure their partner of Channel visor so we’re already pre-integrated with him so we can go to bring a bunch of celery along with the software
and then the last thing I actually forgot to put in the show notes is,
Target at least that they have a Marketplace so I saw a thing on cnbc’s it looks like targets doing some Marketplace stuff which is interesting so these marketplaces are a kind of
I feel gratified talked about him for a very long time and we could only talk about even Amazon but now we have.
Copious marketplaces and talk about with obviously Walmart it’s a big part of what they’re doing and it’s interesting to see not only Miracle raise a pretty substantial round of funding to keep spreading the marketplace fire and now we have.
Jason:
[32:46] So it is interesting to me and almost feels like a a new wave of marketplaces so you obviously you have the businesses that are fundamentally marketplaces I gave an Amazon there their they’re.
In the past have been some retailers that leaned in the marketplaces so you know Staples talked a lot about it and I still think run one although you don’t hear them talk about as much.
Scot:
[33:09] Actually close to them.
Jason:
[33:11] And of course the best by briefly ran one and closed it down and so for a while there was a whole Market places are great but not.
Every retailer can earn the traffic to make the marketplace work.
Now for your point we’re seeing I mean Walmart’s is leaning heavily in the marketplace is this new Target initiative Albertsons is an interesting,
tackling marketplaces from a fresh and frozen perspective which will be unique.
Scot:
[33:40] Yeah Urban Outfitter has one.
Jason:
[33:42] And then for your point like Miracle being able to raise money means that there’s investors that that think that that’s a,
a trend that we’re going to continue to see as well so it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out I almost wish I had founded some company that made money helping people sell on Marketplace.
Scot:
[34:00] You’re a chief strategy retail Commerce digital officer you don’t have to worry about mundane things like.
Jason:
[34:07] No no no but keep doing a good job you may eventually earn another initial in your title of your.
Scot:
[34:11] I keep working on it sorry.
Jason:
[34:12] It’s important to have goals and that we are going to have to leave it there because,
it has happened again we’ve used up all the allotted time for this
a special Scott has to get to the airport short edition of the Jason and Scott show so if you have any questions or comments about the show jump on Facebook and leave them there let us know how much you prefer this much shorter version of the guests,
and as always if you enjoyed it would love to get that five star review on iTunes.
Scot:
[34:43] Thanks for joining us everyone and remember…
Jason:
[34:46] Until next time happy commercing.
Leave a Reply